Fewtril #4

Many a man is so impressed with the idea that the next despots will be wearing jackboots, that he fails to hear the gentle flap of sandals.

Resistance is Futile

In The Sunday Times yesterday, Matthew d'Ancona had the following to say:

Multi-culturalism - often presented as a sinister Left-wing conspiracy - is, in fact, as the philosopher John Gray has written, 'an historical fate', a purely empirical description of the modern condition. (Matthew d'Ancona, "This horror began with a literary row", The Sunday Times, 17th July 2005.)

Now, I am of sufficient cognisance of the intellectual power of journalists, and am charitable enough, to suggest that Mr d'Ancona wouldn't know an empirical datum if it hit him in the eye. Therefore, I shall not say that he deliberately confuses a doctrine with an empirical description.
.....If one describes Britain, say, as multicultural, one describes an empirical fact. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is not a description, not an empirical fact, but a doctrine. Now, there is no reason to accept a doctrine just because it has had an (empirical) impact on the world. Marxist-Leninism and German National Socialism have had great impact on the world, and have brought about such facts as gulag camps and Vernichtungslager, but I need not accept them. But Mr d'Ancona seems to suggest that because multicultural society exists, we must accept it as the only right and proper way to be. It is interesting too that he finds, along with John Gray, that multiculturalism (by which I presume he means a multicultural society brought about as a consequence of the doctrine of multiculturalism) is "an historical fate". Shysters learnt long ago that a doctrine can be made more powerful if it is also claimed to be historically inevitable. It is a trick that aims at the heartening of one's friends and the disheartening of one's foes, saying in effect to the former, "you are on the side of history", and to the latter, "resistance is futile".

Conformity or Death!

Of the revolutionary triptych Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, the third has received the least attention from intellectuals. This may reflect its more visceral nature, which makes it unsuitable for systemization. Nevertheless, on this earth of squabbling apes the call for fraternity has not been rare.

.....The call for fraternity – a universal brotherhood of man – entails a universal toleration of views, which itself may or may not entail a universal conformity of some views. If it does not entail conformity, but rather a true toleration of all disparate and possible views, then the call is nihilistic. Only the nihilist tolerates all, a stance which some might take to be to his credit. Such persons do not reflect, however, that the toleration of all means the equal indifference to the boiling of eggs and the boiling of chartered accountants. If, on the other hand, it does entail a universal conformity with some views, the call is probably not as generous or as tolerant as is often made out. Conformity to which views, exactly? We should not be surprised to learn that the call is for a conformity to the caller’s views!
.....For instance, the international socialist who calls for a universal brotherhood may sound generously tolerant thereby, yet his call is not a call for the accommodation of all views including those of the capitalist, but rather it is a call for the dominance of his own views and the destruction of all views inimical to it. If it is not hyper-tolerant and nihilistic, a call for the brotherhood of man is a call for the conformity of all humanity with at least some of the views of the caller, the important point being that it may not be so generous and innocent as claimed.
.....In short, in order that there be a universal brotherhood there has to be at the very least a universal belief in this universal brotherhood – and there may be scant toleration of those who spurn the conformity in respect of the views it entails. This is starkly illustrated by the Jacobin slogan, “Fraternity or Death!”, the naked meaning of which Nicolas-Sébastien Roch de Chamfort was keenly aware: “Be my brother or I’ll kill you!”.

Media Moghuls

Judging by the way the media are carrying on, anyone would think this was Hug a Muslim Week.

.....The BBC seems to have become a propaganda service on behalf of the “religion of peace”; The Independent won’t have a bad word said against it; and I fear that The Guardian wouldn’t like to hear it denied that there is no God but Allah.

.....Madeleine Bunting in The Guardian continues in much the same vein today, but it is testimony to how inured I have become to Islamic apologetics, that what annoyed me more was a typical piece of lazy journalistic conceit:

It [the terrorism in London] puts the British model of multiculturalism - until now the source of quiet admiration across Europe - under unprecedented scrutiny.

Who admired it? In what circles was it admired? What was there to admire? Do we imagine that across Europe there were men sat with jaws firmly set, gently shaking their heads in "quiet admiration" at our multiculturalism? Or that in small intellectual circles “of the right kind”, narcissistic blathermouths found it in themselves to admire anything but their own mess? What tosh! Can't these hacks deal in anything but counterfeit? I bet there was not one thing that persuaded her that there was "quiet admiration" for our multiculturalism, except that she liked the idea of it. It belongs to the same journalistic license that permits the description of mumbling simpletons as "fiercely intelligent" or weepy and neurotic women as "strong and independent".
.....Such journalists cannot grasp that every counterfeit statement -- however slight it might seem -- devalues the currency in which they deal.

The Smell of Sartre

If we are to speak de mortuis nil nisi bonum, then it behoves us to say nothing much about some dead intellectuals, for about them there is little that was not bad; and if we were to say something good, it would be nothing that is not trivial, such that Sartre liked puppies or that Foucault was known to knit baby-boots (neither of which, I must add, I know to be true).

.....In short, if I were to comply with this exhortation, I should be unable to speak about their ideas, upon which their claimed significance and reputations rest. I should, instead, be confined to trifles. Were they, their works and their reputations to remain forever buried, their names never to be uttered or their words repeated, then I should be happy to comply with this exhortation, to speak nothing (but good) about them, for then there would be nothing to be said about them at all.
.....But this is not the case. Foucault's reputation, for instance, lingers in the halls of academia like the stench of a rotten rat under the floorboards, of which the denizens thereof seem unable or unwilling to rid themselves. The reputations of Lacan and Barthes and numerous others still excite the buzz of academics. And on the centenary of Sartre's birth, there have appeared persons of mean intelligence who think it high time we spoke well of him again, as if we could lessen the smell of a week-old fish-pie by reheating it.
.....For one, Kevin Jackson in Prospect magazine (found via Arts & Letters Daily) thinks that "For decades, Sartre's reputation has often been more a matter of hearsay, allegation and cliché than of well-founded judgment" (in other words, it is a stink kicked up by unjust and ignorant critics), and that "It is time for us to start reading him properly". If we are serious about finding the source of the smell, however, then we ought to begin by looking under the covers of his shysterwork, Being and Nothingness, in which we read that "a gift is a primitive form of destruction", that smoking is "the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world", and (my favourite) that, "The Being by which Nothingness arrives in the world must nihilate Nothingness in its Being, and even so it still runs the risk of establishing Nothingness as a transcendent in the very heart of immanence unless it nihilates Nothingness in connection with its own being".
.....I opine that reading him properly can reveal much about intellectual impropriety and the fadish pretensions of French intellectuals.
.....There are few more disagreeable sights than the digging-out of an intellectual fad long after it was buried quietly in embarrassment. At least a new fad has the appeal of its freshness, something to which our blusterers, full of the joys of idiocy, are drawn. In its old age, however, a fad comes to take on the appearance of its innermost character. It begins to look absurd, because it has always been absurd; it begins to look flighty, because it has always been flighty; it comes to look farcical and foolish and idle because it has always been those things.

In the spirit of charity, I believe Sartre best forgotten.

Fewtril #3

He who embraces the doctrine of equality refuses to admit the shortcomings of lesser men in the hope that greater men will do likewise for him.

The Benns

On Newsnight last night, I was soothed to listen to Tony Benn babbling like a mad brook. It is somehow reassuring to know that even deep in senility he might still be allowed out to broadcast his infirm ideas; by which I do not mean to suggest that his ideas have ever been any thing but infirm. In consideration of the vigour with which he embraced unreason as a young man, and to which he has clung with undiminished fealty ever since, one might fairly say that senility for Mr Benn is like a medal awarded for life-long service to madness.

.....There is now on the political scene another Benn: the son, Hilary. Whether the son will ever scale the preposterous heights attained by the father remains to be seen. There have been promising signs, however. In his early days on Ealing Borough Council (1979-1999), Hilary Benn was an active member of "the loony Left". He shares with his father an endearing disinclination to see sense, except for the overwhelming sense of his own righteousness. The future looks bright, therefore.
.....I hereby name the following disorder in honour of Tony and Hilary Benn:

the Benns, n.pl. A largely untreatable disorder that is marked by maniacal claims, distress in reasoning, and often moral collapse, involving an uncontrollable babbling and a dizzy-headed acceptance of one's baseless assertions as the acme of sense, caused by the formation of hot air in the frontal cortex upon too rapid a surfacing of one's conceit. Usage: "His prejudices bobbed to the surface too quickly, and he got the Benns."

Fewtril #2

A man who claims to be so radically sceptical as to doubt the possibility of knowledge should hardly feel affronted if a fellow doubts the sincerity of his claim; for he who can doubt the possibility of knowledge should also appreciate the credulity required of a man who is meant to believe that he is sincere in that doubt and not merely pretentious.

This Septic Pile

Considering the present prospect of England, I thought it best that John of Gaunt's speech on England be updated, lest we take some false solace from it. This is how Shakespeare had him describe England in Richard II (Act 2, Scene 1):

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

And this is a version that best befits our modern land:

This rank throng of morons, this septic pile,
This heap of lowliness, this feat of ours,
This other Hades, pandemonium,
This shack built by Politics for itself
Against redemption and the rule of law,
This wretched gang of men, this mighty herd,
This worthless rock amidst the slimy sea,
Which serves neither sovereign task to forestall
Nor lost and defamed duty to preserve
Against the claims for just inclusion in
This cursed blot, this heap, this wreck, this England.

Just Popped Out

I shall be in Japan until the fourth of July. Thus, no posts until then.

Hobsbawm

What led Hobsbawm to Marxism? In his own words, “Pity for the exploited, the aesthetic appeal of a perfect and comprehensive intellectual system, . . . a little bit of the Blakean vision of the new Jerusalem and a good deal of intellectual anti-philistinism” (Eric Hobsbawm, (2002.) Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life, New York: Pantheon,. p. 74; quoted by Robin Melville). And what did Marxism bring? Pitiless exploitation, the ugliness of a corrupt and totalitarian pseudo-intellectual system, the imposition of a Dantean vision of Hell on earth, and a great deal of mind-numbing philistinism. Any surprises? Were these not an inherent part of Marx’s vision?

Fewtril

One may fairly suppose that, when it comes to the winning of power, even the most ardent of socialists would not wish to abolish the brisk trade in grandmothers.

Fools and Persuasion

It is almost impossible to persuade a fool of the rationality or truth of a matter if upon that same matter some genius has averred to the contrary. This fool is apt to insinuate that, if Newton was a genius and said x, and you are not a genius and you said not-x, then no matter what your argument, x is more likely to be the case than not-x. It is no matter that you put forth a water-tight argument that proves not-x beyond doubt, and that said genius had no argument for x and was just airing his prejudices, the fool will have none of it, simply because he does not come to his stance through rational deliberation, but through seeking to align his opinions to those of someone known to be clever. It has been the less sage and sometimes downright stupid sayings of geniuses that have provided fools with much of the spurious support for their foolish opinions. Einstein – currently, the fool’s favourite genius – said many a silly thing in his time, but because it came from the mouth of a genius, it is taken by the thoughtless to be full of thought. But then, there’s a fool making notes every time a genius opens a bag of nuts.

The Guardian of Bad Ideas

Today I am reminded that bad old ideas never die, they just eke out a sordid and valetudinous existence in The Guardian. Therein George Monbiot reiterates the old calumny that property is theft: “in terms of looted resources, stolen labour and now the damage caused by climate change, the rich owe the poor far more than the poor owe the rich.”
.....This is how Proudhon put it back in 1840:

If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?

(What is Property? Or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government. Chapter 1.)

It is fortunate that Proudhon feels that no extended argument is required; for he would find that none could be found to defend such nonsense. This passage, by the way, is a fine example of Calumnious Redefinition, which is defined below.

Wilful Misinterpretation

In ideological struggle, the scoundrel wishes to make known that all great thinkers are essentially on his side, so that it appears that the light of genius shines on him. As often happens, however, the writings of great thinkers exhibit views that are anathema to his ideology. The bold step here is to denounce these thinkers, but this is dangerous; for claiming that a widely acknowledged genius is an idiot can reflect badly on one’s character, even if he is an idiot. The safer option is to misinterpret wilfully the writings of great thinkers in concordance with one’s ideology. One says things such as, “Taken at face-value, it could be thought that by saying ‘x’ he means x,” and then one should intimate that only ignoramuses, reactionaries, and naifs could think that he means x. For instance, it has been the sport of many an ideologue to pretend that Nietzsche’s advocacy of warfare was no such thing, that what he was really advocating was philosophical warfare in passages such as the following:

War indispensable.— It is vain reverie and beautiful-soulism to expect much more (let alone only then to expect much) of mankind when it has unlearned how to wage war. For the present we know of no other means by which that rude energy that characterizes the camp, that profound impersonal hatred, that murderous cold-bloodedness with a good conscience, that common fire in the destruction of the enemy, that proud indifference to great losses, to one's own existence and that of one's friends, that inarticulate, earthquake-like shuddering of the soul, could be communicated more surely or strongly than every great war communicates them: the streams and currents that here break forth, though they carry with them rocks and rubbish of every kind and ruin the pastures of tenderer cultures, will later under favorable circumstances turn the wheels in the workshops of the spirit with newfound energy. Culture can in no way do without passions, vices and acts of wickedness.— When the Romans of the imperial era had grown a little tired of war they tried to gain new energy through animal-baiting, gladiatorial combats and the persecution of Christians. Present-day Englishmen, who seem also on the whole to have renounced war, seize on a different means of again engendering their fading energies: those perilous journeys of discovery, navigations, mountain-climbings, undertaken for scientific ends as they claim, in truth so as to bring home with them superfluous energy acquired through adventures and perils of all kinds. One will be able to discover many other such surrogates for war, but they will perhaps increasingly reveal that so highly cultivated and for that reason necessarily feeble humanity as that of the present-day European requires not merely war but the greatest and most terrible wars—thus a temporary relapse into barbarism—if the means to culture are not to deprive them of their culture and of their existence itself.
(Human, All Too Human, §477.)

How clear would Nietzsche have had to be in order not to be sympathetically misinterpreted by persons desperate to save him from his clearest assertions? How was he ever to advocate x if lesser and ideological men are forever going to take ‘x’ to mean not-x? Credulity has been stretched to such lengths by those who would like to tame and save Nietzsche for themselves that this radical aristocratist has even been seen by some as a prole-loving egalitarian!

The Advantage of the Deranged

One might have thought that a derangement of the mental faculties would be of some disadvantage to an intellectual career, had one not time and again met with the most absurd and idiotic pronouncements in spittle and ink by our most celebrated academicians.

.....But a derangement of the mental faculties has one advantage in the academy which elsewhere would be seen as a liability and a danger: it allows that one might proclaim without necessity and with effulgent whim the boldest connections between things, which thitherto would have been deemed absurd, and thus it yields a never ending supply of what the academy esteems most: originality.
.....We are so used to thinking of originality as a good thing, that it is all too easy for us to accept originality per se as a good thing. But only a little thought is required to understand that originality by itself is a sorry and silly thing. An estimation of orginality per se would have us esteem a computer made of custard that doesn’t work above an old and conventional computer that does. Of course, when it’s put this way, no one would countenance originality for its own sake.
.....But as I say, in the paper-mill of the academy, where consequences are barely perceived and where, presumably, matters are thought to be epiphenominal, originality in all its unfettered and insane glory reigns. There is good reason for this. A never-ending supply of originality means a never-ending supply of work. If academicians restricted themselves tomorrow to saying what is both original and sensible, or just sensible, academicians would find themselves a week next Tuesday circling the classifieds. But with a working ethos that esteems orginality above all, there is no end to what can be said, and thus no end to academic work.
.....The modern academician finds himself stuck for something to say only for a short while; for with orginality trumping reason and evidence, there is nothing to stop him forging ahead with that ground-breaking work on the hitherto unsuspected link between paper clips and hegemonic systems of power.
.....For him there is no lifetime of barren struggle looking for the causal connection between x and y, only to find there isn’t one, because to him x and y can be picked at random and made to stick with the glue of some esoteric and hermeneutic theory. Indeed, the more disassociated x and y are, the more bold, shocking and original is the forging of a link between them.
.....In the atmosphere of untrammled orginality, the befuddled and irrational half-wit suffers no disadvantage; on the contrary, he blazes a trail.

If you have a favourite academic loon, please recommend him or her at The Hatemonger’s Quarterly, whose “crack young staff” are running an Academic of the Month competition.