Author Archives: bernardporter2013

Historians are usually quite good at pointing out precedents for what is happening in their own times. But I’m afraid I can’t think of any close precedents for what is going on today. For the clear ‘Fascist’ tendencies in modern … Continue reading →

‘For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike’. That was the line Donald Trump took on Tuesday (April 2), to justify the long list of ‘reciprocal’ American … Continue reading →

I’m still astonished by the revelation that the American Constitution gives so much unchecked power (as it seems at present) to a single person. George III had nothing like the same authority; and some of his royal predecessors met gruesome … Continue reading →

Easy, isn’t it? – USA gets Greenland, Russia gets Ukraine, China gets Taiwan. All neat and tidy. Everyone agrees. No more wars. Back to the 1790s: https://bernardjporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg. (See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/28/putins-endorsement-of-trumps-greenland-takeover-reflects-their-vision-of-a-new-world-order.)

For academics a crucial aspect of ‘Fascism’ is the way it plays out in universities. As a retired academic I’ve been shocked by some of the reports coming from America over the past month featuring censorship of free speech in … Continue reading →

Ages ago I considered the idea of researching and writing a history of the political ‘Right’ in Britain, following on from my works on ‘imperialism’ and its enemies. I’ve still got notes on this, in a file somewhere back in … Continue reading →

You must see this four-part British TV series, recently released on Netflix, and starring Stephen Graham, whose craggy face will be familiar to you; and a new boy actor, Owen Cooper. Both are transcendingly good, and the film a great … Continue reading →

A great piece by Meghan O’Rourke here:  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/opinion/university-defunding-trump-rufo.html. If you can get this up – I could only do it by subscribing to the New York Times – it paints an alarming picture, by a Yale professor, of what appears … Continue reading →

The ‘Mad Scientist’ has been a common trope in fiction – novels, movies, comic books – ever since Mary Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein, and possibly before. (There’s an incomplete list of them here: https://fearplanet.net/2024/07/17/top-20-mad-scientists-in-fiction-and-film). My favourite one as a kid was … Continue reading →

Is this what America and Russia want – to carve up the world between them? (A famous Gillray cartoon.) Replace Pitt and Napoleon by Trump and Putin, and of course slice the pudding differently; and it could serve for today.