From regime changes to staking new terrain for the United States and a mother being killed in disputed circumstances, El Presidente Trump’s bull in a china shop approach certainly keeps us on our toes.
What’s interesting to note is that the anti-Trump hysteria that categorised his first term in office is nowhere near that level today (well, up until the killing of Renee Good). So are we potentially witnessing a vibe shift?
Brendan O’Neill certainly thinks so.
A former contributor to Living Marxism/LM as well as Spiked’s chief political editor, Brendan O’Neill has certainly made his mark on the culture war. Discussing a 1997 meeting that was organised by Republican Sinn Fein in support of Josephine Hayden and Roisin McAliskey, O’Neill recalled going to it as:
...a critic who was arguing against republican dissidents. I said they were wrong, nostalgic and increasingly illiberal. My brief opening comments were mostly focused on the issue of the Independent Review of Parades in Northern Ireland (which a year later would become the Parades Commission). I argued that in backing the state banning of Orange Order marches, as made clear in their submissions to the review, Irish republicans were behaving in a similar way to the British state that once sought to outlaw civil rights marches. My argument then, as it is now, is that state curbs on freedom of speech and freedom of association are never a good thing. As you can imagine, this did not go down well — at all. I essentially defended the Orange Order (an organisation I am not a fan of) in front of a small gathering of Irish republicans.
This approach, labelled contrarian by some, sums up O’Neill (and, by extension, LM/Spiked): a belief in individual freedom, being unafraid to express unpopular opinions even when it could be argued that the opinions are based on narrow interpretations of events and always willing to question. Regardless of your opinion of Spiked, we need people like them even if we disagree with them 90% of the time.
This, his new book, explores what he sees as the changing social and political landscape around us. In the introduction, he writes that:
Something extraordinary is stirring in the Western world. We are living through the twilight of luxury beliefs. The faux-virtuous postering of the ruling classes is being gleefully called into question by the little people... I like the phrase ‘vibe shift’. It’s pithy, evocative and people know what it refers to – the seismic turn in the moral zeitgeist brought about by popular discontent with the old, knackered order.
With this being prepared before the events of January 2026, it will be interesting to see how much the optimism on display above remains in place by the end of the year. With that out of the way, let’s consider the contents of the book.
Beginning by discussing the trans debate as well as the apocalyptic climate change mentality, things become very interesting is when O’Neill moves onto the so called ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ where various spots around Britain seemingly transformed into the North of Ireland over last summer. Pointing out the hypocrisy of various commentators who approve of Palestine/Ukraine/LGBTQIA on public buildings but not St. George’s flags nor Union Jacks, he ties this to the larger debate around borders and immigration:
The chaos of the borderless ideology expresses itself most clearly in the migrant crisis. There is no denying that mass immigration has become a flashpoint – perhaps the flashpoint – in the war of the vibe shift. In both the UK and the US, polls consistently find that uncontrolled immigration is a key concern of working-class voters. Indeed, it is striking that as the global commentariat rails against President Trump’s deporting of illegal immigrants, a huge majority of working-class Americans support his actions. Working-class voters back the deportation of ‘immigrants living in the United States illegally’ by a staggering 69 to 29 per cent. The chasm between the virtuous anger of the makers of opinion and the practical worries of everyday voters has rarely been so starkly expressed.
Quoting James Connolly and Hannah Arendt in defence of the nation and their ability to control their harbours, it’s hard to disagree that the whole situation has become an intricate mess where the blurring of ideologies has left supposed left wingers deriding the ordinary working class as racist, while far-right types use this veneer to further poison relations.
Closing by describing woke ideology as a project of forced alienation from the gains of history, the connection of nationhood and the Enlightenment, the reader is left with a sense that things are still open for the taking (although the killing of Good may alter matters further). Whether this proves to be over optimistic or not, we’ll find out soon enough.
Those familiar with O’Neill’s writing will know what to expect so it’s not one that’s going to win over sceptics and, running at 80 pages, you wish it could have been a little more substantial. However, as a short and punchy read, it works and might very well make the most ardent doubter think twice on how they view recent events.
Brendan O’Neill, Vibe Shift: The Revolt Against Wokeness, Greenism And Technocracy, Spiked Books, ISBN-13: 978-1068719325
⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.
You once recommended a piece by a Spiked writer, and the Woketards went bonkers demanding it be removed. This constant push to exclude different ideas from the Diversity-Equality-Inclusion template that they claim to cherish leaves them open to the claim that they are behaving in a fascistic manner.
ReplyDeleteFor all Brendan O'Neill's advocacy of libertarianism he habitually finds himself siding with the proponents of authoritarian statism.