Cultural Revolution, Culture War

How Conservatives Lost England and How to Get It Back

By: Sean Gabb

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

“Today’s England is a moral-social basket case, full of violent crime, outrageous state enforcement of political correctness, and protected Muslim extremists.” — Paul Gottfried

First published in 2007, Cultural Revolution, Culture War rapidly became one of the most influential books on the British Right. It introduced the now-familiar analysis of Cultural Leftism, exposed the machinery of New Class domination, and provided conservatives and libertarians with a coherent explanation for England’s accelerating cultural decline. Within weeks of publication, its arguments had reshaped the language of debate across the Right.

Dr Gabb’s central claim is stark. Since 1997, the British ruling class has reconstructed itself as a managerial elite that wages war on both liberty and tradition. It exercises power not only through bureaucracy, policing, and state propaganda, but also through its grip on cultural institutions. Controlling a single plotline of EastEnders, he argues, is more politically effective than a thousand editorials in The Guardian.

The book offers a response as radical as the problem. The present ruling class lives by State patronage. Turn off the taps, and the elite collapses. On that foundation, Gabb outlines a programme of minimal statism—not out of abstract libertarian piety, but because a drastically reduced State is the only structure capable of breaking the New Class and restoring English liberties.

Now recognised as a modern classic, Cultural Revolution, Culture War is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand contemporary England: activists, scholars, journalists, political strategists, and readers seeking an unvarnished account of how a supposedly conservative country came to be governed by an aggressively left-authoritarian elite.

From the Reviews

Madsen Pirie:
“Sean Gabb’s case is that England has been taken over by a new ruling class, totalitarian in its ambitions, seeking to direct our thinking in every aspect of our culture. Its influence is more powerful and pervasive than that of government; it wants to mould our behaviour and even our thought to its own norms.”

Paul Gottfried:
“Today’s England is a moral-social basket case, full of violent crime, outrageous state enforcement of political correctness, and protected Muslim extremists.”

Kevin Carson:
“I concur with so much of his analysis of political correctness and multiculturalism as ruling-class ideologies. Official multiculturalism becomes a tool of division and control, serving a class that prefers a population too fragmented to resist.”

A Brief Encounter:
“Not the run-of-the-mill attack on political correctness. Dr Gabb goes deep into the political revolution that is destroying our country, then sets out his manifesto for counter-revolution. Extremely readable, tightly argued, and delivered with unflinching precision.”