Violence and the Art of Civilisational Maintenance
Can Violence Be Virtuous?
Who can consider a poem or a painting if the way to the art museum is riddled with the threat of assault? The pro-civilisation project of cultural re-awakening through poetry, art, literature, handicrafts, and holistic education cannot be accomplished without acknowledging that the modern west has a serious violence problem, and it is a problem that both directly and indirectly comes from self-proclaimed pacifists. It is a paradox that the cost of peace is a credible threat of violence against those who would assault that peace. To punish a someone who does objective wrong against the innocent is first as a form of justice delivered to them, and second, is a form of deterrence to future crime.
The classic Catholic image of Saint Michael the Archangel destroying the wicked with violence always comes to mind for me whenever I am nagged and finger wagged by modern Christians that all violence is bad. I find it hard to relate to the pacifists who continually lecture us online that “loving our neighbour” necessarily means never justly punishing those who would prey on our families and destroy our society. Justice is, after all, a form of love.
Violence as a Fixture of the Modern West
We say “un-alive” instead of “kill” these days because the online algorithm will punish or demonetise anyone who uses the real word which explicitly indicates violence. The gun emoji has been replaced with a water-gun toy on our phones. The ordinary person in the modern west proclaims to be a pacifist while supporting policies and ideas such as mass migration from violent third world countries, lack of background checks for new migrants, permissive use of hard drugs in society and allowing violent criminals to re-enter society on bail despite proven likelihood of repeated offence.
Consequently, the streets of every major European and North American city are marked with kidnappings, murders, stabbings, theft and assault and the people have become desensitised to the violence. They believe that expecting to get robbed in a train station in Paris is part and parcel of the experience. Little girls getting gang-raped in the UK in the infamous “rape-gang-scandal” is an accepted risk of living in the midlands because to punish the perpetrators was seen as “racist”. Taking the New York subway means staying vigilant lest someone set you on fire or push you onto the subway tracks to your untimely death. Children are shot to death en masse in schools in America. Ordinary children are stabbed to death in parks in Europe.
This is a choice. In many parts of the world these problems do not exist. In many cities, safety is taken for granted. It seems that the west has more of an appetite for violence, than their emoji’s and rhetoric might suggest.
I wish this were hyperbole but there are news reports to reveal that these incidents do happen and are unfortunately not as rare as we would hope. Eva Vlaardingerbroek is one excellent journalist who covers these events even when the mainstream media is silent and the team at the Lotus Eaters are another great source.
I wish this were hyperbole but there are news reports to reveal that these incidents do happen and are unfortunately not as rare as we would hope. Eva Vlaardingerbroek is one excellent journalist who covers these events even when the mainstream media is silent and the team at the Lotus Eaters are another great source.
The Exact Amount that We Should Talk About Politics is Not Zero
Those who tend to espouse the anti-civilisational ideas that create this kind of dangerous and violent society for ordinary people, are often the people who live in gilded cages, homogenous neighbourhoods, big houses with electric fences, and private security. Upper-middle class white women living in plush apartments in Kensington are the ones who ridicule and dismiss the laments of lower-class parents of girls who were raped and murdered in the suburbs of Rotherham. The consequences of their ideas are problem for everyone else, not them.
Although political commentary in the 2020s has become an entertainment spectacle, there is still merit in “talking about politics” if it is done well. When sensible people refuse to address these issues, we relinquish the discussion to the nefarious, the mentally ill and the people heavily propagandised by anti-civilisational ideas.
It is not good to be so obsessed with politics to the extent that it demoralises and distracts you from building good and beautiful things in the world; however, it is also not good to completely ignore “politics” such that the conversation is taken over by people who would see what you build destroyed and undermined.
Your words might offer a powerful and much needed articulation to counter the propaganda that causes so many anti-civilisational ideas to promulgate. It is important to counter the bad ideas that contribute to the modern west becoming a violent and unsafe place to live because that is the only way that we can raise our families and build our projects there again.
Peaceful Societies
It is difficult to see your own society clearly until you step outside of it. Many argue that it is racial homogeneity that achieves safety; however, cities like Dubai and Singapore have very heterogeneous populations with people from all over the world and still have very low crime. The most reasonable explanation is also the most boring one: these cities enforce their laws with the threat of violence behind them and strictly filter their populations. While in the West anyone who shows up in a boat can become a citizen, cities like Dubai do not give away even residency privileges to just anyone. These cities have their own problems and are far from perfect, but the bare minimum goal a city ought to provide its residents is safety and yes, the threat of violence is necessary to take this goal seriously.
We may define a government as the system in which a small group of people who have the monopoly on violence in a society make and enforce decisions on everyone else who lives in that society. Government tyranny is the abuse of this power to destroy the lives of the many to benefit the few, however government tyranny is no justification for anarchy. All virtue is characterised by balance, and balance is precisely the thing which is the most difficult to achieve and the most worthy of pursuing.
Saint Augustine’s “City of God” writes:
“And, accordingly, they who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
Leftists are Pacifists only in Rhetoric, not in principle
Violence is not only a powerful deterrent, it is the most powerful deterrent. Although it is laudable to have debates and arguments with people, it must be admitted that the most mentally ill and deranged people who are the most likely to commit heinous acts of violence against the innocent are not those whom reasoned debate will ever reach. Everyone might not understand the logic “imagine how you’d feel if you hadn’t had breakfast this morning” but everyone understands “I will face certain death penalty if I attack this girl on the train”. I have written elsewhere about the nature of crime and conquest.
The lack of deterrent against violent crime in the modern west is the primary problem (though not the only one). Decarlos Brown who slaughtered Iryna Zarutska on the train in August 2025 was a man who had been arrested and released no less than thirteen times for violent crimes. Imagine if he had been removed from human society the first time? How many innocent people would be spared?
The modern west defends the violent criminal and punishes anyone who dares to use violence to defend themselves or others. This is the case with Renee Good who was recently killed by an ICE officer in self-defence in Minnesota. She is currently being memorialised as a hero even though she was killed in an effort to defend illegal migrants committing fraud and crime in America. It was also the case with Daniel Penny who detained and killed a man who was threatening to kill several people on a subway train in May 1, 2023. Though Penny was later acquitted of his charges, mainstream western media and culture excoriated him. The “empathy” of the leftist seems to be only for those who are actively working to destroy society in some way. I’ve written an essay about this phenomenon of inverted morality here.
This is not just a recent phenomenon; all of the most violent movements over the last century have been committed by leftists, whom I refer more precisely to as “anti-civilisational” ideologues, a concept I will explore in next week’s essay. The Bolsheviks in Russia, Mao in China, Antifa in America, the civil war riots, the George Floyd riots, many political assassinations.
Leftists are only pacifists in rhetoric, not in principle because they understand what it takes to win is to be willing to use force. They celebrate and rejoiced when Charlie Kirk, an innocent man hoping to change hearts and minds via peaceful debate, was assassinated in public. They are upset whenever pro-civilisational people defend the use of violence because they know it is the only thing that truly threatens their cause. They may claim to be “Christian” or call you heartless when you proclaim that it is good when the wicked are punished justly, or stopped from doing evil with the force or threat of violence. Because they know violence works. It is only when good people are willing to use violence, in just and well-ordered ways through law, that the world can be made more peaceful. I have written here about St. Thomas More’s ideas of dealing with your enemies in a corrupt world without losing your own values…and violence is a big part of it. Conquest is the only option, perhaps, when compromise is impossible.
We need more than just punishment
The threat of violent punishment should not be the only thing that dissuades an ordinary person from committing heinous crimes against his fellow man, woman and child. People who only hold back from assault and murder because they fear violent retribution have not truly been healed from whatever afflicts them. But the punishment of violent crime is a good start because at the very least, it puts some basic protections in place for the benefit of the innocent. Then we may have the safety and space to consider how we can address the spiritual problems that lead people to become violent criminals in the first place.