Why do You Think What You Think?

I had a small revelation yesterday. No the earth did not shake, nor did voices call out to me from the sky. I just understood something very simple that had eluded me till now.

 

I am always taken by surprise when people attack me by suggesting that I hold my opinions for the sake of it, or to attract attention, or because of some sinister, concealed worldview such as I am from time to time accused.

 

And now I know why. The people who make these accusations do so because they themselves hold opinions for reasons of conformity and convenience, rather than out of conviction. These opinions, as was well-demonstrated last week during BBC3’s ‘Free Speech ‘ programme, have absolutely no bearing on any actual arguments or facts.

 

 

Look at the way I was accused by one audience member of supporting ‘rape culture’ because I defended the presumption of innocence. The idea that anyone accused of rape might conceivably *be* innocent seemed wholly baffling to her.

 

 And then there was the unfortunate person who (as far as I could make out)  simply couldn’t conceive that I might favour the death penalty put of compassion rather than cruelty. If this is your approach to the world, then you will think everyone else is up to the same thing,. If you yourself don’t hold your views out of conviction, but only out of conformity, you will be angry with the person who breaches that conformity. He is making you look like a conformist by doing so. And while many are ready to conform, few like to admit they are doing so.

 

None of my critics will believe me when I say that hold my opinions because they seem true and morally correct to me. And I suppose there may well be commentators who do take positions for effect or career reasons, which makes it easier for them to believe this of me. But there it is, I just hold them because I think them correct. My assailants are the ones who lose by this.  If they  believed that I might be sincere, they would themselves find it easier to argue for their own views. As it is, the simplest logical or factual challenge can usually derail them hopelessly.

If it Had Happened Otherwise - Part 94

Here is an entertaining  spin-off from a long but pretty unproductive argument I have been having with ‘Jack’ and ‘Paul P’ about Hitler’s attitude towards Britain.  The whole thing is to be found in the discussion thread of the posting ‘”Visceral” Hatred, Ukrainian Culture and the Hitler Threat’ published last Thursday.

 

My view is that we were never a central concern of Hitler, as is shown by his actual behaviour, and tend to exaggerate our part in the war. My opponents seek to rebut this by producing various documents and quotations showing that at various times Hitler contemplated creating a big Navy to challenge the RN. No doubt he was urged to do so. No Navy worth the name doesn’t lobby for more ships. He may even have considered it at various moments. But not only did he never actually build such a fleet. He declined to make use of the large chunk of the French Navy which fell into his hands in 1940 -  several battleships and heavy cruisers, plus many destroyers and other vessels, which would have been formidable in battle. He didn’t because he wasn’t interested. Russia, and particularly Ukraine and the Caucasus, were his aim. That’s why he invaded the USSR, and not Britain, in 1941.

 

This, by the way, led to Mr ‘P’ making certain insinuations about me for which he has now apologised and withdrawn – the exchange can be found in full on the thread.

 

It has also, rather more interestingly, produced this counter-factual suggestion from ‘Jack’  as to the progress of events after a compromise peace and renewed non-aggression pact between Poland and Germany, such as might well have happened had Britain and France not dishonestly guaranteed Poland’s independence (in the full knowledge that they could and would do nothing to protect Poland if attaced) in April 1939.

 

I have interleaved my responses to the suggestions by ‘Jack’ in his comment, marking those responses *** .

 

‘Jack: ‘With her eastern border secured (no fear of a two front war), Hitler could launch his war of revenge against France in 1941-2’

***I would like to know more about this ‘war of revenge’. When was it planned first? In any case, there is the strong possibility that, in the absence of war in 1940, Belgium would have reconsidered her neutrality and permitted the extension of the Maginot line into her territory, so making Hitler’s 1940 invasion plans impracticable.  France knew perfectly well that this fault existed in her diplomacy and defences. So did Belgium. Alternatively France, lacking such an alliance,  would have fortified her frontier with Belgium. The Maginot line was in fact a formidable obstacle, and its major fault was that it was so seriously incomplete. Hitler might well have used the time to build his own Western defences, which in 1940 were not serious but could have become so.

 

Then there is the problem of how Hitler would have justified an unprovoked attack on neutral France. We now know (read Lynne Olson’s interesting book ‘Those Angry Days’ for details) that it was the arrival of German troops in Paris which finally awoke the USA out of its neutralist torpor in 1940, and began to shift opinion towards armed neutrality if not eventual war. Such an attack would also have been viewed with some alarm in Moscow. Hitler would have thought carefully before doing any such thing. His interest in Alsace and Lorraine was never very great. They were annexed after conquest, but they were a symbolic conquest. Would he have taken major risks for Alsace and Lorraine alone? My view is that he invaded France because he did not want to have an active enemy on his Western frontier while he was attacking Russia. All his policies were guided by the over-riding Eastward priority.

 

 

 

He continues ‘ to definitively remove Britain from economic and political involvement on the continent’.

***This is simply odd. He would have attacked France, if he did so, to eliminate France. It is extraordinary vanity to imagine that he would have done so to ‘definitively remove Britain from political involvement on the continent’.

 

If Britain had had any sense, she would have kept at arm’s length from such involvement anyway, as her interests were not affected.

 

‘ and could proceed with Plan Z to guarantee superiority over the Royal Navy that had the Far East and Mediterranean (Japan and Italy) to consider as well.’

 

***‘Jack’ has this ‘Plan Z’ on the brain, I’m afraid.  You might as well take seriously the US Navy’s plan for a war with the British in the 1930s. The files of every major state are full of unfulfilled plans. What matters is which of them came to pass. Look, if Hitler had wanted a war with the British Empire, he’d have built a huge navy instead of a huge army. He didn’t , because he didn’t want such a war. That wasn’t because he was nice (he wasn’t) or liked cream teas (though he may have done).It was because his policy was the regular east-facing policy of all German governments since about 1900.

 

He wanted a war with the USSR.

 

Jack : ‘Hitler would have time to integrate the European economy into Germany's on Germany's own timescale.

 

***No doubt. But like most people he is simply not using his imagination to the full about how momentous the Polish guarantee was.  If we had not given the Polish guarantee and had then not gone to war in 1939, there would have been no Norway campaign, no invasion of the Low Countries, no Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Hitler would not have had the crucial access to raw materials granted to him by that Pact, and so would have been far more vulnerable to a naval blockade if he had initiated a war with France or Britain.

 

He would not have had control over anything West of the Rhine. He would not have invaded Norway or Denmark , or the Baltic states. So the ‘European economy’ would have been limited to the ‘Greater Germany’ created by the end of 1938, slightly extended by the Polish concessions discussed earlier. My own guess is that he would have sought to ease these problems by putting irresistible pressure on Romania (for its oil).

 

‘Jack ‘ : ‘Britain would not have been able to rely on the USA for assistance if FDR had not been re-elected in November 1940 when Chamberlain died in office.’

 

***As it happens (and again Lynne Olson is very good on this) FDR was never the secret enthusiast for Britain portrayed in so much sentimental literature, but a tricky and devious politician who gave the impression of action while not actually taking any. His 1940 opponent, Wendell Willkie, might well have beaten Roosevelt had there been no war, and there is reason to believe (see Olson)  that Willkie might well have been *more* interventionist than Roosevelt. Again, a reading of Olson on this period is a sharp corrective to sentimental ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ ideas of how the USA viewed Britain at that time. Public opinion wavered between mistrust of or indifference to us,  to active dislike.  Congress wanted us stripped bare before it would give us any aid at all, and Congress got what it wanted.

 

 

‘Jack’ asks : ‘Would Churchill have become Prime Minister or would a more "realistic" appeaser consider that Germany should be left alone to expand eastwards and retain her new euro zollverein in order to retain "independence" and most of the Empire?’

 

*** More interesting still. Without a war in 1939, there would have had to have been an election by November 1940. One wonders what the Labour Party (which was opposed to rearmament until March 1939) would have actually said about defence and foreign policy in that election. The old ‘Guilty Men’ myth of Left-wing courage and resolution versus Tory cringing appeasement would not, I think, have been sustainable if that election had taken place. It was never true, but a 1940 election would have drawn attention to its untruth in  a pretty big way.  It is very unlikely that Churchill would have become Prime Minister. But then again, Churchill’s great contribution to our national story was to refuse, quite rightly,  to make peace after Dunkirk. Such a peace would have been worse than any other possibles alternative.

 k;

If there had never been any such defeat, his role would have been less important. And the Dunkirk defeat is, once again, a direct and traceable consequence of the Polish guarantee. By the way, please don’t forget that Churchill ‘appeased’ Stalin like anything , very ‘realistically’,  as his defenders rightly point out,  and was shockingly bullied by Stalin,  especially over Poland, before, during and after Yalta. And that Roosevelt was no help in many of these conflicts.

 

As for this new ‘euro zollverein’ this just shows ( for the second time) that 'Jack' simply hasn’t realised that, without the Polish guarantee, there wouldn’t have been any such thing in 1940. No guarantee, no war in September, no Norway campaign, no invasion in May. Do think.

 

‘Jack’: ‘The invasion of the Soviet Union would have been initiated at the most favourable moment for Germany. The USSR would not have received vital Lend-Lease from America.’

 

***The first bit of this is certainly true. But by what route would Hitler have attacked? Would Stalin have refused to believe he was planning an attack? Would his armies and air forces have been wholly unready for it when it came? The fact that Stalin took the Pact seriously, and the fact that Hitler was already on the banks of the River Bug in September 1940, directly on the frontier of the USSR, greatly aided the German campaign. Without the partition of Poland, he would have had to compel Hungary, Romania and the rump of Slovakia (and possibly Poland too) to give him passage. This could not have been done without attracting attention. He would also have had to leave a substantial force in the West, in case neutral France (which, not having been defeated in May 1940 would still have appeared to him as a major military threat) decided to declare war and take advantage of his commitment in the East.

 

All Hitler’s military adventures were huge gambles on quick victory, just as 1914 had been. As soon as it became a long war, he was almost certainly done for.  Germany’s problem (until it obtained the eastern land empire that it wanted) was that it was capable of huge spurts of dynamic energy, but in sustained warfare it would eventually be outmatched by the industrial power of its enemies.

 

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Britain and the USA, if neutral in 1941 had given some sort of aid to the USSR against Hitler Roosevelt’s administration, for certain, was crammed with Communist agents and fellow-travellers.  As for us, it’s possible. We’d been allies in 1914. We’d already contemplated a new alliance in the famous failed Moscow talks of summer 1939, to which we had despatched Admiral the Hon. Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax,  amongst others.  

 

‘Jack’ again: ‘Japanese expansion in the Far East would still have been southwards to take advantage of the occupation of France and the Netherlands.

 

***Once again, *what* occupation of France and the Netherlands???? (third time of asking)Without the Polish guarantee and the Molotov pact, there is no reason to suppose this would have happened. That is the whole point. This sort of thing proves that ‘Jack’ isn’t really thinking about this at all.

 

‘Jack’ : ‘There would have been a localised Pacific War because of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines that would have been concluded with a victory for the USA. The British Empire would have been terminally weakened.’

 

***I really cannot comment on this. But I cannot see how any other outcome in the Far East could have been much worse for the British Empire than the one that followed from the Polish Guarantee, namely the catastrophic loss of Singapore. This event ended that Empire forever. And if France had not been defeated in 1940, the Japanese advance into Malaya through French Indo-China would have been a very different thing.

 

 

Not Very Friendly

Some readers may be interested in this extract from an interview with the actor Matthew Perry, interviewed in the ‘Sunday Times’,  27^th April 2014. He is referring to my clash with him on ‘Newsnight’ shortly before Christmas, when we disagreed about drug courts and ‘addiction’,   which he claimed (mystifyingly) was an ‘allergy of the body’ . I think I may have laughed.

 

Apparently he wanted to hit me, but didn’t. In that case I am not sure what he seeks to prove by revealing this desire, or by saying (as he does) that I am one of the few people he could beat up. I am not especially distressed to admit that he may well be right and that, had he attacked me, I very much hope I would have had the good sense not to retaliate.

 

My brawling days are long over (though I once long ago surprised myself with the power of my left fist,  in an act of pure self-defence). I am 62 and he is 44, which, alas, inevitably weighs against me. But I suppose it just illustrates that the self-righteous liberal’s reaction to any kind of contrary opinion is instinctively totalitarian. The desire to thump an opponent  is not that far from the desire to arrest him and lock him up, which is just violence in slow motion.  He certainly didn’t offer (and still hasn’t offered) any actual counter to what I said.  In fact, in the same interview,  he offers evidence for my position.  If ‘addiction’ were the force he claims it to be, how could he have ‘battled’ against it? What else, except his own will, did he use for this battle?  Had he not chosen to exercise his will, wouldn’t ‘addiction’ have won?  In which case I am surely right to say what I say. He couldn’t have picked a fight with ‘addiction’, and thumped it for disagreeing with him.

 

By the way, it’s not really the case that we ‘had to be escorted separately out of the building’.  We were kept apart before the programme, perhaps because Mr Perry, like most Hollywood aristocracy, was accompanied by a large retinue, which took up an entire hospitality room.

 

As we left the studio, one member of this very large entourage started barking at me about drug courts, quite rudely and aggressively, and I replied as reasonably as I could, and he desisted. There were so many of them that they completely filled the first of the (rather slow) lifts which descended to the basement from which ‘Newsnight’ is transmitted, and I was happy to let them go first. Had I squeezed in,  the atmosphere might have been a bit tense, I suppose. Also I wasn’t feeling particularly combative,  being at that time on a course of an unpalatable substance called ‘Gastrografin’, which I had been instructed by my doctor to take before  a CT scan I was to undergo the following day (I, at least, am glad to say that the scan found nothing alarming) . Those who have come across this prescription will know that, as well as having an unlovely taste, it has a number of disagreeable effects into which I will not go.

 

Anyway, here are some extracts from the interview. Mr Perry has recently been in London again, making a film about a man who throws a dog in the air and catches it.

No, me neither.  

He told Benji Wilson (the whole interview is in the 'Culture' section of the paper, which is behind a pay-wall. Do read the whole thing) that he had "bumped into an idiot (that's me) on national television."

 

He said it was rare to meet "somebody who's so off the mark about something", adding "If he'd said that addiction was controversial, I could have worked with that.

Apparently, when I said trhat 'addiction' is a fantasy (as I did, because it is ), Mr Perrry didn't know what to do. I was, it seems "attacking something that has been the pre-eminent battle of my (his) life" . I was saying it was "nonexistent and it was a choice, a matter of will."

In a wonderful piece of California rebuttal, Mr Perry then expostulated : 'Like I've chosen to almost die from this disease four different times in my life. We had to be escorted separately out of the building.

"I don't think I've ever hit anybody in my life, but I almost got up and hit him on national television. He happens to be one of the few people I could beat up."

 

 

A Christian nation, Dave? Only when we are trying to get a place in a faith school

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

It hurts me to say it, but the grisly gang of anti-God professors and authors  are right, and David Cameron is wrong. This is not  a Christian country any more. Actually, I suspect the Prime Minister knows this quite well, as he and his Nasty Party have never done anything to defend the national religion from its attackers.

It is of course possible that Mr Cameron is genuinely pulsing with the power of the Holy Ghost. But it is hard to forget that he is also trying to defend his flanks against UKIP, and  to win back some of the  ex-Tories who defected over same-sex marriage.

Then there’s the problem of his children’s education. His well-publicised attendance at a London church miles from his home has helped him and one of his senior colleagues to insert their young into one of the best primary schools in England.

Too bad for any children  of poor Christian parents  who couldn’t get in because  the school is crammed with Tory infants.

Of course Mr Cameron could afford a private school, but since the Tory Party was taken over by left-wingers, its leaders, like Labour’s, have to pretend to love the state system

 Now, I know nothing of the inner mind  of our nation’s Premier, but I can think of few things less Christian than to use outward displays of faith to gain material or political advantages for yourself, especially if you do so at the expense of the poor.

Before he began doing God, Mr Cameron declined to criticise ‘middle-class parents with sharp elbows’, praising them  as ‘active citizens’. This was presumably at one of those moments when his religion  was fading out, ‘like Magic FM in the Chilterns’, rather than fading in.

Now, neither Mr Cameron  nor Mr Blair, nor even Harold Wilson (who launched the Cultural Revolution) or Margaret Thatcher (who fought so hard to abolish the Christian Sabbath), can be blamed for destroying the Christian church in this country.

It bayoneted itself in the  heart by supporting the First World War when it should  have used every sinew to stop it. The Church in this country and all of Europe has  never recovered.

But both parties have kicked Christianity when it was down. Their joint support for easy divorce effectively cancelled the Church of England’s marriage oath, in which husband and wife swore to remain together for life.

Their joint backing for abortion on demand undid one of  the greatest advances made by Christian civilisation, which ended the pagan practice of murdering unwanted children.

They quietly allowed the teaching of Christianity as the national religion to disappear (illegally) from hundreds of state schools. Religion is now taught instead as a sort of oddity which other people do, and which you can laugh at provided they are not Muslims, who must be treated with respect in case they get angry. Pupils are now ignorant of the faith that formed their nation, but are force-fed green propaganda, and dangerously bad advice about sex and drugs.

 But above all, there was Harriet Harman’s 2010 Equality Act, which was actually an EU Directive. If the Tories had been in office at the time, they would have passed it themselves. This turned the pursuit of ‘equality’ into our new national belief system, alongside the closely related commitment to ‘human rights’.

It is not just that these ideas are quite different from the Christian beliefs in authority, duty, self-restraint and conscience that used to govern our law and life.

They are actively hostile to  an established Church. For they ban any ‘discrimination’ on the grounds of religion. And that means that the law cannot discriminate in favour of the Christian faith – a change many radical judges welcome.

In practice, of course, it also means that Islam, which brooks no mockery or disrespect, grows strong while the gentler voice of Anglicanism grows fainter and fainter until it is blown away on the breeze. You wait and see.

But for now, until the church is turned into a mosque or a bar, the faith schools are still jolly good, if you can wangle your sons and daughters into them.

He is a bit silly sometimes, but Charles is our best hope

I can remember when there was no political advertising on public transport at all. Now a great deal of such advertising has a political message of one sort or another, so why the censorship, on the London Underground, of the Almeida Theatre’s striking poster for its play about what will happen when Prince Charles becomes King?

I think it’s genuine fear of an unavoidable national crisis, myself. I have long predicted (and in a way hoped for) a clash between Charles and the Government when he eventually comes to the throne. When it arrives, many who now fashionably despise the Monarchy will find themselves unexpectedly siding with him.

The Prince is silly on some things (warmism especially) but in most matters he is far closer to the nation’s heart and soul than the political class. And he has just as much of a moral claim to speak for us.

Think about it. It’s the party  machines, not us, who actually choose MPs in safe seats, and then boss them around. And it’s money from rather fishy billionaires that pays for their campaigns, and they expect their reward. Whereas the heir to throne is nobody’s creature, and hasn’t sold himself to the highest bidder.

It is amazing that the Blair Creature does  not grasp how much he is despised, especially by those who once admired him. He has taken to making speeches about doing good in the Middle East, where his Iraq policy helped to ruin the lives of millions for decades to come.

It also cost this country billions we could not afford, not to mention 179 British lives.

I still think the only way for him to regain our respect would be to take a vow of lifelong silence in a very austere monastery, where he could perhaps clean the lavatories. But he still thinks he was right, and many of his accomplices also still walk around as if they had done nothing wrong.

It is a gigantic scandal that Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the Iraq War, which ceased taking evidence three years ago, has yet to be published. Who is holding it up and why? Is it frontbench collusion between the parties? If Parliament is any use at all, it will force publication this year.

There is nothing at all ‘racist’ in UKIP’s election posters. Those who use the word simply prove that the expression has become nothing more than an empty smear. What’s wrong with the placards is that they just aren’t very good.

In the crowded pedestrian zone of a prosperous  Home Counties town, I politely asked a heedless cyclist to dismount. He ploughed on. I grew slightly less polite, and – to my joy – won the support of two other citizens, who eventually forced the lawbreaker to stop. There were, of course, no  police officers to be seen. At this point a group of tattooed, pierced young men joined in, on the side of the cyclist. We had infringed his human rights, or something.

It could have turned nasty, and nearly did. But what struck me is that there is now no guaranteed majority on the side of goodness in public places. And there might soon be a majority for wickedness.

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It Was My Fault I was Booed - an Exercise in Free Speech

On a recent visit to a well-known social media site (What is it called? Twaddle? Something like that), I found quite a few reactions to my appearance on the BBC Programme ‘Free Speech’ last Thursday evening, still, I think, to be found on the BBC iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b041t6r9) but not for long.  BBC3? Not really a place I know much about, but I was asked very nicely to go on the programme, which involved a trip to Nottingham, always an interesting destination, plus a chance to glimpse, on the train there and back, the mysterious, beautiful Triangular Lodge at Rushton. I had not heard of this astonishing work of art and faith (it is all about the Holy Trinity) when I first saw it 45 or so years ago, and could not quite believe that I had in fact seen anything so lovely and unusual just sitting in the English landscape.  Since then I have always looked out for it on the stretch of track between Kettering and Market Harborough. One day I hope I shall actually go and visit the Lodge itself.

 

Also, the train to Nottingham stops at Market Harborough, which allows me to text messages to one or two trusted people saying ‘Am in Market Harborough’, knowing I will receive replies asking ‘Where ought you to be?’. This stretch of country is part of the large area of handsome, unpicturesque England which hardly anyone visits but which I always draw a strong feeling of reassurance

 

Anyway, there I was in a former Courthouse in the pleasantly restored bit of Nottingham just east of the centre, near the new tram tracks, not quite knowing what I had let myself in for, but certain it would not be the same as ‘Question Time’. This, after all, was a Youth Channel.  Two of the panellists spoke for Youth, Archie Bland, of the Independent, and Ava Vidal, a former prison officer, now a comedian.   

 

Perhaps slightly less youthful was Anna Soubry, an unusually interesting and engaging Tory MP (not that I like her politics, as I don’t, but she seems to have independence of mind and a good strong combative streak), former journalist, former barrister, now a junior Defence Minister.

 

I was there to represent age, and reaction, and polished leather shoes, and everything bad. And as I walked into the old courtroom in which the programme was to take place, I was booed by quite a few people in the audience, just for existing. I waved merrily at them.  Alas, this bit was not broadcast, as it might have helped viewers understand what sort of audience it was, more quickly than they otherwise might have done.

 

I received a strongly hostile reception from quite a few of them (nothing to worry about, but there were times when I simply couldn’t make myself heard above the shouts and heckling, which is never good) I am sure it wasn’t universal but it must have sounded sometimes as if it was. It got better later. It was almost impossible to discuss prison (it always is, as any intelligent and informed opinion cuts across the boilerplate and clichés of both tribal leftists and tribal Tories, and gets nowhere). I was also asked (I must do this again at a student meeting in London next month, at 6.30 p.m. on May 7^th at King’s College in the Strand, with the great Theodore Dalrymple as my opponent. ) to discuss the death penalty, a topic that has now become a sort of ritual, as there is not the slightest chance of it ever being restored under acceptable conditions. Yet I think it dishonest to avoid it when asked.

 

Even so, I generally feel, when I make the excellent case for the capital penalty in facts and logic, that most people in the audience regard this spectacle as akin to seeing a dinosaur skeleton in a museum suddenly starting to speak. They are too astonished to hear much of what I say. One audience member misunderstood me so completely that I can only assume she was too shocked actually to listen to a word I had said.

 

Somehow, we ended up discussing circumcision, during which the anti-Hitchens loathing abated because they weren’t absolutely sure that my opinions were criminal, and then rape (a subject I never volunteer for). I stuck to a firm, defence of the presumption of innocence, but noticed that this immediately got me denounced as a supporter of something called ‘rape culture’. Does this mean that anyone who doesn’t agree that everyone accused of rape is a) guilty and doesn’t need a trial and b) should be locked up forever and a day , is a supporter of ‘rape culture’. I suspect so.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, when I ventured on to ‘Twaddle’ the next day I found that quite a few of its contributors were still, in a way, booing. The burden of their message was that I should have felt actually ashamed of what I had said, which in their view was plainly, objectively wrong. The worrying thing was that they really did think something of the kind, that it was morally wrong of me to have held and spoken out loud the opinions I expressed. Who has taught them this totalitarian view? Who has failed to teach them that their opponents are entitled to their opinions? I do not know, but those responsible have much to answer. I have said for some time that many of our more feral young people would make excellent concentration camp guards. But some of these ‘Twaddle’ contributors would make excellent members of some Committee of Public safety, breezily and without a qualm sending dissenters to their doom.

 

My absolute favourite was this one from a  young woman (I have corrected a minor spelling error) ‘You should review what you said, which led to you being booed.’

 

It was my fault, you see, that I was booed. It reminded me of the brave old days in the Hampstead Constituency Labour Party general management committee, circa 1979, then held in the magnificent surroundings of Sir Thomas Beecham’s old house, which had become the headquarters of the train drivers’ union, ASLEF. At these festivals of the higher philosophy, the chairperson would call me to order during my own speeches -  because I was being heckled . This tended to happen if one were too critical of the IRA, or supported the nuclear deterrent, or put in a good word for constitutional monarchy.

 

‘Comrade Hitchens!’ she would snap  ‘You are provoking the other comrades!’ I thought then that this was so unconsciously funny that it wasn’t worth pointing out that it was actually her job to call the hecklers to order. Nowadays I’m not so sure that it’s still funny.

'Visceral' Hatred, Ukrainian Culture and the Hitler Threat

Mark Jaremko says ‘I wish Mr. Hitchens would stop with his rambling of "Ukraine has to culture". ‘

 

I am assuming he means to write “Ukraine has no culture”. He places this sentence in quotation marks, as if I had said it. But what I said was quite distinct. I said it had ‘that it has no *common* language or culture, a completely different thing. I have no doubt there is a Ukrainian culture. But it is not shared by a large minority of the citizens of Ukraine. Misrepresentations of this kind are very unhelpful to rational discussion.

 

‘Phil W’ says, oddly : ‘The pertinent fact about Hitler was that he was a direct threat to Britain itself as he subsequently proved by invading France, almost destroying the BEF, and then bombing our major cities for several months.’

 

That doesn’t show that Hitler was any threat to Britain.  It is a wholly logic-free and unhistorical assertion. What was the BEF doing in France at all? Why was Britain at war with Germany? By Hitler’s choice?  No, by the choice of Britain’s own incompetent government which (allegedly in defence of the ‘balance of power’ in Europe) succeeded mainly in stimulating an unprecedented  alliance between the two major European powers(Balance?)

 

 It shows that, once Britain had declared war on Germany, and sent its tiny,  ill-equipped army to sit next to the French army, Hitler felt the need (no great surprise there) to engage and if possible destroy British armed forces, and to knock Britain out of the war. Had we not made our incomprehensible and dishonest guarantee to Poland, there is no reason to believe that Hitler would have attacked Britain then or later. He simply wasn’t that interested in us. Indeed that guarantee pretty much precipitated the events which led to the invasion of Poland, a wholly avoidable event. Britain has never , except from 1916-18,  been a major European military power. Hitler’s interests were in the East. His only concern with France was that she might attack him in the rear while he was pursuing his eastern ambitions. France’s declaration of war gave him the pretext for what would otherwise have been a unprovoked attack, a politically and diplomatically difficult and dangerous thing to make against a major nation.

 

 

 

My automatic critic ‘Bert’ has spoken again (though it is not, alas, to explain to us why British rubbish collections have not been affected by the EU Landfill Directive, but have been revolutionised by some other force, of whose existence he is certain but which he cannot name and or describe – and they say Faith is Dead).

 

This time he has automatically disagreed with me about the Schengen agreement, thus : ‘Peter Hitchens’ equation of the Schengen Agreement with the aims of WW2 is bizarre. I suspect that most people – here as much as in Europe – are delighted that they can move around the continent without the faff of showing passports etc. I doubt very much that they see connect this with German or Russian tanks blasting across cowering countries. (As somebody, I think, pointed out on another thread, the whole notion of border controls is a relatively recent invention anyway.) It seems to be yet another manifestation of Hitchens’ visceral hatred for all things connected with the EU.’

 

I am grateful to him for giving the opportunity to expand on this. Schengen does not simply abolish passport controls ( I have still been unable to find any further details about a reader’s suggestion that this was done for a while in parts of the continent before 1914. Border controls were far from unknown in 18^th and 19^th century Europe. None of my vintage guide books substantiate the pre-1914 passport abolition theory, as they often contain detailed instructions of what to expect at the customs sheds of various nations. Perhaps passports were not required, though the number of travellers was very much smaller and they were generally ‘respectable’ and well-off, so countries had little reason to fear that they would become a burden on them.. Lengthy and thorough luggage inspections certainly were still required).

 

It abolishes frontiers *as such*. Frontiers are the boundaries of legal systems, military and police operations, trade, in short of the hard attributes of sovereignty. Without them no country is sovereign.

 

 

You can (I have) simply walk across the Rhine between Strasbourg, in France and Kehl in Germany, as if you were walking from Goring in Oxfordshire to Streatley in Berkshire . You can do the same between Aachen in Germany and Vaals in the Netherlands, only in that case there is not even a river, or any other sign that you have crossed from one jurisdiction into another, unless you are very observant indeed. The same’s true between Germany and the Czech Republic in the Elbe gorge, between Austria and Italy at the Brenner pass, between Germany and Poland at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder and Slubice . And if you fly to a British (or Irish) destination from any Schengen airport, you’ll find yourself corralled in a small, cramped zone separate from the rest of the airport, to punish you for belonging to a country which still more or less insists on observing the  formalities of a frontier. The Irish Republic would of course much prefer to join Schengen, but cannot really do so without raising awkward issues about the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, which Dublin does not genuinely recognise. If Dublin joined Schengen and London stayed out, that border would have to be marked and patrolled by both sides.

 

Though ‘formalities’ is the word. Possessors of EU passports cannot in reality be stopped from passing through our border ‘controls’. But the British public are still largely unaware of the fact that they have no more right of entry to Britain than does a KGB pensioner from Tallinn. Most don’t even realise that their passports are EU documents,  not British ones.

 

Now, Bert says that my ‘equation’ (not in my view the apposite word, I would say ‘comparison’. The whole point is that it much easier to do these things by treaty than by force, precisely because so few people will see the significance, or even notice it ) between Schengen and German war aims is ‘bizarre’.

 

Why is it ‘bizarre’

 

Is it not rather more ‘bizarre’ to pretend that the two have no connection, as it is to pretend that the EU does not have a remarkable congruence with German diplomatic aims openly expressed for almost a century, from the September Programme of 1914 to Friedrich Naumann’s  slightly later dream of ‘Mitteleuropa’.  Naumann was not a militarist or Nazi, but a conscientious and civilised liberal. The Hitler era blinds people to the fact that many of his policies were in fact pioneered by( and supported by) civilised Germans

 

To mention these things is always to be accused of making ‘xenophobic’ attacks upon the new liberal Germany, and of absurd comparisons between Herman van Rompuy and Hitler.

 

The accusations are false. I make so no such claims. It’s a simple matter of fact that Germany has always achieved power through customs and currency unions (which entail abolition of borders) has a strong economic, political and strategic interest in gaining some sort of hegemony over Ukraine, the Baltic coast and the Caucasus. Why does the EU have to be supranational rather than multinational? Because it requires the cession of sovereignty by its members to a central authority? Why does ti require this? because it is a political entity, requiring all the characteristics of such an entity (free movement of goods and persons within, an external border which is enforced, a common currency, a common bank, common foreign policy, common military strategy etc.).

As Germany dominates the EU economically and politically, geographically and in terms of population, it is no great surprise if the EU takes on German characteristics.

 

I like Germany, I understand that its size and power mean that it must dominate continental Europe and I am happy for it to do so. If France wishes to cohabit as subservient partner with its former occupier, then what is that to me? Britain has wasted quite enough blood and treasure trying to maintain the hopeless imbalance of power which existed between France and Germany, and which could only ever have ended one way.

 

Those who study photographs and newsreels of events such as the Anschluss and the invasion by Germany of Poland in 1939 and of the Low Countries in 1940 will note how many of them show German troops destroying frontier barriers or crashing through border posts. Why did they do that? Because the deliberate destruction of another country’s frontier is the most undeniable violation of its sovereignty. So much more sensible, and irreversible, to do it by means of treaties than by means of tanks. As I keep saying, the EU is the continuation of war by other means.

 

And what is this allegedly ‘visceral’; ‘hatred’ of the EU, of which I am accused by ‘Bert’ . I do not ‘hate’ the EU. I am happy for it to exist, though do not wish my own country to belong to it. My objection to British membership of the EU, and my objections to its policy in Ukraine, come from my organs of reason, not from my organs of digestion. Can the same be said of the automatic and unvarying objections of ‘Bert’ to all my articles?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Still not Getting the Point on Ukraine

I think any historian looking back on this period will see the Ukraine crisis as by far the most significant event of the time. So I have no hesitation in returning to it, as my first offering on returning from my involuntary disappearance from the Internet .

 

And I think my own trade is doing a lot of damage by failing to understand or explain what is going on. I was dispirited, for instance, by Hugh Muir’s selection of items on Ukraine in last Sunday’s ‘What the Papers Say’ on BBC Radio 4. The ‘Guardian’ writer,  while giving long quotations of descriptions of events, also quoted only analysts (Edward Lucas and Janet Daley) who supported the ‘New Cold War’ view  and ending by quoting yet another dim article comparing Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler.

 

Sure, some people genuinely do think that this  ignorant, unhistorical, crude, misleading and frankly dangerous comparison is valid and useful.  They deserve airtime, not least because there are so many of them, as one might expected in our poorly-educated society. But there is another view, which has been expressed by several people including me, and you wouldn’t have known from Mr Muir’s selection (still available here for a few days http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0414rsb ) that such a view even existed. Shouldn’t a review of the papers have at least given some mention to the dissenting position? To its considerable credit, Radio 4’s ‘The World Tonight’ has for some time (after a poor start)  been a model of proper impartiality on this, giving ample airtime to genuine experts on both sides who disagree on this matter, and leaving it to the listener to form his or her opinions. Whenever it happens, I almost weep with nostalgic joy, for it reminds me of the old long lost World Service to which I would listen in Weimar, Prague and Moscow on the crackling, elusive short wave  - ‘The Truth, Read by Gentlemen’, as it was once described, though among the gentlemen there was also the evocative voice of Pamela Creighton, bursting with intelligence and so English you can almost see the meadows and woodlands (you can hear clips from those days here  http://andywalmsley.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/this-is-london-world-service-memories.html

 (scroll down) .

You will even hear the (now-abolished) station signature ‘Lilliburlerlo’, the song that drove James II out of Ireland, and thus impossibly Unionist, British, patriotic, Protestant and ‘outdated’. A truncated, blandified version was used until a few years ago but appears to have vanished. Note that it's always 'Greenwich Mean Time', observe the use of language as carefully-separated words pronounced with care and the scrupulous attribution to others of any claim which the BBC has not itself been able to verify (an absolute rule at that time).

 

By the way, listeners to today's BBC and readers of the mainstream press in Britain might be forgiven for thinking that the Geneva accords agreed between Russia, the USA and the EU (plus the Ukrainian junta installed by the mob) only applied to Russian-speaking separatists in the east of the country, who have plainly not taken any notice of the agreement.

 

Well, it’s quite true that they haven’t taken any notice, and indeed it is not clear how Russia could make them observe it anyway, short of actually sending in the troops that it is said to be massing on the frontier. Though I personally have no doubt that Russia has been fomenting a lot of this, it is notoriously harder to rein in such things than it is to start them, and  it may genuinely be the case that some Russian speakers in places such as Slavyansk are keener or joining Russia than Russia is on having them.

 

But what did the agreement actually say?

 This is the only text of it that I have been able to find, and it is so brief that there’s really no excuse for any media outlet not having read it in full: 

 

‘The Geneva meeting on the situation in Ukraine agreed on initial concrete steps to de-escalate tensions and restore security for all citizens.

 

All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism.

 

All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.

 

Amnesty will be granted to protestors and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.

 

It was agreed that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission should play a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation of these de-escalation measures wherever they are needed most, beginning in the coming days. The U.S., E.U. and Russia commit to support this mission, including by providing monitors.

 

The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.

 

The participants underlined the importance of economic and financial stability in Ukraine and would be ready to discuss additional support as the above steps are implemented.’

 

Note the two really central sections (with my emphases added):

 

‘All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-semitism.

 

All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.’

 

I think it is blazingly clear from this that Russia requires the ‘Maidan’ occupation in Kiev to disperse, and for the Pravy Sektor squads to be disbanded,  as a quid pro quo for the dispersal of the pro-Russians in Donetsk and elsewhere.

 

Have you seen or heard or read *any* description of moves to do this, or to disarm and disperse such organisations as the menacing ‘Pravy Sektor’ in Kiev itself, or elsewhere in the West? Or have you seen any discussion of the fact that the agreement imposes obligations on both sides? If so, please do let me know, for I have not. I have not even seen a recent report of the state of affairs on the ‘Maidan’ . And how’s the promised inquiry going into the highly public beating, by members of the Ukraine parliament, of the TV boss Oleksandr Pantelymonov?

 

Now, whether the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, or his boss, Vladimir Putin, ever seriously expected the Ukrainian Junta (I use this name as a corrective to the selective use of such terms as ‘regime’ applied by mainstream media to governments of which they disapprove, especially that in Syria. If The Assad government is a ‘regime’, then how much more is that Ukrainian government, which came to power through violent mob rule, a ‘Junta’)  to do anything of the kind I do not know.

 

Neither of these persons is exactly naïve or lacking in cynicism or calculation.

 

 

And it seems to me that the ‘West’ which has big jaws and a large appetite, but rather small teeth, may have wholly misunderstood what these accords really meant. To Russia (which has quite big teeth and much more limited and well-thought-out aims, despite the absurd caricatures of Putin as a new Hitler) , they were an official and irreversible recognition that the future of Ukraine is Russia’s legitimate business. I think that may prove very important indeed in the months to come, unless everyone completely loses their heads (as so many people seem so anxious to do).

 

I should have thought that the events of the past few weeks would have helped to make my point that ‘Ukraine’ as a country is a fiction. We know it has nothing truly resembling an economy or a currency, that it has no common language or culture, and now we see that it cannot physically defend itself from external or internal threats, its armed might being on one occasion quite easily overcome by a  crowd of old ladies and fat men with beards. I agree that the old ladies of the former USSR, with their armour-piercing scowls, weighty handbags and extra-wide loading gauge, are not to be trifled with. But even so.

 

The real problem is that, in the age of supranational states, Ukraine is a throwback to the loopy idealism of Versailles, a Wilsonian state based on a nationality, but containing in its borders many people who don’t really share that nationality, and also being smack in the middle of a volatile and contested piece of territory. So, from the start it was ripe for destabilisation by neighbouring outsiders, and very likely to be subjected to it.

 

The only thing to be said in its favour that that this mess was created entirely by accident, rather than as an act of carefully-thought-out policy.  Actually, it seems to me that any wise person would see these events not as a pretext for boarding up the doorways between Russia and the ‘West’ (as Washington seems so strangely anxious to do) but to reorder the borders so that Ukraine had more of a chance of developing into a viable entity. But to do that I think everyone would have to recognise its neutrality.

 

Western Europe has undone the follies of Versailles (without anyone noticing) by simply dissolving all the borders on the entire Continent, up to the River Bug. I still can’t get people to see what an astonishing thing this is, how the Treaty of Schengen ought to be ranked with those of Versailles, Potsdam, even Westphalia, as a momentous occasion. The supreme paradox of this is the borders dissolved by Schengen are the very same borders which so many young men fought and died to preserve and restore (and in which so many others died in collateral results)  in the 1939-45 conflict.

 

The modern age makes a great fetish about the nobility of World War Two. Then it presides smilingly over an act which utterly undoes that war’s principal purpose and achievement.  This is what happens when people stop thinking. 

Glad to be back

I can’t honestly apologise for the disappearance of this weblog for much of the Easter period because it was beyond my control and I can’t give a meaningful promise to prevent it ever happening again. And as I’m sick to the tonsils of railway apologies for delays which I know they can do nothing about and will repeat tomorrow, I’m not going to do anything of the kind here.

 

I’ll just say that I’m glad to be back, and explain that the platform through which this blog is published suffered some severe problems, which inadvertently led to the vanishing of the weblog. I very much hope we won’t be troubled in this way again, but I’ve learned over the past few days that the  world wide web is a more complex and vulnerable place than I thought it was.

 

Who is using spies and lies to grab power in Kiev? We are

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

What would you think if Russia’s spy chief had been discovered last week, roaming round Ukraine?

The British media would have been raging and howling about sinister Kremlin meddling.

Well, as far as I know, no such visit took place. But something just as astonishing did happen. John Brennan, Director  of the CIA, was, in fact, in Kiev last week, and I do not think he was there for the nightlife.

It is, by any measure, a hugely interesting fact that such a person, who seldom ventures out  at all, was in Ukraine at a moment of great tension. Yet the information was buried by British news media.

Last week, I asked several colleagues whom I know to be assiduous newspaper readers, interested in the world, savvy and alert, if they knew Mr Brennan had been in Kiev. Not one of them did.

Well, what else don’t we know? Here’s a hint. About three- quarters of what Russia is now doing in Ukraine is a bitter joke at the expense of the ‘West’. What we attack them for doing is what we have also done, in Yugoslavia and Ukraine.

We snatched Kosovo from Serbia. They have snatched Crimea from Ukraine. We  like referendums which confirm what we wanted to do  all along. So do they. So far, even they haven’t had the nerve to copy the EU habit of rerunning any votes that give the wrong result.

We unleashed armed mobs  in Kiev, to overthrow the lawful authority. They have done the same in Donetsk.

Just as I have no doubt that Russian secret services and front organisations have helped, encouraged and equipped the crowds in Donetsk, I have no doubt that the ‘Maidan’ protests in Kiev had what I shall politely call help from outside.

I write as a former Marxist revolutionary who has organized demonstrations and knows how hard it is to mobilise and sustain them.

I think both sides have also shut down broadcasts they do not like.

The simple conclusion we might draw from this, this Eastertide, is that it would be wise to stop being so lofty about what the Russians are doing, and pretending that our side are the nice, law-abiding freedom-lovers.

We should ask instead what this conflict is really about. I will tell you. It is an old-style territorial clash over a very valuable piece of territory, in which the EU, as Germany  used to do, seeks to expand its power and influence into areas long dominated by Moscow. This can only be resolved through compromise. Yet, on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great War  that almost ended civilisation, I am amazed by the partisan enthusiasm for conflict and confrontation that has infected so many politicians and journalists.

Why wait for future historians to tell you that you were rushed into a stupid, ruinous war by crude, one-sided propaganda?

Tell these people now that you want no such thing.

Squawking hypocrites who ignore reality

I am puzzled by the fuss over Muslim activists taking over schools. You  might as well deal with a burst pipe by changing into dry socks and shoes, and walking straight back into the water.

Muslims, many of them very serious and devout, now live in this country in large numbers.

They do so because our elite for years pursued a liberal policy of wide-open borders.

Among those who support this policy are the very same neo-conservative types (also keen warmongers, seldom happier than when Western bombs are falling on Muslim cities) who now shout and squawk about Islamists taking over schools.

They are having it both ways. If we hadn’t wanted Islam to flourish in this country, we shouldn’t have encouraged Muslims to live here. Now we have done so, we are just going to have to get used to it.

How Pollyanna turned into an evil, deceitful little monster

Meet Pollyanna Creep. She sounds awful, doesn’t she? The name calls up a picture of a gap-toothed, lisping little girl in a frilly dress who is never ever bad.

Some of you will recall (as I can) Hayley Mills’s portrayal of the original Pollyanna, that dangerously optimistic heroine, in 1960. The character seemed to have been made entirely  out of artificial sweeteners.

But Pollyanna Creep is far, far worse. She was invented by an American economist, John Williams, to describe the US government’s habit of, er, modifying its figures to give a good impression to voters. Now she’s moved across the Atlantic, and is very busy in the Treasury (where she has successfully concealed the fact that the Government’s debt is actually still rising).

And do you know anyone who seriously believes the Government’s inflation measure, the CPI, another part of Pollyanna Creep’s duties?

Two groups of people know for certain that it’s a lie – young couples trying to find somewhere to live; and savers, who are being legally burgled by the banks, with their joke interest rates.

Of course Miss Creep is working hard in the Ministry of Injustice too. I still actually meet people, seemingly in possession of all their wits, who rather sweetly believe official crime figures.

They should listen to Judge Richard Bray, who said on his retirement last week: ‘The figures have been massaged. Robbery is now classified as theft from a person. Burglary is downgraded to criminal damage. Cautions and reprimands are used to save police time. But you ask the people who walk about the towns and cities at night if crime has gone down.’

Have we yet even begun to realise what a huge change may overtake us in September  if Scotland votes for independence and Britain ceases to exist? 

Silly threats about the pound, the economy and defence simply don’t work. I hope they wouldn’t work on us either. They actually increase the pro-independence vote. So why  do we keep making them?

I for one am sure that the High Command of the Tory Party actively wants Scotland to leave. It is the only way the Conservatives, who like office above all things, will ever get  a majority at Westminster again. You don’t think they are that cynical? Why ever not?

How odd, when BBC Radio 4’s Today programme discussed the introduction of horse racing on Good Friday, that it was all about time off for jockeys, and money. Nobody mentioned the fact that it is the most solemn day in the Christian calendar. Once nobody knows, nobody cares. In the same way, people will one day forget that such a country as Britain ever existed. It’s the speed of it that amazes me.

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Night Falls on the City

I won't be posting here much for a day or two. Tonight is Maundy Thursday, for me the most solemn moment in the Christian calendar, as it is the actual commemoration of the Last Supper, ending in the stripping of the altar, silence and darkness.

By great good fortune, I have been able to visit Jerusalem and the tiny remaining scrap which is all that is left of the Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives and overlooked by Jerusalem on its hill. On this cool clear Spring night, my thoughts turn always to this particular spot, the disciples arriving nervously as night falls on the city, the tense and oppressed meal in the upper room, the mob already stirring, not yet knowing what its part is, but knowing that it will be a mob,  the agony in the garden, the arresting party coming out with staves and torches, the brief fight, the betrayal, the long wait, Peter warming himself at the fire and hearing the cock crow as he betrays his master for the third time, and going out, and weeping bitterly.

 

And still to come, the show trial and the usual failure of human justice.

Did it happen? Of course it happened. Everything about it is true. It is still happening, all the time.