Porter’s Pensées

It’s hardly fun being a socialist in Britain just now. The popular press is demonizing us, and the country as a whole is creeping – seemingly – towards a situation that can only be described, without much exaggeration, as proto-fascist. Democratic opposition is cast as ‘sabotage’, and its leaders as ‘traitors’. The prime minister vaunts ‘strong and stable leadership’ as her main political desideratum: ‘strength’ apparently consisting in being as hostile and insulting as possible towards those she is going to have to negotiate with, in Britain’s interests, soon. In other words: the Führerprinzip, in an English skirt.

On top of all this I found out today that we are being subject to a censorship more characteristic of authoritarian regimes than of genuine democracies. That concerns a brilliant satirical ‘documentary’ film, called What Was Done, made by a Scottish film maker and based on the pleasant hypothesis that Labour has won the next election; which lasted on the web for a few hours – during which I managed to see it; it really is superb – but then was mysteriously taken down. Here’s the latest account of what appears on the surface to be quite an appalling example of political censorship on behalf of the present government: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2017/05/01/what-was-done-3/. If this isn’t scary, I don’t know what is. I wonder whether the mainstream media will mention it?*

Tomorrow I return to the UK after a month in Sweden, where socialism is simply one entirely acceptable political credo among others. Today I attended a couple of the political demonstrations they hold on Första Mai, the main one being the Vänster, or Left, Party’s; Left that is of the Social Democrats, but presently forming a governing coalition with them. It was also very internationalist, with banners from Syria, Poland and half a dozen other ‘oppressed’ countries leading sections of the march. I looked for a ‘Corbynista’ banner from my own oppressed country, but couldn’t find it. (I can imagine what the Daily Mail would have made of British Labourites marching alongside ex-Communists.)

It was huge; and also highly enjoyable, with a super band playing, dancing, exotic food – cooked by refugees to show off their national cuisines – and lots of good humour. It showed me how one could actually enjoy being a socialist even in Britain, if the conditions were right.

During the doubtless depressing elections we have coming up in Britain, memories of the vital, joyful and optimistic crowds I moved amongst today in Stockholm may ease the pain. Until, that is, I move here permanently myself, as a kind of refugee, albeit without the cuisine. Lancashire Hotpot, anyone?

*PS (Monday evening): It’s back! And worth seeing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dUrEZiHIbE.

Apparently our UK press now lies at number 40 in Reporters Without Borders’ ‘Press Freedom Index’. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index; which also describes the methodology.) That’s way below most other ‘developed’ countries of the world, apart from the USA (at no. 43). My second home, Sweden, is at no. 2, flanked by the other Nordic countries at the top of the list.

This should be borne in mind when our powerful right-wing press barons, who are mainly responsible for this situation, refer to the ‘great British tradition’ of ‘freedom of the press’, as a reason for resisting the regulatory framework recommended by the Leveson Inquiry, which had the object of ensuring greater press freedom from them.

It should also affect our attitude to our Press’s (and the BBC’s) reporting of the current British General Election campaign, which is appalling by any but the most Machiavellian standards; and will probably be largely responsible for returning Theresa May to power on June 8.

Social media may compensate for this to a certain extent; but mainly for the young people who are into it, but who apparently won’t vote; and with the same doubts about its veracity as plague the print media. For example, today’s story about May’s presenting a tiny meeting of Tory supporters in a hut in a wood somewhere as if it were a public rally in Aberdeen – https://skwawkbox.org/2017/04/30/did-mays-scottish-stunt-breach-contract-force-a-charity-to-breach-its-articles-ge17/ – is tasty; but can it be true? That’s the other ill effect of ‘fake news’: to taint even the genuine brand.

We all need our heroes. They seem to be in rather short supply just now – live ones, anyway. Mine – since the death of Bobby Moore – has long been the pianist, conductor and peacemaker Daniel Barenboim. We went to a concert of his last night, preceded by a seminar addressed by him, in Stockholm’s glorious Konserthus. He was conducting his ‘East-West Divan Orchestra’, recruited from among young Jews and Arabs from the Middle East, with the object of bringing sworn ‘enemies’ together. That is heroic in itself; but the quality of the sound his baton draws from these musicians is remarkable, too. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better Mozart ‘Jupiter’ Symphony since Beecham.

The other item was Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote, which showed up the orchestra’s technical qualities, but which I didn’t enjoy so much. The problem was that it’s narrative, like film music, aiming to tell a story in a quite literal way. In my view the greatest music is usually abstract, and connecting directly and mysteriously with the emotions. Story-telling brings it down. I’m reminded of a remark Elgar is reported to have made at a dinner party in the 1920s. A group of arty people – poets, painters, mainly Bloomsbury set – was discussing which is the ‘greatest’ of the arts. Elgar was getting restless, and even irritated; until he burst out: ‘Music is written up there in the heavens, waiting to be grasped. And you dare to compare that with your damned copying?’

One or two of those in our party were irritated, in their turn, by Barenboim’s emphasis on music, and by implication ‘Western classical’ music, to the neglect of the other arts. But isn’t music superior to all of them? OK: it depends on what you’re measuring. But in my view Elgar had something. For me, music is almost the sole thing that justifies the evolution and existence of humanity, in the broadest of perspectives. When our sun finally burns out, and the earth comes to an end, wiping out all signs of human life, I would be most distressed to think that Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 might be destroyed along with it. If we can escape to other worlds, OK. But just in case not, I think we should start now launching hundreds of satellites out into deep space, containing recordings of our race’s greatest music, in the hope of at least one of them striking an inhabited and intelligent alien people somewhere; so that our whole human story won’t have been in vain.

For a few years now I’ve been blogging about the Julian Assange case, both here, on the LRB Blogsite, and in Lobster (e.g. http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster71/lob71-assange-again.pdf). This has been based on my historical interest in ‘Secret Service’ activities, and on my present familiarity, as a Swedish resident, with the Swedish legal system, especially in relation to sex. My general argument has been that the Swedish request to Britain to extradite Assange on suspicion (only) of ‘rape’ was probably ill-founded, and may have been a mere excuse to have him re-extradited from Sweden to the USA on more serious charges of espionage. As a result of this, Assange has been incarcerated in the Ecuadorian embassy – where he sought asylum – for several years now, while Britain still formally abides by the Swedish request to remove him to Sweden for ‘questioning’ if he steps outside.

The following piece by Craig Murray, a former member of the British diplomatic service, corroborates my view all along, and describes the situation vis-à-vis Assange as it is today. Neither the British nor the Swedish government comes well out of this; to my great unease, as both a Briton and a Swedophile. Here’s Craig Murray’s post, from his own blog: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/04/no-rape-charges-julian-assange-sweden-espionage-charges-julian-assange-usa/. Regardless of how we feel about Assange as a person, about his relations with women, and about his political activities, he deserves the same justice as do any of us; which both the British and Swedish legal systems have signally and grotesquely failed to provide.

The Brexit vote was so close that a number of small things could be claimed to account for it. The deliberate lie on the side of the Brexit battlebus was one I’ve mentioned before: who wouldn’t vote for another £350 million a week for the NHS? Another is this fellow:

who was one of Brexit’s surprise spokesmen, after months of indecision on his part. What, one wonders, might have been the outcome if Boris Johnson had backed his Eton chum Cameron in June last year, as the latter was clearly hoping? He only had to bring 2% of voters over to make the crucial difference.

For the main thing we can say about public opinion at that time – including mine – was that most of it was neither particularly pro- nor anti-Europe, but undecided, not terribly strong, and ignorant. The zealots – including the tabloid press – made most noise; but Britain is not a nation of zealots on the whole, at least as regards foreign policy. (The same was true during the age of imperialism, to don my historian’s hat again. Most Britons then were apathetic. See my Absent-Minded Imperialists.) People feel much more strongly over other things. It was those other things, as I argued at the time (https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/), that determined the way our EU referendum went. Which means that trivial 2% factors, like Boris’s clownish personality, could have had more of an impact than they deserved.

He surely can’t last long as Foreign Secretary. He’s clearly no statesman, and is a laughing stock abroad (certainly here in Sweden). Theresa ‘strong and stable’ May (a phrase she repeated nineteen times in a single short speech the other day: how very Goebbelsy) seems, so far, to be hiding him during the current General Election campaign. It’s clear that she’s depending on apathy (together with the media) to win that for her, so long as her side doesn’t suffer too many pratfalls. Boris is pratfall prone.

‘Hello funny foreign people… I am Boris from Britannia and I come to do diplomacy and stuff’. (Not original; from another blog I can’t recall.)

But so too is Theresa, or so she seems to suspect, judging by the way she is assiduously avoiding TV leaders’ debates, public appearances (except among ‘trusties’), and even interviews with the press. The only way people might still cling to the idea that she is ‘strong and stable’ is if they don’t see too much of her. She hasn’t had time to prove her qualities yet; which is all to her advantage. For us, the electorate, better the devil you don’t know, than the one you think you know from the hostile press. The Tories have got it all worked out.

Many wives these days are electing to stick with their ‘maiden’ names – i.e. those they were born with – rather than automatically adopting their husbands’. That, it seems to me, is an admirable way of escaping from the old-fashioned patriarchalism implied by the other way; if you feel you have to get formally married, that is. Another way to achieve that, however, would be if the husband took his wife’s name in place of his own. Is one allowed to do that in Britain, without having to go through any expensive legal hoops? I’d have quite welcomed it: as Bernard O’Hara (when I was married), or Bernard Ohrlander (now). Both those names must be preferable to ‘Porter’. ‘Oh Mr Porter, what shall I do? I want to go to Birmingham and they’re taking me on to Crewe!’ I was plagued with that chant in my junior school playground. Until they felt my fist in their silly faces. (Sorry, I was never a ‘turn the other cheek’ sort of a boy.)

The thought came to me when, in connection with my inquiries into ‘YouGov’ – see my previous post – I found that the chap who runs it had done just that: replaced his own birth name with his wife’s. Gosh, how women’s lib! would be one’s normal reaction; and it may well be that it was his feminist principles that mainly motivated him in this. But then you need to know who he is, what he does, and what his original name was.

He’s the chap who runs YouGov for the Conservative Party. His original name was Stephan Kukowski; his current one – his wife’s – is – wait for it! – Shakespeare. You’re not telling me that the enormously English resonances of that name didn’t have an influence on his decision to adopt it, while working and scheming for the ‘patriotic’ party. Like the name ‘YouGov’, it’s misleading, and possibly deliberately so. It must also say something about his attitude towards his proud family origins – Polish? German? – that he has turned his back on them in this way. Of course he isn’t keeping this hidden; but who’s going to bother to look him up? By the time anyone (like me) has Googled him, the impression will have stuck.

He isn’t the only continental European-cum-British patriot to have done this sort of thing. One of the most prominent British imperial propagandists of the turn of the 20^th century was one J. Ellis Barker (look him up). On further enquiry his real name turns out to have been Otto Julius Eltzbacher, from Cologne; just 28 miles from Moenchengladbach, as it happens, where Kukowski was born. This is a common phenomenon generally: that the keenest and most fanatical ‘British patriots’ have been foreign born and/or bred. (I cite examples in my The Absent-Minded Imperialists.)

I’m not complaining at a foreign-born person’s being open-minded enough to espouse another country’s patriotism. I’m quite keen on Sweden, as it happens. It’s the subterfuge I object to. I’m not going to change my name to Berndt Cyrilsson (my father was a ‘Cyril’) to try to persuade the Swedes I’m one of them. And I’m certainly not going to give the impression that my blogsite is somehow ‘official’; which of course is what ‘YouGov’ does.

I’m a trusting kind of bloke on the whole. Many would call me naïve, but I’ve found that if you don’t have a suspicious frame of mind, you get on with people better. Of course you’ll be occasionally disappointed, betrayed and taken advantage of, and even made to feel foolish; but that’s the price you have to pay for friendship and a generally sunny disposition. I have chosen to be a naïf rather than a cynic. I like myself better that way.

But, yes, the betrayals can be hurtful. I learned of one today. For a few months I have been subscribing to an organization called ‘YouGov’, which samples public opinion on a variety of issues. Some of its surveys are political, albeit rather superficial; but these have been getting fewer and fewer as time has passed, to be replaced by questions on commercial and financial products, and TV programmes. A recent discussion on a Labour-supporting website has disclosed that many others of its subscribers have experienced the same trend. Some of them suspect that it’s because their early replies revealed them to be socialists. (Here: https://m.facebook.com/groups/790942501052475?view=permalink&id=1151390081674380&comment_id=1151439038336151&notif_t=group_comment_reply&notif_id=1493055905496721&ref=m_notif.) As a ‘trusting kind of bloke’ I don’t necessarily go along with that. But I was beginning to worry about YouGov’s commercial or marketing bias, which – I thought – must affect its political objectivity.

I had assumed, from its name, that it must be a governmental concern. That’s why I joined and trusted it. Maybe it was simply helping to finance itself by working for marketing companies as a sideline? Today, having checked – which of course I should have done much sooner – I find that this isn’t the case at all. Here is Wikipedia’s description of it:

‘YouGov is an international Internet-based market research firm, headquartered in the UK, with operations in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. It has no known connection with the UK government despite the name. Stephan Shakespeare, the firm’s CEO as of 2017, once stood as a Conservative candidate for Colchester; he was also a Conservative Party pollster.’

Hence my present sense of betrayal. If it’s a private market research firm, it shouldn’t have a title with the word ‘Gov’ in it. That’s grossly misleading, and indeed immoral. Finding that it was set up by a Tory politician exacerbates the sin. Innocent of this, I provided a great deal of personal information to it, which it sought in order (it claimed) to sophisticate and perfect its sample. I now greatly regret that. I think the information was extracted from me duplicitously. I worry about the use that the Tories might make of it. And I’m angry to have been made a fool of by these bastards. I shall of course unsubscribe – with some choice words, and maybe a link to this post – the next time they get in touch.

But it still won’t make me a cynic. I won’t allow it to.

Who would have thought that the time would come when hundreds of thousands of people all over the world would feel constrained, or provoked, to demonstrate in support of science? (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/22/evidence-not-arrogance-uk-supporters-join-global-march-for-science.) There was one in Stockholm, too, yesterday. Nerds in white coats and thick glasses, doctors, teachers; people who have generally been apolitical, until today. It shows how far the reaction against rational critical thought and expertise has gone. It really is scary. You know whom to blame.

I liked the pic of a young girl dressed in a Hogwarts uniform holding a banner which said: ‘Science is like magic, but real’. Hopefully she’s the future, after this new Dark Age has passed.

PS. A friend in Sydney has just sent me this, reporting on other witty pro-Science demos around the world: https://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragriffin/march-for-science-signs?utm_term=.cpEzZoPNZ#.yoyY94Ey9. – Thanks, Chloe.

‘Why bother listening to that stuff?’ asks Kajsa this morning in bed, as my i-Phone radio app (wonderful!) picks up Nigel Farage wildly berating a phone-in questioner on LBC. (She’s asked me to point out that she was only half awake.) Here in Sweden that kind of ‘debate’ would be virtually impossible. The quality of ours genuinely shocks them. Political discussions – even on the Right – are calm and rational. ‘Shock-Jocks’ don’t exist. The media exist to broadcast news, not party propaganda, still less made-up ‘news’. Differences are debated politely. That’s the kind of discussion I should be listening to. Why waste my time with these loonies?

What she doesn’t fully understand, from her cultural viewpoint, or at least hasn’t yet internalized, is that the loonies are a major part of the political debate in Britain, and even more so in the USA, which makes it important for us more rational folks to try to understand what is going on in their necks of the woods. Otherwise we’re going to be taken by surprise by the results of popular votes like Trump’s and UKIP’s; as indeed we were. Machiavellian propagandists, certainly on the Right, are fully aware of the irrationality and stupidity of probably the majority of voters in any election (OK, it’s not their fault), and cynically direct their efforts to them. That’s how they win.

The answer, hopefully, is not to meet fire with fire – certainly not with Leftist lies – but to calm down the terms and language of the debate. That’s what Corbyn has been trying to do ever since he became Labour leader. He has succeeded, to the extent that he almost universally comes over as ‘honest and decent’, by contrast with Farage, Johnson, May and all the rest. Whether that’s enough, in an age where fake news and misleading propaganda are accepted as normal, proto-Fascist ideas of ‘strong’ leadership the prime political desiderata, and ‘decency’ regarded as wimpish, remains to be seen.

In the meantime I still have calm and rational Sweden for my potential bolt-hole, especially when my Swedish citizenship comes through; and could choose to emigrate here permanently at any time. The problem is, I’d miss too many English things. Does anyone else fancy joining me in a project I have in mind, to set up a little English colony in the south of Sweden (where it’s a bit warmer than in Stockholm); a village with a pub, a cricket field and a chippy, with pics of the Queen, Harold Wilson and the World Cup winning English football team adorning the walls, but surrounded and guarded by the Swedish welfare state, rational discourse, and Kurt Wallander to protect us from the notorious serial killers stalking around?

Please reply to englishutopia@inmydreams.co.uk.

National moods of nastiness, such as I described – and hopefully exaggerated – in my last post, are usually tied up with widespread pessimism and lack of hope. I don’t get any strong feeling that the Brexiteers, or the Trumpeters in America, despite their great triumphs last year, are really anticipating a bright new future for themselves or their countries, even if their governments don’t renege on their promises; which of course is the excuse they’re already preparing for when disappointment sets in. Michael Caine – whom I admire more as an actor than as a political pundit – is saying that he’d ‘rather be a poor master’, under Brexit, ‘than a rich servant’, of the EU; which seems to be conceding half the case. The most the Brexiteers are hoping for is to be free of Brussels pettifogging and east European immigrants mending their plumbing and digging their turnips up for them, which isn’t the brightest vision in the world. (Some of them seem to think they can rid the land of ‘Pakis’ and straight bananas too, but that’s just because they’re thick.)

There’s no longer any real positive hope around, let alone the idealism which has fuelled protest movements in the past. People know there’s something wrong with the world, but don’t really know what it is; so they kick the EU dog instead. That’s what the Daily Hatemail is doing: simply lashing out. I know what’s wrong with the world – the perversions of modern capitalism, mainly – but the rich capitalists who own the press are hardly going to admit to that. Hence our national descent into meanness and malevolence.

It is in fact rather rare in history – in British history, at any rate – for no-one, anywhere in the political spectrum, to have real hope. There have been times when people have been far worse off than today, and even gravely threatened, but always with glimmers of hope. Capitalists have envisioned free market paradises. Socialists could look forward to their democratic revolutions. Liberals retained their hope in gradual ‘progress’. Christians eagerly awaited the second coming of their Lord. Blitzkrieged Londoners kept calm, carried on, and still had faith in their brave boys at the front and in the air. West Ham supporters could look forward to the next season. And all of them – remarkably – could have their different, even conflicting, hopes at one and the same time. (I wrote about this here last December – https://bernardjporter.com/2016/12/21/hope-and-hate/. Take a look.)

Recent events, both in Britain and in the USA, seem to have confirmed that this time is different from those previous ones. Have you met an optimistic capitalist, or socialist, or even a Christian, recently? A Progressive, for example, who really thinks Labour or the Lib Dems can win? Or an American who genuinely believes the world of Norman Rockwell will return once the Mexicans have gone? (Well, maybe or or two; in the Appalachians, say.) I haven’t. That marks a real historical turning point. Unless, that is, Jeremy – and Bernie? – really can marshall the potential optimism that may be buried deep under the surface of our mean, nasty, Daily Maily, Breitbarty societies just now, and give some of us a reason to live in hope again.