Category Archives: historical

historical, society, Uncategorized

When Public Order Collapses

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I suppose that few British people have ever seen the collapse of public order. The United Kingdom has at least been fortunate in that regard. The tumultuous events of the past century have left largely intact the Victorian legacy of “law and order” bequeathed by the 19th Century.

Britain has endured two world wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945), other and smaller wars overseas, a General Strike (1926), other periods of industrial strife (1930s, 1970s), acts of terrorism, periods of political violence (1930s, 1970s) and even a limited and slow-burn civil war in pockets (Northern Ireland, particularly 1970s to late 1990s), yet overall order (and the rule of law) has persisted. Even in Northern Ireland that has been so, though a barrister friend of mine visited a “Diplock court”–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_courts— in the 1980s and told me of how surrealistic it was to see a criminal trial with all the panoply of the English law (bewigged and gowned barristers, a “red judge” in his wig and robes etc) but without a jury and, instead of court security or police officers, several soldiers carrying submachineguns and on guard.

This is of course in stark contrast to the experience of other Europeans. Russia of course is, as always, sui generis, with its 20thC revolutions (1917), civil war (1918-1922), political purges (1917-1948), invasion and vast wartime destruction (1941-1945), as well as the collapse of the Soviet system in the 1980s and early 1990s and the waves of gangsterism and Jewish-Zionist oligarchy that followed from 1991 onward until a degree of stability was attained under the Putin regime.

The older generation of mainland Europeans were almost all affected, at least at second-hand, by disorders: the Second World War swept across the continent leaving few countries untouched (and even some of those–Finland, Spain, Eire– had seen their own wars, civil wars etc). In fact, the only European countries of any size unaffected directly (though certainly indirectly) by the Second World War or civil upheavals were Sweden and Switzerland. Even Portugal, neutral during 1939-1945, later had a military coup and revolution (in the 1970s).

France, for example, was in the 20th Century invaded twice, had several all-France republics established, as well as the Vichy Government of 1940-1944; it also had considerable political and industrial conflict, huge destruction from air, land and sea (in 1940, from German attack, but more seriously from the Anglo-American invasion, bombing, shelling etc of 1941-1944). France also had the underground war of the OAS in the early 1960s, which very nearly brought down de Gaulle and the Fifth Republic.

Again, Poland has seen, from 1914 through to the 1980s, invasions, purges, wars, civil disorder, very great changes in the Western and Eastern borders of the country itself, near-starvation at times, economic collapse several times, destruction of much of its infrastructure, ruination of its currency.

The effects upon civic life and rule of law of all these events has been greater on mainland Europe than has been the case in the UK. On mainland Europe, the ways of life of the various countries has had to be re-established, sometimes several times over, usually with very significant changes. In the UK, the way of life has evolved quite slowly and –even as a result of WW2– without dramatic alteration overnight.

Why then, do I see civil disorder as a serious possibility in the UK?

First of all, Britain has taken in a vast horde of mainly non-European immigrants, most of whom have no racial, cultural or religious connection with anything that British history has produced. Even those non-Europeans born in the UK do not feel the same connection with the country that is felt by the real British (including those with other white Northern European ancestry and who were born here).

Secondly, the reaction of the Caribbeans and other non-Europeans to serious difficulty is to engage in street protest which can become riotous, as has happened several times even in the past decade.

Thirdly, the indigenous British have lost at least some of the resilience which sustained public order in previous times. By way of personal anecdote, I recall the “petrol crisis” of 2000, when I had not long returned from overseas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_protests_in_the_United_Kingdom. Having little choice but to travel across country, I saw at one motorway filling station scenes not far from the chaotic. This left a deep impression on me. Speaking personally, I have little faith in the ability of the System to maintain order, should a more serious or prolonged crisis hit the nation, if “nation” it still is.

I do not see the British now as a unified people, because of both cultural and directly racial/religious factors. A large and growing minority are really not British at all and have only tenuous connection with and loyalty to the State.

A fourth aspect is that the arms of the State are not now well-staffed. Police, Army etc. Could they handle large-scale disruption? I wonder.

It may be that the UK will have to undergo some of the vicissitudes endured in the past century by many of the mainland European peoples before a new system is established.

elections, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, MPs, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

They Go Like Sleepwalkers, whence Providence Dictates

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Adolf Hitler once remarked that he went like a sleepwalker to wherever Providence or Fate dictated. A cynic might ask why, in that case, did Germany lose the Second World War. I have thought about this over the years, coming to the conclusion (decades ago now) that Germany’s bitter defeat saved not only Germany itself but all Central Europe and even all Europe from terminal disaster.

As is well-known, the atom bomb scientists working on the Manhattan Project (the British end being known as “Tube Alloys”), were almost all Jews who had fled from or anyway left Europe to live in the USA. Their motivation was to create a weapon which would obliterate National Socialist Germany. Japan was but an afterthought.

So focussed were the Jew atom bomb scientists on Germany’s destruction, that when it seemed possible in mathematical theory that detonation of the first bomb in the desert of the South Western USA would cause the world’s atmosphere to catch fire, destroying all life on Earth, those Jews decided to proceed. A sombre fact indeed.

Had Germany not been forced to surrender by complete military defeat, it would have seen its main cities destroyed by atom bombs. The air, water, soil of much of Central Europe would have been contaminated for decades, in fact for centuries. Seen like that, the bitter defeat and humiliating  surrender was a saving grace in the end.

Why do I bring up these facts? Because I want to make the point that agencies above the human level act on what might be seen as “purely” earthly concerns: war, politics etc.

Move now to the present UK political scene. Less than 2 years ago, Jeremy Corbyn, an eccentric and –his critics said– extremist radical, was persuaded to stand in the Labour Party leadership contest and agreed purely because he wanted to have his kind of politics at least represented. It was uncertain as to whether Corbyn would even be allowed to become a candidate, because to stand, a candidate required nomination by 15% (35) of Labour MPs. Corbyn did not have even that much support. In the end, he was nominated, not only by the few who supported him, but by a number of MPs who did not support him and who had no intention of voting for him. Reflect on that. A number of MPs who were anti-Corbyn still nominated him and without those nominations Corbyn would not even have been on the ballot. As it was, Corbyn only managed to scrape onto the list with 36 nominations (inc. his own), the last a few minutes before nominations closed.

Once on the ballot, Corbyn’s support mushroomed and he won easily, overwhelmingly. The same happened when there was a challenge to his leadership the following year. Events happened by which his opponents were wrongfooted. There seemed to be an aura of invincibility around Corbyn and his campaign. Indeed, in 2015, Conservatives were urged by Toby Young and others to join Labour under the £3 offer scheme and then vote for Corbyn, on the premise that a Corbyn leadership would sink Labour!

Mainstream media commentators seemed unable to fathom Corbyn’s appeal. Journalist Janan Ganesh, for example,  wrote that Corbyn’s election “spelled disaster” for Labour. I wonder if he wishes now that he had spiked that opinion!

Coming up to the 2017 General Election, the polls predicted Labour’s worst-ever disaster, with its MP bloc being reduced from 230 to as few as 150. Some predicted an even lower number. That general perception of Labour’s defeat persisted until about two weeks before Election Day, when the Prime Minister, Theresa May, suddenly destroyed both her own carefully-crafted public persona and her party’s chances. The bursting of the Conservative Party balloon was palpable. The polls immediately narrowed and by Election Day were showing the parties almost neck and neck. We should, again, reflect on this: Theresa May, for no reason, destroyed her own party’s campaign. For me, “the Hand of God” is shown here.

The eventual result of the General Election was a Labour MP bloc of 262, up from 230 and something few had seen coming. As for the Conservatives, though some loyalists said that “Labour lost”, that was and is not how it feels. The Conservatives lost 13 seats (317 won, down from 330) and their House of Commons majority. Corbyn’s stock rose and he is now said to be higher in public esteem than Theresa  May, while Labour is higher in the polls than the Conservatives.

Taking it as a fact, for the purposes of argument, that higher forces are protecting Corbyn, why would that be so? After all, he is some kind of agnostic, it seems, is not overtly religious or spiritual and does not on the surface seem to have anything to commend him to what Schwerin von Krosigk termed “the Angel of History”. All one can say to that is the admittedly-platitudinous comment that “God moves in mysterious ways”. There are a few ideas that come to mind: the Conservative Party may now be prevented from imposing a Jewish-Zionist repression on freedom of expression on the Internet, for one thing. It is also far less likely that the UK can get involved in Israel-instigated wars or attacks in other parts of the world.

It may be, also, that it is necessary that the UK has to have a weak System government, so as to gradually open the door to social nationalism and a completely different society down the line. I cannot say. All I can say is that it seems as if Corbyn does enjoy a degree of “divine protection” and it will be fascinating to see how that plays out in the coming months and years.

free speech, historical, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Stray memories of life at the English Bar, Uncategorized

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Darcus Howe and the MSM: Cultural Musings

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Introduction

The deaths of two people came to notice particularly in the past week. One person had been a significant cultural influence in the Soviet Union, was world-famous, is still oft-quoted. The other was a West Indian immigrant to the UK, best known for his support for black rioters, gangster criminals and others, as well as his assault on British cultural norms.

The first was Yevgeny Yevtushenko [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Yevtushenko] about whom The Guardian newspaper published this by way of obituary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/02/yevgeny-yevtushenko-obituary.

The second was one Darcus Howe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darcus_Howe], about whom the Guardian said this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/02/darcus-howe-writer-broadcaster-and-civil-rights-campaigner-dies-aged-74.

It can surely be seen that even the Guardian was unable to make out Darcus Howe as being a greater cultural figure or a more positive one than Yevtushenko.

Comment and Personal Musing

I knew neither of the two recently deceased. I had heard of Yevtushenko vaguely, en passant, as a child and teenager, about the poet who was able to fill stadia in Russia with fans listening to his declamations. Black and white pictures from Life magazine and books. Later, in my twenties, I knew a few people who had been well-acquainted with Yevtushenko in Moscow. I even met his third wife on a couple of occasions during that time and once swam with her and her children (Yevtushenko’s) in a semi-private wooded beach area in some expensive part of Bournemouth, on England’s southern coast.

I never met Yevtushenko himself, though I heard plenty about him. His private life was messy, not always commendable, but that is hardly unusual in the biographies of poets and artistic people generally. One cannot judge a poet primarily by his private life (think of Byron etc). At a distance, he seemed to me to be a Soviet cultural windvane, able to change direction not so much with the prevailing wind but at the moment before it changed. Thus Yevtushenko was seen by some , e.g. Irina Ratushinskaya [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irina_Ratushinskaya] as an “official poet”, with all the moral compromise and material benefits which that term implied; by others, as a brave and anti-official –even a little bit anti-Soviet– quasi-dissident.

Certainly Yevtushenko was willing to argue even with such as Khrushchev on occasion. He was lucky, perhaps, to have been born in 1932 and not 1922 or 1912. He escaped Stalinism to a large extent. Also, he was born and mainly brought up in Siberia, where (ironically) the Stalinist pressure was slightly less. Having said that, he lived in Moscow from age 18, studied there, was never in political trouble. I once heard privately that his mother had been an informant (“secret co-worker”) for the KGB and went weekly to an address not far from the Lubyanka to receive her stipend, signing for it on a list which had all the other names blanked out via a kind of stencil. Perhaps. That would not imply, however, that Yevtushenko himself was implicated with such work (and as I heard it, his mother only went through the motions anyway, giving little but avoiding conflict).

Certainly, Yevtushenko lived rather well by Soviet and indeed Western material standards. Robert Conquest [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conquest] described that as “well-rewarded collaboration”. By the 1970s, if not before, he had a house or “dacha” at Peredelkino [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peredelkino] with (I believe I was told), 4 or maybe 5 bedrooms –unheard of luxury in the Soviet Union for all but the highest-regarded citizens. He also had an apartment near the Kremlin with no less than (from memory) 14 rooms (a friend of mine was offered the chance to stay there for a week while it was unoccupied; she returned to London gushing about how wonderful it was and how she had not realized that people in the Soviet Union lived like that!); the apartment had been occupied at one time, I was told, by Beria [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria] though Beria did have a mansion in Moscow, perhaps in addition. Yevtushenko also had a house on the Black Sea, situated, I believe, at Yalta.

Yevtushenko is now known for several “soundbites”, in today’s terminology, as much as for his poems: “in Russia, a poet is more than a poet”; and the 1962 lines usually slightly changed to (and improved?) “double and triple the guard on Stalin’s tomb, lest he return….and with him, the past” [http://osaarchivum.org/files/holdings/300/8/3/text/60-4-47.shtml].

Whatever one’s view of Yevtushenko, there is no doubt that he was a significant cultural figure, who personified the changes in the Soviet Union from Stalin’s rule, through the Thaw of the 1950s and early 1960s and on to the retrenchment which led up to Gorbachev, corrupt laxity and then complete collapse. Yevtushenko himself spent his later years living partly in the USA, paid generously by the University of Tulsa (Oklahoma) and the City University of New York (CUNY). A weathervane to the last.

As to Darcus Howe, I know little of him beyond a few items recently read, though I do recall that rather menacing figure on “British” TV from time to time, always promoting the idea that the blacks in the UK had been and were oppressed by white British people and culture.

I cannot imagine that Howe ever contributed much to the UK, though others, in the mainstream media especially, seem to think otherwise. On Twitter, the death of Yevtushenko was like an express train at night, flashing quickly through a country station (Zima Junction?) without stopping. Darcus Howe’s death was trending for far longer. The mainstream TV and radio almost ignored Yevtushenko’s death (and life), while eulogizing about the life of the West Indian rioter and troublemaker. Channel 4, the tax-subsidized “independent” channel, was especially loud in its praises.

Where the msm did notice Yevtushenko’s death, the reports concentrated mainly on his poem “Babi Yar”, about the death of Jews in the Ukraine during the war with Germany. Typical.

The cultural sickness of the West can be seen in the juxtaposition of the two recent deaths and how they have been treated. The time must come when real merit is respected, when people are able to properly discriminate between what is worthwhile and what is not. Most of the existing cultural organizations and faces must be removed.

elections, ethnostate, historical, Party Politics, prepping, Reminiscences and Musings, Russia and Russian relations, safe zones, society, Uncategorized, white flight

The Way Forward for Social Nationalism in the UK

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“The talent of the strategist is to identify the decisive point and to concentrate everything on it, removing forces from secondary fronts and ignoring lesser objectives.”

Those words of Clausewitz are often taken to encapsulate the essence of strategy. How are they applied to the socio-political question in the UK (England, primarily) from the social-national point of view?

“The Decisive Point”

The “decisive point” or objective, ultimately, is the formation of a British ethnostate as an autonomous part of a Eurasian ethnostate based on the Northern European and Russian peoples. However, within the UK itself and before that, the objective must first be drawn less widely, as political power within the UK’s own borders.

The Gaining of Political Power in the UK

The sine qua non of gaining the sort of political power required is the existence of a political party. More than that, a party which is uncompromizing in its wish to entirely reform both State and society.

History is replete with examples of states which have seemed not even just powerful but actually eternal, yet which have collapsed. Ancient Rome, though perhaps not a “state” in our modern sense, is perhaps the one most embedded in the Western consciousness. More recently, the Soviet Union and its satellite states. In between those two examples (but among many others) we might cite the pre-1914 European “settlement” based on the empires and kingdoms which collapsed during and after the First World War: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Ottoman Empire.

The main point to understand is that, in situations of crisis on the large scale, it is not the political party with the most money, erudition, developed policy or even membership that comes out on top, but the party with the most will or determination. That means the most disciplined party under the leadership of the most determined leader.

It is better to have a party consisting of only 1,000 which is tightly-disciplined and self-disciplined than one of 100,000 which is a floundering mass of contradictions. When a national crisis occurs, such as 1917-1921 in Russia or 1929-1933 in Germany (to take two obvious examples), the people instinctively turn to the party perceived to be strongest, not strongest in numbers, money, intellectuality or number of members, but strongest in the will, the will to power.

The Party

A party requires leadership, members, ideology, policy and money. Everything comes from the leadership and the membership, in symbiosis. In practical terms, this means that policy is open to free discussion, up to the point where a decision is made as to what is party policy as such. Also, it has to be understood that a party requires money as a tank or armoured car requires fuel. To have endless fundraising drives, hunts for wealthy donors etc demeans and dispirits the membership. Having a “tithing” system renders such other methods unnecessary. The members sacrifice an agreed amount of their post-tax income, such as 10%. The party organizes itself and its message to the general population using that money.

As a rule of thumb in contemporary Britain, it might be said that, on average, each member will provide something like £2,000 per year to the party. A party of even 1,000 members will therefore have an annual income of £2 million, enough to buy not only propaganda and administration but real property as a base. By way of comparison, the Conservative Party in 2017 has an income of about £3.5 million.

Elections

It must be understood that elections are only one way to power, but they are indispensable in England, for historical-cultural reasons. A party which cannot win elections loses credibility rapidly once that party is large. In the initial phase, no-one expects the party to win Westminster or even local council seats, but after that, it has to win and so grow, or deflate as the BNP did and as UKIP is doing now. The problem small parties have under the English electoral system is that a Westminster seat can be won only with, at a minimum, about 30% (and usually 40% or more) of votes. The insurgent party is in danger of spreading itself too thinly, in every way. UKIP’s history illustrates the point: in 2015, about 12% of votes cast (nearly 4 million), but only the one MP with which they, in effect, started. The answer is to concentrate the vote. That is done by concentrating the members and supporters of the party geographically.

Safe Zones

I have blogged previously about the creation of safe zones and especially one primary safe zone (possibly in the South West of England). If the members and supporters of the party gradually relocate into that zone or zones, many things become easier, from protection of buildings, meetings, exhibitions etc to the election of councillors and MPs. I have also blogged about the magnetic attraction such a safe zone might exercise over people in the UK as a whole.

The Decisive Time

The “decisive time” cannot be predicted. In Russia, Lenin (at the time in foreign exile) thought that the 1905 uprising was “the revolution”. He was wrong. He also thought that the first (February, old-style) 1917 uprising was not “the” revolution. He was wrong again. It was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution

Lenin had to hurry back to Russia (arriving belatedly in April 1917, old-style) not only to try to take control (he failed in that and had to foment his own coup d’etat in October 1917) but to avoid being sidelined and so becoming an almost irrelevant footnote to history.

In Germany after 1929, Hitler likewise was not in control of events. In the end, economic near-collapse and political turmoil gave him the chance to win enough votes (33% in 1932) to form a coalition government which led on to full power in 1933, after the NSDAP achieved a higher –though still minority– popular vote (44%).

In other words, both Lenin and Hitler were the pawns of Fate while striving to be the masters of events. They had something in common though: highly-disciplined and ideologically-motivated parties behind them.

Practical Matters

At the age of 60, the last thing which is convenient for me is to form a political party. I have no need of such an activity as a hobby or absorbing interest. I am coming to the idea out of duty, out of a realization that something has to be done and out of an understanding that something can be done, if Fate concurs. I am not willing to compromize on overall ideology or on the way things are organized within such a party. I shall only establish a political party (which may become a movement) if it can be done on a serious basis. However, there is a need for a party to speak for the British people and there is a widening political vacuum in which such a party can thrive and grow.

Update 15 April 2019

In the two years since I wrote the above blog post, my view has not changed, that is

  • a political party and movement is needed;
  • there is at present no such party;
  • such a party can only be established if done on a serious basis;
  • I myself still do not have the means with which to found such a party; but
  • a political party and movement is —still— needed…

Update, 8 March 2023

All factors mentioned in the previous update remain the same.

free speech, historical, London Forum, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

The Internet: Privatization of Public Spaces

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I have been concerned for some years about how “public space” on the Internet is really just privately-owned space. Offline, there are sometimes concerns raised about how parks and other spaces, which are usually open to the public, are made less than fully open to the public by the imposition of charges, fees or conditions. In fact, there have in the past often been fees and conditions imposed on entry to parks etc, but in those cases those unable or unwilling to comply could go elsewhere. That is not always so online.

In the offline world, there are public markets and competition between marketplaces in various ways. Online, though the same may be true superficially, the reality is that a few key players operate in a quasi-monopolistic manner. Facebook, Twitter, ebay, Amazon have little real competition. The private individual is granted access to these spaces essentially at the will or whim of the proprietor. If expelled, the individual has no redress save appeal (and not by right) to the website itself. There are no means to go to law to enforce re-admittance, because the relationship between the website and the individual is one based on contract and the contractual power lies with the website.

Taking Amazon and intruding a personal note to make the argument more concrete, for 2 or 3 years (up to 2011 or 2012) I reviewed books on Amazon (at one time I owned over 2,000 books and bought one every few days). I was on the Amazon UK “Top 100 reviewers” list and the vast majority of those who voted or commented liked my reviews and found them helpful. Very few hated what I wrote but one of that tiny handful (literally about 3 or 4 people) was a Jew who objected to some of my reviews because they examined events 1933-45 from a revisionist (truth-seeking) perspective. This person trolled virtually every review I wrote, “commenting” sarcastically on each, insulting me as well as my reviews, trying to bait me to argue with him (with the obvious idea of then screaming “antisemitism!” and “hate speech” and getting me chucked off Amazon, of course. “They” do the same on Twitter etc).

After about 2 years, the aforesaid Jew (who, by the way, operated under a pseudonym, as the same sort of trolls often do on Twitter) managed to interest the Jewish Chronicle in his complaint. The Jewish Chronicle wrote about my reviews, the attention resulting in my being barred from reviewing books on Amazon. About a third of my reviews were removed. Oddly enough, those reviews were removed en bloc. Most had nothing to do with the 1933-1945 era, National Socialism, Jews, Israel etc. There was no possibility of appeal, not even to the site itself.

I then started to review books on the American Amazon site. The same occurred before long, except that this time the same Jew must have contacted Amazon directly after complaining about me under my reviews (all of them…), because all of those reviews on the US site disappeared overnight and I was barred without warning. No appeal, no explanation. So much for American “free speech”!

The above illustrates the problem. While there are other online booksellers, some of which allow reviews, in the end the reviewer, the citizen, is there as guest of the website and can be chucked off at any time. Amazon’s position is quasi-monopolistic, yet it is not merely a retailer but a provider of what amounts to a public intellectual forum.

Twitter is the same: if someone is barred from Twitter, he is effectively muzzled, his right of freedom of expression taken away. He has no redress (though Twitter itself does give a possibility of appeal). It is not good enough to say that “other sites exist”. Twitter is in a global quasi-monopolistic position.

Tellingly, the Zionists and others (but mostly Zionists) often make the point that barring someone from Facebook, Twitter etc is not an attack on free speech because those sites are “private platforms” and can get rid of unwanted authors at will.

The privatization of public online space is wrong. The solution is to give the citizen a legal right to appeal against removal from any website which has more than x number of users or subscribers. The present situation is an unwarranted extension of the economic sphere into the sphere of law and rights.

Alison Chabloz, Alison Chabloz, Campaign Against AntiSemitism, David Irving, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, London Forum, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Tommy Robinson, Uncategorized

Free Speech: Individuality and Collectivity

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Rudolf Steiner often spoke of the ever-increasing individualism in our age (that period which he named the “Fifth Post-Atlantean Age”, which started around 1400 AD and is due to run until about 3500 AD). This is an inevitable continuing process and will bring many benefits if people are guided by conscience. However, if people are not guided by individual conscience, the forces of the individual will tear apart society.

Against the forces of individualism stands “society”, which encompasses law, unwritten “laws” of convention and expectation and also the powers of the State (which holds itself out as the concrete expression of the people as a whole).

Society is, of course, a good thing. In proper measure, it makes possible and supports such aspects of life as law, public order, organized help for the sick, disabled, elderly, poor etc. It is a structure which supports the family, too. It also provides, via the State,  the structure for defence against outside forces (hostile states, natural calamities etc). However, if taken too far, society and/or the State becomes oppression, involving the repression of individual liberty in various ways (most obviously, perhaps, suppression of free speech or other freedom of expression).

Society restricts freedom of speech. It is hard to imagine a society beyond the most primitive or germinal in which complete freedom of speech exists (eg spoken or written threats against the person). On the other hand, when society (the State, or perhaps a religious or political cult) prevents individual expression, reasonable restriction becomes unreasonable repression. One thinks, perhaps, of the more extreme socialist states of the 20th Century, such as the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, China under Mao Tse-Tung, Albania under Enver Hoxha, Cuba under Fidel Castro. The same was true of anti-socialist tyrannies such as Nicaragua under Somoza.

Particular emergency conditions may lead to a temporary tightening of what is regarded as acceptable free speech. In the Second World War, the various combatants restricted free speech considerably. In the UK, those who spoke out against the war or government policy faced both prosecution (State) and persecution (society generally). Even the USA, with its famous Constitutional safeguards, clamped down on freedom of expression.

As in other fields of life, we can see that the tension between the demands of the individual qua individual and those of the collective results in what amounts to a compromise. It is a question of either where society (in practice, usually the State, but possibly a smaller community such as a town or even a family) decides where the line is drawn, or where the individual draws the line, based on conscience or preference and regardless of where the State and/or society has drawn it.

Most people, most of the time, obey the dictates of the collective. Were that not so, law could not exist except as a facade with nothing behind it (cf. Stalin’s Russia etc); neither could the State or its power, in the end. On the other hand, the individual must always obey conscience and it therefore becomes vital to distinguish between individual conscience and individual wilfulness or egoism. No outside force can decide what is conscience and what is wilfulness or egoism. The individual, the individual human soul, is the only judge or arbiter here. Where the individual and the collective collide, the results can range from martyrdom of the individual to reform or even revolution affecting the collective.

Where do I myself, as both individual and citizen (i.e. part of the collective) draw the line? For me, freedom of expression about social, political and historical matters should be absolute. Other forms of expression (eg threats, libels, fraudulent misrepresentations) can be (and commonly are) restricted to a greater or lesser extent.

It follows from the above that I prefer the approach taken in the United States to that of most EU states (including the UK). Restrictions on freedom of expression are often imposed for or from outwardly “good” motives, but rapidly become a slippery slope with evil results. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Notes

  1.  http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/communications_sent_via_social_media/
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Alt-Right, free speech, historical, historical revisionism, Ian Millard, Jewish lobby in UK, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

Reports and Lies

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We are accustomed to reading the most arrant nonsense about Adolf Hitler. According to this stream of black propaganda (which started as long ago as the 1920s), Hitler was savage, unforgiving, tyrannical, vituperative, uneducated, a down-and-out from the gutter, a house-painter, sexually perverse, an erotomaniac, impotent, excessively interested in women, a gay, mad, sometimes mad, occasionally mad, only interested in his own material benefit, a tax dodger, even harsh toward his beloved dog, Blondie!

In Hitler’s own lifetime, a pack of lies was spewed out by his enemies: Jewish elements and interests; the Communists and Socialists who, many of them, supported or condoned Stalinism; also journalists working, in effect, for those same groups. During the Second World War, both the Soviet Union and the Western Allies maintained huge ministries and agencies dedicated to “black propaganda”. After 1945 the baton was passed to the increasingly prevalent Jewish or Zionist lobby and its major offshoot, the “holocaust” industry, aided by historians who knew that their careers depended on not challenging the approved narrative.

The “Hitler was a house-painter” story seems to have come from a Jesuit priest who was taken to hear Hitler in Munich in or about 1920. He asked what Hitler was (at that time Hitler had few followers and was unknown outside the city); the answer came, “I think that he is a painter of houses” (no doubt a garbled version, heard somewhere, of Hitler’s pre-WW1 life as a struggling art student and painter). In the 1930s, Churchill took up that false version of Hitler’s life as a young man, no doubt calculating that English snobbery would be inherently biased against a political leader with a past involving painting houses or the like. Even today, one occasionally sees reference to Hitler “painting houses”.

The idea that Hitler was “mad” came from an anti-Hitler newspaper editor (probably the half-Jewish scribbler Konrad Heiden), who, in the 1930s, told the American correspondent and anti-Hitler propagandist William Shirer (who posed as an historian after 1945) that Hitler was a “Teppichfresser” (“carpet-chewer”), meaning prone to bouts of insanity when he would supposedly curl up in rage on the carpet and chew the edge of the same. A complete invention, which has coloured the popular view of Hitler ever since, though even the Jewish historians no longer make the exact allegation.

As to the stories and speculations about Hitler’s  sex life, I should imagine that every possibility has now been explored by journalists and historians eager to reduce Adolf Hitler to a sort of freak show. Needless to say, the most likely possibility (that Hitler was “normal” but unenthusiastic) is of little interest, being unlikely to sell books or newspapers.

A more recent allegation has been that Hitler was a drug addict. Again untrue, though there is at least a kernel of fact underpinning this one, in that Hitler’s doctor, Morell, was a medical innovator who did tend to experiment on his patients. Hitler demanded results; Morell tried to provide them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Morell#Substances_administered_to_Hitler

(actually, though many have quailed at Morell’s preparations, such as the ones that included “intestinal bacteria”, these were the basis for the now-popular “active” yoghurt health drinks for the stomach now found next to the milkshakes in every UK supermarket).

What about Hitler as a vengeful tyrant? This seems to rest mainly on his reaction to the 1944 plotters, who, in the midst of Germany’s fight for survival, saw fit to blow up Hitler and the German High Command at Rastenburg in East Prussia (now in Poland). Yes, they were executed, some cruelly, it seems, but would it have been much different in, say, England, had Churchill been blown up by “traitors” at Ditchley Park (in, perhaps, 1940), alongside his military and naval chiefs?

In reality, Hitler was not a vengeful type. Anton Drexler, the locksmith who founded the then DAP which Hitler joined in 1919, had a serious quarrel with Hitler in 1921. He wrote a letter accusing Hitler of “acting like a Jew, twisting every fact” (!), was removed as head of the party (replaced by Hitler) and was given a purely figurehead position until he resigned in 1924, after which he was elected to the Bavarian Parliament for another party, serving as elected member until 1928. Despite that, Drexler was readmitted to the NSDAP in 1933, honoured (though not given any political position) and died peacefully in 1942. One cannot imagine Stalin treating a similar case the same way!

Another example. The first reports about an attempted putsch in Munich in 1923 (the Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch), reached the ears of a police commander called Sigmund von Imhoff, who contacted the Reichswehr commander of the city and seized the telephone and telegraph exchange. He was probably the most important reason that the putsch failed (amid bloodshed, Hitler himself being injured as the main march was brought to a halt).

One can well imagine what Stalin, on attaining power, would have done with an officer such as von Imhoff, but under Hitler he was not punished. On the contrary, he was promoted to Police General in 1933 and, in WW2, seconded to the Luftwaffe with the rank of Major General (he died in Bavaria in 1967).

This article could be ten times or a hundred longer, so many lies about Hitler and the Reich have been told and continue to be told. However, the few examples above perhaps will give pause to those who imagine that they have been told the truth about those world-historic events of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

elections, historical, Party Politics, Reminiscences and Musings, Russia and Russian relations, society, Uncategorized

Tipping Points in Politics and Life

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We have all heard of the theatrical cliche of the actor who achieves “overnight success”, having in fact worked hard against all the odds for years. The same is often true of writers, painters and other artists. Not forgetting scientists. It was Edison who, on the failure of his (supposedly) 2,000th lightbulb experiment, is said to have said: “I have not failed. I have just discovered the 2,000th way not to invent the incandescent lightbulb.” At a later time, he of course succeeded. Many things follow the pattern: a long period of non-movement, then sudden success (or sudden failure of something, often after long stagnation).

One can call this a tipping-point, or characterize it by some other metaphor. The aircraft which suddenly fails by reason of metal fatigue, the ship which finally turns over after ice has built up on its external structure in Arctic waters, the huge empire which “suddenly” staggers and falls. On the other hand, there is that actor with his “overnight” success, that composer whose works suddenly find favour, the small political group which “suddenly” rises to prominence and power.

The Bolsheviks were a small group of societal rejects mostly living in internal or external exile, or in prison. Many were not even Russian. Jews predominated in their higher councils (despite forming only 10% of the entire membership), but there were also Georgians and others. In fact, the Bolshevik Party only had 8,400 members in 1905 and, though that increased to 46,100 by 1907, by 1910 the numbers had slipped back to about 5,000. Few would then have imagined either that the mighty Russian Empire would collapse or that the tiny faction of Bolsheviks could seize control of what was left. We know the rest: a failing war and an impoverished population, an initial attempt by others at “moderate” revolution and then a coup d’etat by one small group in one corner of a vast empire.

The lesson: a small and marginalized group, disciplined ideologically and practically, can both seize power and institute an entirely new form of society, once that tipping point or crisis point has been reached.

In post-WW1 Bavaria, Adolf Hitler became the 7th member of the German Workers’ Party [DAP], which may also have had an unknown number (estimates vary from mere dozens to as many as 15,000) of loose supporters in the beerhalls of 1919 Munich.

By 1923, this tiny and marginalized group was able to attempt the Beer Hall Putsch [aka Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch], but it is important to note that, despite the support of Ludendorff and a few other notables, the actual number of putschists involved was small: the main march headed by Hitler was only 2,000-strong (immediately after the putsch failed, 3,000 students from the university also marched in support and to lay wreaths). Indeed, even had the putsch succeeded, Hitler would only have taken power in one city of one region within the German state as a whole.

The membership of the NSDAP grew steadily, reaching 108,000 by 1928. Electorally, however, the NSDAP was doing worse in 1928 (receiving only 2.6% of the national vote) than it had done in 1924, no doubt a reflection of the growing prosperity in the intervening years (i.e. since the infamous hyperinflation finished in 1924). Despite that poor showing, once the Great Depression started to affect Germany after 1929, the NSDAP was able to gain the trust of ever-more voters: the vote in 1932 was 37% and then 33% (in the two elections of that year), growing to 44% in 1933. Adolf Hitler then took full power, having been appointed Chancellor in 1932.

A different example: UKIP grew from a few people in a pub in 1991 to a peak in the 2012-2015 period, but has not the ideological discipline or revolutionary intent to “seize power” even by electoral means. It missed its chance and will probably not get any further. Still, its growth, in the UK context, is interesting. Its founder, Alan Sked, was a former Liberal candidate who stood as “Anti-Federalist” candidate for the seat of Bath in 1992 (i.e. after UKIP had been formed), receiving 117 votes [0.2%].

UKIP had virtually no members until the late 1990s, though by 2015 the membership had grown to nearly 50,000 (now 30,000). As for its vote share, that grew to nearly 13% by 2015, but the UK’s unfair “First Past The Post” [FPTP] electoral system meant no gains.

FPTP voting itself illustrates the “tipping point” idea, as happened in Scotland: the SNP had fairly good support for decades, but few MPs until the tipping point was reached. Now it has 50% support, but almost 100% of Westminster seats. Why was the tipping point reached? Cultural identity rising, living standards falling, entrenched Labour failing. The point was reached–and the Labour vote collapsed.

UKIP has the same problem. So long as it has only 10% or even 15% of votes, it cannot get more than one or two MPs. Were it to get to 25% support, the situation would tip and UKIP would have perhaps 100 MPs. Except that that will probably not happen…

In fact, the Bath constituency mentioned above is instructive: Alan Sked got only 117 votes (0.2%) in 1992; in 2015 the UKIP candidate received nearly 3,000 votes (over 6%), but was still only 5th (Sked came in 6th in 1992)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

The difference between UKIP’s situation and that of the Bolsheviks or NSDAP is that UKIP has no really firm ideological or organizational structure. Even if society came to a political tipping point, UKIP might well be unable to take advantage of that.

A new and properly-run social nationalist party could take most of the votes of UKIP as well as those which formerly went to the BNP and others. That however, could only ever be a foundation for electoral success. That success itself would depend on the rising star of the new party meeting the fading star of the old parties. It is a question of timing and of Fate. The tipping point for the whole society would be key.

historical, Reminiscences and Musings, Uncategorized

Castro and Cuba

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I had no intention of writing about Cuba or Castro following the recent death of “Fidel”. However, the public and mass media reaction, much of it an outpouring of adulation and “me-too” faux-liberal compromise, has impelled me to write.

There is no doubt that Cuba before Castro was corrupt and, for many, poor. Before Castro there was Batista and before Batista, Prio (Carlos Prio Socarras), of whom the British historian Hugh Thomas wrote, memorably, in his mammoth history of the country, that he “fell like a rotten fruit, full of its own corruption.” Prío himself later said of his presidency: “They say that I was a terrible president of Cuba. That may be true. But I was the best president Cuba ever had.”[see Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. New York: Houghton Mifflin (2002) p 216].

Prio was in fact someone who tried to keep to constitutional proprieties and it was his decision not to act extra-judicially which allowed the harsher figure of Batista to seize power in 1952, Prio himself having been elected (by free and contested election) in 1948.

Cuba in the 1950s was sometimes described as somewhere between a Latin American country and a detached, poorer, part of the United States, the latter for long its effective suzerain.

It would be easier to make a quick judgment of Castro’s rule had the United States not (and typically) engaged in ham-fisted great-power and quasi-colonialist geopolitics over the island. Those American interventions continue to muddy the waters: attempts to assassinate Castro, the Bay of Pigs “invasion” of 1961; above all, the partial embargo (which Cuba called a “blockade”) imposed initially in 1960.

No-one can say for sure whether Cuba would be much different had it had the chance to trade freely with the USA, its neighbour and natural main trading partner. Probably not much. Venezuela is another and more recent example of the inability of a Latin American socialist economy to perform adequately for long.

The  bien-pensant “usual suspects” in the UK (the absurd Tariq Ali, Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn etc) are now saying that the Castro dictatorship was sort-of acceptable because Cuba had good education and good medical services. On that basis, they should be very kind indeed to German National Socialism, which provided the same and in fact far more (and with far less repression, in reality).

In fact, long before the Soviet subsidy disappeared, Havana was falling to pieces, as were the Cuban roads and railways. I myself had fleeting and peripheral contact with Cuba, otherwise seen by me only from the sea (between Cuba and the Bahamas) and the air (flying over Cuba between Tampa, Florida and Grand Cayman).

I was asked, when a practising barrister in London circa 1995, to help a scientific start-up based at Porton Down, Wiltshire, the high-security  biological warfare facility, then recently partly-privatized. A small company of scientists had a bacterium which turned biomass into fuel (unscientific me calling it the turning of straw into gold). I thought of Cuba with its sugar-cane detritus, lack of fuel and high technical-education levels. Unfortunately, the Cuban Embassy in London did not respond, unlike the Ukrainian: I visited Porton Down with the then Ukrainian Ambassador, Mr. Komisarenko [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serhiy_Komisarenko]. Nothing came of that in the end, but it seems that, in more recent years, a company called Havana Energy, headed by ex-Labour Party MP Brian Wilson, has been producing energy that way in Cuba. The Cuban Embassy’s unresponsiveness told me all I needed to know about the Cuban bureaucracy: unalert, lethargic, useless, bearing in mind the country’s crying need for fuel.

Since the early 1990s, Cuba has gradually been moving towards a capitalist economy. No doubt that process will continue. Eventually, some kind of greater rapprochement with the USA will happen.

In this blog post, I am more interested in the puerile reaction of the kind of people in the UK who are letting off Castro on human rights and economic efficiency because Cubans have a health service and a school system. Jeremy Corbyn has excelled himself in ignorant misunderstanding. He just digs himself deeper with every statement.

The mass media and in particular the BBC is, as one might expect, doing its bit to eulogize about Castro, saying that he “turned a small island into a major force in world affairs.” Where does one start in unpacking such nonsense?

The reaction to Castro’s death tells me something else: those in the UK who think themselves “socialist” are willing to turn a blind eye to historical, political and economic realities so long as the label is right.

Update, 5 January 2019

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6558991/Rich-kids-COMMUNISM-Fidel-Castros-model-grandson-flashes-wealth-European-vacations.html

environment, historical, Reminiscences and Musings, society, Uncategorized

Robotics Might Save the Railways

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The rail system in the UK is a mess. Start from basics: rail travel, when it started (in England, in the world) in the 19th century, was a fast expanding private enterprise system of competing lines. These lines (companies) solidified into an efficient cartel by the time of the First World War. During the war itself, the railways were under State control (and until 1921). The Railways Act 1923 put the de facto private cartel on a statutory basis, with four large railway companies running virtually all passenger and freight services. Profitability waned with the coming of cars and road freight so that, by the time of nationalization in 1948, losses threatened. This became reality in 1955, when British Rail recorded its first operating loss.

The “modernization” plans adopted from 1955 culminated in the Beeching Report of 1963 and the subsequent and consequent closures of lines, services and stations. More than a third of passenger services were closed down. The closures of railway stations were even more dramatic: out of 7,000 stations, more than 4,000 were shut.

The 1990s privatization was carried out in a manner so poorly-conceived that only free-market ideologues who knew little of the realities of how to run a railroad could ever have decided upon it. I do not propose to delve into the detail here (and I myself am no expert anyway), except to say that there seems to be a good case for re-nationalization, possibly on a low-compensation or even an expropriation basis.

What of the future? We see that, all over the world, even in the UK, that driverless train transport, indeed driverless transport generally, is becoming common. Many British people will have travelled on limited forms of automated transport such as the Docklands Light Railway or the monorail at Gatwick Airport which connects the main terminal with another. It would be possible to run many more light rail and ultralight rail services on new branch lines, connecting with existing mainline stations and lines. Indeed, computerized and robotized ultralight narrow-gauge trains could run from towns, villages and suburbs not presently connected to rail, such lines terminating at an existing railway station. A whole huge new web of public transport could come into operation in this manner, eventually becoming more dense even than the railway system that existed before the 1960s. At the extremities, such lines could be narrow-gauge and the trains very small, perhaps single carriage. The expense, though considerable, would be worthwhile, knitting together a country which has become dislocated.

Road transport will be the dominant mode for the foreseeable future, but if an enhanced branch line network can take even 10% of passenger journeys off the roads, the cost of the new system will perhaps have been justified on that basis alone.