George A. Romero’s 1978 cult zombie flick Dawn Of The Dead takes place largely in a shopping mall. Here, hordes of the undead claw at shop windows while the still-sentient survivors loot high-end clothes and gadgets and stuff their pockets with cash. It was less gore than a deliberate satire on capitalist consumer culture.
Since then, the notion of the zombie as symbol of societal breakdown has become an evolving theme in popular culture. From 28 Days Later to The Walking Dead via World War Z and others, these jaw-snapping, flesh-eating ghouls represent an existential, systemic threat from within our own civilisation.
Unlike aliens or vampires – which are ‘the other’, by turns terrifying and seductive – zombies are us, only mangled beyond all recognition. A zombie has no language, no reason, no self-awareness – it is the expression of a person that has been stripped of their guiding principles, a human devoid of all humanity. They are the ultimate in degradation.
As I watched the scenes of wanton destruction in Paris and beyond unfold over the past few days, I couldn’t help thinking: is the zombie apocalypse finally upon us? Forget Putin, forget China and the Strait of Hormuz, is this how civilisation ends, with a bunch of mindless balaclava-clad brats crawling over each other to bag themselves a Birkin, or setting fire to historic buildings for the sake of a pair of designer sneakers?
What else are these hordes of so-called protesters if not real-life zombies, their unthinking brains addled by social media, far-Left propaganda and greed?
Immune to rhyme or reason, ignorant of all culture or compassion, driven purely by an insatiable appetite for destruction, they rampage out of control, leaving nothing but shattered glass and shattered lives in their wake.
'As I watched the scenes of wanton destruction in Paris and beyond unfold over the past few days, I couldn’t help thinking: is the zombie apocalypse finally upon us?' writes Sarah Vine
A masked protester holds up a Palestinian flag while a bus stop burns behind during the French protests
The thrill of instant gratification is what drives their dopamine-hungry brains, whether it be the look of incomprehension on a shopkeeper’s face as he or she sees their life’s work destroyed in a matter of minutes, or the delight of watching a 300-year-old architectural gem go up in flames.
They daub their pathetic verbal excrescences on the monuments to the mighty and squawk their slogans on social media, cloaking themselves in the politics of the supposed dispossessed, denouncing the so-called evils of capitalism – before scurrying back to their state-subsidised bunkers to upload the spoils of their ‘revolution’ on Vinted and eBay.
‘What do we want?’ ‘Hermes, Prada, Louis Vuitton!’ ‘When do we want it?’ ‘Now!’
And yet still there are those who attempt to justify their actions by casting themselves as ‘victims’. Jean-Luc Melenchon, France’s answer to Zack Polanski, has predictably blamed the police. Greta Thunberg stated that ‘the whole world is watching with awe’.
The BBC, in its inimitable way, continues to characterise the looters as ‘student protesters’, as if smashing a window and making off with a shopping cart of designer clobber had anything to do with the provision of maths teaching at secondary school level. Either that, or it’s a ‘cost-of-living’ crisis.
Both may indeed be on the minds of some, but what motivates most of them is not political activism but greed, laziness, entitlement and envy. There are no ‘victims’ here save the poor souls whose livelihoods and property have been destroyed.
The vast majority of these ‘demonstrators’ are, I’m afraid, just spoilt brats. At no point has anyone taught them the importance of hard work, respect or resilience. They live in a world where not having the latest PlayStation or mobile phone is considered a form of deprivation, where having a flatscreen TV and box-fresh designer trainers is practically a human right.
Witness the array of expensive ‘streetwear’ on display during the riots. Stussy, Bape, Off-White – all proudly on show. Plenty of expensive accessories and smartphones, too. These are not the weak and the starving, driven to violence by sheer desperation. These are the indulged, ignorant, undisciplined children of a bloated welfare state and a culture of wokeism that threaten the very fabric of civilised society.
For years, successive European governments have attempted to buy their way out of societal breakdown instead of tackling the root causes, and this is what they have to show for it: an underclass of nihilist ingrates with zero loyalty or respect for the nation that nurtured them.
France, where the riots have been at their most visible and fierce, spends €932.5billion (£783billion) annually on social protection and welfare; its investment in social housing is one of the highest in Europe. Fat lot of good it has done them.
What we are witnessing here is not some kind of heroic uprising, just a bored, belligerent, lost generation whose brains have been turned to mush by the nonsense they’re fed online and the propaganda of various extremist groups who rely on ignorance to fuel their campaigns of hatred.
Talking of which, some – the usual suspects – have attempted to frame the unrest as a direct consequence of too much immigration. And while it is true that there is an element of this, it’s far from the whole picture.
Looking at the footage from Milan and Turin, for example (Turin being the place where I spent most of my childhood), it’s clear that many of the faces behind the masks are white.
Thunberg, poster girl for a generation of the professionally peeved, is about as Northern European as you can get. Likewise, the army of Phoebes and Ludos who are for ever gluing themselves to things and shouting about the Jews running the world.
Nevertheless, it’s undoubtedly the case that France, in common with many other countries on the continent, including Italy, has a significant number of foreign nationals and first, second, third-generation immigrants, many of whom live in closed, ghettoised communities and do not share the values, history or traditions of their adopted nation.
There are also many who do, of course. For them it’s even worse, since they – such as that poor Chinese lady who was pictured in tears in the ruins of her little restaurant – have so much more to lose.
This lack of commonality, together with other social and cultural drivers, has been a problem for years.
But instead of tackling it, successive governments have not only tolerated it but in many ways indulged it. They have allowed schools, universities and other institutions to become infected with notions of post-colonial guilt.
Instead of defending and upholding the values that made Western civilisation one of the most sophisticated and tolerant on the planet, our leaders have allowed our culture to become fatally fractured. White guilt combined with political correctness have created a perfect storm.
All of this applies to Britain just as much as anywhere else. We have a far-Left government that believes the answer to everything is a bigger welfare state, rather than a system that encourages and rewards hard work and enterprise.
We have an ‘excuse’ culture, where failure is always someone else’s fault, where victimhood is practically a lifestyle choice – and where ‘mental health’ has become a get-out clause for everything, from not showing up to work to evading punishment for the most heinous of crimes.
We let those who would wish us harm literally get away with murder. We have a society where large numbers of people refuse to integrate, where customs – cousin marriage, female genital mutilation, religious-based misogyny and other intolerable practices – which are not our own and have no place in a civilised nation are indulged in the mistaken belief that this will facilitate cohesion, when in fact they only deepen divisions.
We apologise for who and what we are in a pathetic attempt to appease our critics – who only despise us all the more for our weakness.
There is a lot that is wrong with Britain, and Western society in general. But this country is still, all things considered, one of the best places in the world to live. As Tory leader Kemi Badenoch pointed out yesterday, it is a ‘privilege’ to be a British citizen.
I, for one, will defend it to the death from the zombie hordes.