2026-08-10 19:18:17
If you’re a Pratchett (or: Mary Shelley) reader you’ll know the most dangerous people are those clever enough to uncork some tremendous power — a monster, dragon, civic unrest — yet hubristic enough to believe they can also control that power; thus comes RUSI:
“Following an increase in whole-of-society attacks, the UK government should deploy tools to encourage nationalism and total defence across society”
It gets worse. Much worse.
Source and Archive (in case it gets deleted)
Firstly, they revile at the observation that most people don’t consider themselves to be supermen who could individually impact the outcome of war:
Only 42% of respondents feel a personal responsibility to help, and less than a quarter (24%) believe that their individual actions would make a big difference in a national crisis.
Then they hold up the threat perception of the (aging, Daily-Mail-Reading) British population as reflecting objective military threats and needs:
The British public believe that the world is becoming increasingly more dangerous. The number of respondents who think a global war is likely in the next five years has increased to 43%, up from 30% from the end of 2025. Additionally, 63% feel that hostile foreign governments are more willing to harm the UK as compared to a year ago, and 64% agree that ‘ordinary people and the systems they rely on are as much at risk as soldiers on the battlefield’.
Then, they propose fomenting / socially engineering “nationalism” as being one way to invigorate people into joining a “total defence” effort — BUT (big but!) it has to be the right kind of nationalism:
Nationalism could be the missing spur to drive an increased belief in shared responsibility for, and therefore in willingness to participate in, total defence. However, the type of nationalism is important. Some examples are:
- Ethnic nationalism, which privileges the exclusivity of a shared ethnic group above shared values and other more inclusive traits. It is not only toxic, but also less effective in motivating people to participate in total defence.
- Uncritical nationalism, or supporting a country whether it is ‘right or wrong’, is similarly unhelpful in driving defence willingness. This is because uncritical nationalism is undemanding; it deters participation in democracy and other activities that could improve the country because it is built on the idea that the country does not need improving.
- Civic nationalism (or ‘inclusive’ nationalism), which is predicated upon shared citizenship, values and responsibility, is better placed to drive defence willingness. Studies have found that a sense of inclusive belonging to a nation makes people feel like they have a stake in its resilience, which drives a commitment to defend it.
When combined with the UK public’s relatively high threat perception, civic nationalism could play a critical role in driving a sense of responsibility for, and the willingness to participate in, total defence. This form of nationalism relies on core institutions, and is built around a clear national identity, which can effectively convene and foster shared values and responsibility.
…because of course political leadership is capable of shaping the right kind of nationalism for this purpose, and nothing could possibly go wrong with such a proposal, eh?
[fx: author looks over his shoulder at the people of Clacton]
And then you need to make the people the right kind of scared, too:
Civic nationalism should also be encouraged in conjunction with enhancing threat perception among the general public. The public needs the opportunity to understand the scale of the threats they face, and should be given the opportunity to participate in total defence. In sum, neither nationalism nor threat perception alone are enough to drive defence willingness; nationalism provides the drive to participate, and threat perception gives the knowledge and agency required for participation.
Then we get the “Appeal To Sweden”, because of course the British people think very much like the Swedes, and of course there is no significant race-rioting in Sweden:
Sweden is a useful case study of how civic nationalism and threat perception complement and rely upon each other to drive stronger defence willingness in a population … The pamphlet was distributed without discriminating based on language, national origin or even citizenship versus residency, and emphasised that in the event of an invasion, everyone was Swedish, and everyone had a part to play in defending the nation.
Oh, did we mention that this is all to be done with pamphlets?
Nothing wrong ever happens with Government pamphlets.
Also, by association with the Swedish example, the unstated risk to the UK is from Russia:
The pamphlets outlined the exact scale of the Russian threat and then set forth several ways for people to participate in the potential conflict with Russia. Favouring a whole-of-society approach, participation tended to fall within three categories, as noted by the pamphlet
If we’re worried about Russia there might be other ways we could help.
RUSI want the UK Government to boost nationalism – but only the right kind of nationalism, ideally the kind which you can get in flatpacks from IKEA – in order to boost willingness to join the defence forces in some specific way, so that individuals feel they can make solo impact upon specifically the Russian threat:
Total Defence in the UK
In order to engage the UK public in total defence, the government should develop a similar pamphlet which encourages inclusive nationalism and clearly communicates the threats facing the UK. If the pamphlets do not sufficiently encourage inclusive nationalism, studies suggest that people will be more likely to limit their participation in a conflict to whatever actions maximise their self-interest, rather than drawing out more robust actions to protect the nation that are based on an emotional attachment to the nation.
In addition, while Public First survey responses reflected a relatively high understanding of the threats that face the UK, reported low levels of defence willingness suggest that the British public tends to feel that threats from Russia and other malign actors are farther away than they actually are. This inhibits the public’s belief that they should step up and participate in defending the country, as the threats do not feel imminent, and it is unclear whom they are defending the country from.
…adding specifically:
As in Sweden, the pamphlets should be printed in several languages and emphasise national pride, empowering people throughout the country to join in a whole-of-society approach to defence. This approach ensures that the government’s urgent mobilisation message reaches everyone, regardless of language and access to the internet, which disproportionately affects minority communities.
So, that would be pamphlets in Welsh, Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Romanian and Polish — (which latter two are something like 1% spoken in the UK, more than many of the others) — all to foster “national pride” whilst somehow avoiding the fact that the “national pride” nearest London is mostly bald, sunburnt-red, thinks that St George was English and is widely detested by all of the other nations?
As debates continue about how best to fund and design a shared UK national defence, the public should be at the forefront – empowered, willing and prepared to defend their nation against rising threats.
Yeah. No.
Terry said it better:
You can’t uncork anything remotely describable as nationalism and expect it to be controllable.
Instead at best you need to foster pride, and belief in something itself to be fostered and shared, rather than that we need to be protected from “reds” and “wogs” and all forms of “others”.
2026-08-06 19:08:59
This, attached below, is an inevitability.
The UK Government strove for years to foster “tech” capability in British childen, and — although the “safety” community will push this as a “platform” responsibility — either we’re going to have to leave the kids ignorant of tech, or-else they will be coding-up their own VPNs & other circumventions whilst we continue to blame “the tech” rather than “the society” for the risks that they face.
2026-08-01 22:43:14
The only people who should be allowed to buy Meta AI Glasses are visually impaired or blind; Facial Recognition & Live AI scene analysis is *only* moral if it would help you because you can’t see. Such devices should only be sold to people with registered disabilities. Be more Geordi La Forge!
Also: gatekeeping or denying access to assistive technologies on the basis of human capability and state registration has never caused social or political problems.
2026-07-31 21:12:08
It is interesting from a sociological perspective that some people will go to great lengths to explain how big 1+ billion is in the context of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg having too much money, yet will consider similar numbers to be trivial in the matter of filtering daily content uploads to seek evidence of abuse
2026-07-31 20:34:20
train your own teeny-tiny name-generating LLM
in just 3 pages of python