This is completely superlative. It demonstrates just how wide of the mark is the idea we are entering a new age of the nation state. No: a new age of ‘civilisation states’ or empires. Milbank/Pabst in PofV were right here despite being in a postliberal minority on this issue. https://twitter.com/blue_labour/status/1291450779488980993

Even a ‘nationalist’ like Orban in fact talks in civilisational terms as Roussinos points out.

Aris Roussinos also points to the terrifying neo-Ottoman rhetoric of Erdogan. Turkey could have the capacity politically to unite a radicalised Islam. Roussinos also shows how Macron, far from being an outdated globaliser is uniquely alert to the new reality of empires.

I also agree with AR that Europe cannot re-think itself on the basis of enlightenment alone as it is just this too thin model of cultural unity that has failed. Yet merely folkish alternatives cannot unite Europe either. Only the older Greek-Jewish-Roman legacy can do this.

What I would add though is that the current Chinese, Indian and Russian politicised civilisations are all to a degree kitsch. In reality they are brutal westernised technocracies with an aesthetic gloss. In other words they are neo-fascisms.

It then follows that the new Asiatic powers have not at all escaped a specifically modern and terrible western logic. They are repeating the fascistic combination of universal science plus arbitrary ethnic-cultural assertion.

The only way to overcome this is by everyone recovering more perennial philosophies which allow for a transcendent universality variously reached in different concrete way. Tao. Vedanta. Neoplatonism. Mystical Islam. Mystical Judaism. Mystical and so mainline Christianity.

In Europe’s case its uniquely universalising claims are founded in Christianity, of which Enlightenment is but the pale echo. Personalism is deeper than human rights etc. European nations will not survive without European political unity. But that needs a Christian focus.

Finally, given AR’s analysis it becomes clear that the main context of Brexit is geopolitical, though that was ignored. In that perspective, Britain has betrayed European civilisational empire, without which we too will go under. Now, we have to somehow to repair the damage.

We should begin by strengthening our military and political alliance with France. At some point down the line we need to return to a reformed EU or its equivalent. (Either as the UK or a sad, bedraggled England.)

The stated aim of Erdogan is to destroy the EU and advance the Islamification of Europe. Yet the UK has been assiduously doing his work for him. In the name of our ancestors we should be more than ashamed.