Heritage Month Day Three: Enoch Powell

Happy Enoch Powell Day!

For day three of Heritage History Month, we are shifting forward again to the postwar era—an age where the theme is civilizational defense rather than civilizational building. Conservatives in the postwar era found themselves surrounded by a liberal establishment that was in a state of constant urgency to tear down the world they had inherited.

One of the most effective mechanisms of tearing down a nation is to import hoards of foreigners who neither know nor care about the essence and heritage of said nation. This would become a major theme of 21st century politics. But its roots stretch back to the 1960s and 70s— all across the Western world the nations began a unified suicide pact.

Among the most brilliant voices who stood courageous and elegant against the tide of cultural suicide was the Welshman Enoch Powell. Powell was a genius, a masterly classicist well-trained in the literature and culture of the Ancient Greek and Roman world. He knew quite well the absurdity of claiming that the end of history had been reached; civilizations come and go, and nations that choose to liquidate their heritage rather than fiercely preserve it are nations in a state of dissolution.

Anyone who knows about Powell most likely knows about his famed “Rivers of Blood” speech which offered biting criticism of the cult of immigrationism in the Western world. This speech was made in 1968–a symbolic year that represents the spirit of the New Left and its barbaric assault on the Western heritage. Powell gave a graceful voice to the pained outrage of Heritage Brits who knew—even in the sixties— that the elites in Western Europe sought to replace them. Example after example, story after story, Powell noted that the British government was completely oblivious to the cultural grievances of its people who were the first to fall victim to what we now know was to become the Long Invasion.

This speech became an international talking point of immense controversy. The controversy of course was not in found in the minds of the everyday British population, but in the media, in elite circles, in the managers of the social order at large. These elites blamed him for initiating racial tensions, when in fact he had become a spokesman for the instincts of the British people at large. Powell focused directly on the future consequences of the “coloured question” in terms of cultural hegemony, not materialism and crime. This sets him apart even from today’s moderate (GOP) critics of immigration.

A decade after the speech, Powell was asked whether he had perhaps exaggerated his fears for political gain. Powell stood his ground and answered that he was only guilty of under-estimating the problem, never of exaggerating it. Powell had an uncanny ability to quickly and sharply reply to any hysteric critic in a level-headed and eloquent manner—just look up his interactions on YouTube. He could handle any question, any absurd accusation, any twisting of the facts, and any distortion of the political realities of the immigration problem in our time.

Besides immigration, Powell made a mark on things like foreign policy. He was a critic of American expansionism and its fixation on spreading democracy. He pointed out time and again that pursuing global visions while toleration the subversion at home was akin to some medieval kingdom sending its soldiers out across the continent to explore while leaving their wives and children susceptible to barbarians at home. Except in this case the cultural barbarians were subsidized and praised by the Anglo-American elite.

What we learn from Powell is that our Long Heritage still matters. He saw himself as standing “Like the Roman”* (see note in follow up Tweet) against a civilizational onslaught—yet his duty was to man his post in the face of “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.” The consequences of the Immigrationist Cult would not just be material, but spiritual. The British people—indeed all Western Europeans— were liable to forget who they were. His job was simply to give these people a voice—to stand for them, and for the heritage that made them. We are the product of those who came before and it is our duty to stand up for them, to give our own dead a voice in the present.

Enoch Powell was an early Noticer. And he was convicted to state clearly what he noticed.

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.”