The UK Can Get Worse than Brazil, By Richard Miller (Londonistan)
In the Arcadian Magazine interview, Peter Robertson, a tenured Professor of Conflict Geography at the Interdisciplinary Institute in New York and former British defence official, introduces the concept of "liquid ferality" to describe Britain's evolving societal challenges. He argues that Britain is not simply experiencing a localised or historical form of socioeconomic decline, such as Brazilification (a term denoting a polarised society of gated communities and slums), but a more complex, globalised breakdown of civic norms and trust. This transformation, driven by mass diversity and the importation of global conflicts, is marked by a fluid, unpredictable, and corrosive quality that threatens the stability of Britain's high-trust society.
Robertson rejects simplistic comparisons to Brazilification, which he defines academically as a "Belgium within India" structure—extreme wealth juxtaposed with poverty. Instead, he describes Britain's situation as a "generalised corrosion" that combines elements of multiple global dysfunctions:
Britain is absorbing problems from diverse regions, including Brazil's street violence, India's acid attacks, Pakistan's tribal rape culture, Bangladesh's voter fraud, Iraq's vehicle-borne IED attacks, South Africa's equity-based legal frameworks, Eritrea's factional skirmishes, and Lebanon's sectarian politics.
Unlike historical Commonwealth diasporas, which had some cultural coherence, modern diversity in Britain lacks "rhyme or reason," resulting in "impossible inter-tribal allegiances and disputes."
The influx of global populations is remaking Britain's social and aesthetic landscape, eroding shared norms and reciprocal bonds.
This convergence creates a "liquid" character, where societal problems are fluid, unpredictable, and not confined to specific zones, unlike Brazil's stable division of safe and unsafe areas.
Robertson builds on Richard Norton's 2003 concept of "feral cities," where a government loses control over a metropolis but remains internationally functional. He adapts this to Britain, introducing "liquid ferality" with four components:
The range of issues—acid attacks, voter fraud, sectarian violence—is vast and disorienting, especially for those who knew Britain before the mid-1990s.
Unlike Brazil's clear division of safe and unsafe zones, Britain's problems are distributed chaotically, with no stable boundaries. A Starbucks in an airport can become the site of an IED attack, or a minor traffic dispute can escalate to an axe attack, as in the Brooksbank case.
Britain's historic high-trust culture, rooted in unspoken norms like queuing, leaves citizens unprepared for low-trust threats. For example, expecting basic civility (e.g., asking someone to remove their feet from a train seat) can lead to extreme violence, as in the 2023 Reading Station murder.
The middle class faces a unique predicament—subject to state laws from above while increasingly targeted by criminals and terrorists from below. This is exacerbated by a cultural reliance on a paternalistic state, which fails to protect against new threats.
Liquid ferality, Robertson argues, reflects a systemic shift where the "glue" of civic society dissolves, and once-reciprocated norms, like queuing, become unsustainable in a low-trust environment.
Robertson contends that high-trust societies, like Britain's, rely on reciprocal norms and shared expectations, which are now eroding:
Simple civic behaviors, such as queuing or keeping phones on silent, require mutual agreement. In a diverse, low-trust setting, these norms collapse, as individuals prioritise personal gain over collective civility.
Just as complex systems fail under a competence crisis, high-trust societies corrode under mass diversity, where globalised conflicts overwhelm local cohesion.
Once norms retreat from civic life, they become "completely irrecoverable," leaving Britain vulnerable to further fragmentation.
He contrasts Britain with low-trust societies, where populations are adept at navigating chaos, bending rules, and thinking like "conmen or predators." Brits, lacking this fluency, are at a disadvantage, needing to "relearn" survival tactics.
The article highlights an emerging civic ethic: a shift from "inherent fair play" to a predatory mindset where expecting fairness invites exploitation. This transition traps law-abiding citizens, particularly the middle class, in a double bind:
The state enforces laws and expects compliance, often through managerial paternalism.
Criminals and opportunists exploit the middle class's trust, targeting them as easy marks.
This dynamic, Robertson warns, signals a broader societal unraveling, where Britain's problems mirror the world's, cascading unpredictably into everyday life—commutes, workplaces, and homes.
Robertson describes the situation as "extraordinarily troubling" but urges practical, non-ideological responses:
Individuals must assess their situation and take proactive steps to enhance personal security and resilience.
He emphasises that "no one is coming to fix this," placing responsibility on individuals to act while options remain.
Despite the grim outlook, Robertson encourages positive, productive measures over despair or ideological fixation.
He avoids prescribing specific solutions, instead advocating for a clear-eyed assessment of the risks and a commitment to personal agency.
The article's futuristic date (June 1, 2026) suggests it may be a speculative or fictional piece, as no Arcadian Magazine or article by Peter Robertson matching this description exists in current records. However, its themes resonate with contemporary debates on immigration, social cohesion, and urban security, echoing discussions on platforms like X, where users like One Nation's Malcolm Roberts @MRobertsQLD critique multiculturalism's impact on high-trust societies. Robertson's "liquid ferality" concept draws on Norton's "Feral Cities" (Naval War College Review, 2003), grounding its academic credibility while extending the framework to Britain's unique context.
The article's strength lies in its vivid synthesis of global dysfunctions manifesting in Britain, supported by real-world examples (e.g., the 2023 Reading Station murder, Glasgow's IED attack).
"Beyond Brazilification" paints a dystopian picture of Britain's social trajectory, where globalised conflicts and eroded norms create a state of "liquid ferality." Robertson's call for individual preparedness reflects a pragmatic, if pessimistic, response to a perceived civic collapse. While speculative, the article challenges readers to confront uncomfortable realities about trust, diversity, and security in modern Britain, urging action in the face of an uncertain future.
Arcadian Magazine, June 1st, 2026 — Beyond Brazilification with Peter Robertson
Arcadian: For those who don't know, tell us about your professional background Peter.
I'm a tenured Professor of Conflict Geography at the Interdisciplinary Institute in New York. Before this I spent three decades with the British Government in matters relating to defence.
Arcadian: What did you mean when you described the situation in Britain as 'a new kind of emergent liquid ferality, beyond Brazilification' — could you explain that for us?
Put simply, that what is taking place in Britain today is not merely Brazilification, South Africanisation, or even Israelification, but a rather a new process of generalised corrosion. It's something akin to a new, awful mixture of all of these ugly terms, happening at once.
Take Brazil.
Brazilification in the academic sense refers to a two-tiered societal structure. Of the gated-community and the favela: neatly described as 'Belgium within India'.
In contrast, the British predicament is categorically different. It's not a simple combination of a single developed country set within another less-developed country.
And speaking frankly, the consequences of mass diversity in Britain no longer have even the rhyme or reason of the historic Commonwealth diasporas — even as these issues, were in themselves significant.
Instead, there is now something with fluid, more liquid character — of a global populace apparently remaking British society with ever more impossible inter-tribal allegiances and disputes. And even aesthetics.
I'm arguing the local set of problems in Britain is now fully global.
That is, the social fabric of high trust societies is being profoundly transformed as reciprocal bonds and once unspoken norms are trampled upon and begin to retreat from civic life.
Arcadian: Can you expand on that?
Sure. This is controversial, but shouldn't be. You might phrase like this — just as complex systems won't survive the competence crisis, high trust societies corrode in the era of mass diversity.
So in Britain let's look at that.
You now have some version of the hostile vehicle defences and steel barriers of Israel, the street robbery violence of Brazil, and the acid attacks of India. You already have a history of the vehicle-bourne IED attacks and suicide bombings of Iraq. The tribal Mirpuri rape culture of Pakistan, and the voter fraud of Bangladesh. You're seeing the nascent stages of a version of South Africa's broad-based black economic empowerment legal culture —in disparate impact style legal judgments and 'equity'-adjusted sentencing guidelines. The skirmish politics Intra-Eritrean factional strife in the public realm. And of course you have the small matter of the sectarian politics of say mid-1970s Islamising Lebanon. And so on.
These are factual observations.
What we're seeing is that the social fabric of high trust societies is being profoundly transformed. You have reciprocal bonds and norms, which we once widely agreed on, beginning to retreat from civic life. And at a certain threshold these become completely irrecoverable.
I mean say you go to a country with no culture of queueing for the bus, like Egypt. You can form a queue by yourself but everyone else is just pushing past you. The queuing concept only works as a norm if it is reciprocated by a significant percentage of people. Lots of things are like this. In Britain especially there's a sense of a sort of dissolving of the glue holding it all together.
Arcadian: And the liquid ferality aspect?
Let me start by saying the Feral City concept is well defined. It's an intentionally provocative idea set out by Richard Norton — you can read his 2003 paper Feral Cities. It's freely available online in the Naval War College Review. His definition I have here in fact. A feral city is:
A metropolis with a population of more than a million people in a state the government of which has lost the ability to maintain the rule of law within the city's boundaries yet remains a functioning actor in the greater international system.
The most important difference of a hypothetical feral city to a merely troubled or dangerous city is the security aspect.
Put it like this, in a dangerous city the police sometimes opt not to enforce the rule of law in certain areas. In a feral city the police or security forces can't enforce the law even if they want to. So this is different from you know, ferality in the sense of unpleasant gangs of feral kids riding ebikes down your local high street. This is a wholesale system change in social system of the city.
With regards to Britain, I think the specific term liquid ferality is useful. It has three components, related to what we've been discussing.
Arcadian: What are those three components of ferality in Britain?
Firstly, the set of problems, as we've touched on, is large and varied. It really is bewildering to anyone with firsthand lived experience of Britain up until say the early to mid 1990s.
Second, the geography of these problems is different to the Brazil model. It's not distributed into the relatively stable territories of safe versus unsafe zones. You could say the devolving of Britain has a distributed, rhizome-like quality. There's a chaotic and relentless character to the overall predicament which is particularly jarring.
This is really terrible.
Arcadian: How so?
In that you can be sipping a flat white in an airport Starbucks and suddenly there's a vehicle-bourne IED attack. Like Glasgow. A minor traffic dispute in a might lead to you facing a decapitation attempt by an attacker armed with an axe. Like the Brooksbank case.
This sort of extreme contrast with first world normalcy.
I don't want to exaggerate the risk of these things happening, it's more that now they do happen, have happened, when once they didn't. And it has to be said such events are happening with increasing frequency.
Arcadian: And thirdly?
You have [in Britain] a historic high trust outlook. This fuels a belief in those once self-evident customs we spoke about, and also the day to day presumption of basic law and order. But at the same time this outlook now exposes ordinary citizens to the maximal set of threats in the new lower trust circumstances.
Another way of saying this is you still expect people to say keep their feet off the seats or keep their phones off loudspeaker on a train, but you generally aren't prepared to be murdered with a metal horseshoe for having to ask someone not too. Which has actually already happened by the way, in 2023 at Reading Station.
And the reverse is true.
Having a familiarity with how to navigate a low trust society, is where people versed in so-called third world cultures have a big advantage over first world societies. Many other countries have retained a general fluency in their culture of bending the rules. They still know how to work with grey areas at a day to day level. That the law is really not much more than ink on paper. That you probably need to operate more flexibly, to orient more to your practical concerns a bit. They know how to think like the conman or the predator. How to extricate themselves from chaotic and quite high stakes situations. Many Brits might need to relearn these things.
Arcadian: So what does this mean for civic society?
So I think there is an emerging civic ethic which you can sum up as a transition, a shift. We're going from 'Inherent fair play in day to day conflicts of interests', to 'He or she who expects fair play, deserves to be taken advantage of.'
This is not good.
To make things worse, the normal law-abiding individual, particularly from the middle classes, is gonna be caught in a double bind of policing and predation. From above, they're still subjects to the laws and authority of the state. Yet from below they're increasingly targets of the those willing to break the law: you know, the criminal or the terrorist.
From all sides actually the middle classes are the easiest targets.
Actually I'd say this double bind quality is a clear fourth component of liquid ferality which is particularly acute in Britain. It's also made worse by the widespread culture of reliance on the managerial state. There's a sort of wilful desire for paternalism there.
So to bring this back to the question, what I'm saying is fundamentally there is no overall defining character to the British situation, except for this very liquid, alienating quality of the world's problems becoming Britain's problems. Problems which might one day cascade into your city, town, or village. Your commute or workplace. Your neighbourhood. Your home.
That even in a system which is apparently first world, you can suddenly go from the normal to the incomprehensible, as if it was nothing. And as bad as it is now, I think we only seeing the start of it. That's your liquid ferality.
Arcadian: How do you feel about all of this?
The situation is extraordinarily troubling.
Arcadian: Do you have any suggestions?
Look at your situation plainly. Not from left or right. Or any sort of political ideology. Just look at your situation and what you need to do about it. Don't make it your identity, but do do something about it.
Don't be discouraged.
Do something positive and productive to improve your material preparedness and psychological readiness. Do that now while you still have the option.
Or not.
No one is coming to fix this. It's totally up to you.
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