Philosophy

Namier on English politics

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

Sir Lewis Namier made his name with The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III published in 1929.It landed like a bomb, and Namier attracted conflict all his life.  I idolize him.  As a practising lawyer, I found it odd that Namier was said to be revolutionary because for primary evidence he preferred contemporary notes made at the time to secondary rehearsals made by scholars who were not present at the relevant times.  I then regarded him as I regarded Maitland on the history of the common law – if the inquirer devotes his life to digging so deep and with such understanding, he may well command our intellectual assent when he ascends to make observations that in others may sound too large and unfounded.

In 1961, Namier published the second edition of England In the Age of the American Revolution.  Amid the mountains of primary evidence that Namier assembled in the work of a lifetime, we still find large statements of insights that distinguish the story of England from that of Europe or the United States.  All of what follows comes from that second edition. 

It is a story of a remarkable people written by a most remarkable man.

***

The social history of England could be written in terms of membership of the House of Commons, that peculiar club, election to which has at all times required some expression of consent on the part of the public……In its origin, the House of Commons was akin to the jury, and the representative character of the two were in a way cognate; from an intimate knowledge of conditions, the House declared the sense of commonalty on questions which most patently and directly concerned them….it came to represent not so much the sense of the community, as the distribution of power within it…(3)

England knows not democracy as a doctrine, but has always practised it as a fine art.  Since the Middle Ages, no one was ever barred on grounds of class from entering the House of Commons, and in the House all Members have always sat on equal terms; as between freemen, England never knew a rigid distinction of classes….

Trade was never despised, and English society has always showed respect for property and wealth.  The financial expert, usually a moneyed man, was valued in the House, and the Treasury has for centuries held a pre-eminent position in the government…. ‘gentry are always willing to submit to raising their families by what they call City fortunes….’ (6)

Feudalism was a system of social organisation whereby both army service and administrative functions were bound up with the holding of land. (7)

The fine growth of English Conservatism is due, in a high degree, to the country having been free from the revolutionary action of war within its borders, and of militarism within its social organisation.  The true Conservative is not a militarist. (8)

Trade was not despised in eighteenth century England – it was acknowledged to be the great concern of the nation; and money was honoured, the mystic common denominator of all values, the universal repository of as yet undetermined possibilities…. for the English are not a methodical or logical nation – they perceive and accept facts without anxiously inquiring into their reasons or meaning. (13)

Classes are the more sharply marked in England because there is no single test for them, except the final incontestable result; and there is more snobbery than in any other country, because the gate can be entered by anyone, and yet remains for those bent on entering it, a mysterious, awe-inspiring gate. (14)

Whereas on the Continent scholarships rank as poor relief, at Oxford or Cambridge the scholar holds a privileged position, coveted as a distinction.  More intellectual work is done by aristocrats in England than anywhere else: …. What is not valued in England is abstract knowledge as a profession, because the tradition of English civilization is that professions should be practical and culture should be the work of the leisured classes. (15)

When a tribe settles, membership of the tribe carries the right to share in the land.  In time, the order becomes inverted: the holding of land determines a man’s position in the community. (18)

English history, and especially English parliamentary history, is made by families rather than individuals; for a nation with the tradition of self-government must have thousands of dynasties, partaking of the peculiarities which in other countries belong to the royal family alone.  The English political family is a compound of ‘blood’, name and estate, the last, as the dominions of monarchs, being the most important of the three…. the men who are most intimately affected by the government have a primary claim to share in it; in reality, this conclusion is based on instincts and modes of thinking much deeper and much more cogent than any conscious reasonings…. [the British Parliament] is territorial rather than tribal….

Though the State primarily belongs to the owners of the land, it is the circulating part of the nation which is most directly concerned with government…. (29)  Trade is the natural form for the acquisitive endeavor of islanders… (30) Continental nations engaged in wars for loot and talked of glory (31); the English went out for adventure and talked of trade…. (32)  Colonies… were not ‘planted with a view to founding new empires, but for the sake of trade….’ (37)

No great historic problem has ever been settled by means of a brilliant idea…. Restraint, coupled with the tolerance which it implies and with plain human kindness, is much more valuable in politics than ideas which are ahead of their time; but restraint was a quality in which the eighteenth-century Englishman was as deficient as most other nations are even now. (36)

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le proces aux revolutions.  Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.  (40)

History is made up of juggernauts, revolting to human feelings in their blindness, supremely humorous in their stupidity.  One of the greatest caricaturists that ever lived, Francesco Goya y Lucientes, reached the highest level of historical humour in his picture of a military execution of Spanish rebels.  A bundle of feeling, suffering humanity is huddled together in the last stages of agony, despair or defiance, and facing them stands a row of the most perfectly trained Napoleonic soldiers, with their hats and rifles all cocked at the same angle.  One knows that the next moment the rebels will be at peace, inanimate matter, and the firing squad will dissolve into a number of very ordinary, dull human beings.  Similarly in Breughel’s ‘Fall of Icarus’, the true humour of the tragedy is not so much the pair of naked legs sticking out of the water, as the complete unconcern of all the potential onlookers…….History of infinite weight was to be made in the absurd beginnings of a reign which was to witness the elimination of those who had hitherto governed England…..and the break-up of an Empire such as the world had not seen since the disruption of the Roman Empire – history was to be started in ridiculous beginnings, while small men did things both infinitely smaller and infinitely greater than they knew.  (131)

In the absence of distinct definable programs, it was becoming increasingly difficult to say who, from the angle of practical politics, should be considered a Tory and who a Whig …. and parties at all times at all times rest on types and on connections rather than on intellectual tenets…. (179)  Moreover, the disturbing element of personal connexions is always present in politics; the game is played by groups, and human ties continually cross and confound the logic of social and political alignments.  (184)

The territorial magnates were the nucleus of that governing class, whose claims even now are based on rank, wealth, experience, and a tradition of social and political pre-eminence (or, according to George Meredith, are ‘commonly built on birth, acres, tailoring, style, and an air’).  (181)

***

We don’t get history like that anymore.  And that is a great worry, because every word of it bears on our travails here and now.  Namier was I gather from people at Cambridge not easy to like, and I can understand how he may have unsettled the academic Establishment.  But Sir Lewis Namier stands very high in my pantheon because of the depth of his insights into our humanity.

Quo vadis, Conservatism?

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

The most abused word in our language may be ‘conservative’.  When applied to the political attitudes of a person or party, what does it mean?  Is it of any use here in Australia now?  Do we have a conservative political party?

The Shorter OED has: opposed to change and holding traditional values… (in politics) favouring free enterprise and private ownership.  The Macquarie has: disposed to preserve existing conditions…cautious or moderate…traditional in style or manner….

These categories are very wide, and obviously open to questions of degree.  They practically invite the application of bromides like ‘broad church’ – until the body is so wide that it is no longer a church. 

Most labels are suspect – this one is even more so.  Some people are optimistic about the work of government.  Others are pessimistic.  Some crave change.  Others fear it.  There may be deep emotional values underlying differing world views.  The place of ‘science’ in all this is wobbly.  The temptation of deception is strong.  And the poseur might have a field day.  Especially one who craves the ear of the ‘people’.

We can see the room for slippage in the notion of ‘conservative’ from the definition in The Oxford Definition of Philosophy.

Conservatism.  Originally in Burke an ideology of caution in departing from the historical roots of a society, or changing its inherited traditions and institutions.  In this ‘organic’ form, it includes allegiance to tradition, community, hierarchies of rank, benevolent paternalism, and a properly subservient underclass.  By contrast, conservatism can be taken to imply a laissez-faire ideology of untrammelled individualism that puts the emphasis on personal responsibility, free markets, law and order, and a minimal role for government, with neither community, nor tradition, nor benevolence entering more than marginally.  The two strands are not easy to reconcile, either in theory or in practice.

Those remarks are English and dated now.  No sane person here would refer to ‘a properly subservient underclass’.  But no political party in the Welfare State can reject ‘benevolent paternalism’.  That would be political suicide. 

We inherited the Welfare State from the English.  The constant political issue is that we demand to retain the benefits, but we turn against those who want us to pay for them.  The result is that our government is broke, because its members are too scared of us to do what is required.  They just pass the buck to the next lot. 

They deny that, but we do not believe them.  Nor do we do anything to fix the problem.  This failing looks to be inevitable in our model of democracy.  I have no idea what the end will be.

Another thing we inherited from the English was a rejection of theory or ideology.  We distrust both.  ‘Ideology’ comes from the study of ideas.  We act on the lessons of experience rather than the demands of logic.  You see very different attitudes across the Channel or the Atlantic.

Another thing we inherited from England, after America had not, is that the English had accepted the responsibility of government for looking after the poor from at least the time of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603).  In the sixteenth century, before white people had even seen America, the English people had assumed obligations for their poor that would have been abhorrent to their Puritans back then, and which still look at best alien to most Americans today.  By 1563, the English had made a law for the compulsory levy for the maintenance of ‘impotent, aged and needy persons’.  The Oxford History of England records that the English accepted that the poor were ‘a charge on public benevolence’ and that ‘responsibility in the matter could not be left to the conscience of the individual, but must be enforced by law upon everyone.’ 

The English did not do this for ideology or out of charity, but for the prosaic object of keeping the peace against vagabonds.  They faced reality, not God.  Common sense trumps theory.  The distance from this very old English position to that in America now is as deep as the Atlantic.

When you add to that the fact that the Welfare State was introduced to England by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in the People’s Budget, you get a better idea of the difference between us and the U S. 

Before Churchill, Disraeli had been the pin-up boy of English Conservatives.  That did not stop him taking the plunge and introducing something like universal male suffrage.  The great Prussian, Count Otto von Bismarck, had done the same for Germany before he introduced the Welfare State there.  Disraeli and Bismarck were archetype conservatives – and I admire both.

‘Conservatives,’ then, could be alarmingly ‘progressive, to use another very plastic label.  Even when ‘conservatism’ was in full flower it allowed policies we now call liberal or progressive and which would be pure heresy to those who claim to be ‘conservatives’ in the U S today.  Burke, Bismarck and Disraeli did things that would lead to apoplexy on Sky After Dark.

England had both a conservative party and a liberal party.  (Churchill flitted between both, but he was one off.)  England still has a party with ‘Liberal’ in its name beside the party of the Tories.

Australia has a party called the Liberal Party.  It also claims to be conservative, although its lore is that the title ‘Liberal’ was deliberately chosen.  It now looks neither liberal nor conservative.

For about a generation it was wedded to a party of very determined agrarian socialists.  That party now looks to be in the hands not of farmers, but mining companies and urban ideologues in think tanks.  The coalition further dilutes any recognisable platform.

What are the results in Australia? 

 First, neither of the two main parties can come close to forming a majority in parliament.  Each is on the nose to the public at large.  One is accused of forgetting its roots or past.  The other is accused – and fairly accused – of not fulfilling its obligations in opposition and of turning its province into a one-party state. 

Secondly, on vote-driving issues, the only differences between the two parties are those of degree.  With the possible exception of preserving the environment, neither major party offers policies that derive from its platform, and are different in substance to those of the other side.  Each is engaged in a listless and useless game of charades that turns people right off politics as a whole.

Thirdly, whereas two generations ago it was the Labour Party that was unelectable because of division, ideology, cranks, and crooks, now it is the turn of the Liberal Party.  They look useless and bent on sustained irrelevance under the sedative of the ideology of their media drivers. 

It is best to pass over the National Party and One Nation in silence.

The conclusion is, I think, that the word ‘conservative’ has no place in Australian politics.  It is at best useless, and at worst misleading.  Like ‘socialist’, it is a darling dodo of our time.

And no populist can claim to be ‘conservative.’  They stand, they say, for ordinary people against the ruling Establishment, whose members they brand with the term ‘elites’.  I long for the day when an Australian says ‘I don’t want the best cricketer in my Australian XI – I want a dinky die Aussie battler or bludger.’  Or someone walking into a hospital saying ‘I need surgery to deal with a life-threatening condition, but I don’t want a Top Gun surgeon – a GP from the sticks suits my schtick.  I distrust all elites.  I am but a child of the people. Who was it who said of the people, by the people, for the people?’

The most hilarious claimant for the label ‘conservative’ is Donald Trump.  His mission is to obliterate the whole status quo by deceit, and if necessary by violence and force.  And a frightening number of Americans are happy to go along for the ride on a violent road.  And the last thing Trump wants to ‘conserve’ is the planet.

His major trumpet, Fox News, has nothing to do with politics.  It exists simply to enrich and aggrandize its owners.  In this respect, it resembles Trump.  By contrast, the function of the Murdoch press in Australia is simple.  It appeals only to a portion of the voters who can only vote for one party, and while doing so makes that party unelectable.

The American ideology is home grown – the family, God, and the flag.  They look still to have a hankering after royalty, as do the French, but at its worst in the U S, you get the spewing hate of Stephen Miller, who is besotted by the very idea of ideology.

There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.  It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless.  It is an ideology that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth.  Its adherents organize constantly to tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul.

You would not want to be left alone in a room with a man who talks like that.  Goebbels would have blanched.  This is wild uncharted Scapegoat Territory.

So, the future looks bleak for democracy all round. 

Conservatism is a natural and decent instinct, but it has been claimed by people who are anything but decent, either because they are stupid, or greedy, or both.

Oddly enough, Australia may be well placed to deal with the Fall.  This is because we are not interested in ideology – or, for that matter, politics at large.  Life offers so much more.  Most sane Australians would much prefer to talk about footy or cricket than the so called ‘culture wars’.  And that is very healthy.  Australians correctly suspect those who have the time and inclination to indulge in what are called the ‘politics of grievance’.  What more do these people want?  What drives them to keep stirring the possum?  Did they not have enough toys in their childhood?

I was reminded of a very cold morning in the middle of winter on a crowded platform on a railway station an hour from Melbourne some years ago.  Then came the dreaded announcement.  The train was delayed.  Yet again.  That led to the following conversation.

I am going to punish these bastards for this at the next state election.

So am I, Mate.

Can you just remind me, Cobber – which set of bludgers claims to be running this bloody joint at the moment?

Two Dictators

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

Each views the existing dispensation with contempt, and looks back on a mainly imaginary past, and a wholly imaginary future.

Each counts himself and his nation as a victim.

Each has suffered a crushing loss either personally or by the nation.  ‘Never again.’  Each reacts by denying the loss or inventing reasons for which it must be avenged.  In one sense, each wants to replay events leading to the downfall to produce a different result. 

Both can look at their lives as a struggle against the forces of darkness.  Each is therefore the archetype of a hero.  If either knew who Tolkien was, he would have asked that myth maker to write his story.

Each claims the power to diagnose the cause of his suffering and that of his nation. 

Each claims to have the answer.

Neither has any time for middle ground.

Those they accuse are enemies of the nation.

Each brings a self-righteousness that is nauseating to others.

A savage and vengeful bully lies close to the front of each that sometimes drops.  His whole life is a charade.

Neither has any sense of shame.  Each is shameless.

Each bully has no trouble in finding a weak minority to beat up as scapegoat.

Each claims that by taking revenge on the enemy, he can restore the nation to its greatness.   But both are addicted to and feed off conflict in a way that reminds others of Napoleon’s addiction to la guerre éternelle.  They look like Ponzi schemes of conquest.

Each exploits the envy felt by those who have not done so well for those who have.  Envy, as Othello learned, is a killer. 

And God help any minority whose members are seen to do better than the locals, and who threaten to challenge the established order.  Some are left with only their bare civic standing to barter with, and to lose that is to lose all.

The revenge of each is very personal.

Each is capable of cruelty for its own sake.

The character of each is fixed early, and his upbringing left no capacity for honest inquiry of himself.

Although hungry for power and acceptance, each fears inferiority and resorts to fantasy – a denial of reality.

Each is a showman – is there anything else? – but the Internet carries more clout than a torch-lit parade.

Each has an unerring feel for the parochial and the nativist – the gutter.

Each brings to his followers the ultimate gift of deliverance from the insecurity of doubt.

Each therefore raises a serious question about the upbringing or education of his followers – although it is very unwise for others to raise this issue.

Neither has any friends.  Their ego leaves no room in their psyche for friends.  When the end comes, they may stand alone.

God is obviously quite out of the question.

For similar reasons, neither marries well.  Love is not in the vocabulary.

Because neither cares for other people, each gambles recklessly with the lives of others.  If he goes down, he will take as many with him as possible.  (His Grace the Duke of Wellington correctly identified Napoleon as being guilty of this failing.)

But although each gambles with the lives of others, each is terrified of failing – and refuses to acknowledge it when it happens.

Each has had brushes with the law that he seeks to paint in his favour.  The prevailing faith in the community was premised on the life and teaching of a man subjected to the most gruesome form of capital punishment.  He was a humble man who crossed the old regime. 

Neither could ever be accused of humility.  Each subscribes to his own cult.

Each has devoted cult like followers, but the rest of the nation has trouble taking most of it seriously.  They regard the message and the messenger as fantasy – and banal fantasy at that.

Each is surrounded by toadies who from fear or ambition or both are too scared to contradict their leader.  They betray their obligation to the nation, and they feed the already enlarged ego of the man appointed by destiny.

The press of course is brought to heel, and the judges are too.  They get stacked or sacked in any event.

Each understands that the dictator must make all those around him complicit in what the regime is doing. 

Their loyalty is personal to him – not to the nation.  This is fundamental, and commonly fatal to the nation – and to those who pledge their civic faith.

Each sees the world as he wants to see it.  Each shows all the signs of having been spoiled and pampered as a child,  And that is another ground for saying the claim of victimhood is moonshine.

Each knows that if you are going to lie, and you most certainly are, you lie greatly.

Each relishes chaos – he remains the center of attention.  If he happens to drop from view, he behaves like a baby throwing toys out of the cot. 

Neither can accept being left in a room alone.

Each loves the sound of his own voice.

Each has many fronts, but is capable of an arrogant humility.

The result is that those who oppose the dictators do not understand them and are reviled by them.  The new man is treated with disbelief and scorn, but that only fires up him and his supporters.  (And what, in any event, is ‘reality’?  What did reality ever do for you?)

Each claims to be a patriot, but each also ruthlessly attacks the nation insofar as it was or is outside his power.  L’état c’est moi.  This is just one of those spellbinding contradictions in terms in which he revels. 

Neither has had the time or inclination to acquire any real learning – or taste.  Each is utterly tasteless, and civilized people would be uncomfortable having them in their home.

Each has low intelligence and no conscience.  Each is a moral cripple.

But that want of general intelligence does not prevent either from sensing the taste of the gutter, or an instinct for the weak spots of their enemy.  Someone said of that instinct that it was a handy gift for a politician, but ‘had less in common with the eye of the eagle than with the nose of the vulture.’

Only one is a coward.

In the end, the old regime starts to fall apart, and the center cannot hold.  As Yeats further said, the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.  Chaos takes the place of fantasy, and each dictator trades on chaos.

What is essential is that neither lives in this world.  There is more to this than egomania.  Each lives in a world of his own.  As someone remarked of one of them: ‘He does not really exist – he is only the noise he makes.’

But his raison d’être is simple.  He is the hero who will save the nation and raise it to its rightful triumph.

Above all, each is heartless.  I am myself alone.  Et praeteria nihil.  (And in addition, nothing.)

Well, then, both the fantasy and the chaos in their worlds seem to us so banal.  We might look at what that observation entails.

The word ‘banal’ comes from France – curiously, a banalité was one of those feudal obligations that led the peasants to burn down chateaux during the French Revolution.  The dictionary says that ‘banal’ means ‘trite, trivial, or commonplace’, but there is often a suggestion of emptiness or hollowness behind feigned or usurped importance that is pejorative.  This may have been behind the observation in Fowler’sModern English Usage that ‘we should confine banal and banality, since we cannot get rid of them, to occasions when we want to express a contempt deeper than any of the English words can convey.’

Hannah Arendt had as penetrating an intellect as I know of in the realm of political philosophy.  She wrote a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil.  She explained the sub-title as follows:

When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to the phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial.  Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing could have been further from his mind than to determine with Richard III ‘to prove a villain’.  Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all.  And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post.  He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realised what he was doing……He was not stupid.  It was sheer thoughtlessness – something by no means identical with stupidity – that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period.  And if this is ‘banal’, and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, that is still far from calling it commonplace.

These observations derive from intellectual integrity, and they are of great moment.  Arendt had previously said to the same effect: ‘The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were and still are terribly and terrifyingly normal.’ 

Eichmann was no devil or demon; he was just human, and the trouble for us is that he was ‘terribly and terrifyingly normal’.  Those who do not accept that Eichmann was just human, and that there is a little of Eichmann in all of us, are seeking to impose some kind of grid or cattle pen over humanity and are at risk of falling into the error that fed the derangement of people like Stalin or Franco or Mussolini.

We might here note the matter of fact assessment of the American historian R R Palmer on Carrier, the man who drowned priests by the boat load in the Vendée during the Revolution, and after being at first applauded, was later guillotined for what we would now describe as war crimes.

Carrier, it may safely be said, was a normal man with average sensibilities, with no unusual intelligence or strength of character, driven wild by opposition, turning ruthless because ruthlessness seemed to be the easiest way of solving a difficult problem.

As Arendt said of Eichmann, ‘it was sheer thoughtlessness…that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period.’

It is in the French Revolution more than under twentieth century dictators that we see people with little or no prior experience of government trying both to govern and to lay down a system of government, each of which tasks was beyond most if not all of them. 

These tasks require more than a lifetime of experience – they require generations of history and experience, centuries even.  It is here in France during the revolution that we see ordinary people placed in a whole new world doing their best in good faith to stare down chaos and the void, and just getting slowly more out of their depth until they run out air. 

We see this all the time.  If you have any experience with what we now call risk management, you will know that your biggest worry is the functionary who is getting out of their depth and either does not see that, or is incapable of admitting it.

In any revolution, you can normally back three horses.  First, jealousy fairly shrieks its venom.  Secondly, the scum rises to the surface, as if by an iron law of motion.  (The world’s losers are the most vengeful.)  Thirdly, self-interest usually prevails.  And those at the bottom live in terror of the heavyweights leaving them to hang out and dry when the carousel comes to a stop – as it must.  Their ultimate fear is replacement. 

These are simple, obvious facts of life, but historians tend to forget that most humans are just that – ordinary human beings – when they consider how some of them reacted when the volcano that was France erupted.  When looking back on how events unfolded, with the curse of ignorance and the false hope of hindsight, we may not be surprised to see that some ordinary people did some things that they would do very differently if they had their time again.  There was no procedure or manual telling Robespierre how he might react: the script had not been written because no one had seen anything remotely like it before.  And we might also remember that if the French could at least look back on the experiences of both England and America in their revolutions, the Russians had the benefit of the lot, and made a worse mess than anyone.

There is another term that is useful in dealing with people who are sleight of hand.  Here is Brewer on mountebank:

A vendor of quack medicines at fairs…who attracts the crowd by his tricks and antics; hence any charlatan or self-advertising pretender.  The bank, or bench, was the counter on which traders displayed their goods, and street vendors used to mount on their bank to patter to the public.

There is a big gap in time between Commedia dell’arte and Mussolini, but they have so much in common.  And it is all there in MAGA.

Well, in my lifetime, the Germans and the world learned lessons from Hell.  We have no idea what may unfold as the United States falls apart before our eyes.  Who can say?  Who in the name of God could have predicted that in my lifetime, thousands of Jewish people would choose to live in Germany rather than Israel?

Two Dictators

Each views the existing dispensation with contempt, and looks back on a mainly imaginary past, and a wholly imaginary future.

Each counts himself and his nation as a victim.

Each has suffered a crushing loss either personally or by the nation.  ‘Never again.’  Each reacts by denying the loss or inventing reasons for which it must be avenged.  In one sense, each wants to replay events leading to the downfall to produce a different result. 

Both can look at their lives as a struggle against the forces of darkness.  Each is therefore the archetype of a hero.  If either knew who Tolkien was, he would have asked that myth maker to write his story.

Each claims the power to diagnose the cause of his suffering and that of his nation. 

Each claims to have the answer.

Neither has any time for middle ground.

Those they accuse are enemies of the nation.

Each brings a self-righteousness that is nauseating to others.

A savage and vengeful bully lies close to the front of each that sometimes drops.  His whole life is a charade.

Neither has any sense of shame.  Each is shameless.

Each bully has no trouble in finding a weak minority to beat up as scapegoat.

Each claims that by taking revenge on the enemy, he can restore the nation to its greatness.   But both are addicted to and feed off conflict in a way that reminds others of Napoleon’s addiction to la guerre éternelle.  They look like Ponzi schemes of conquest.

Each exploits the envy felt by those who have not done so well for those who have.  Envy, as Othello learned, is a killer. 

And God help any minority whose members are seen to do better than the locals, and who threaten to challenge the established order.  Some are left with only their bare civic standing to barter with, and to lose that is to lose all.

The revenge of each is very personal.

Each is capable of cruelty for its own sake.

The character of each is fixed early, and his upbringing left no capacity for honest inquiry of himself.

Although hungry for power and acceptance, each fears inferiority and resorts to fantasy – a denial of reality.

Each is a showman – is there anything else? – but the Internet carries more clout than a torch-lit parade.

Each has an unerring feel for the parochial and the nativist – the gutter.

Each brings to his followers the ultimate gift of deliverance from the insecurity of doubt.

Each therefore raises a serious question about the upbringing or education of his followers – although it is very unwise for others to raise this issue.

Neither has any friends.  Their ego leaves no room in their psyche for friends.  When the end comes, they may stand alone.

God is obviously quite out of the question.

For similar reasons, neither marries well.  Love is not in the vocabulary.

Because neither cares for other people, each gambles recklessly with the lives of others.  If he goes down, he will take as many with him as possible.  (His Grace the Duke of Wellington correctly identified Napoleon as being guilty of this failing.)

But although each gambles with the lives of others, each is terrified of failing – and refuses to acknowledge it when it happens.

Each has had brushes with the law that he seeks to paint in his favour.  The prevailing faith in the community was premised on the life and teaching of a man subjected to the most gruesome form of capital punishment.  He was a humble man who crossed the old regime. 

Neither could ever be accused of humility.  Each subscribes to his own cult.

Each has devoted cult like followers, but the rest of the nation has trouble taking most of it seriously.  They regard the message and the messenger as fantasy – and banal fantasy at that.

Each is surrounded by toadies who from fear or ambition or both are too scared to contradict their leader.  They betray their obligation to the nation, and they feed the already enlarged ego of the man appointed by destiny.

The press of course is brought to heel, and the judges are too.  They get stacked or sacked in any event.

Each understands that the dictator must make all those around him complicit in what the regime is doing. 

Their loyalty is personal to him – not to the nation.  This is fundamental, and commonly fatal to the nation – and to those who pledge their civic faith.

Each sees the world as he wants to see it.  Each shows all the signs of having been spoiled and pampered as a child,  And that is another ground for saying the claim of victimhood is moonshine.

Each knows that if you are going to lie, and you most certainly are, you lie greatly.

Each relishes chaos – he remains the center of attention.  If he happens to drop from view, he behaves like a baby throwing toys out of the cot. 

Neither can accept being left in a room alone.

Each loves the sound of his own voice.

Each has many fronts, but is capable of an arrogant humility.

The result is that those who oppose the dictators do not understand them and are reviled by them.  The new man is treated with disbelief and scorn, but that only fires up him and his supporters.  (And what, in any event, is ‘reality’?  What did reality ever do for you?)

Each claims to be a patriot, but each also ruthlessly attacks the nation insofar as it was or is outside his power.  L’état c’est moi.  This is just one of those spellbinding contradictions in terms in which he revels. 

Neither has had the time or inclination to acquire any real learning – or taste.  Each is utterly tasteless, and civilized people would be uncomfortable having them in their home.

Each has low intelligence and no conscience.  Each is a moral cripple.

But that want of general intelligence does not prevent either from sensing the taste of the gutter, or an instinct for the weak spots of their enemy.  Someone said of that instinct that it was a handy gift for a politician, but ‘had less in common with the eye of the eagle than with the nose of the vulture.’

Only one is a coward.

In the end, the old regime starts to fall apart, and the center cannot hold.  As Yeats further said, the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.  Chaos takes the place of fantasy, and each dictator trades on chaos.

What is essential is that neither lives in this world.  There is more to this than egomania.  Each lives in a world of his own.  As someone remarked of one of them: ‘He does not really exist – he is only the noise he makes.’

But his raison d’être is simple.  He is the hero who will save the nation and raise it to its rightful triumph.

Above all, each is heartless.  I am myself alone.  Et praeteria nihil.  (And in addition, nothing.)

Well, then, both the fantasy and the chaos in their worlds seem to us so banal.  We might look at what that observation entails.

The word ‘banal’ comes from France – curiously, a banalité was one of those feudal obligations that led the peasants to burn down chateaux during the French Revolution.  The dictionary says that ‘banal’ means ‘trite, trivial, or commonplace’, but there is often a suggestion of emptiness or hollowness behind feigned or usurped importance that is pejorative.  This may have been behind the observation in Fowler’sModern English Usage that ‘we should confine banal and banality, since we cannot get rid of them, to occasions when we want to express a contempt deeper than any of the English words can convey.’

Hannah Arendt had as penetrating an intellect as I know of in the realm of political philosophy.  She wrote a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil.  She explained the sub-title as follows:

When I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to the phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial.  Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing could have been further from his mind than to determine with Richard III ‘to prove a villain’.  Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all.  And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post.  He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realised what he was doing……He was not stupid.  It was sheer thoughtlessness – something by no means identical with stupidity – that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period.  And if this is ‘banal’, and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, that is still far from calling it commonplace.

These observations derive from intellectual integrity, and they are of great moment.  Arendt had previously said to the same effect: ‘The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were and still are terribly and terrifyingly normal.’ 

Eichmann was no devil or demon; he was just human, and the trouble for us is that he was ‘terribly and terrifyingly normal’.  Those who do not accept that Eichmann was just human, and that there is a little of Eichmann in all of us, are seeking to impose some kind of grid or cattle pen over humanity and are at risk of falling into the error that fed the derangement of people like Stalin or Franco or Mussolini.

We might here note the matter of fact assessment of the American historian R R Palmer on Carrier, the man who drowned priests by the boat load in the Vendée during the Revolution, and after being at first applauded, was later guillotined for what we would now describe as war crimes.

Carrier, it may safely be said, was a normal man with average sensibilities, with no unusual intelligence or strength of character, driven wild by opposition, turning ruthless because ruthlessness seemed to be the easiest way of solving a difficult problem.

As Arendt said of Eichmann, ‘it was sheer thoughtlessness…that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period.’

It is in the French Revolution more than under twentieth century dictators that we see people with little or no prior experience of government trying both to govern and to lay down a system of government, each of which tasks was beyond most if not all of them. 

These tasks require more than a lifetime of experience – they require generations of history and experience, centuries even.  It is here in France during the revolution that we see ordinary people placed in a whole new world doing their best in good faith to stare down chaos and the void, and just getting slowly more out of their depth until they run out air. 

We see this all the time.  If you have any experience with what we now call risk management, you will know that your biggest worry is the functionary who is getting out of their depth and either does not see that, or is incapable of admitting it.

In any revolution, you can normally back three horses.  First, jealousy fairly shrieks its venom.  Secondly, the scum rises to the surface, as if by an iron law of motion.  (The world’s losers are the most vengeful.)  Thirdly, self-interest usually prevails.  And those at the bottom live in terror of the heavyweights leaving them to hang out and dry when the carousel comes to a stop – as it must.  Their ultimate fear is replacement. 

These are simple, obvious facts of life, but historians tend to forget that most humans are just that – ordinary human beings – when they consider how some of them reacted when the volcano that was France erupted.  When looking back on how events unfolded, with the curse of ignorance and the false hope of hindsight, we may not be surprised to see that some ordinary people did some things that they would do very differently if they had their time again.  There was no procedure or manual telling Robespierre how he might react: the script had not been written because no one had seen anything remotely like it before.  And we might also remember that if the French could at least look back on the experiences of both England and America in their revolutions, the Russians had the benefit of the lot, and made a worse mess than anyone.

There is another term that is useful in dealing with people who are sleight of hand.  Here is Brewer on mountebank:

A vendor of quack medicines at fairs…who attracts the crowd by his tricks and antics; hence any charlatan or self-advertising pretender.  The bank, or bench, was the counter on which traders displayed their goods, and street vendors used to mount on their bank to patter to the public.

There is a big gap in time between Commedia dell’arte and Mussolini, but they have so much in common.  And it is all there in MAGA.

Well, in my lifetime, the Germans and the world learned lessons from Hell.  We have no idea what may unfold as the United States falls apart before our eyes.  Who can say?  Who in the name of God could have predicted that in my lifetime, thousands of Jewish people would choose to live in Germany rather than Israel?