Porter’s Pensées

For the situation I described in yesterday’s post – the widespread denial of obvious truths, and dismissal of ‘expertise’ – I blame four factors in particular. The first is the general rise and popular fascination of ‘conspiracy theories’, from the grassy mound (Kennedy) to David Icke’s shape-shifting royal reptiles. The second is the actual conspiracies that have been revealed over the last few years  – I’d include the ‘Wilson plot’ as one of these, albeit in a watered-down form, and all the recently confirmed revelations of institutional paedophilia – which give some credence to all the rest. The third is, of course, the internet, spreading ‘fake news’, unmoderated, at a rate unimaginable before. I imagine much of this as being the preserve of pimply adolescents tapping away in their bedrooms when their mothers think they’re asleep; but I may be wrong. (And in any case it’s a slur on pimply adolescents, the poor dears.)

My fourth factor is the least likely one, because it would only apply to educated people, which these adolescents generally aren’t. That’s ‘post-modernism’, in its extreme, relativistic form. (There is no objective truth.) I’d like to be able to place some of the blame on them, because – in the form of ‘post-colonial theorists’ – they’ve been the bane of my recent professional life. But as members of the hated intellectual ‘elite’ they’re unlikely to have had much influence on the poor suckers who swallowed Boris Johnson’s ‘£350 million a month’ – or was it a week? –  for the NHS’ lie. I didn’t find many of them citing Foucault and Deleuze.

One solution might be to teach – by some means or other – simple ‘logic’ in schools. I’ve suggested this before: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/10/23/logic-lessons/. In other words, critical thought. Mathematics obviously does this. History can, if taught well. Literature very rarely does . Conservative educationalists have generally shied away from that, in case it encourages the young to be critical of the status quo. But at least it might give them the tools to be rationally and constructively critical; not simply against the status quo, and ‘elites’, and ‘experts’, because that’s what or who they are. I wouldn’t even mind if they were taught postmodernism. But critically.

The American Right still seems to be convinced that Sweden is in, or very close to, a state of ‘civil war’ through its generous asylum policy, and its admission of hundreds of thousands of inassimilable Muslims hell-bent on Islamicising the country through terrorism. I’ve commented on this before, after a false claim made about Sweden by Donald Trump in the last American presidential election: https://bernardjporter.com/2017/06/27/sweden-on-the-brink-of-civil-war/. The latest version is this very recent article in Frontpage Mag, edited by David Horowitz, a well-known Right-winger: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267764/shooting-messenger-sweden-bruce-bawer; which cites the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby as evidence of this kind of thing. I’ve been to Rinkeby; it was a fairly fleeting visit, which I described in another post: https://bernardjporter.com/2017/02/24/rinkeby/; but I was there long enough to allow me to positively contradict a number of assertions made in the Frontpage article – such as that there are ‘grocery stores that have signs only in Arabic’. Other more shocking ones, such as that there are ‘no-go’ areas there, or that women are stoned or ‘set afire’ for wearing the wrong clothes, I can’t disprove absolutely – I might have missed them – but my general impression of the area, and what I’ve read in the Swedish press, which doesn’t usually block such news, made me highly dubious about them. As I was, incidentally, of the signs that were pictured on Right-wing blogsites purporting to demarcate ‘sharia-only’ areas there – not in Arabic or Swedish, but in English! But we all know about this kind of ‘fake news’, don’t we?

Ah, ‘fake news’. We see plenty of it on Right-wing blogsites. But it’s mainly a charge made by them the other way. Only the other day the Right-wing ‘shock jock’ Rush Limbaugh claimed Hurricane Irma was fake news, put out by Democrats in pursuit of their climate change agenda; only to be forced to flee from his Florida home – not, he insisted, by the hurricane itself, but by the panic the reports of it was stirring up. (See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rush-limbaugh-irma-hurricane-florida-evacuation-hoax-conspiracy-theory-a7937201.html.) I imagined that would discredit him for ever thereafter; but possibly not. I’ve seen dozens of ‘ordinary Americans’ interviewed in the streets on TV expressing ridiculous beliefs in the face of all the objective evidence, and excusing themselves on the grounds that their status as ‘free Americans’ allowed them to think whatever they wanted. (For an example, see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/02/22/btl/, first para.)

‘Freedom’ – of thought – is undoubtedly an important motive. More important, however, will be the mistrust of authority that, in many situations, this gives rise to. ‘Mistrust’ is, of course, healthy. I wouldn’t have become as averagely-good a historian as I like to think I am without a good measure of it. It involves scepticism, checking back, requiring evidence, asking questions, and being open to persuasion at every stage. (In other words, ‘scientific method.’) But it has to be subjected to the same processes itself. The American Right doesn’t just mistrust authority; it automatically discredits it. This is no better than automatically trusting governments, politicians, the mainstream media (MSM) or whatever. It’s just as lazy; a way of avoiding thinking and discriminating: which is, to be fair, hard work. But it’s certainly a process behind much Trumpian (and also Farageist) ‘thinking’ these days. If an ‘authority’ tells you something, it must be fake. This applies not only to political authorities, but intellectual ones too. ‘We’ve had enough of experts’, as our own Michael Gove once notoriously said.

That kind of argument does something else: it hitches these Rightist arguments to an anti-elitist popular culture. For the ‘elite’ is made up not only of the social elite of the country – the sense in which it used to be understood – but also of experts, intellectuals, the educated, people who know things. Read that Frontpage piece, and the BTL comments appended to it, and you will find this is a thread running all the way through. The Swedes who rejected this Norwegian minister’s criticism of their asylum policy were simply an ‘elite’. It was the little boy and the Emperor’s clothes once again. Elites and experts have their own agendas, which only ‘ordinary folk’ can see through. And these agendas cover everything. Which is why you can’t even trust them on something as obviously verifiable as a hurricane. So dismiss them out of hand; especially if so doing confirms your own prejudices, and saves you from the mental labour of thinking.

None of this is new. Richard Hostadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, published in 1963, suggested it was an enduring tradition in free-thinking American history.  But it seems to have got more assertive in modern times, emerging no doubt out of the very real deceptions by governments, parties, corporations and others that have been revealed since then, which have slowly chipped away at the confidence in these agencies’ integrity which is essential to trust, and hence to real democracy. On the extreme Right, and also in some quarters of the extreme Left, this has left people with no solid evidential footholds for their opinions, and the idea therefore that what one believes is simply a matter of subjective choice. Fox, Breitbart, the Daily Mail and the rest of the proto-Fascist (yes) media then exploit this to pursue their own agendas. – Sometimes. Not always; or we’ll be falling into their trap, but in reverse: of simply and automatically believing the opposite of what they say.

It must be emphasised, in the context of the present ‘Brexit’ discussions, that the ‘free movement of people’ is not a point of socialist principle. There have been times in British history when unrestricted immigration was allowed, but they have either been because there were no practical ways of limiting it; or, as in nineteenth century Britain, out of liberal principle. I’ve written before – in books and I think blogs – about the extraordinary lack of any practical ‘alien’ laws, as they were called, for most of the Victorian period; an absence which enabled anyone to enter Britain, for any reason, and made it virtually impossible to expel even the worst behaved of them, including terrorists. Passports weren’t required, and incomers were never stopped at Britain’s borders. (That’s not to say that they weren’t sometimes watched.) Not many people, especially present day Conservatives, know this; but it was so. It’s the reason why so many refugees, Jews fleeing from Russian pogroms, and economic migrants came to Britain between around 1830 and 1906, despite the fact that they were not particularly welcomed there. Indeed, it was a distinct matter of pride for most Britons that they could tolerate people they didn’t like and might even be virulently prejudiced against. There’s no particular virtue in befriending friends.

This was of course all part of the nineteenth century’s almost mystical belief in the ‘free market’, which included free movement of labour as well as of everything else. It allowed resources of all kinds, material and human, to be distributed to where they were most needed – and so could be exploited most profitably – quite ‘naturally’. (Free market capitalism was regarded as a ‘law of nature’ then.) According to this philosophy, there was little essential difference between ‘goods’ and ‘people’. In Thatcher’s time this came to be reflected in the renaming of people travelling by train as ‘customers’, rather than ‘passengers’, so highlighting their place in the commercial process; and, in my own professional field, turning ‘Personnel’ into ‘Human Resources’ departments in universities. In the same way, immigrants are now ‘human resources’ – or not.

This seems to lie at the root of the present government’s new draft policy on European immigration, leaked today. As good ‘New’ or economic liberals they welcome foreigners insofar as they contribute to the nation’s economy, mainly by driving down wages but for other reasons too; and don’t appear to be anti-immigration for openly racist or xenophobic reasons, which is what separates them from UKIP and their own Right wing. As I understand it – I haven’t scrutinised the details – the new policy is supposed to take these ‘market’ arguments for immigration on board.

Some Labour MPs might object to it because it’s Tory, and seems ‘illiberal’ in their own, broader understanding of theat word. I’m not sure what official Labour’s position will be, with so many of its natural constituents complaining – possibly unreasonably – of immigrants pricing them out of jobs, houses and health care. If they pander to them, it may lead to their being portrayed as ‘unprincipled’. But it won’t be Labour principles it will be flouting.

Socialism has other ways of dealing with the ‘problem’. State ‘controlled’ immigration might be one, which is what we’re seeing in this Conservative document. Another would be to strengthen minimum wage legislation, to prevent immigrants undercutting other workers, and in particular stopping companies deliberately recruiting abroad in order to lower wages. Corbyn floated both of these ideas during the recent election. Then, if ‘quotas’ were necessary, it could be presented as a way of undermining the power of market capitalism. It shouldn’t be an embarrassment to a socialist. So long, that is, as the policy is operated reasonably and flexibly. Expelling people who have lived in Britain for years – been born there, in some recent cases – just shows how inhumane May’s government is.

That’s ‘economic’ immigrants. Refugees – when you can distinguish them – are a special case. There are totally different, humanitarian arguments for admitting these. But it requires international co-operation. When refugees started ‘flooding in’ from Syria and elsewhere a few years ago, I hoped the EU might ease the burden for more generous countries like Germany and Sweden, by getting every member state to take a fair share. But that’s the EU of my dreams, not the reality.

‘Two World Wars and one World Cup.’ That’s what English soccer fans used to chant – still do, perhaps – from the terraces when we played Germany. Yes, it’s pathetic; as is the part that the Second World War continues to play in our national self-image, judging by the books, films, and TV dramas and documentaries (watch the Yesterday or History channels any day) we’re still reading and seeing more than seventy years after the conflict came to an end. It also highlights how little ‘we’ have ‘won’ since that date. ‘Pathetic’ seems about the right word.

And yet… Isn’t it just a little comforting that it’s Britain’s part in the Second World War we generally celebrate, rather than the First, or any of our imperial victories? Imperial campaigns are embarrassing now. They are seen as wars of aggression. As is, in part, the First World War: which is currently being commemorated during this centenary period (2014-18) mainly in terms of its perceived pointlessness, and the suffering it entailed. There’s no ‘jingoism’ there.

World War II, however, was different. It was clearly a defensive war: in defence first of all of Poland, long before Britain herself was directly threatened; and then of ‘civilization’, no less, against the Nazi menace. Britain was feared to be next on Hitler’s list after Poland and France, but there was no absolute certainty of that. The Empire was in little danger: Hitler had promised that Britain could keep that so long as he was left alone to rule continental Europe. That is, if you could trust him; a big ‘if’, granted, but a slight opening for the significant number of British Right-wingers who would have preferred to continue appeasing him. Never mind Britain’s diplomatic mistakes before the war, and some of her actions during it (like Dresden); on the whole World War II was a ‘good’ war from Britain’s point of view. It also involved huge sacrifices: of human lives, treasure, and ultimately – as the appeasers saw clearly, but Churchill couldn’t – her Empire.

It was also a democratic war. It was the British democracy, represented mainly by the Labour Party, that ousted the appeasing Chamberlain and replaced him with Churchill. It was the ordinary people who withstood the saturation bombing by the Luftwaffe of London, Coventry, Hull and other cities in 1940-41 with what has always been celebrated in retrospect – and probably exaggerated – as uncommon fortitude, bravery and good humour. (I wrote an LRB piece on this a few years ago: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n13/bernard-porter/were-not-jittery). And it was the ‘little people’, some in their ‘little boats’, who rescued almost the entire British Army from the beaches of Dunkerque in May-June 1940, in order to enable them to re-arm and resume the fight against the Nazi menace.

If the ‘Dunkirk’ retreat hadn’t been successful, together with the ‘Battle of Britain’ for the skies (1940), the whole war might have been lost: America not trusted Britain enough to intervene on her side, and neutral countries like Sweden – whose ‘neutrality’ was dodgy in any case – gone over to the Germans. I hope my Swedish friends, with whom I’ll be seeing the film of Dunkirk this evening, will, despite their proud pacifism, and their mocking of us poor pathetic Brits for our Second World War nostalgia, realise that Dunkirk was instrumental in saving them from Fascism, as well as us.

(By the way: I’ve just realised I must have been conceived during the Dunkirk evacuation – born 5 February 1941. I don’t imagine the film will have room for that. But it may give me a special feeling for it.)

It was exactly fifty years ago today – at 4 o’clock in the morning, to be precise – that Sweden changed from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right. That’s despite a popular referendum which overwhelmingly opposed the move. It involved a huge amount of preparation, as one would imagine, and provoked many fears of widespread slaughter. Nonetheless it passed off amazingly smoothly; a credit, surely, to Swedish organisation and efficiency – if not to plebiscatory democracy. The country was experiencing an economic boom at the time – under the Social Democrats, naturally. Otherwise it might have been trickier. There’s a famous picture of ‘Dagen H’ (for Höger – Right) here:  http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/dagen-h-sweden-1967/. It makes it look more chaotic than I’m told it really was.

My latest review, commissioned by the LRB two years ago but not yet appeared there – so I’ve let Robin Ramsay have it for Lobster Magazine. (For those who don’t know it, Lobster – biennial, internet only, free – is excellent reading for serious Lefties.)

Click to access lob74-the-secret-war.pdf

Back from holiday today. A disappointing Swedish summer, weather-wise, but who cares when you have a friendly pub (krog) down the road, and a snug sommarhus to retire to? Anyway, the Archipelago looks even better in the rain. I’ll resume blogging shortly, after Kajsa and I and some radical Swedish friends have seen Dunkirk together in Stockholm – I don’t suppose it will have the same emotional impact on them as on me – and I’ve returned to Hull on Tuesday. In the meantime I thought this was worth circulating  slightly more widely – the pseudonymous ‘Trotter’s’ response to an earlier post of mine: https://bernardjporter.com/2017/08/12/brexit-and-democracy/#comments. No further comment from me is required, I think. (But you may like Andrew Rosthorns’s – printed above it.)

Kajsa highly recommends The Square (an English title but a Swedish film) when it reaches the UK, and I can see it with subtitles. It’s in line for the ‘best foreign film’ Oscar. I wonder whether it will come to Hull?

First Eton (see last post). Now it’s Winchester and Charterhouse – both in the top half-dozen English Public schools in terms of ‘prestige’ – that have been caught exam cheating: (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/27/exclusive-three-britains-leading-independent-schools-caught/); plus, a while ago, one of the government’s prized ‘Academies’ in east London: (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/10/staff-at-outstanding-london-school-suspended-over-alleged-exam-cheating). The tip of an iceberg, or what? But this is what happens when you introduce cut-throat competition into education, in circumstances where funding – from the government – or sales – of places in the posh schools – depend on good positions in exam ‘league tables’.

I had experience of something similar when I was Head of a university Department during the first of the Higher Education TQA (‘Teaching Quality Assessment’) exercises. Our departmental ‘grants’ were supposed to depend on this, and on our place in the resulting ‘league tables’. The cheating on the part some of our rival departments at other universities was obvious, albeit more subtle – we university lecturers were supposed to be clever-clogs, after all. I published a piece about it at the time in the Times Higher Education Supplement (I think: I can’t find the link to it now – if there is one. It was pre-digitalisation and pre-Google. I’ll look it up when I get back to the UK). Colleagues at other universities pinned it on their office doors. I was a hero for a while! – As it happened, my department did alright in the assessment, and without cheating. But that didn’t alter my view of the process as a whole, and of the place of crude ‘competition’ in the subtle business that is education.

Corruption is even affecting the ‘public’ schools. It’s reported today that a ‘deputy head’ at Eton, no less, one Mo Tanweer, has been sacked for giving out public exam questions to other teachers (or ‘masters’) – and so to their pupils – in advance: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/25/eton-colleges-deputy-headmaster-leaves-school-following-investigation/.

How long has this sort of thing been going on, I wonder? Might it help explain the apparent academic success of other Old Etonians, who don’t otherwise seem to be endowed with great intelligence. (Dave and Boris obviously come to mind.) Actually, hostile as I am to public schools generally, this is not the sort of behaviour I would have expected of them. They always used to take pride in instilling honour and honesty in their pupils, if very little else; which is why – notoriously – they were so snooty towards the notoriously amoral and selfish business of industrial capitalism. (See Martin Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1981.) And why they were so relatively incorruptible as colonial rulers.

But then Mr Tanweer isn’t like other Eton masters. (I’ve known a few.) Racists might want to make something of his Pakistani origin. (Predictably, Daily Telegraph bloggers already have.) Myself, I’d highlight his job before he went into teaching, which was in investment banking. Is it usual, I wonder, for public schools these days to recruit ex-finance capitalists as teachers? More evidence, if so, of the inexorable progress of  Marx’s capitalist leviathan.

Apart from that, Mr Tanweer’s main interests are reported to be ‘poker and golf’. ’Nuff said.

It’s just possible that the popular backlash against Brexit has started, if a survey showing that a quarter of those who voted for it last year now feel that Farage, Johnson et al ‘misled’ them, is to be credited: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brits-believe-they-were-misled-over-brexit_uk_599bf511e4b04c532f441339.  If so – or even if not – there can be no conceivable democratic argument for denying us a second referendum, once the precise terms of the divorce settlement are settled, so that we’ll know for the first time what we are voting for. ‘The people have spoken’ – having been lied to – just won’t do.

In particular, people might think again when they come to realize that with Brexit European domination is merely being exchanged for American, as Theresa May scrambles to butter up Trump for a commercial arrangement to replace our EU one. ‘National independence’ is never pristine and absolute, as Britain’s ex-colonies discovered when they escaped their colonial master’s formal bonds, only to leave them equally vulnerable to less visible ones. In this case American informal hegemony, in what Trump has always insisted will be America’s own interests, may well be less satisfactory in all kinds of ways – environmentally, for example; for our military if Trump gets his way over Afghanistan (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/21/donald-trump-address-nation-outline-new-afghanistan-strategy/); and for our system of healthcare – than anything we may suffer today within the EU. And of course we’ll have much less chance of influencing the former, as an isolated and friendless medium-sized country negotiating in desperation with a behemoth. Better the devil we’ve known for forty years, than the delusion that there won’t be a devil at all.

One problem seems to be that voters don’t see ‘informal’ ties and pressures, however powerful they may be, as clearly as they do formal ones, like ‘unions’ and ‘federations’ and ‘empires’ – entities you can draw lines around on a map. That was one of the arguments of my last book, British Imperial: What the Empire Wasn’t: that in the latter’s case its apparent solidity on those great red-besplattered world maps was misleading. Real power was exercised more subtly, and by others. Similarly, freedom from the EU won’t make Britain truly free.