Porter’s Pensées

Vice-President JD Vance’s speech on Saturday to the Munich Security Conference (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOsgfINdKg) may have marked a crucial turning-point in recent world history. This is not only for its signalling of the USA’s disengagement from the defence of Europe after eighty years, but because of the rationale Vance gave for that decision. This went way beyond the best reason he cited – that Europe should look to its own defence more, and not be so dependent on American generosity – which may have a great deal to be said for it (I broadly agree); and which it now looks as though Britain and other European nations may be taking on board. (See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gxgxl3grgo.)

But the speech was also important because of the deeper reason Vance gave for the split between them; which was that the USA and Europe no longer shared the same ‘values’ that had once united them. To illustrate this he focussed mainly on the issue of ‘free speech’, which he claimed was more under threat in Europe than it was in his own country; citing a number of alleged examples (including in Britain and here in Sweden) which – in my opinion – were at the very least distorted or exaggerated, and appeared to have been garnered from some of the furthest reaches of the Right-wing social media. Apparently these pose more of a threat to Europe than the military danger from those notable champions of free speech, Russia and China. This was quite explicit in what Vance said: ‘The threat that I worry most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within: the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.’ Here we have the ‘culture wars’ – which I used to dismiss as mere undergraduate frippery – fully armed and on the prowl.

This may exemplify a seismic shift in global polarities. For over fifty years we’ve been used to the great political divide in the world being the one between liberal (or capitalist) countries on the one hand, and communist ones on the other. In the former camp you had most of the western European powers, plus the United States of America, and various other lesser actors. On the opposing side there were Soviet Russia and its eastern European and mid-Asian dependencies; together with China, espousing a different version of communism; and other quasi-socialist countries scattered around. But then came the fall of Soviet communism, leaving that camp broken, and the leadership of Russia in particular seeking to re-establish its former hegemony without the ideological cements that had bound it to its former ‘satellites’, in both Tsarist and Soviet times.

It was then that the great change took place, with leading players swapping teams, and fighting on different sides. The obvious example is the new warmth that appears to be growing between those former political enemies Trump and Putin, with Trump openly expressing his admiration for Putin, and taking on some of the latter’s authoritarian characteristics himself. Vance’s speech can be seen as a sign of America’s distancing itself from its old European allies not only militarily, but also ideologically. This is why it was – apparently (the reference here is from Musk’s ‘X’) – so enthusiastically welcomed by the Kremlin (https://x.com/jcbehrends/status/1890721064390447356), which clearly shares many of Trump’s reactionary prejudices. And it opened up the possibility of a new global division, to replace the old communist-democratic ‘Cold War’ one, between – what to call them? Dictatorship and democracy? Authoritarianism and liberalism? Reaction and Progress? ‘Populism’ and ‘Woke’? – with the two combatant armies mustered differently, and Putin and Trump – a real dictator and the wannabe one – now on the same side.

There can be little doubt just now that the Right is winning, both nationally and globally, and highly dangerously. I can understand its appeal; I may blog about this later. But I’m beginning to despair of my world.

Excellent article here, from yesterday’s Guardian, but by an American-born Dagens Nyheter correspondent, Martin Gelin (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gelin).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/12/sweden-risbergska-orebro-gun-massacre. – (If it doesn’t come up, try the Guardian website.)

They’re thinking of tightening their gun laws here in Sweden. The shooter in this case had four of them, quite legally (for hunting), including automatics. The Swedish equivalent of the American gun lobby, mostly Right-wing Sverigedemokraterna, is against any limitation; but I imagine the measure will go through.

He was obviously targeting immigrants, by the way. They were on a course called Svenska för Invandrare (Swedish for immigrants), or SFI. I took the same course myself when I arrived, as a sort of ‘refugee’; to little effect, I must confess. But it means that I could have been in his line of fire.

The hero of the Ayn Rand novel I’m struggling with presently, Atlas Shrugged (see https://bernardjporter.com/2025/01/30/ayn-rand/), is a railroad magnate. The hero of the one I abandoned a few years ago, The Fountainhead, was a builder.

Déjà vu? The two men dominating America (and the world) today can be seen as these two heroes’ modern equivalents. One is a technocrat, developing new ways both of communicating and of travelling (to the planets); the other is a real estate developer. They’re both very rich. Beyond this, both of them represent the highest – possibly the last – stage of global capitalism; as did the fictional ‘Howard Roark’ and ‘Hank Rearden’ in Ayn Rand’s time. Post-revolutionary Russia (Rand’s birthplace) is of course following a similar path; which is what makes Putin such a natural ally for Trump. And this is roughly the path predicted by Karl Marx all those years ago. Doesn’t this describe the essence of the situation we’re in today?

Trump’s obscene plan to turf out the Palestinians and turn poor Gaza into a luxury ‘Riviera’ resort for the rich could not have come from the mind of anyone but a modern property capitalist. The way that what is called ‘populism’ has played into the hands of this new plutocracy undermines – if it doesn’t destroy – any hope that Marx’s favoured solution, a rebellion of the ‘people’ against the plutocrats, will come about any time soon.

I’m still not very far into Atlas Shrugged – it really is a very cold and boring novel – so I don’t yet know how it ends. But I guess not well, from my wokeish liberal point of view.

Apparently if you’re an immigrant it costs thousands of pounds and a mountain of paperwork to acquire British citizenship these days. – Just for purposes of comparison: when I got my (dual) Swedish citizenship five years ago it cost me around £50, a few questions about my financial situation and how long I had been with Kajsa, a quick police check, and that was it. No language requirement, even – wrongly, I think, but luckily for me. It took a few months for my application to be processed; but then I was Svensk. (Of course I’m white, comfortably off, and professional; all of which will have helped.)

Sweden, like Britain, is about to make its naturalisation process more difficult; but still it looks as though Britain will remain one of the most unwelcoming countries for the foreseeable future. Of course, that’s what our Rightists want; despite all the benefits that immigrants have brought over the past 400 years. (See my Britain Before Brexit, 2021, chapter 4.)

Incidentally: I once happened upon Karl Marx’s application for British citizenship about 150 years ago. The British police reported that as he had been notoriously hostile to his German king, he was unlikely to be loyal to Queen Victoria. But he was still allowed to stay. (He’s still here, of course.)

Eleven dead, at an adult education centre, including the shooter, a 35-ish white man with no previous criminal record, but a history of school failure, unemployment and solitariness. Thank God he wasn’t a Muslim. (As many of his victims were.) But we need the police to look into his computer before we can surmise his motivation for sure.

This is extraordinary in Sweden. We thought it was reasonably safe here. We’re also currently getting bombs going off all over Sweden – gangland, apparently. No-one hurt.

I’m about to be interviewed by a ‘free’ Russian documentary maker (Redaktsiya) on ‘imperialism’. I guess the subject is more relevant now than it has been for many years, with both Putin and Trump reopening that can of worms.

Next day: more info: https://www.thelocal.se/20250205/orebro-campus-shooter-named-in-swedish-media. And more: https://www.thelocal.se/20250206/multiple-nationalities-among-victims-in-swedish-mass-shooting-police. So it does look like an anti-immigrant motive.

It used to be dismissed as hyperbole. Now the idea of the USA’s being – or shortly becoming – a ‘Fascist’ power is being taken seriously.

Obviously Trump is not gassing Jews, or anyone else, yet. But neither did Hitler until 1941, or Mussolini ever. Those who think that genocide is the test a regime has to pass before it can be labelled ‘Fascist’ are clearly wrong. The ‘final solution’ was the culmination of Hitler’s particular form of Fascism, not essential to it. There are other more characteristic features: including different forms of racism, irrationalism, anti-intellectualism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, nationalism, assertive masculinism, corporatism, resentment against past national humiliations, anti-‘elitism’, anti-politics… and so on. They must all strike chords today.

As a historian, I was intending to post a blog on the comparison with Trumpism, as well as the differences. But I soon realised that this has already been done a score of times (Google Trump/Hitler comparisons); and so I won’t burden you with my take on it now. Except to say that in my judgment Trumpism is a particular form of Fascism, peculiar to America because of the late-capitalist environment in which it is being born there – vide the very Ayn-Randy and obvious ‘techno’-Fascist Elon Musk – and so not strictly comparable in every detail with the 1930s variety (in which capitalism played a lesser part); but nonetheless sharing many of the latter’s characteristics.

I was reminded of these when I recently watched the TV documentary series Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. The similarities shout out at you. Among trivial ones, it’s the narrator who compares the Berghof to Mar-a-Lago; so the series must have been made fairly recently, and with Trump in mind. The Nuremberg rallies are another obvious parallel. Then there’s the Austrian Anschluss, raising fears for present-day Canada… and so on. – I recommend the whole series, which you can get up at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32331294/. It must raise some doubts in the minds of those who dismiss our ‘Nazi’ fears as mere left-wing scare-mongering. As of course many did in the 1930s.

Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophical novels’ are supposed to have had a great influence on the American Right, with their glorification of free enterprise and heroic male industrialists. With America now being ruled (once again) by a millionaire property developer, supported by the country’s three leading tech billionaires, and along capitalist lines (The Art of the Deal), I thought I ought to read at least one of them. I’ve tried once before with The Fountainhead, but gave up; it’s a very long and pedestrian book, and bored me stiff. I’m now fifty pages into Atlas Shrugged, and finding the same. I’ll persevere; but I may not finish it.

I imagine you’ll know about Rand: originally Alisa Zinovjevna Rosenbaum; an immigrant from Soviet Russia, whose ‘philosophy’ seems to be to be a marriage between Adam Smith and Friedrich Nietzsche.

(PS. Here’s an article on the modern-day equivalents of Rand’s fictional heroes: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/jan/29/silicon-valley-rightwing-technofascism.)

Interesting historical piece by a conservative Canadian/American.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/opinion/trump-mckinley-populism.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Prince Harry’s utter vindication this morning in his High Court case against the Murdoch press (https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/prince-harry-v-murdoch-lawyers-due-back-court-after-last-gasp-deal-talks-2025-01-22/) is a rare ray of light in today’s on-going war between Good and Evil. I’ve not much time for the British royal family, least of all for Harry after the scandal of his wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy-dress party twenty years ago (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/13/royalsandthemedia.pressandpublishing); but to my mind he has fully made up for that with the battle he has been waging, at some risk to himself, against our over-powerful and, yes, ‘evil’, Fourth Estate. It will be interesting to see what the Sun – his main adversary – makes of it all tomorrow.

Unfortunately it won’t have as much impact as it would have done in the days when people still read newspapers, before they switched to the social media. (Of course neither is completely evil; you still have the Guardian, and this blog.) In connexion with which it was depressing – even scary – to see our social media lords and masters given second-row seats at Trump’s Inauguration; quite apart from the (allegedly) Nazi salutes that one of them gave to a rally of MAGA Republicans shortly afterwards. I think that even the twenty year-old Harry would have baulked at that.

How many self-styled ‘democracies’ allow their elected leaders to pardon convicted criminals by ‘executive action’, without reference to the ‘due process’ that applies to the rest of their people? (I’m referring of course to the roughly 1600 Capitol rioters whom Trump pardoned yesterday. Of course Biden has done the same, as outgoing President.)

The reason in America’s case may be the legacy of the colonial ties she escaped from in 1776. The new-minted USA ditched its ‘mad’ British monarch then, but not all his monarchical privileges. The American President is essentially a George III de nos jours. In certain circumstances he can do what the hell he likes. In this respect, British leaders, at least, could be said to be more democratically accountable than Trump.

I doubt, too, incidentally, whether any European rulers would be comfortable with their rich backers celebrating their electoral triumphs with Nazi (or ‘Roman’) salutes (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/20/trump-elon-musk-salute).

But you never know what might come. I have to say I’m troubled. I’m almost grateful that, at my age, I probably won’t live to see the final victory of ‘fascism’ (or whatever), in its 21^st-century guise. Looking at the signs now, that guise will probably be late-stage capitalist, and scaringly technological. Look at Trump’s government, and his rich and nerdish backers. And be afraid; very afraid.