Civil War in Britain?

Riffing on the Predictions of Professor Betz

John Opie Boudica

For the last month or so, David Betz, who has long taught war studies at King’s College London, has been making the rounds of indie interview shows, warning that the United Kingdom will soon face a crisis that he describes as a ‘civil war’. To be more specific, in the course of three appearances on long-format programs, he has predicted a near-term future in which native Britons attack the facilities that provide gas and electricity to the cities occupied by immigrants from the Global South.

In making these pronouncements, Professor Betz echoed many of the points that he made in an article (‘Civil War Comes to the West’) that appeared, in the summer of 2023, in the pages of Military Strategy Magazine. The newer incarnations of this vision, however, replaced generic observations with particular predictions. In particular, while ‘Civil War Comes to the West’ cast a wide net over the range of possible actions and the countries where they might take place, the viva voce versions of this forecast specific things that might happen within the borders of the United Kingdom in the very near future.

The refinement of this prophecy owes much to the example of the self-appointed saboteurs, known as ‘blade runners’, who, for the past two years, have disabled hundreds of toll-enforcing robots in central London. (The robots, each of which connects a camera to a central computer, have been installed to catch drivers who decline to pay a substantial toll for the privilege of taking their cars, vans, or trucks into the heart of the British capital.)

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