WHATEVER happens on October 31^st, Brexit has already given us one, incalculable benefit.  For a long time, I have tried to avoid writing about the ongoing horror show. It is a subject that has long ceased to be interesting to me, or to the majority of people in this country. Nor is it one on which I have anything particularly passionate or original to say. What little I have had to say on the matter – that Brexiteers are delusional and that their project is a poor solution to genuine problems – I have already said. And this is a topic on which less is more. As one foreign writer quipped, the perpetual, daily deluge of analysis and commentary offered by Radio 4, the print media and British Twitter never amounts to knowledge. Technical jargon is introduced and abandoned without moving the debate or imparting any real understanding. What is essentially the world’s longest and most histrionic process story trundles on, a wobbling titan of tedium, impervious to our ignorance and our despair. At present, we look likely to exit the European Union on Halloween without a formal agreement; an outcome representing the most extreme possible interpretation of the 2016 vote, short of actual armed insurrection against our European overlords. Sober experts – economists, business leaders, academics, trade union officials and the like – foretell our doom. Perhaps they are right. The sorry line, so heavily leaned on by climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers and the associated rag-bag of cranks and science-liars, that “the experts have been wrong before and could be wrong now” is the very cheapest of cheap coin, but it’s not totally worthless. It’s not without cause that public opinion has come to despise the warnings of economic prophets, our modern priestly class. My own hunch is that Brexit will change almost nothing that anyone who voted for it cares about. Mass immigration will continue; traditional jobs, communities and ways of life will continue to melt away, or mutate; and the broadly mutinous outlook of the general public – their deep discontent with, and suspicion of, politics and government – will remain essentially unaddressed. In a pathetically naff and British way, everything will continue as it was, only shabbier, slower and more inept. Who really knows? For my purpose here, it does not matter.

And this upside I speak of? The elusive Brexit benefit? In short: the campaign for Brexit and the efforts to implement it represent the first victory in decades of British politics of principled arguments over economic ones. I emphasise: I do not like the principled arguments for Brexit; I do not agree with them; but I recognise them for what they are. Millions of people who voted for Leave in 2016 consciously decided that something was more important to them than growing the economy. Overwhelmingly, the issues that most motivated Leave voters were non-economic ones: appeals to national identity, to democratic sovereignty, to cultural distinctiveness and so on. It may not be obvious why this is a good thing: economic growth and personal enrichment are understandable and comparatively harmless motivations, at least compared to atavistic anxieties around identity, nation or race. As much is true. But ours is a society in which public discourse has been so degraded that we seem almost incapable of talking about anything other than money. Consider: when was the last time you heard someone on television or on the radio making a case for social mobility or for better representation of women and ethnic minorities on company boards without talking about spurious studies “proving” that diversity makes companies more ruthlessly effective? (And thereby, it is implied, somehow making us all richer).

“Spurious” is perhaps unfair. Such studies may or may not be accurate. It certainly seems plausible that a business run by a committee of chortlingly posh male clones might make stupid decisions. It’s also completely beside the point. We expect institutions to hire and promote women and ethnic minorities and working class people because it’s morally wrong to discriminate and exclude them, not because we somehow think it will make everyone richer. So why can’t we say as much? Why must we pretend everything is about money? Do you imagine – if a shock study came out, “proving” that companies run by all-white, all-male, all-privately educated directors outperformed more diverse companies – do you imagine that for even a moment, we would think it might be OK for companies to start hiring exclusively from Harrow? Of course not! Our real concern is a moral one. And yet we put forwards mercenary arguments that are inferior to the moral ones they replace.

Recall the referendum on Scottish Independence. Neither campaign really had the courage of their convictions. Even the nationalists, for all their rhetoric, did not dare be honest about what they really believed; to say what the real case for Scottish independence was (and is): that the point of Scottish independence is independence. There is nothing else there; nothing save an appeal to Scottish national identity. There is no “economic” case; no “democratic”* case; no “internationalist” case; no “left wing” case. Nor is there anything wrong with that. All modern states, including the UK, are organised around a (largely fictitious) concept of nationhood. But in 21^st century Britain, every issue must be hacked and mutilated until it fits the “what does this mean for your wallet?” format. And so that debate was dominated by tedious squabbling about the currency, oil revenues and the whisky trade; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the arguments for caution and pragmatism won the day. This is what makes Brexit different, and even exciting.

To be sure, appeals to tribe and nation – to fear of immigrants and outsiders, and to distrust of the governing elite – speak not to the most noble of human sentiments. But the European referendum also posed the profound question of democratic legitimacy. Who rules? By what right do they rule, and by what means can they be removed? Unlike the Scottish referendum, where arguments about democracy were a cover for arguments about national identity rather than democracy per se, the EU represents a genuine case of unelected deciders wielding real power. Perhaps this unsanctioned power is overstated by campaigners for Brexit. I am not sufficiently versed in the arcane workings of the European Union to assess precisely to what extent British democratic sovereignty is constrained by our membership. Nor does it really matter (in the context of this essay, anyway). We can quibble about how powerful EU institutions are in formulating legislation and policy, but the point – that the EU wields power in Britain that is not meaningfully democratically legitimated – is basically true, even if we don’t think this point is the knockout punch that some Brexiteers do. That this argument was made by mainstream politicians, and that people were effectively willing to risk economic consequences for its sake, is astonishing and hopeful.

But why grant such importance to principled arguments? Yes, one might concede, it’s nice to have public debate framed in terms that aren’t exclusively economic, but it turns out the alternative to bland managerialism is angry populism, and I know which I prefer. This is a reasonable objection. And yet, one need only step back, and consider: what is the point of politics?Are the ferocious battles in our Parliament and the toil and labour of our public servants merely a mighty effort to add a few points to our GDP? As if GDP mattered! The mindless pursuit of economic growth in our politics is the political symptom of the mindless pursuit of wealth in our private lives. And we chase money despite knowing that it is pointless; despite knowing that wealth, beyond a basic level of comfort and security, does not fill the hole that gapes in every human heart. The pursuit of wealth stems from the lack of meaning in our lives and our societies: we chase money because it is the obvious and easy thing to do. We have built a civilisation that has many great human and scientific achievements, but is simultaneously destroying our natural world and imprisoning us in a joyless cycle of unceasing toil and consumption: consumption for consumption’s sake, without end, purpose or real satisfaction. The great unravelling, over the past few centuries, of the customary bonds of community, tradition, family and faith represents both a great emancipation for the individual, and an existential challenge to our civilization.

The condition of the emancipated human is one of extreme liberty and intense isolation. The bonds that held them in their place have fallen away. They are free, but rootless. The same institutions that imposed order and control on lives of men and women also put earth beneath their feet. Existential troubles rarely haunt one who is given a place and a task, however minor, and who is barred from seeking or aspiring to anything else. This observation has been made countless times before. The famous psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) famously went so far as to suggest that the search for meaning was the most profound cause of mental disorder in modern man. The high statistics on loneliness, purposelessness and isolation in modern societies, including Britain, are well-publicised, as is the rising tide of mental illness (mostly anxiety and depression). Perhaps these phenomena fit together. The neuroticism of our present politics – the collapse, everywhere, of the established democratic parties and the old consensus, and the rise of paranoid, authoritarian nationalists – lags the neuroticism of our societies. The Great Recession only accelerated our descent into madness by putting even the pursuit of wealth, as flimsy a purpose as it is, firmly out of reach for millions. It is in this context that the retreat of liberalism and the triumph of nationalism worldwide must be understood. In promising meaning and protection and community, nationalism appears as a rope to the drowning man. And this impulse – the hunger for a simple order, for control, for a world that makes sense, for common values and a shared identity – is innate to mankind, and the natural refuge of the isolated man.

It is also illusory. Nationalist politicians and their shibboleths – Brexit, Scottish independence or Trump’s wall – cannot reimpose the old certainties, in so far as they ever existed. They cannot even attempt to do so without sacrificing the fruits of emancipation. Only by turning the wheel backwards, by waging aggressive war against civilization itself, could emancipation be undone and the old ways restored. (General Franco’s unspeakable regime in Spain was of this type, as was Al-Baghdadi’s brief and bloody tyranny in the Levant.) I leave aside the question of whether a project of this kind would be possible, as it should be obvious that it is a prize not worth having, and with a price too monstrous to contemplate. In truth, ultimate meaning is not something the state can give, and it is misguided to seek meaning from it. It is the responsibility of us all, as individuals, to find a worthwhile purpose to our one, pitifully short life. It does not follow, however, that we do not suffer from allowing our public debate to be emptied of everything but the counting of coins. Our politics can, and has before, been about matters of deep urgency to the human cause: the abolition of slavery; the fight for democracy and universal suffrage; the extension of education to the masses; the holy war against fascism and National Socialism; and the dismembering of the apparatus of racial, sexual and class oppression. Politics (like art, work, family, faith and philosophy) can impart meaning to an otherwise empty life, but only if the individual makes the cause their own. It cannot be stamped on their soul by an identitarian state, but must speak with its own voice to their better nature, and incense or inspire them enough to galvanize them out of passivity. The cause of reaction – of nation, religion and hierarchy – has always been powerful. It promises the certainty and security of a lost, half-imagined childhood. But it has generated, in opposition, an eloquent and passionate voice for its antithesis. People speak of internationalism, of European solidarity and of the abolition of borders in a way that would have been unthinkable in the sensible and managerial country that was pre-referendum Britain. And even the Brexiteers have had their moments, when they have spoken of restoring democracy and seeking a more international outlook for Britain. This is a society talking, and thinking, about more than coffee and mobile phones.

This is the upside that has gone un-noticed: that we are, at last, talking about something other than economics. The return of actual moral controversy to our public debate hints at the possibility of a genuine political awakening – one that will expand and transform the minds of those who participate. Even if the starting place for many in this debate is one of reaction – of anger, nationalistic fervour or simple fear – they are at least in the debate. And in so far as it might permit us to talk about what really matters, rather than what might or might not make us a bit richer, Brexit should be celebrated.

Nathan

Tuesday August 13^th, 2019

Cambridge

*The so-called “democratic” case is in fact a national identity argument in disguise. The argument goes like this: “Scotland is often outvoted by the rest of the UK (e.g. on Brexit) and this is undemocratic. If Scotland were independent, she would always get what she voted for.” The argument falls apart when you consider that, for example, Lanarkshire won’t always get what it votes for in an independent Scotland, just as Scotland doesn’t always get what it votes for in the UK. Why is it undemocratic for Scotland to be outvoted but not undemocratic for Lanarkshire to suffer the same? Because Scotland is a nation, and is therefore entitled to sovereignty, whereas Lanarkshire is merely an area, and cannot complain if it is outvoted by other areas. But of course, to a British nationalist, for Scotland to occasionally be outvoted is no more a democratic outrage than it is for Yorkshire. (These responses only work for as long as no-one in Lanarkshire, or Yorkshire, decides that, in fact, they are a nation. Either way, the point is the claim of nationhood, without which the outrage of being outvoted in a bigger democracy loses all moral weight). The contrast with Brexit, of course, is that the most powerful EU bodies (such as the Commission and the Council of Ministers) are not elected at all.

MARX is irrelevant. His critique of 19^th century capitalism remains the most sophisticated, ambitious and wide-ranging ever attempted, but it is nonsense. His most important ideas – the inevitability of capitalist breakdown and overthrow; the liberation promised by the revolutionary abolition of private property; and the superiority of socialist production – have proven not merely wrong, farcically wrong, but disastrous. So why is it so hard to admit as much, and move on?

This seems an odd question to ask, at first. Marx scarcely features in contemporary political debate; almost never explicitly so. As much is true of the mainstream. But in radical political circles – in certain universities and left-wing groups – Marx reigns supreme. Don’t be confused by the proliferation of labels (and the far left are notoriously particular about labels, as anyone familiar with the LGBTTQQIAAP movement can testify): the legacy of Marx is inescapable. So much post-Marx and even post-Cold War theory is devoted merely to embellishing Marxism, defending Marxism or building on Marxism. Even theory which appears substantially different in spirit and method implicitly accepts much of Marx’s assumptions and worldview. Serious academics still call themselves Marxists, as though Marxism remained a credible methodology or worldview, as though his ideas had not been refuted – refuted as much by the folly of his own predictions and the failure of his loudest evangelists as by the unsung work of countless social scientists over the following century; men and women less charismatic than Marx, but far more careful in their work. Marxist categories and tools of analysis are still offered to explain ISIS, the Great Recession, the Scottish independence movement and Brexit. Still the Left cannot escape Marx’s spell.

Yet the wisdom of Marx is illusory. For as elegant as his grand theory is, the prestige – the sheer dominance – Marx still commands amongst “radical” thinkers today stems not from the quality of his thought but from the power of his proponents. Do not be fooled: above all, it is because disciples of Marx came to power in so many major countries that his legacy still endures today. The initial success of the Russian and Chinese revolutions (peasant societies, which in no way resembled the collapse of capitalism in its most mature stage predicted by Marx) appeared to prove Marx right, even after those revolutions had curdled into poison. That these regimes came into being in large and important countries, vigorously implemented his programme, spread his message, won major wars and continued to hold power for decades gave Marx a prominence he would never have merited on his ideas alone. The lustrous coating on his altar is blood; spilled from the countless victims of fanatics who killed in his name.

Marx was not a monster. Nor are his ideas inherently evil. For all his scientific pretensions, the essence of his message – like Christianity – is one of liberation through moral and spiritual redemption. Suffice to say, the crimes committed by zealous Christians are of a similar magnitude and gravity to those of Marxists, though they occurred over a much greater period of time. The point is that the consequences of his ideas were appalling, chiefly because those ideas were wrong. Lenin, Stalin and Mao were ruthless, but they were neither charlatans nor fools. They were learned, faithful and extremely competent. They genuinely believed in Marx’s ideas, and made colossal efforts to implement them. And if those ideas had been correct, the revolution would have worked. If displacing capitalism could awaken the people to the conspiracy of religion, there would have been no need to continually persecute and repress the clergy. If socialist production really were a more advanced, democratic and humane means of administering work, there would have been no need to impose collectivisation by force, nor would mass starvation have reliably followed in its wake. Had the overthrow of mature capitalist societies by an ever-more downtrodden working class been inevitable, Britain, Germany and the United States would have followed (preceded, in fact) the Russian example, forestalling both the Second World War and the Cold War. If the workers of the world really did have nothing to lose and no country of their own, Western democracies would have been unable to buy their acquiescence in the Cold War. Nor would there have been any political advantage in embracing jingoistic nationalism, as all Marxist regimes eventually did. The illusion of initial success enjoyed by the Russian and Chinese revolutions, in particular, is a testimony to the power of the will – the sheer determination – put into making those revolutions succeed; an effort marshalled from the whole society by regimes that claimed for themselves unlimited powers of compulsion.

Marx is irrelevant, but Marxism shambles on, an unkillable horror, indifferent to attack, even as decayed flesh still falls from its mighty limbs. What is more apt than Marx’s description of capital as dead labour: Marxism itself is dead thought, unkillable because it is no longer alive, and still it deadens brains, turning seeking minds into unthinking sloganeers, imprisoned by the categories and analytical tools of a long-dead and long-refuted analyst. How many brilliant and creative minds have been hobbled by their insistence on viewing the world through the Marxist lens, even as that lens has been superseded and replaced a hundred times over? The point bears repeating. Scientific socialism is a lie: the spell of Marxism is essentially religious. It is a faith, a master theory of life, and like all faiths it leans on obscurantism to paper over the cracks in its doctrine. That is why it is impervious to evidence and reason. And like a doomsday cult that finds the world still turning after the foreseen day of judgement, Marxists cling to their faith, making only cosmetic changes, whilst refusing to reckon with a reality that proves their utter irrelevance. For those of us on the political left, the supremacy of Marx has destroyed our ability to think for ourselves; to start from a blank sheet; to look at the world with fresh eyes. Every new insight must be crushed and moulded until it fits into the Marxist box. Those who still try to use Marxist analysis to explain the world are like Christian Scientists who scour nature’s works for evidence of intelligent design. None of this was supposed to happen. Marx would be horrified by what his works have become.

Almost as blatant as the failure of Marxism is the failure of 21^st century liberal capitalism. We have built a world that is fabulously wealthy, but morally impoverished. We have deliberately poisoned our culture and our values: embraced greed and insatiability, made of them the prime virtues, and built societies where almost everyone works harder and longer but does not live better. Ours is a world where taxes, rules, obligations and laws are for the little people, and the very rich do as they please. We accept an arrangement where the majority sink themselves in debts they cannot repay to buy things they do not need, and must work longer and harder to keep themselves afloat in jobs of declining quality and purpose. All the Right can offer is more of the same: less social protection, lower taxes, more work. There is much here to criticize, and only the Left can do it. For as long as we are obsessed with Marxist fantasies, we cannot do so.

Marxism is not completely worthless. His critique of nationalism, though essentially utopian, remains profoundly moving. The material conception of history, properly understood, is a useful perspective to add to the historian’s arsenal – although this benefit must be weighed against the loss history has suffered from the insistence of so many brilliant historians on the near-exclusive use of such an inadequate tool. But it should be obvious that these splinters of lucidity do not equal Marx’s sacred status in our thought. How many intellectual careers have been wasted trying to prove Marx was right? What might they achieve when the weight of Marx is lifted from their shoulders? At long last, let him sleep.

Nathan

Monday May 13^th, 2019

Salisbury

IS it possible to feel sorry for Shamima Begum? To hold anything but revulsion at her conduct, at her beliefs, at her obvious failure to accept any guilt or responsibility and (most of all) at her abrupt desire to undo her hijra, now that the Caliphate is burned to ashes around her and her jihadist heroes are all dead? When meditating upon the cauldron of murder that Syria has been made – on the Yazidi and Christian girls, gang-raped, murdered or trucked like animals to market by the men she served (to say nothing of the Caliphate’s male, Muslim or foreign victims) – the self-pity Ms Begum seeks to force upon us curdles in the mouth. Her callous disregard for the victims of the monstrous movement she joined (“enemies of Islam”, she put to her interviewer, when asked about public beheadings) girds even the squishiest of liberals with bands of steel. Her little part in the ruination of Syria and Iraq cannot be forgiven. Not without penitence. And if her blatant lack of remorse were not enough, her admission that she had watched proud ISIS videos of beheadings and murder before deciding to defect and had gone on to defect anyway is one that blows apart any subsequent defence of her actions she might seek to build. What do we owe Shamima Begum? What is her excuse? That she was a child? She was fifteen when she chose to defect – far in excess of the age of criminal responsibility in English law, and easily old enough to know that people who produce snuff videos of themselves sawing the throats of journalists and aid workers are not a crowd one should join. And what of her plea that she was groomed; deceived by propaganda and by lies? Perhaps she was, but what of it? Does this absolve her? Had she not some basic responsibility to think for herself, to question what her ISIS contact was telling her to do before lying to her parents and boarding a flight to Turkey? And now that she has rediscovered and re-embraced her Britishness, she expects to be spirited from the refugee camp where she now languishes, away from the country she helped to destroy, and back to one she had once merely wished to destroy. She scratches and claws for our cloak of protection; protection she so casually cast aside when she pledged allegiance to a depraved cult that promised slavery or death to all who would not submit to their tyrannical rule. And if she now returns, are we to endure the menace she might still pose to our society? Stoically to pay for the prison cell and the welfare benefits and the new identity and the constant surveillance she might require? Certainly, a tall order.

And yet, take her back we must. Leave aside, for a moment, the question of her newborn son – an innocent, whose moral right to return to the United Kingdom is not questioned. Leave aside the ongoing legal skirmish over the State’s attempt to strip her of her British citizenship, or the practicalities of how she might get out of Syria and make her way home, should the courts rule in her favour. Consider Shamima Begum herself, and the principles at stake in the decision on her fate. As satisfying as many would find it to leave her to her fate, the arguments for taking her back are clear and compelling.

The most important reason is that she is our responsibility, morally if not legally. She was born, reared and educated in Britain. It was in our country that she was radicalised, it was on the watch of our security services that she escaped, it was our country she betrayed and there is no other country that could be reasonably expected to have her. Certainly, the suggestion that either Bangladesh (a country she has never visited, and which faces an Islamist insurgency of its own) or war-ravaged Syria should be left to deal with her is absurd. Naturally, the degree to which Ms Begum’s defection is “our fault” is highly debatable: her personal moral responsibility for her actions, though ineradicable, does not itself erase our failure as a country to properly assimilate her. (Or failing that, to have caught her before she reached ISIS territory). But it is also entirely beside the point: she is our problem not because she is “our fault”, but because there is no-one else who can be reasonably expected to take responsibility for her, no other nation to which she has any more than the flimsiest and most technical claim to membership, and the alternatives to our taking responsibility are morally unacceptable. However one looks at it, she is a problem for someone to deal with. And if we refuse to take responsibility for her? The alternatives are simply unacceptable: death by disease, starvation or dehydration, of her and certainly her child; summary execution, perhaps after rape and torture by vengeful local militiamen or by Assad’s death squads; or her escape in the chaos of a shattered nation, free to spread the jihadist word and free to raise her son a footsoldier for Islamic supremacy.

Consider too that we are (and are lucky to be) a nation of laws, and that we cannot remove protection for Shamima Begum without weakening the regime of fair play that protects us all. Whether we like it or not she is British, and in Britain we have rules for dealing with terrorist sympathisers. So let her face British justice. I’m not qualified to comment on the precise legal arguments for and against revoking Ms Begum’s citizenship, or for blocking her return. But the Home Secretary’s attempts to do both are blatantly and cravenly political, and as such are a brazen violation of the spirit of the rule of law, whatever the government’s lawyers might say. Sajid Javid’s pretence that Ms Begum is Bengali (and therefore not technically left stateless by his move) is a disingenuous and obvious ruse, regardless of whether it stands up in court. The point bears repeating: it is precisely in the case of hate figures like Shamima Begum that our liberalism is tested, and if we are to ever lose our freedoms and our democracy the rot will have begun here. If the government begins to act outside the law, if the courts are unable or unwilling to check them, if the public and the opposition and the press do not notice or do not object, even if at first all of this only occurs in cases like this one, how then do we fill that hole in our defences? Either the law is exercised impartially or it isn’t: there is no room for exceptions. And through that tiny hole made by Shamima Begum will trickle more such decisions – more arbitrary rulings, more weakening of the courts and the law, more softening of our grip on our rights; perhaps until the hole is big enough for a torrent of corruption and graft and wholesale abuse of power. And even if an exception could be made – if we could get away with breaking our own rules and degrading our own values – even then, would it be worth it? To keep out one teenager? Just how important is she? Why do we fear her so? It is our freedoms, our values and our laws that make Western liberal democracy better than the medieval Islamic fantasy project. Indeed, they are the crown jewels of our civilization. They are not worth tarnishing for the stupidity of a schoolgirl.

There is also the possibility, however remote, of Ms Begum’s personal redemption. Admittedly, I have said some pretty tough things about her so far, and I’ll do so again: she appears to be a despicable and wholly unrepentant person. And yet – this is a teenage girl; effectively a single mother, a victim of rape through underage marriage, a traumatised survivor of war and totalitarian conditioning, still grieving the deaths of her first two children and now desperate to save the third. She defected at fifteen, and once within the Caliphate would have been killed had she tried to escape. Does she not merit a second chance? Are we ready to say, at nineteen, that hers is a hopeless case – that her life is worthless? There is some hope that she might be a powerful voice against extremism and terrorism, if only she were brought back and properly deradicalised. After all, she is not some shapeless gasbag like Anjem Choudary, but someone who actually went to Syria, and tried out life under the Caliphate. Alas – it’s a nice thought, Shamima Begum touring schools to expose the lies of Islamist propaganda, but not, I think, a likely one. Her media skills clearly aren’t up to much. She’ll probably want a quiet life if she ever makes it back.

But even if she were to return and nothing we expected came to pass – if she somehow escaped jail, somehow kept custody of her child, refused to recant or apologise, wrote a snivelling and self-justifying book, even returned to preaching Islamic supremacy from the safety and comfort of Britain – even then, it would be a triumph to have her back. Her return would not just be a gesture of magnanimity. It would prove that when we talk about freedom and human rights and the rule of law, we mean what we say and we do not apply one law to Muslims and one to everyone else. Treating her in the spirit of the law would allow us to credibly promise other Britons fighting for terror groups a fair trial if they would give up and come home. And it would be a crippling humiliation for her and for everyone who thought like her: to have her return a supplicant, begging for the protection of the nation she had abandoned when flush with the certainty of Islam’s final victory; and to live the rest of her life on handouts from her saviours. Her action, her decision to return, would speak a truth louder and larger and more powerful than any words we or they or she could muster, for that truth or against: that their promises are worthless and our way of life is better.

Nathan

Monday, March 4^th, 2019

London

THIS is not a subject on which I wanted to write. The debate around these issues is ruthless, dishonest and unpleasant, and ill-informed videos and blog posts attacking “PC culture”, “feminism”, “identity politics” and “social justice” are, with precious few exceptions, as plentiful as they are awful. (Even I’ve written about it at least once before). Lampooning the antics of idiotic activists, mostly students, has long since become a popular genre on YouTube, in particular. Here there is little space for novelty. But I have been unable to stop thinking about it, because the fight over how to incorporate identity issues into a broader political programme is tearing the Left apart, particularly in the United States, whilst simultaneously uniting, mobilising and arming the Right. There is too a deeper interest: is a post-identity political system possible, or merely Utopian? And if possible, would it be better? This essay is my attempt to coalesce my thoughts on these two issues.

My first impression is that identity politics or “PC culture” per se is not the problem. All “identity politics” refers to is political mobilisation based on a group affiliation, real or imagined, rather than strict adherence to an ideology or a calculation of individual self-interest. Odious examples of identity politics are easy enough to find (consider the sectarian politics of Northern Ireland, or the politics of bigotry practised by extreme racist or religiously intolerant movements) but the notion of organising around common experiences to advance common interests is both ancient and entirely unremarkable. In reality, all political movements – even those making the most universalist claims – practice identity politics to a greater or lesser degree. This point is obvious (with a little reflection), but is no less important for that. Socialist and communist factions, despite their universalist aspirations, openly appeal to the class identity of workers or peasants, depending on the social and economic structure of their home country (and on taking power, most communist parties quickly exhibited strident jingoism in policy and rhetoric). Nationalists might seek to suppress identity politics within a given state (e.g. the national or religious aspirations of minorities), but only in the name of exalting the national identity above all others, as expressed in relation to other states. Even liberal and conservative parties depend in actuality if not in theory on tribal coalitions of voters whose partisan loyalty goes beyond crude self-interest to the elemental matter of how they see themselves and their place in the world – as small businessmen, as teachers, as farmers, parents, homeowners, retirees, intellectuals and so on. Identity even more than self-interest (though it is not always easy to separate the two) is perhaps the dominant mode of political mobilisation in human history. For this reason, most political developments now celebrated as great achievements for human progress – of which the women’s suffrage and black civil rights movements are merely the most obvious examples; the revolution of 1776 being another – are examples of identity politics, in whole or in part[1]. Similarly, of political correctness (PC) – although a term with totalitarian connotations (one can imagine the Party ordering arrests for the crime of having “incorrect” politics) – means little more than for there to be a social or political price to pay for indulging in cruel, bigoted or bullying behaviour. And insofar as it does stray into policing people’s actual politics rather than their nasty behaviour, the hard Right are no less guilty of enforcing their own brand of correctness – in aspiration if not in practice (I have written on this previously). Thus contextualised, the excesses of PC culture and identity politics – on both left and right – are normal and predictable, if regrettable, instances of politics as it has historically been practiced. With this understanding, the panic about “cultural Marxism” (Melanie Philips) and “radical neo-Marxists” (Jordan Peterson) can be put to bed. The political world they recall with reactionary glow is an imaginary one; one no less filled with identity politics than the world of today, albeit in a different form.

In fact, the abuse of identity politics stems from a cause both simple and blatant. Typically, the worst excesses are examples not of political correctness or social justice run rampant, but of the appropriation of the language of social justice by deceitful or delusional individuals to advance their selfish personal interests. This is fake social justice, and it is practiced by career and amateur activists alike. There are many reasons for such behaviour. Self-promotion appears to be the most common motivation in a political and media culture where one claws to the surface of publicity by tearing others down. Attempts to stoke controversy by attacking the innocuous – everything from how “white people” eating curry is “cultural appropriation” to the classism and racism endemic in Thomas the Tank Engine – on absurd or obviously disingenuous grounds are another tactic of the “look at me!” variety; less vicious or invidiously personal than the reputational cannibalism known as “call out culture”, but equally stupid and dishonest. And “call outs” need not be about self-promotion: for some, reward enough is the indulgence afforded to bully, humiliate and wield power over others by the good cause of challenging oppression and domination. Anyone who doubts the relevance of this very human impulse need only observe the naked glee with which people participate in a Twitter crucifixion, or read the savage comments left on the pathetic mea culpa such crucifixions reliably produce (and which always read like the final confessions beaten out of the victims of Stalin’s show trials). Bullies always have an excuse, and within some supposedly Left-wing circles bullying is acceptable and even praiseworthy, so long as one dresses it up as righteous fury (or, more despicably, as desperate emotional self-defence). Sometimes, the target of fake social justice is very specific: vengeance for a personal slight masquerading as radical politics. On other occasions, it is indiscriminate in its hunt for people to dominate: anyone online, however insignificant or naive, is fair game. Yet another common abuse of social justice is the attempt to silence or discredit people with whom one disagrees on the unfounded basis that either the speech or the speaker are hateful, oppressive or “violent”, or that the speakers’ privilege renders them unfit to voice an opinion. The reflexive and entirely predictable hysteria with which even conventional and boring centre-right politicians can be denounced is the result of the over-use of a cynical, but increasingly ineffective, silencing tactic[2]. Finally, dressed up as the needs of some marginalised group, a fake social justice argument can be put forwards to try to force accommodation of the complainer’s personal preferences. Such individuals usually claim to speak on behalf of this group, and decry any resistance to their own demands as an attack on that group. For instance, the London Underground last year announced that they would no longer begin public announcements with “ladies and gentlemen” after a request from activists claiming to represent the trans gender and gender non-conforming community. Now, I’m as in favour of accommodating the marginalised as the next squishy Leftie, but I can’t help but wonder: did anyone actually ask London’s trans commuters for their opinion on the matter, or did they simply take the activists claiming to represent them at their word? This example is fairly harmless, and may in fact be a good idea, though a constant torrent of campaigning on such micro-issues does debase the currency of equality and social justice. A more serious concern is when similar tactics are used within Left-wing political spaces for individual advantage, as Left-wingers have next to no natural resistance to appeals to equality and inclusion, however disingenuous, allowing a few manipulative individuals to sabotage a cause in pursuit of their short-sighted personal advantage.

Because the language of victimhood and injustice is so easily appropriated, almost anyone can do it. Naturally, millions do. How else the Great Terror of “call out culture” in Left-wing social media spaces? How else the feeding frenzy, where agitators consume their mentors, mentees and comrades, and are consumed in turn? That people use politics as cover for their naked selfishness is no mystery. But what allows it to happen? Why do others go along with it? I have thought about this a lot. None of the answers is particularly surprising; nor do they make pleasant reading. Regarding the bullying and the shaming; the simplest explanation is that people enjoy being part of a mob, and savour the sense of impervious cruelty, all sweetened delusion of punishing the unjust. Others go along with it because they want to show they’re “on the right side”; because they haven’t stopped to think; because of tribal loyalty; or because they hope to feed on such outrage themselves. Still others know that it is wrong, but are too afraid to speak out. Where no-one is being directly attacked, it is easy enough to co-opt our good intentions. The emotive assertion that established practice X is harmful to oppressed group Y and should therefore be changed always sounds more plausible and reasonable than it is, and in the absence either of any detailed understanding of group Y and their feelings on the matter or of any urgent reason to resist, the person claiming to speak on group Y’s behalf will get their way – even if their cause is selfish and their claim baseless. And undergirding the entire edifice is the fallacious certainty that identity politics is always a zero-sum game. This is the ludicrous reductionism that has dissolved the immense and rich intellectual history of anti-racist theory into the thinnest slurry of an idea: that “whiteness” must be bad and “blackness” must be good. (If required, swap out “whiteness” and “blackness” for “masculinity” and “femininity”, “cisgender” and “transgender”, etcetera). Ridiculously, this ideological block reduces even intelligent people to the position of being unable to realise when they are being conned: if the disabled Muslim lesbian is saying it, it must be true! (And even if it isn’t, it’s important that we talk about it as though it is).

The Left has not so much gone mad as senile. Half-remembered bad ideas reappear as parody, absorbed and parroted with deathless zeal; the of problem of how to replicate capitalism’s productive genius without inequality or domination is ignored; at best, absurd flights of fancy like “peer-to-peer socialism” or “eco-socialism” momentarily seize fixated attention, only to vanish without residue or stain; the accelerating environmental catastrophe is used merely as a stick to beat capitalism, with no alternative on offer but failed socialist policies, thereby discrediting the entire environmental movement; and in the cavernous void of Leftist thought, fundamental questions of economics, philosophy, politics and strategy drift unanswered. As our social settlement – and with it, the provision of justice, protection and minimal economic security – are carved up to feed an insatiable and ungrateful elite, we tear ourselves apart over micro-issues. We focus on the cultural battleground because we have been routed in the economic one. There have been important social breakthroughs like the dwindling tolerance afforded men who exploit their positions to harass and abuse women, visibly confirmed by the outpouring of hurt and anger released by the “#MeToo” movement. But these have been made despite fake social justice activity, not because of it. Nor can the benefits of (for example) this kind of female empowerment meaningfully felt by most working class or minority ethnic women without a rigorous left-wing economic programme. Efforts to develop such a programme are reliably seized up by fake social justice activists to launch disingenuous and self-serving accusations of exclusion and bigotry; of obscuring racial injustice by pretending we can just talk about class. The relentless attacks on the Sanders presidential campaign in 2015-16 as a bastion of white exclusionary privilege are a case in point: anyone who dares change the subject from the violence of manspreading and white people dancing to Beyoncé to talk about poverty or redistribution in anything but relentlessly racial or misandrist terms is immediately smeared by mountebanks who snipe and preen at the collapse, in uproar, of the only conversation that can bring about change.

Economics isn’t everything, but it explains a lot. The deterioration in living standards for the bottom 80-90% of citizens in both America and Great Britain over the last forty years, especially for the young, has been relentless and severe. That this has happened despite substantial economic growth and the immense enrichment of a small elite is astonishing and unjustifiable. Don’t be fooled by the illusion of prosperity: iPads, avocados, air travel and lattes have been invented or made more affordable, but housing (to buy or rent), basic public services, higher education and pensions are all either more expensive, of lower quality or both. The wholesale dismantling of the post-war settlement combined with the dwindling supply of decent work – work that is secure, dignified and pays a reasonable wage – fuels the rage and desperation behind the resurgence of the nativist Right. Brexit is the sort of lunatic scheme normally only propagated by the haggard weirdos who sit alone in pubs all day, taking great satisfaction in telling anyone who gets too close about how the State is controlled by bankers in Davos, or that the sprinkler ban isn’t really caused by the summer drought but by an accident in the underground government facility where they add gay serum to the water. Trump, meanwhile, is merely a thieving charlatan and demagogue whose crimes are so blatant and unfitness for high office so obvious as to be unknown to no-one. Brexit and Trump: nothing short of utter abasement would reduce free people to voting for either.

There is more. The vulnerability of marginalised, ignored and impoverished people to the siren song of a sufficiently shameless demagogue is obvious. Scarcely less obvious should be the political consequences of the hateful identity politics practiced by a certain strand of the Left. The use of “white” and “male” as terms of abuse are merely the most obnoxious form of this idiocy, and the mobilising and radicalising effects it has upon the “identitarian” Right hardly merit comment. To be clear, this is not exclusively a problem of fake social justice – of career activists pushing arrant nonsense for selfish ends. Plenty of suckers (and a few hard-core race warriors, sneering man-haters, hijab-wearing “feminist” Islamists and the like) genuinely believe this stuff without sinister motives. Rather, this type of politics and the entire infantile mindset to which it belongs are indispensable to the fake social justice activists in giving them an endless stream both of fake grievances and witless cheerleaders. But if we were better at spotting and rooting out the posers – reliably the loudest, pettiest and most easily parodied of our number – the hard Right would be robbed of an excellent recruiting sergeant.

None of the above should be taken in evidence that a post-identity politics is possible in the short term, whether it is desirable or not. I do not share the view of some voices on the Liberal-Left that all identity politics or all identity politics not based on class are illegitimate, intellectually worthless or otherwise without merit. As discussed in the opening paragraphs of this essay, identity appears to be inextricable from politics as it has been historically practised, even if it is not and has never been the entire story. Nor could anyone reasonably argue that it is illegitimate for people to mobilise around their shared interests and experiences, and to draw meaning from such affiliations. What is terrible about identity politics today is that certain activists and thinkers seem to think that identity categories are and should be immutable and eternal, between which no meaningful exchange of experiences or values could take place, and that such identities are in an eternal struggle for dominance. The furore over “cultural appropriation” – in all but the most extreme and insensitive cases an absolute non-issue – is a case in point. (Such activists appear to hold out no hope – or even any desire – for a post-racial, post-gender, post-class future. Because they take such relish in describing the oppression of the myriad identities and micro-identities in exhaustive detail, and treat any proposed remedies or suggestions that mild progress might have been made with such unreasoning fury and contempt, one simply cannot imagine what they would do with themselves if a post-identity utopia could be reached.) Under this conception, “blackness” is something that non-blacks can and should never understand nor seek to question or meaningfully engage with in any way. Moreover, “blackness” as an identity is one that is see as virtuous and good because it stands in opposition to the dominating and oppressing identity of “whiteness”. Similarly, power is seen as strictly and absolutely hierarchical, brooking neither nuance or exception, with “privileged” groups – such as British Jews – denied either solidarity or protection, and refused any support to organise against any bigotry and discrimination that they face. It should be obvious to anyone reading this that identity politics does not have to be this way, and in most cases it isn’t. This is why blanket condemnations of identity politics go too far. The reality is that the liberal tradition’s idealised conception of the free actor who autonomously generates their own values and explores their unique individuality is too often divorced from a world in which politically important identity categories are both embraced by people and forced upon them by others. Then-Senator Obama’s famous assertion in his address to the 2004 Democratic Party Convention that “there is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America” was electorally astute, but it was a lie – a lie exposed by the vastly differing Americas experienced by Blacks, Whites, Latinos and Asians. When African Americans live in a country massively poorer, more violent and more unjust than the country inhabited by white Americans, there very much is a White America and a Black America. It need not be that way for ever: identity politics will end when identity ceases to have political consequences. As far as I know, there is no party or campaign for left-handed people anywhere in the world because there are no substantive political consequences to being right- or left-handed. When the colour of one’s skin becomes a politically relevant as whether one is right- or left-handed, racial politics will end. The decline in the political importance of different Christian denominations in the nations of the United Kingdom (historically a source of immense strife and bloodshed) is a promising example. The most one can do is hope that the old categories are eliminated without being replaced by new ones.

Politics is never over. The world in which we live is one defined by the political choices of generations past and present, and there is no reason why we cannot reverse the last few decades’ great tide of greed and rapacious stupidity. There is life still in the Left, and purpose too – millions suffer, In countries both rich and poor, because of short-sighted, cruel or bigoted policies. There is no-one else who can change that. Identity politics is a legitimate and necessary part of any movement for change, until the post-identity world can be realised. We have allowed fake activists and fake causes to muscle out real activism and genuine ideas. To rejuvenate the Left, we see them for what they are and show them the contempt they deserve.

Nathan

Saturday November 17^th 2018

London

[1] These three are examples of sexual, racial and national identity politics, respectively.

[2] This is not to say that I am a “free speech absolutist”. Such a position is incoherent, as my right to speak clashes with yours. I am not referring here to the need for rules to order and structure speech; the fact that we are obliged to take turns to talk is no more a violation of free speech than traffic lights are a violation of free movement. The issue is rather that merely by expressing my view, I can create an environment such that other people feel pressure not to express the contrary view – and, in effect, are silenced. Crowds protesting a particularly controversial or hated speaker are expressing their common outrage, but doing so the effect may be to stop the speaker’s supporters from giving voice to their agreement. This is why J.S. Mill himself emphasised the menace posed by social pressure, rather than legal censure, to free expression, and why “no platforming” is not always anti-free speech. Sometimes, “no platforming” is necessary to create a “safe space” is necessary to allow particularly vulnerable people to speak. Understand that this cuts both ways: a robust commitment to free speech requires safe spaces for oppressive and hateful as well as emancipatory ideas.

THE despair that descended upon the liberal, the sensitive and the sane in the weeks and months following the election and subsequent inauguration of Donald Trump has been long in lifting. This is to be expected: the scale of the catastrophe was immense and finally unknowable. That this odious wretch won a national election in a civilised country was appalling enough; that, with the Congress in Republican hands, there seemed no hope of resisting him made the disaster a catastrophe. But eighteen months after the inauguration – a moment, and a speech, encapsulating the lunacy afflicting the world’s pre-eminent democracy – there is at last some cause for hope. His regime has been corrupt and incompetent rather than power-hungry or efficient, blundering from crisis to self-made crisis, and its leading talents far more interested in self-aggrandisement and money than in policy, consolidating power or in moving the political consensus. The courts, the police agencies and even the Senate – twitching limply in Mitch McConnel’s dead, talon-like grip – have shown more independence and moral courage than we had dared believe. And now, with the mid-term elections a mere 3 months away and the polls predicting a massacre for the House Republicans, the end of the phantasmal “Trump agenda” is finally at hand. And with the respective conviction and guilty plea of tinpot tyrants’ lickspittle Paul Manafort and comedy mob boss Michael Cohen – on top of the dozen or so convictions and guilty pleas Mueller has already secured – the crows are beginning to gather on the White House lawn. After more than a year of smears and accusations of overseeing a witch-hunt Mueller has exposed Sean Hannity and his allies in the Republican Party and the right-wing media as shameless liars. We are faced with not merely the prospect of castrating the administration by retaking the House: a Democratic Majority will be able to protect the Special Prosecutor from partisan obstruction whilst subjecting the government to – perish the thought – actual congressional scrutiny. Until now, the Trump juggernaut has seemed, if not unstoppable, impervious to conventional political weaponry. But we may be about to witness not merely the implosion of the administration, but the ruination of Donald Trump personally; and perhaps even the destruction of the Republican Party itself.

This prospect is no mere consolation prize. Recall: Donald Trump has been breaking laws and getting away with it for his entire life. Remember the fraudulent Trump University, his theft of charitable donations from the Trump Foundation or his use of illegal labour to build the Trump Tower. For decades, he has been cheating and lying, assaulting women, exploiting workers, defrauding business partners and ripping off customers. For the Donald, there is no lie too blatant, no scam too petty. His only talents are for self-promotion and criminal escape-artistry. A lifetime of low and blatant criminality, and he would have got away with it – if only he had not run for president. Had he been able to control his own obscene ego and greed and childlike need for adulation, had he resisted seeking an office for which he was so manifestly and entirely unfit, he might never have been called to account for his crimes. But now, at last, he might be about to get his come-comeuppance. Whether he is impeached and then indicted, resigns in disgrace or is thrown out by the voters and subsequently prosecuted, he shall have been the author of his own destruction, and justice will be all the sweeter for it.

More is to come. Are we be about to witness the annihilation of the Grand Old Party itself? So completely have they bound themselves to Trump that their fates and reputations are utterly entwined. And their extinction is well-deserved and hard-earned. Beneath the shadow of a president less worthy and more dangerous than any in living memory, they have abjectly failed to uphold even the minimum standards of responsibility and decency a democratic republic demands. Consider the lies they have told, the excuses they have made, the grave responsibilities they have absented, the cowardice they have shown, the norms they have broken, the thugs and paedophiles they have sheltered and embraced – they have not so much dipped their hands in the blood as they have wallowed in it. They have finally proven that there is no principle they will not abandon – Christian chastity, universal franchise, limited government, freedom of the press, rule of law, integrity in public office, fiscal responsibility, opposing Russian tyranny and aggression, upholding freedom abroad – no principle save one: the relentless redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. (Undoubtedly, the only thing Trump could do to lose their unqualified backing is put up taxes). And what of their conduct before the age of Trump? Surely, you have not forgotten their nationwide, decades-long campaign to dismantle American democracy through gerrymandering and disenfranchising black and minority voters? Their chronic and shameless appeals to lizard-brained bigotry and fear? Their monstrous moral hypocrisy; preaching Christian virtue and demonising homosexuals and liberals whilst secretly fucking rent boys and groping interns? Their sustained campaign to delegitimise objective journalism and scientific truth on everything from evolution to climate change? Their transformation of what should be a simple, rational and boring debate on basic safety checks for gun owners into a hysterical culture war? The cover they afforded the Bush administration’s depraved regime of kidnap, torture and secret prisons? Their bankrupting of the Republic with never-ending wars and immense unfunded tax cuts – a mountain of debt, they insist, that can only be paid by eviscerating the welfare payments on which millions of poor Americans subsist? Equivocate not: they are vile beyond redemption, and the existence of the occasional decent Republican is no more persuasive a counterargument than the occurrence of the odd decent Bolshevik[1]. Far from being a disaster, could the election of 2016 become the triumph that doomed the party whose death was long overdue?

A little hope is a dangerous thing, and events may play out differently. Mueller may exhaust his leads or be fired before he unearths whatever bodies remain. The Republicans may cling on in 2018; nor does Trump’s defeat in 2020 look vastly more likely than not. So with our hope comes a matching fear: that if we do not prevail, the GOP will not waste their opportunity to further corrode the institutions of the Republic. Combined with the theft of Merrick Garland’s seat, the resignation of Justice Kennedy has opened the door to yet more audacious attacks on voting rights in America. Emboldened, right-wing trolls may switch from online harassment of journalists to physical intimidation. The spread of lies and propaganda will continue unabated. The Department of Justice will be de-clawed. And in all levels of government, officials will begin to take notice that the old moral code has changed. It is terrifyingly and tangibly close: a degraded democracy on the model of Poland or Hungary, where greed and despotism hide behind a faux-populist tissue of lies. Only the obliteration of this criminal president and his monstrous party can save the Republic. Cling to that hope, and be face the danger.

Nathan

Friday August 31^st, 2018

London

[1]Many of the Republican politicians held up as examples of conscientiousness and integrity are grossly overrated. The saintly terms in which the late, deeply compromised Senator McCain is near-universally described is symptomatic of a republic in which moral standards in public life are in free-fall, and in Senator McCain’s party most of all. It beggars belief that in the country that calls itself the “leader of the free world” a politician can get credit for opposing torture.

“We need to stop lying to ourselves, and we need to stop lying to each other.” Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

FORGIVE Ms. Eddo-Lodge for titling her book so: she and her publishers knew you probably wouldn’t read a book about race in Britain unless the cover enraged you. This makes Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Bloomsbury) part of a long history of campaigning books with provocative, even obnoxious titles: titles designed to grasp and challenge an uncaring public. Forgive, but don’t be fooled: more than anyone else, this book is written for white people. The words chosen by most commentators in reviewing this book (“blistering”, “searing” etc.) suggest a work born of anger, and while anger is certainly present, the real worth of this book is found in its cool, methodical dismemberment of the myths Britain likes to tell itself about race. Rather than making her case by recounting personal experiences of maltreatment and telling us how distressed or angry it made her feel, as many contemporary writers are lamentably fond of doing, Eddo-Lodge insists on sticking to the rigidly objective: the documented historical facts, and the available data on race and life outcomes. Objectivity gives her something of a distinctive voice within the swelling chorus of young left-wing writers, and the effect is devastating. Where personal experiences are discussed, as they necessarily are in a moving chapter on mixed-race families, the author writes thoughtfully and carefully. Indeed, the book’s disappointments (such as they are) occur mostly where Eddo-Lodge blunders out of this mode by reprinting some lazy, far-left cliché (even “fragile masculinity” makes an appearance).

Why I’m No Longer Talking opens with a brief but necessary history of black and minority ethnic (BME) people in Britain, including their experiences of vicious racism and their resistance to it. Unlike the American civil rights movement, the fight for freedom waged by black Britons is almost entirely forgotten by this country’s white majority. Suffice to say, the silence of our school curriculum on this subject is scandalous, and this neglect is alone a good enough reason to read the book. Indeed, the author is at her strongest when she is dismembering the pious story we like tell ourselves about race: that Britain’s history of racism is long behind us, and that racism in modern Britain is confined to the attitudes and efforts of a few horrible people. Eddo-Lodge is in the business of spoiling such myths, and is rarely thanked for her efforts. Indeed, the title refers to her frustration at the refusal of many white people to accept or even listen to her when she raises the subject of racial inequality, and her anger at the expectation that she tip-toe around white people’s feelings when talking about race.

The book effectively argues several controversial points, attacking the fallacy that defeating racism is as simple as “not seeing” race, or that racist attitudes are only held by straightforwardly bad people. Eddo-Lodge convincingly demonstrates that people today still suffer the consequences of the injustices committed against their parents, grandparents and distant ancestors, and that this suffering is an urgent moral call to action. Crucially, she argues that the phenomenon of racism in modern Britain is less a matter of conscious individual prejudice and more one of systematic exclusion of BME people from privilege and wealth. This exclusion takes multiple forms, the most important of which is the indifference and ignorance of otherwise good people, and not deliberate persecution by hate-laden racists. In forceful brush strokes, Eddo-Lodge paints a picture in which past and present injustices, many of which may be individually small, amass to block the way for BME people to access Britain’s many opportunities, however worthy or industrious they may be.

For all the scorn the author rightly pours on whites who refuse to listen to complaints of racial injustice, and for the hostility she predicts her book will receive, at times she appears to take for granted that those whites who do read the book will be so abject with guilt as to accept her arguments without question. This is apparent in her handling of the most contentious issues in her book, where the opposing opinion is rarely given a fair hearing. For instance, she is surely right when she argues that racism does not simply “cut both ways” (as though the consequences of white racial prejudice and black racial prejudice are of even remotely comparable magnitudes), or when she rebuts the claim that talking about racial injustice fuels racism, but in both cases I was left with the feeling it would have been more persuasive had she taken the other side more seriously, however obvious she thinks their errors are. For example, while campaigning for racial justice certainly mobilises white identitarian opposition, and while this is clearly more often a case of exposing latent racism than it is of causing it, the conclusion Eddo-Lodge appears to draw – that anti-racism campaigning is never responsible for white racism – is misleadingly righteous. While anti-racist activism will always provoke some sort of racist opposition, there are clearly more and less effective ways of appealing to the white majority. At risk of stating the obvious, calls to violence (consider Fox News’s favourite clip of a Black Lives Matter protest: “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!”) will trigger hostility from otherwise neutral or even supportive whites, and will encourage white nationalists to engage in violence of their own. Criticism of the need to prioritise white people’s feelings isn’t a case for being politically repulsive. Similarly, whilst the argument that racism cannot “cut both ways” because racist black people have no equivalent means to hurt white people is true on its own terms, this understanding depends on using the word “racism” in a way that most people don’t recognise: namely, as a term referring to systems of privilege rather than individual prejudice. Rather than admit this, the necessary task of demystifying the arcane jargon used by Eddo-Lodge and other activists is denounced as the unfair expectation that anti-racist activists “educate” their oppressors on the theory of systems of privilege.

This is a shame, because Eddo-Lodge is generally good at doing so: notably, she gives a convincing account of what white privilege is and why it is almost invisible to those who have it. Her analysis is consistently rigorous and sophisticated, which makes the rare instances of lazy thinking quite infuriating. Consider this excerpt, from a passage on the black attainment gap at university:

“Given that black kids are more likely than white kids to move into higher education, it’s spurious to suggest that this attainment gap is down to a lack of intelligence, talent, or aspiration. It’s worth looking at the distinct lack of black and brown faces teaching at university to see what might contribute to this systematic failure. In 2016, it was revealed by the Higher Education Statistics Agency that almost 70% of the professors teaching in British universities are white men. It’s a dire indication of what universities think intelligence looks like.”

Now, I’m as open to the suggestion that we need more non-white and non-male academics as anyone. But by this point in the book, Eddo-Lodge has set you up to expect a thorough dissection of the relevant race-related issues, many of which she has already fleshed out. For instance, BME students might receive less financial support from their economically marginalised parents, and therefore be obliged to take up a job alongside full-time education. Or perhaps BME students are, for any number of reasons, more prone to loneliness, isolation or mental illness. Perhaps they are simply more likely than their peers to feel alienated from a white-dominated education system. The author doesn’t even give the reader a nod to such possibilities: just a vapid assumption that the white professors must be racist. Nor is the above example the only instance where the author trips over the reader’s assumed ideological assent. In her extended commentary on feminism and race she incisively exposes the inherent misogyny of the white supremacist right and their chilling fixation on white women’s wombs, while dismissing the blatant and deadly misogyny of Islamic supremacists – quite as though two dozen teenage girls hadn’t been blown to pieces by one at a concert in this country not twelve months ago. In another utterly surreal section she seems convinced that a policy put forward by then Prime Minister David Cameron to ensure that vulnerable migrant women learn English was actually motivated by racism, rather than a desire to prevent these women from being isolated and controlled. These intrusions of ideology, unexamined, unwanted and mercifully few in number, are lumps in the porridge that the book could do without.

As regards the future, the author draws some dismal conclusions. She cares little to comfort the guilt-ridden white reader, who by the final pages is desperate for some good news. For all the advancement in human civilisation supposedly made over the decades and centuries since the demise of the slave trade, the defeat of fascism and the end of empire, she evinces little hope that racial injustice will be meaningfully addressed in her lifetime. Her disdain for the pretence of being “colourblind” is sharp enough to suggest that she does not think a race-blind society is a possible or even desirable form of emancipation. Fundamentally, this despair seems to rest on her bleakly economic calculation that white privilege equals black oppression, and therefore that gains by the minority must impose costs on the majority – costs the majority will not readily accept. In this, I think she underestimates the potential of bad ideas – of stupid, wicked and false doctrines – to make almost everyone worse off, and of good ideas to improve life for all. For instance, in her chapter on race and class she lays bare the hypocrisy of appeals on behalf of the “white working class” against immigrants and ethnic minorities (appeals invariably made by the same politicians who seek to strip the welfare state to the bone), but never seriously questions whether the white working class really benefits from such favouritism. She should do so: it is not a coincidence that the only major industrial economy without a comprehensive welfare state – the United States – is the one with the most racially divided working class.

Above all, this book is an appeal to your personal responsibility: it argues that each of us, in a tiny but tangible way, through our actions and our inactions, contributes to injustice in Britain, whether we are aware of it or not. It proclaims that your only choices are complicity or resistance. The author is not interested in your guilt or your apologies, but in your efforts to make things right. This need not be an invitation to politicise everything, but to navigate life with your eyes open to the reality of who has power in our society, and who does not. Though imperfect, and weighed down by its author’s ideological baggage, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race paints a vivid picture of injustice in modern Britain, of how it operates and what its consequences are, and is worth your time to read.

Nathan

Thursday May 3^rd, 2018

London

TO survive one of the periodic famines that defined rural life before the advent of modern agriculture, the most desperate farmers might resort to eating the corn they had saved for next year’s planting. Without some saving grace, certain doom is the price of such temporary relief. The two great conservative parties of the English-speaking world find themselves in the self-same predicament: devoted sons of the Thatcher-Reagan consensus* that has dominated politics for more than thirty years, their only response to the manifest failure of such policies has been more of the same, demanded and implemented with an increasingly hysterical zeal. On the one shore of the Atlantic, “Brexit”, and on the other, Trump, constitute the final rejection of the old orthodoxy by each party’s own furious voters. Though different in many respects, both the British vote to leave the European Union and the election of Mr Trump as President of the United States have in each country effectively supplanted free-market conservatism with a tediously predictable strain of paranoid populist-nationalism. For Republicans and Tories alike, this is the scrawled cross at the foot of the suicide note they have spent the last twenty years writing.

The demographic breakdown of conservative support in the two countries is astonishing. While unimaginative free-market policies steadily eroded support among younger and less white voters, who found themselves paying more and more for housing and education on lower and less secure salaries, the abrupt, unscripted adoption of right-wing culture war by both conservative parties has widened the divide into a chasm. In the U.S., the majority of white voters supported Donald Trump, with his greatest lead among white voters over sixty-five. But in the rest of the electorate – younger and less white – his supporters are an embattled minority. More significantly, the personal unpopularity of Trump among young and minority of voters appears to have made his party unpopular with these same voters. The numbers in the U.K. are no less stark. Remorselessly pushing for “hard Brexit” has solidified Tory support amongst their white and elderly base at the cost of alienating everyone else. In the 2017 General Election, a hard-left Labour Party won more votes than the Tories among all voters surveyed younger than fifty , while the Tories had a 50-point lead with voters over seventy).

The backdrop of mounting inequality, declining wages, rising university fees, collapsing home ownership, soaring rents and deteriorating public services, particularly health, of which all apart from the latter disproportionately hurt the young, was politically tolerable only when unemployment was low and economic growth was high. The great recession and subsequent authoritarian-nationalist backlash by reliable conservative voters may have alienated a generation of younger voters from the right – particularly those from minority communities. And in indulging the worst excesses of their dwindling support base, the Republicans in 2016 and the Tories in 2017 each scraped a slender victory in their respective General Elections only by burning whatever goodwill they had left with the emerging majority. Collapsing home ownership, bottomless debt, endless austerity, stagnant wages and reactionary social attitudes will damn any conservative party in the eyes of the young. Both parties are so implicated in this disaster, and so deluded about the consequences of their policies (not to mention their own popularity), that only their massacre at the ballot box, again and again, will force them to see the truth.

Of course, politics never stops. The reversals suffered by the right will not be permanent, even if the price of resurgence is substantial ideological revision. Nor is its course straightforwardly predictable: the left is perfectly capable of squandering the opportunity presented by demographic breakdown, and arguably is already doing so by touting fantasy economics and vanishing down the rabbit hole of pointless identity grievances. Such signs are not encouraging. The right is long lost to madness; a sane left is our best hope.

Nathan

Tuesday April 24^th, 2018

London

*I do not use the term “neoliberalism” because it has, like “progressive”, long since lost all meaning. In so far as it is generally used, it is a snarl world thoughtlessly deployed by the far left against anyone tainted with the sin of economic realism.

THE horror of blatant murder is that of naked power, of power unfettered by shame, restraint or fear. This is quite different to the blundering murder of the impromptu criminal: the betrayed lover; the panicked burglar; the furious drunk. Where such killings are obvious, it is not by design. But some murders are meant to be noticed: do you really doubt that Kim Jong-Un could have found a less dramatic way to kill his brother, had he wanted to? Tyrants and serial killers are alike in that both are attention seekers whose method is murder. The overt murders of Litvinenko and of Kim Jong-Nam, like the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter last week in Salisbury, are attempts by the dictator to force others to recognise his power; his immunity from justice and his mastery over life and death. Why use nerve agents or radioactive toxins unless you wanted the crime to be noticed, and for everyone to know who was responsible? What is striking about these crimes is not only their puerile flair – using weapons of mass destruction where a pistol would do – but their sheer pointlessness. North Korea is the most closed society in the world: the notion that the sad, deflated playboy that was Kim Jong-Nam could have threatened his brother’s position from his hotel suite in Macau is absurd. Similarly, what purpose could possibly be served by slaying old spooks like Litvinenko and Skripal, save as a pure expression of power? The attack on the Skripals is outrageous. But what is to be done?

We can answer that difficult question by first addressing a much easier question: what does Putin want us to do? The answer to this question should be obvious: he seeks confrontation. He is openly murdering his enemies on British soil in the hope that we will feed his propaganda machine with furious rhetoric of our own, and perhaps even with the economic sanctions he needs to excuse the pitiful economic performance of his gangster republic. Why else would this murder coincide with Russia’s sham presidential election, if not to manufacture an opportunity for Putin to play the strong man, resisting Western interference? We must punish this crime as best we can. The rub is doing so without inadvertently giving the dictator what he wants. Understand: what allows dictators like Putin to outmanoeuvre their democratic opponents is their power to make others suffer the consequences of their actions. The supposedly brilliant Putin is in fact a very conventional autocrat. He projects the illusion of the master strategist only by trading Russia’s vital long-term interests for tawdry propaganda victories, and does so at a steadily diminishing rate of return. To appear strong in his confected confrontations with “the West”, he has, in the guise of restoring “national pride”, taken Russia step-by-step to her present disastrous place, where Russia is isolated and encircled; impoverished and corrupted; feared and hated. Millions of Russians already know that national pride cannot be eaten. Millions more will join them before their country changes course. The present regime in Moscow is a menace to everyone. We owe it to the Russians and to ourselves to stop feeding this cycle. However we respond, we must not do so in a way that can be weaponised by the Kremlin for propaganda at home. The Defence Secretary’s speech telling Russia to “go away and shut up” is a good example of what we should not be doing.

Fortunately, we do have ways of punishing the Russian dictatorship without ceding a propaganda victory. A good start would be to toughen up and more vigorously enforce our own version of America’s Magnitsky Act. This act, named after a young Russian lawyer tortured to death in police custody for investigating corruption, has proven threatening enough to Putin to provoke a hysterical response (among other things, banning American families from adopting Russian orphans), and has since been copied in several other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. These acts are highly targeted sanctions programmes which restrict the ability of foreign officials implicated in human rights abuses to enjoy respectable lives in the West. One can imagine a more stringent British version permitting the authorities to seize assets in the U.K. where there is reason to believe they are controlled by anyone linked to abusive dictatorships. The reason Magnitsky Acts are so effective against Putin and others like him is that they hurt their powerful supporters within (for example) the Russian elite without harming ordinary Russians. More importantly, they do so without giving Putin’s state-controlled media a grievance with which to manufacture propaganda. It is hard to imagine the average Russian citizen being outraged by the news of some oligarch’s yacht being compounded. (And as a Londoner, I can testify that besides weakening Putin’s grip on power, preventing his vile accomplices from spending their loot on handbags in Harrods, mansions in Belgravia and on schooling their children at St Paul’s is long overdue.)

Equally important is what we refrain from doing. We should not seek untargeted economic sanctions on the Russian economy, because even if we ignore the suffering they would impose on one of the poorest peoples of Europe their primary political effect will be to strengthen the regime, not to weaken it. Similarly, we must resist the temptation to enter Putin’s war of words. We must be boring, not belligerent. Our determination to resist must be communicated behind closed doors, or through opaque signals, and always with an eye to how it could be used by the regime to buttress its fortress of lies. A classic robotic speech by Theresa May is exactly what we need right now, stating in the blandest possible terms the need for a full investigation and for all parties to tone down their rhetoric. In private, of course, a more frank conversation between our government and the Russians is necessary. Such stern words must be followed by swift action. London’s days as a high-end brothel for ex-KGB thugs must end. Let the mass forfeiture of Mayfair townhouses begin!

Nathan

Sunday March 25th, 2018

Camberley

This post serves notice to my phantasmal reading public that I will be taking a break from writing for a few months, perhaps even a year. I’m starting a new job this month that I expect to absorb most of my energy, and I doubt my intermittent sniping would do anything to arrest our current trajectory. I’ll certainly be back if the world continues to slide into the grasp of the evil lunatics who are so fashionable at present, if only to howl at the moon.

Take care.

Nathan

Saturday September 9th, 2017

London