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Smallest Violin Profile picture
@XiaoVilin99
Feb 14, 2024 • 11 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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Peaky Blinders has been remarkably effective at making normal people believe that Britain in the 1920s was incredibly corrupt and violent.

It is far better propaganda than any government sloganeering or fiddling with the national curriculum, because it is actually entertaining.
There are now Peaky tours and experiences, Peaky restaurants and even Peaky weddings.

Not since the Krays has organised crime been so popular, and whoever thought flatcaps would come back so hard and fast?


The reality is very different. The Britain of 1920, while materially poor, war-ravaged, and full of ideological strife, was remarkably staid and safe compared even to today. It may even have been one of the safest societies ever to have existed.
This is consistently true across all types of crime, including violent crime.



Britain today is, in fact, a pretty violent country not only compared to its past self, but even compared to its continental neighbours.


By the 1990's, Britain even had roughly double the amount of "street crime" as the US.


There were roughly 65 times as many violent crimes per police constable in 2015 (6.55) than in 1951 (0.1). It is little wonder they do not solve many of them anymore.
One fact that Peaky Blinder amusingly does get right is the easy availability of weapons. There were virtually no gun laws in Britain until the Firearms Act of 1920, while our police, of course, have always been unarmed.
This state of affairs, of a virtually crime-free country in which anyone might carry a gun but the police, should really astonish any remotely thoughtful person.

Whole university departments should be devoted to its study, and yet, all we have are the Peaky Fooking Blinders.
Portraying the past accurately is very difficult, and easy to do badly, often more through laziness than spite.

Peaky Britain is certainly sexed up for our entertainment. It would hardly be fun to watch otherwise, would it?
But it is not real, and while you should enjoy your Peaky Diner and your flat cap, you should not let your view of the past be coloured by this stuff. Image

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More from @XiaoVilin99

Smallest Violin Profile picture
Feb 12
The real and organic religious substrate of wider Britain is a sort of Peaky Blinders Buddhism. It's all there. The mindfulness. The obsession with Mental Health.

This poster is a kind of thankga or meditational object. Image
It's a very logical follow-on from Anglicanism, without any of the theological trappings. Very functional.
The grades of Buddhism (theravada, mayahana, vajrayana) also correspond roughly to the British class system.

Mindfulness for the Deano, Zen for the middle-class mum, deity visualisation and tantra for the techbros (Tibet is the Silicon Valley of Buddhism).
Read 10 tweets
Smallest Violin Profile picture
Nov 3, 2025
@owenjonesjourno It is a lot more complex than this. Police records, for example, show a huge increase in violence against the person over the last few decades. The British Crime Survey does not include many types of violent crime, and is a poor estimate for others.

@owenjonesjourno Trends in homicide are more nuanced than they first appear. Homicide has fallen considerably, though a considerable part of this can be attributed to great advances in emergency medicine rather than necessarily a fall in homicidal behaviour.
@owenjonesjourno Another revealing statistic is how few crimes the police even solve anymore. Ten years ago it was around 15%. Now it is about 5%. This is important as it means behind any one conviction there are roughly nineteen unsolved crimes.

Read 5 tweets
Smallest Violin Profile picture
Jul 28, 2025
This is Soviet level civilisational gaslighting.


Our country is a violent slum.


Our country is far more violent than its continental neighbours.
Read 8 tweets
Smallest Violin Profile picture
Nov 30, 2022
This is a crucial point. The right, especially the mainstream, often operates on an ideological level only, and not a practical one. They whinge about wokeness, occasionally making an effort to explain that communism is Bad Actually... and that's it.
For all that the Right often claims to be "anti-intellectual", these people do little other than talking. They hope that if they explain their opinion, often enough, in slow, clear English, as if to a foreign waiter, the system will correct itself.

If the Left is "incoherent" then all that shows is that one doesn't need to be "coherent" in order to win.

Read 5 tweets
Smallest Violin Profile picture
Nov 30, 2022
Many of around Monbiot's age and background feel this way. The postwar generations grew up in a shabby Britain, still full of bomb craters. They were restless and bored, and their reaction was to try to destroy everything around themselves in a wave of nihilism and spite.
Some of his generation eventually grew up and realised what they had done. Most never did, and never will.
If you want to understand the mindset of these people, and how truly resentful they are of the "stifling" Britain in which they grew up, I suggest you watch "If...", despite it being quite a bad film. It was released in 1968.
Read 4 tweets
Smallest Violin Profile picture
Sep 27, 2022
This book is quite illuminating, and goes up to the early New Labour years. Image
If you compressed all the crimes committed in Britain in 2000 into a cube, it would be quite big. Image
Lee Kuan Yew is inspired on a trip to London. Image
Read 40 tweets

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