Porter’s Pensées

I remember years ago – it must have been in the ’70s – Margaret Thatcher’s appointing a businessman to her cabinet, after making him a Lord, in the belief that men (only men) who had succeeded in the ‘real world’ of business were what the country needed at the top. His first name was David; I can’t for the moment remember his surname or lordly title.

‘Most of my ministers’, Thatcher is quoted as saying at the time, ‘come to me with problems; but David brings me solutions’ (or words to that effect). What those ‘solutions’ were I fear we’ll never know, for David Whatshisname soon vanished from my political ken, and I suspect from most other people’s too.

The belief however that his kind, if given hold of the reins, were just what the world of politics needed to make it more efficient, has been a widespread view on the political Right for many years. It’s easy to see why: if you’re the CEO of a company you don’t need to bother much with democracy, which almost by definition is likely to put obstacles in your way. That’s why business people are constantly railing against politicians. And – I guess – why ex-businessmen like David (and perhaps Elon, just the other day) who have been enticed into the web, quickly get out.

America’s current experiment of turning itself into a totally and now blatantly business-led nation – with a real estate speculator President obsessed with money and ‘deals’, and most of his cabinet’s having enriched themselves in ‘the market’ – could be seen as the apotheosis, or culmination, of Thatcher’s (and Lord David’s) philosophy. And perhaps of the US itself, in this its (very) late capitalist phase.

(PS: Searching around later I found this: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/11/lord-young-of-graffham-obituaruy. But that doesn’t impress me much.)

Talk of impending civil wars – in the USA, Britain and elsewhere – is becoming disturbingly common just now. Here’s one of a number of serious academic discussions of the likelihood of one breaking out in present circumstances: https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/civil-war-comes-to-the-west/. I haven’t the expertise to be able to comment meaningfully on this; except to add one other possible dividing line between the opposing ‘sides’, to the ones that Professor Betz lays out, if such a war were to occur.

This is the factor of education. In both Britain and the USA, demographic studies of voters’ opinions on major issues in recent politics show that highly educated people are far more likely to vote ‘progressive’ – ‘Remain’ in Britain, ‘Democrat’ in America – than are those with less formal schooling. The latter are the ones who make up the bulk of the ‘Brexit’ and ‘MAGA’ tribes, if not necessarily of their leaders (although Trump does appear pretty dumb). I wouldn’t want to make too much of this; in Brexit’s case other major factors obviously came into it too (I’ve written on this before: https://bernardjporter.com/2019/11/25/what-is-brexit-really-about/); nor do I mean to imply that Brexiters and Trumpists are the only stupid ones; or that they are necessarily and individually stupid at all. There are good arguments on all sides. Nonetheless, this educational divide may well be significant; and also, incidentally, one that suggests a compelling motive behind Trump’s onslaught on ‘Ivy League’ colleges in recent days. (He wants to replace them with ‘trade schools’, teaching practical and business skills. No doubt The Art of the Deal would be a set text.) ‘Anti-intellectualism’ has a strong pedigree in American thought. There’s even a book about it (by Richard Hofstadter).

The problem with all this, in a ‘civil war’ context, is that it could be difficult to muster them into two separate armies – of any kind, not necessarily military. They’re too scattered: not clearly divided geographically, as the American civil warriors were; or religiously, like the 17^th century English. Regarding the ‘uneducated’ side: well, it might just be possible to make an army of them, as the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021 seemed to show. But the ‘intelligentsia’…? Could the east and West coasts of America (where most of them are) unite against what was once called ‘Godfuckistan’ (in the middle)? Again: am I going to march against the mob (even if I had two sound ankles)? And what would we call ourselves, that would not sound too ‘élitist’? (The Right hates ‘élites’.)

Of course we’d have other ways of fighting. Clever university men, mustered together at Bletchley Park, may have been crucial to the winning of World War II. (They could have been even more effective if they’d allowed the girls in at the top.) Then there’s the power of the ‘permanent state’ – highly-educated civil servants and the like – which should be fighting on our side; together with some good propagandists (us authors). If the pen really is as mighty as the sword, then we might stand a chance. (If, that is, the pens could be taken away from the Daily Mail.)

Otherwise I dread the outcome of a civil war fought across one of the lines that I see as crucially dividing both Brits and Americans today. Our opponents – the ‘Philistines’, perhaps? – would have the numbers, the anger, the grievances and – yes – the stupidity, to prevail. That’s my fear. But then, you would expect an ex-academic like me to be on the élite side. It could be regarded as an occupational prejudice.

I’m going into hospital on Tuesday for a minor operation. It’s to replace a bone in my ankle – I think; either that, or to screw two existing bones together. (I never like to know the gory details.) Of course this is not an important enough event to write about here: too personal and trivial.

But I thought it might justify my reposting an entry from eight years ago, describing the events surrounding the original injury forty years ago, which has flared up again. (I can hardly walk.) That piece also said something about the USA, where I originally broke the ankle; and which may be of more general interest. Here it is: https://bernardjporter.com/2017/01/11/breaking-an-ankle-in-chicago/.

Tuesday’s surgery will be done in a Stockholm clinic, and involve an overnight stay. That might furnish me with an excuse to write a more worthwhile piece here about the Swedish national health system. So far I’ve found it works well. But then it hasn’t put me under the knife before.

You would expect me as an (ex-) academic – and who moreover has taught at two American universities – to be more concerned by Trump’s current attacks on higher education than on other aspects of his proto-fascist regime. The Harvard story is particularly shocking (Google it); but it’s good to see the university fighting back. (Others haven’t.)

Because for Trump everything is personal, I’ve wondered whether his failure to get into a decent university as a young man may lie at the bottom of this. (Did he try?) A more likely factor, however, is his contempt for intellectual enquiry generally, and for the over-educated snobs who try to make him feel inferior to them. He of course repeatedly insists that he’s brighter than any of them – ‘a very stable genius’, ‘no-one knows more about (whatever) than me’ – in a way that suggests that he’s not altogether secure in this belief; but attacking ‘intellectuals’ and their institutions is a way of getting his revenge against his more highly-educated critics. It also fits in with the philistinism that appears to be a common ingredient of many kinds of capitalism (see my Britain Before Brexit, 2021, chapter 6); and which devalues intellectual enquiry altogether.

When is the Trump nightmare going to end? When he steps down, or dies, I suppose. Has there ever been a more ridiculous head of any state, in the entire history of the world? Stupefyingly ignorant, as we all know by now, and fundamentally amoral; but beyond that totally self-obsessed, petty, and revengeful against anyone who has fallen out with him. Which is why other foreign leaders flatter his ego if they want anything from him, whilst laughing at him, as I imagine they must do, behind his back.

When he first burst upon the political scene I took him for a throwback to the venerable tradition of American isolationism: ‘America First’; which felt not such a bad thing to someone like me who had got fed up with the interventionist, imperial Power she had turned into after the last War. (See my Empire and Superempire, 2006.) No more interference in the affairs of other nations; no more wars and war-mongering; no aspiration to be the world’s policeman; no more sense of ‘shining city upon the hill’ superiority; – all marking the USA’s return to being just one nation among others – albeit a ‘great’ one – simply looking after herself. Her allies would need to make adjustments, especially after America’s military protection was taken away from them; but we could live with that, and perhaps with more dignity than we’d had before. If this was what Trump genuinely intended, and might achieve, then I for one – and despite all the man’s obvious awfulness – could go along with it.

But the longer he’s in power, and especially in this his second term, all that begins to seem less likely. For a start there’s his well-known volatility and unpredictability, meaning that he could change his mind and policies at a moment’s notice. Then there are his stated designs on Greenland, Canada, Panama and Gaza, which – although expressed in ‘national defensive’ terms – clearly have expansionist and imperialist implications. (As ‘defensive’ measures often have done, historically. A lot of Britain’s colonial territory-grabbing was defensive in its stated aims.) His much bruited ‘peace-making’ – worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, as he fondly imagines – may involve foreign intervention on a grand scale, and in any case looks more like capitulation to foreign force majeure. Obviously his ‘tariff war’ is a means of foreign interference, accompanied, as it often is, by non-commercial demands on the countries he’s making his ‘deals’ with. (Vance is perhaps more guilty of this than Trump. He of course could be Trump’s successor.) Then there’s the example of Trump’s ideologically-driven policies at home: his proto-Fascist executive orders, directly affecting only the US, of course, but powerfully encouraging right-wing movements around the world.

The word ‘ideologically’ there may be misleading. Trump is supposed to have no ideology; but he does have prejudices, and as a deeply unlettered man is clearly entrapped in the ideological implications of his upbringing. That upbringing, of course, was one of a real estate developer, inclining him to regard politics and government as a kind of game-board for territorial and financial ‘deals’: a super Monopoly game for the real world. More importantly, it exemplifies not only his own experience and prejudices, but also those of a large part of his country at the present moment in its political and social evolution; which is now starting to be called ‘late stage capitalism’. Or ‘last stage’, if you will.

Of course Trump has not achieved full Nazification yet, and it’s the responsibility of the Americans to stop him; but with the future prospect looming of large authoritarian countries on each side of us in Europe, and Europe itself not looking entirely impervious to Fascism’s charms, the future doesn’t look too bright.

(Apart from all that, I would go along with ‘Mickc’s first comment on my post of 14 May: https://bernardjporter.com/2025/05/14/what-if-he-succeeds/ – The third BTL contribution there).

This worries me. What if Trump is proved right? What if his tariffs are successful; manufacturing returns to America; he is instrumental in bringing peace to Ukraine, Gaza and Kashmir – because diplomacy really is just a matter of property ‘deals’; he builds his luxury condos on the Mediterranean coast; all the expelled Palestinians are genuinely happier living in Jordan; and so he succeeds in ‘making America great’ again in all kinds of ways? What then for us, his fiercest critics?

We would still of course be stuck with his awful personality: the narcissism, stupidity, malice, small-mindedness, bullying, lying, incipient fascism and all the rest; which make him difficult to like as a man – but which we might then have to admit could have contributed to some of this success.

Which is why I guess most of us on my side of the debate don’t want him to succeed. Is that mean?

‘What does he know of England who only England knows?’ That quotation (from Kipling) has long resonated with me. Of course in Kipling’s case it was meant to direct people’s attention to his beloved Empire, which he believed (erroneously in my view) manifested the true essence of ‘England’, but was largely neglected in Kipling’s time. (See my The Absent-Minded Imperialists, 2004.)

But it could also be read in an entirely different way. If you are only interested in England, or in its history (my field), without knowing about other countries and their histories, then you deprive yourself of some of the context which might make more sense of ‘England’ than focussing on that country alone. Why was England’s development distinct from, for example, France’s, with whom she was almost bodily conjoined at one time? What was it about other European countries that made them different – or in some cases the same? How did England’s conjoined nations of Scotland, Wales and Ireland come into this? What did Britain learn from other European countries, and they from her? Then again: how was her development either similar to or – more often – different from those of extra-European countries, and especially the great civilizations of Africa, Asia and South America, over time? What can that tell us about her history, as well as theirs? – We can’t know, until we learn about the latter, in order better to understand ourselves.

In many countries history teaching is very parochial. I remember once in the USA a student telling me of a neighbour who seemed genuinely puzzled why he (my student) wanted to study British history: ‘America has the best history in the world’. (It sounds like Trump, doesn’t it?) So far as I know – and I have no up-to-date knowledge; I would be happy to be corrected  – American school and college history courses are still mainly focussed on the history of the USA, and on a somewhat heroic version of US History at that. I believe – although again without having researched it – that the same is true of most European countries; as it certainly is of Sweden, where I mostly live.

But it’s not generally true of British colleges and universities; for which I’m grateful, having been brought up on a diet of European, mediaeval and (marginally) world history there, with modern British history comprising no more than 25% of my studies overall. At university I took more courses in continental history than in British, and about a quarter in American. One of the courses on the syllabus (although I didn’t take it) was on British imperial history, which Kipling would have approved of; except that by that time it had come to be more of a history of the countries Britain had colonised, than of British imperialism itself. So students were introduced in this way to non-British, ‘alien’ cultures, which was all to the good. (Some of the critics of ‘Imperial history’ misunderstood this. It wasn’t imperialist.) My first teaching jobs were in university departments where, again, non-British subjects – mediaeval European, French, Dutch, German, Russian, American, South-East Asian, continental political philosophy – proliferated over ‘British’. I myself was very much a ‘British and Imperial’ historian; but I was in a minority. I approved of that.

I would go further. A proper consideration of any nation’s history should also compare it with speculative ‘alternatives’, or ‘What if’s. What if the Germans had won World War II, for example; or India had colonised Britain rather than the other way around; or the counter-Reformation had succeeded more widely; or the Neanderthals had won over homo sapiens; or (obviously) if Kamala Harris had won the US Presidential election of 2024? – This happens to be quite a popular literary genre just now, with ‘counter-factual’ novels, films and radio programmes coming up frequently, to satisfy the taste for it. For serious historians, however, it’s an equally important approach,

Because to know why something happened in history, we need to know why other things didn’t happen, and vice-versa; and to do that we need to have speculated, at least, about alternative scenarios. Not to have these imaginative points of comparison must limit our understanding of ‘real’ history to a bare recital, without ex-planation, of what actually happened. That’s why those who only study British, or American, or Swedish (or whatever) history cannot fully comprehend even those national stories. Their minds will be limited to their own nations’ experiences; with nothing to compare these to.

*

Which brings me on – at last – to Science Fiction. For I’ve been a reader of this literary genre, on and off, from boyhood; usually rather shame-facedly, I must confess. It probably started with ‘Dan Dare’ in the Eagle comic, when I was ten. ‘Dan Dare’ was not the most cerebral kind of Sci-Fi, being mainly based, as I remember, on recognisable tropes from the time (just after World War II): space-ships looking like Lancaster bombers shorn of their wings, distant planets covered in very earth-like jungles, Dan himself effectively a public school-educated World War II pilot (and with a working-class Lancastrian batman to boot), space conflicts uncannily like the Battle of Britain, green-skinned villains owing much to Hitler, and with good always triumphing over evil (the Eagle’s founder and editor, Marcus Morris, was a Church of England vicar). But it occasionally made you wonder at what might be.

Other Sci-Fi authors do this more deliberately, by inventing whole societies – humanoid or non-human – which are clearly alien, and yet seem plausible, and so possible to empathise with. Many Sci-Fi films, stories and even comic books can do this; but my own favourite contributors to the genre are HG Wells (of course), Olaf Stapledon (he was a philosopher too), Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin (the greatest, in my view), and – quite recently – the amazing Chinese writer Cixin Liu. Douglas Adams (who incidentally went to my school) might also be included here, if he’d been a bit more serious. Star Wars, Dune and Star Trek also very occasionally have solid ‘alternative reality’ themes (‘It’s life, Jim,but not as we know it.’). And there’s more of this than you might expect in the SF ‘pulp magazines’ – Astounding SF, and the like – hidden among the spaceships, monsters, death rays and space heroes.

I have to admit that Science Fiction has not been the most comforting of my enthusiasms. It can be somewhat belittling, to be made constantly aware of the enormous – infinite? – size of the universe, and the multiplicity of alternative environments, societies and lives that it must embrace. It makes what I do, and what indeed we all do – even Donald Trump – seem petty: which is depressing, but perhaps also chastening. And – to get back to my main theme – it can provide yet another layer of context for whatever we’re engaged on at the time.

Another popular quotation from Britain’s age of Empire is: ‘Wider still and Wider may thy bounds be set’. That of course is a line from Land of Hope and Glory; not by Kipling, as it happens, but it could well be. Just like ‘What does he know of England’, it might also be adopted as the main theme of this post. To understand any country’s history, we need to trawl ‘wider’, beyond that country’s shores; to take in other countries, imagined countries, and even other worlds. ‘Context is all’.

The British Empire, as well as being a site of conquest, exploitation, racism and atrocity, also harboured pockets of idealism, good intentions, and – just occasionally – good outcomes. The best of these (apart of course from cricket) was the establishment of the ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’ – subsequently simply ‘The Commonwealth’ – as a repository for most of Britain’s colonies and dominions after their ‘liberation’. The Commonwealth was imbued with a number of ‘standards’, which were supposed to reflect British ‘values’, especially political ones; and which included democracy, self-government, human rights and anti-racism. Not all these ideals were lived up to (which was why South Africa left in 1961); but they always stood as an aspiration, at the very least, for all its 56 members.

Of course the original thirteen North American British colonies were never among that number, chiefly because they broke away too early to join. Canada was, however; indeed, fighting successfully to preserve its position in the old British Empire and then the Commonwealth, and to retain a portion, at any rate, of its ‘Britishness’, and of British ‘values’, against pressure from the United States. Australia is another Commonwealth nation that remained ‘British’ in many respects (cricket is one) after its de facto independence, although many Aussies might not thank me for saying it.

Which makes it interesting that it is these two latter countries that have recently given the clearest single-finger gesture to Trump, in the form of national election results which are seen as direct repudiations of his whole political, cultural and economic philosophy. In the Canadians’ case, of course, it was partly a response to his stated ambition to annex them to the US as its ‘beloved fifty-first state’. But there may also be some significant differences between their societies, which arose originally from their divergent post-colonial histories; with the United States embracing a new set of values to replace the ones Britain had left with them. These included rugged individualism, the frontier spirit, its gun culture, an ignorant populism, showmanship, and – of course initially – slavery.

So post-independence America became dominated by capitalists, cowboys and conspiracy theorists. Not that these were entirely absent from Britain – frontierism, for example, Ned Kelly, and colonial slavery, albeit at a distance from home – but to a lesser extent; and combined with other inherited values which are today considered rather ‘woke’. Could this at least partly account for the difference between Britain, the Commonwealth and Europe on the one hand, and Trump’s America on the other? Does it all go back to 1776? Might it have been different if the thirteen colonies had remained under the protective wing of the mother hen?

Just an idea; from an old imperial historian trying to make his subject relevant.

Can anyone any longer doubt the Fascist proclivities of the Trump administration? It is now even targeting West Point Military Academy, in its aim to force an uncritical and über-‘patriotic’ mindset on Army cadets.

And MAGA make themselves out to be the champions of ‘free speech’. – We need to read 1984 again. Orwell intended it as a warning; but here we are.

During the Corbyn era, the Labour Party’s alleged anti-semitism played a leading part in its electoral defeat in 2019. The accusation goes back a few years; although certainly not to the origins of the Labour Party, which was one of the main opponents of any kind of racism, and a major supporter of Jewish causes in the early 20^th century. Anti-semitism then was mainly the province of the political Right.

I first commented on modern Labour and ‘anti-semitism’ ten years ago: https://bernardjporter.com/2016/04/28/anti-semitism-and-labour/. I was a member of the party then, as I should acknowledge, as you may think it gives me an interest in defending it. But my arguments for objecting to this kind of demonization of Corbyn, in that post and in subsequent ones, still stand on their own merits, I would claim, and need stating again.

Especially, I would say, for me here in Sweden, where Vänsterpartiet is currently being tarred with the same brush as British Labour was then: see https://bernardjporter.com/2025/04/11/leftist-anti-semitism-in-sweden/. Last night the party held a ‘crisis meeting’ over this via Skype. (My line on the particular issue raised is that the offending MP should have resigned over it, whether she is a good MP otherwise or not. Her intervention was at the very least unwise, and leaves her party vulnerable.)

The reason I’m blogging on this today however is that the issue has resurfaced, in connection with recent accusations against universities, in both Britain and America, of not doing enough to combat anti-semitism among both students and faculty there. – Now, on the one hand, none of us should be surprised at any resurgence of anti-semitism today, in the wake of Netanyahu’s and the IDF’s blatant atrocities in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank. I remember the feelings in Britain against ‘the Germans’, as a people, being equally condemnatory for a few years after the Second World War and the opening of Auschwitz. (I think I shared these, as a very young boy.) Of course that was grossly unfair; but it was understandable. It’s easy to channel even righteous anger on to a particular racial group. In the present case some of the criticism of Israel may well express a pre-existing racial prejudice; but it’s important to realise that this isn’t always so. Netanyahu’s crimes are condemned by many Jews in Israel too.

Unfortunately not everyone shares this view. One of the difficulties stems from an  ‘IHRA working definition of anti-semitism’ (IHRA stands for the ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’), which many reject as far too open-ended, but which is treated as holy writ by Israel’s very vocal and influential defenders (the ‘Israel Lobby’?) in Britain and America. (There’s an excellent ‘Wiki’ piece on the controversy over this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHRA_definition_of_antisemitism).

But what particularly struck me this morning was a radio interview with someone from the Israeli Embassy, which leant heavily on that controversial ‘definition’; and in particular took aim at a discussion by students of a recently-published book called Understanding Hamas, and Why That Matters (by Helena Cobban and Rami G. Khouri, October 2024). ‘You wouldn’t discuss a book called Understanding Hitler, would you?’ claimed the contributor, as her coup de grâce.  – Well, yes! We would, and do. There are many books trying to get to the bottom of Nazism, and were even during World War II. You need to understand your enemy in order to defeat him: as any general will tell you.

Beyond that, it’s surely every university’s main purpose to try to ‘understand’ everything. So the Israeli spokeswoman was implicitly attacking not only Hamas, or her perceived anti-semites, but also academics like me (I’ve researched many horrible things); and the whole function of universities, and even of education generally. That’s why I take personal umbrage at her intervention. And will continue criticising Israel’s bombing, starving and possibly now annexation of Gaza (as well of course as condemning Hamas atrocities), while continuing to support the many brave Jews and Israelis who criticise these horrors too.