Porter’s Pensées

‘That’s not who we are’. You sometimes hear this from liberal Americans who disapprove of policies or actions taken by their country, or by its people or Presidents. But of course it’s not entirely true.

Going back over US history – if that is meant to indicate ‘who they are’ – we encounter numerous examples of crimes committed in the name of the country that could quite legitimately be taken as characteristic, and are reflected in its present situation and identity. Genocide (of native Americans) is one; slavery is another; Jim Crow a third; the whole ‘Western’ (cowboy) experience a fourth; unrestrained capitalism and the corruption associated with it a fifth; murder and the gun culture a sixth and seventh; imperialism – however you want to define it – an eighth; – and there are several other features of historical American culture that critics, especially foreign ones, might take to be more typical and defining of the present USA, than the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ that figures so large in its original Declaration of Independence. This is not to single out America in particular for its national hypocrisy; most countries, including my own, are guilty of not living up to their stated ideals. As a British imperial historian I’m only too aware of this. And of course the US also has its admirable sides. The point is, however, that America places more emphasis on its founding ideals than do the rest of us, and so should surely be held to those ideals more strictly than we are to ours.

In any case ‘who we are’ is a difficult thing to establish, and may be a silly one to try. Most ‘national identities’ are over-simplified and confused. I’m not even sure of my own personal identity; or which one of my several identities – British, English, Essex, European, lately Swedish, male, middle-class, MA Cantab, academic, cricket lover, West Ham supporter – I would want to prioritise. In my case they’ve changed over time, with my ‘identity’ now being different from what it was fifty years ago; having been affected – for the better, I like to think – by my contact with other ‘identities’, especially when I was a graduate student of British imperial history, thrust into the company of the products of many other cultures, bits of all of which have clung to me. Because my ‘academicism’ remained constant during all these experiences, that is probably the identity that I would choose above the others; but that has little to do with where I come from, or with what we, as a nation, ‘are’. There are things I like about being English (and Swedish), and things I don’t. So far as I’m concerned it’s a mixed and ever-changing bag. And the same applies, on a broader scale, to the rather un-United States of America at the present time; to its eternal credit and benefit, for nothing is more sterile than uniformity and rigidity.

What I think American liberals mean by ‘that’s not who we are’, is that it’s not what they want their country to be. That’s fair enough; so long as they don’t assume that the America of the Declaration of Independence is a kind of natural or fall-back position. The story of the past 250 years has shown that it’s not that at all, but at best simply an ideal that needs to be struggled towards, against some of the other tendencies that have dominated America’s history for all that time; and especially today, when the countervailing forces are arguably stronger and more malevolent than they have been since the American Civil War. They’re also stronger throughout the West, of course, even in social-democratic Sweden, encouraged by the American example, and by American money; which means that we European liberals must be on our guard too. We’ve got dark precedents in our countries also. Very little in any of our histories is an infallible guide to ‘who we are’ today; and still less to ‘who we might be’. The same applies to the USA.

I know very little about the American judicial system, apart from what I’ve seen in films like Twelve Angry Men, which probably idealised it, and in any case is seventy years old. So I don’t know what is likely to happen with Trump’s stated intention to sue the BBC for between one and five billion (!) dollars, after its admitted distortion of a speech he gave on the day of the notorious MAGA attack on the Capitol building in Washington DC of 6 January 2021. Did he incite the riot directly, as the BBC’s version of his speech implied, and as many of the rioters clearly understood; or only implicitly? There’s a one-to-five billion dollar difference between the two versions.

What I don’t know is how exactly Trump and his lawyers intend to do this. Does he – can he – sue the BBC in a British court? Or in an American one? If the latter, would it be Federal or State? If in the US, I understand that it would have to be in Florida (where he mainly lives), but where we’re told the BBC programme was not aired. So it was unlikely to have done any ‘reputational damage’ to him there. Any such damage would be difficult to quantify in any case, with his having won the next Presidential election in 2024 in spite of the BBC. Surely two resignations at the top of the BBC are more than enough to appease him for this. And everyone knows – not least because of his pardoning of the main rioters after that election – that he strongly supported them, at the very least. – Then there may be other legal barriers to a prosecution: like a Statute of Limitations, if that exists. (The alleged offence was more than four years ago.) But as I say, I’m ignorant of US law.

Would it be a jury trial? (In which case we might see a Henry Fonda amongst the Twelve Angry Men. He’s the ’goodie’ in that film.) And then, how would Trump get hold of his 1 to 5 billion dollars, if he won? An international bank transfer? More tariffs? Monies from the British Treasury (i.e. from us). Or by seizing whatever assets the BBC has in the US? – In truth, it’s difficult to see any of this happening. It looks like a bluff. So the BBC were right to refuse him the money; unlike several American media companies, incidentally, which have caved in to similar blackmail.

On the other hand, I’d have quite liked it if the case had come to court. Trump himself I assume would have had to give evidence. The BBC’s lawyers would have had a field day probing into his own propaganda: his ‘fake news’, distortions, lies, and libels against almost anyone who opposes him. Surely these could be used as evidence against him? – A trial along these lines might have made terrific television, and afterwards even another film – perhaps one as good as Twelve Angry Men (with George Clooney to play the Fonda character?). So it’s a shame it’s unlikely to come to trial. But then – I repeat – I’m woefully ignorant of American jurisprudence.

The BBC must hold firm on this. There are far bigger issues involved than Trump’s self-regard. In Britain public service TV, and the political idea of public service generally, are two of them. (This is why the Right, who hate public service – ‘socialism’ – are on Trump’s side.)

At this moment I feel like I probably would have done in the 1930s: – that the world is hurtling towards a catastrophic end. Even before climate change fries us, our population is multiplying to a level that surely can’t be sustainable; whole peoples are moving around the world unsettlingly; grotesque inequalities are incubating social and political enmities that will probably break out in a variety of violent ways; nations can’t agree on how to meet the climate crisis; people are reverting to instinctual rather than rational ways of thinking and behaving; Fascism – or something very like it – is raising its ugly head again; capitalists are taking advantage of us; fools and tyrants are at the helms of the leading nations; one of them is threatening to sue the BBC for a million dollars; and West Ham are third from the bottom of the Premier League. It’s mighty hard to get away from thoughts like these; especially when you’re in bed and can’t sleep. (It’s four o’clock in the morning as I’m writing this.)

(12 noon.) Well, I’m now over my ‘black dog’, as Winston Churchill used to call his bouts of depression; but not because I want to disown any of what I wrote in the night. I suppose my better mood now – or apathy – comes from the knowledge that at my advanced age I’m not likely to live through the coming ‘catastrophe’; although I realise that that’s somewhat selfish, in view of what my children and grandchildren, and their generations, will have to endure.

Sorry kids. It’s my generation that has left you this mess. Yours is the one that will have to clear it up. It’s systemic, as I argued two posts ago, and so getting rid of Trump and Britain’s press magnates won’t do it alone. But you could maybe start with them.

And after all, we recovered from the 1930s.

The degree to which the far Right in both the US and Britain hate public services is difficult to overstate. Currently its ire is being directed against the BBC, occasioned by a 2024 Panorama report which spliced together two sections of a Trump speech in order to give the impression that he was directly inciting – rather than just hinting at his support for – the riotous attack on the Capitol of 6 January 2021. That was appalling journalism, as the BBC has admitted; and which as I understand has caused it to set up new editorial procedures to safeguard against a repetition. But it was surely not serious enough to justify the resignation of the BBC’s Director General, and of the head of its News service; or to justify Trump’s threat, just announced, to take legal action against the BBC (how? Can he prosecute the corporation’s people in the USA?); especially, you might say, when set against the plethora of lies put out by Trump and his favoured American media outlets virtually every day.

But of course it’s not only that Panorama clip that the Right is gunning for, but the BBC as a whole; as a public service body that it would like to be ‘privatised’, like most of America’s broadcast media are. When I’ve lived in the US I’ve been quite impressed by PBS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS); but I imagine – American friends will correct me – that it isn’t as much viewed or influential as are the better-financed commercial TV and radio stations; and in any case Trump has it in his sights to ‘defund’ – defund, not defend – it currently (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14290). British Rightists – papers like the Daily Mail – have for years been pressing for the abolition of the license fee there, the public tax which mainly finances the BBC; and for the organisation to depend on capitalist providers and sponsors for its existence. Nigel Farage thinks this, and came a step closer to it today by expressing the hope that, as a first stage, the new DG be recruited from the private sector (https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2131767/nigel-farage-bbc-tim-davies-resignation). ‘Public bad, private good’ – the mantra of the Right for decades.

If the BBC goes, the NHS will probably follow; and the victory of the ‘last stage’ of capitalism – see my last post – will be complete.

If my pet theory is sound – that most of the alarming events in the world today are symptoms of the ‘natural’ and perhaps even inevitable ‘evolution of capitalism’ in its later stages – there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence around to back it up.

The elevation of an Ayn Rand-type property developer to the presidency of the most advanced capitalist nation on earth is the most obvious sign; together with the simple transactional profit-and-loss way Trump seems to regard and conduct politics (The Art of The Deal), devoid of any other kind of principle, moral or otherwise. The support he receives (or used to) from the (alleged) richest man on earth, an über capitalist with openly Fascist and even Nazi sympathies, together with the said Elon Musk’s open involvement in British politics on the side of the Far Right, are further indications. In Britain Farage and his ‘Reform UK Party’ cronies – in spite of the pretence they make of representing ‘ordinary people’ – mostly, like Trump, worked in finance before they turned the skills and ideas learned there to politics. Another indication is the way the language of politics in Britain has been commodified, with railway ‘passengers’ now becoming ‘customers’, and voters seen as ‘stakeholders’. Professional football (soccer) has changed from being representative of communities (when I began following ‘my’ team, most of its players came from within ten miles of where I lived), to business ventures, controlled by the super-rich, many of them rich foreigners. The internet is rapidly being bought up by these people. Elon Musk has already taken over ‘Twitter’ to replace it with ‘X’, which has proved to be more amenable to his Right-wing views. He apparently dislikes Wikipedia because it’s non-profit, and is aiming to challenge it with a new profit-making web encyclopaedia, ‘Grokipedia’ (!), of his own. Most of the newspaper press is controlled by millionaires. – In all these ways, and in others, capitalists are now virtually running both America and Britain; as they may have done for many years, but far more openly and shamelessly today. So, if you are looking for broad trends in modern American and British history, this must surely be the most likely one.

It has been a slow-developing trend before today. For many years in Britain – and to a lesser extent in the USA – capitalists had to compete with political liberals, collectivists and socialists for command of the country and its future. This used to be a fairly equal contest, with both sides believing they could win, or at least that they could reach a workable compromise. That compromise was what the Labour government of 1945-51 pretty well achieved, with its ‘welfare state’ and ‘nationalisation’ of sectors of the British economy. Even later Conservative governments broadly went along with this in the 1950s, ’60s and a short way into the ’70s, persuaded that it really was the way of the future, and would maybe provide an essential safeguard against the threat of Soviet-style communism. Those who hankered after a return to a more 19^th century form of ‘free enterprise’ capitalism were marginalised, pushed on to the outer edges of conventional politics, or into tiny intellectual Right-wing ‘think tanks’, much mocked.

Their sudden emergence into the light of daytime politics coincided with the rise and then electoral victory in 1979 of Margaret Thatcher, whose whole purpose in politics, she stated, was to reverse the progress of what she saw as ‘collectivism’, and to restore the old capitalist values of Britain’s ‘heroic’ Victorian age. In this she (or rather the tide of history that carried her) broadly succeeded; and the ‘progressive’ alternative gave way to what we have today. The fall of Soviet-style communism in eastern Europe after 1989 aided this process, by removing the institution that for years had furnished both a beacon for some of the Left, and a salutary warning for the Right. Now the capitalist juggernaut was free to dominate American, British and much of world politics, by its own volition, and inexorably; until – maybe – its internal contradictions bring it down.

That may sound a bit Marxist, albeit a pound-shop version of Marxism, without Marx’s philosophy or economics, but based here simply on historical observation; and without the salvation that Marx promised, of a proletarian revolution that would put everything to rights. (Personally, I don’t think I would like a revolution in any case. I’m too comfortable as I am.)

Will very recent events in America – the impressive ‘No Kings’ demonstrations all over the country, and the ‘socialist’ Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York – put a spoke in the wheels of the juggernaut? We Lefties can but hope. Tides after all can ebb.

The UK Education Secretary has just announced a reform of the English national school curriculum to include more on the Arts, and to incorporate the teaching of ‘Critical Thinking’ in order to make children aware of fake news and propaganda. Guess which national newspaper has come out against it? – Yes, you’re right. Here’s the front-page headline.

https://x.com/Lou_obrien19/status/1985828878988784096

Just occasionally I question the decision I took after the Brexit vote to make Sweden my main home, and to take on Swedish citizenship, in order to be part of the EU again. My doubts stem from the rise of the far Right here, in the form of the ‘Sweden Democrat’ (Sverigedemokraterna) party, which is not part of the ruling coalition, but is exerting influence on it from the outside.

It is due to its pressure that the government recently passed a scheme to ‘encourage’ immigrants to return to their original countries, with generous cash incentives, to be implemented by local municipalities. A few days ago, however, one of those municipalities in the north of the country, Jokkmokk (it’s a Sami word), refused to go along with this, on the grounds that it valued and welcomed its foreign incomers. (See https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/municipalities-take-stand-against-swedish-government-repatriation-plan.) Since then several other municipalities have followed Jokkmokk’s example – the last I heard it was around forty.

Bully for them, I say; and a good reason for me to stay here in Sweden. (Even if they offered me money to return to the UK.)

‘I love the poorly educated’, said Donald Trump a few years ago (https://www.politico.com/video/2016/02/donald-trump-i-love-the-poorly-educated-044575). And of course Trump himself is poorly educated. Is that one of the factors behind his political success? And, incidentally, behind his assault on top American universities?

It may also be a reason for the anticipated success of the ‘Reform’ party in Britain today. Repeated surveys have shown that support for right-wing causes there is stronger among the relatively uneducated than among (for example) college graduates. (Here’s one example:  https://www.statista.com/statistics/572613/brexit-votes-by-education/?srsltid=AfmBOop9VLvHYH158J12Zw97L43OwL-NOre_cK1Qp_6LXnib5Wj_AQMf.) The same is apparently true in the USA. Which might suggest that the solution to the problem, if you see it as a problem, is more – or better – education for (the) hoi polloi.

For those of us who do see it as problematical, fears of what in earlier times was called ‘the mob’ are conjured up. These fears lay behind the restrictions that were placed on the British political franchise during the whole of the 19th century and a good way into the twentieth, to exclude non-property owners, and women. (Also incidentally peers; but only because they had a ‘House’ of their own.) Women were excluded on the grounds that they were too unstable (‘hysterical’) to vote; the relatively poor for lacking a sufficient material stake or ‘interest’ in the country. These ‘lower’ classes (and blacks in America) were also seen as vulnerable to what today we would call ‘left-wing’ propaganda, which would endanger the very foundations of what was, in effect, a property-owning democracy. For this reason, fears of the ‘mob’ then were mainly directed against popular ‘socialism’.

Which might surprise those old-timers about today’s situation; where the ‘mobs’ are mostly found on the political Right. This is not unprecedented in Britain: vide the ‘Church and King’ riots in Birmingham in 1791, and the ‘jingo’ demonstrations of 1899 in support of the Boer War. (The USA, I’m sure, had its historical equivalents.) Present-day demonstrations against foreign immigration follow in this tradition, illustrating the spread and depth of ‘reactionary’ opinion in today’s Britain.

We probably shouldn’t blame the ‘poorly educated’ themselves for this, if only because to do so would leave us open to the charge of ‘élitism’; a powerful tool of the Right these days, and one which no amount of intelligent – élitist – argument can dispel. But in any case we need to be aware of the pressures that many of the ‘poorly educated’ labour under, from the Right-wing propaganda directed at them by most of the media, and from which – Daily Mail headlines, for example – it must be difficult for them to escape. The purveyors of this propaganda are not generally‘poorly educated’ – in most cases rather the reverse; but simply unprincipled and – I would say – wicked. (I’m thinking here of course of Rupert Murdoch.) Maybe better education – in ‘critical thinking’, for example – could act as a prophylactic against this; plus stricter regulation of Britain’s notoriously amoral and partisan popular press (Leveson II?). We can but hope.

These may be the only ways to counter ‘populism’; which is today’s word to describe what in the past would have been characterised as ‘mob rule’. Either that; or again restrict the franchise, this time to what in the Middle Ages was called the maior et sanior pars – major and wiser part – of the population; with educational (rather than property) tests to wean the not-so-‘sanior’ out. But that would be very un-populist; and also undemocratic, in strict terms (‘demos’). The way of education and press regulation must be preferable. I’d trust it much more than what we have now.

Just to say that my KCom email still doesn’t work, despite the best efforts of the technical experts at KCom in Hull, and of the young people at the ‘Genius Desk’ in the bright, futuristic and friendly Apple Center in Täby (near Stockholm). So I’ve migrated briefly to another ‘server’ – is that the word? – with a new email address; which is:

bernardporter869@gmail.com.

Now to try to get my i-phone to recognise that. At present it only works on my lap-top. I need an adolescent boy or girl to help me set it up. Maybe one of Kajsa’s barnbarn?

You’ll have seen those ridiculous MAGA videos that have been aired on the internet recently. The first showed a post-war Gaza transformed into a piece of prime sea-front real estate, with a huge golden statue of Donald Trump bestriding it at the end. The second more recent one has Trump wearing a crown, and piloting a fighter plane which is bombing a ‘No Kings’ demonstration with faeces. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uGKtihX1U4.)

Where do these come from? Surely not from The Donald himself? But they’re childish enough, and reflective of his very real narcissism and spite. So he could have sponsored or at least approved of them. – Or are they on the contrary intended as anti-Trump satire?

I would genuinely like to know. If Trump is in any way responsible for these Loony Tunes, it must add to the evidence building up that he is, indeed, mad. Or, if you prefer, retarded and unbalanced – but in any case dangerous.

And he still has three years to go. And with authoritarian powers that the US’s Founding Fathers would never have anticipated – and indeed tried their best to prevent. Come on, you Democrats: fight back!