Ryszard Kapuściński in Imperium (1993) warned of three plagues, or contagions threatening the world: nationalism, racism and fundamentalism. He further identified one shared trait or a common denominator in ‘an aggressive all powerful total irrationality,’ arguing that ‘[a]nyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that awaits its sacrificial victims.’
The lunatics have now well and truly taken over the asylum worldwide. We are now witnessing a new unholy war being led by evangelical Christians against Islam, just as earlier crusades emanated from Europe in the Middle Ages. And like those earlier wars, the acquisition of plunder is clearly a motivating factor.
Noticeably, the clearly sociopathic Pete Hegseth talks of the Iran war as God’s War, and the soldiery are briefed accordingly. Trump uses similar language, but holy wars often occlude terrestrial agendas. Add the dimension of rampant technology, wherein war is conducted remotely in video game sequences and one reaches a level of savagery reminiscent of the 1940s. Meanwhile AI plunders our libraries and distorts our reality with propagandist bombast.
Hegseth’s macabre ceremonies in the White House have included Doug Wilson, the founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. He has stated that homosexuality should be a crime and that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. As editor of The Princeton Tory, Hegseth also suggested that homosexuality was immoral.
In March 2026, soon after the start of the U.S./Israeli attack – branded with the biblical denotation Operation Epic Fury – it has been reported that military leaders told their service members that the war was ‘part of God’s divine plan,’ and that President Donald Trump had been anointed by Jesus. One commander quoted the Book of Revelation, and said the war will bring the second coming of Jesus Christ. The whole exercise has a distinct air of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1959).
The legendary punk band, The Dead Kennedys album In God We Trust Inc (1982) curiously presages our times, but none of what is being done in God’s name is properly Kennedyesque, or indeed genuinely Christian. It appears to be an extension of what Eisenhower warned of the existential threat of the Military Industrial Complex. Wars. As IG Farben and Bleichroder knew, wars are a great source of revenue.
The leading Catholic legal philosopher John Finnis is also a believer in God’s law. Marriage is for him exclusively between a man and a woman and purely for procreation. He considers homosexual congress and sex outside marriage as intrinsically shameful, immoral and harmful. In Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980) he compares abortion to carpet bombing civilians. Sadly, murdering the civilian population of Iran does not appear to bother the zealots in the White House to the same extent as interfering with women’s reproductive rights.
Jonathan Sacks, the leading contemporary Jewish philosopher in the U.K. railed against extremism. In Morality (2020) he outlined positive religious values, including a focus on dignity, associative levels of responsibility, community and a sense of public service and the common good. Is all of this now lost on the Likud faction in Israel?
Christian jihadism, historically, also includes the horrendous conquest of South America by Spanish Conquistadors. In modern times the Blairite justification, couched at one level in Christian terms, for the war on Iraq was also used to mask narrow self-interest in securing oil. The war in Iran, now engulfing the entire Middle East, also has significant acquisitive elements, but is more obviously an attack on what is perceived in racial terms as a satanic culture.
Shortly before his death Sacks equated altruistic evil with the neoconservative group, who held themselves to be good and their opponents to be evil. This leads to the arrogant imperialist assumptions that ‘we’ are inflicting punishment for ‘their’ own good, and that killing multitudes will pave the way to democracy.
Both the late Christopher Hitchens, and indeed Richard Dawkins, have written extensively about the new forms of religious extremes we are witnessing, with the finger of blame primarily pointed at Islam. Islamic extremism does provide graphic examples of brutal beheadings, mass executions, stoning to death for adultery, planes hitting the Twin Towers, as well as the murder of journalists. There is also evident in Britain a lack of integration, and a secessionism unconducive to any kind of harmonious multiculturalism. Recourse to genocide, however, seems to be the preserve of evangelical Christians and Zionists.
Osama bin Laden (L) sits with his adviser and purported successor Ayman al-Zawahiri (Foto: HO/Scanpix 2011)
Islamic Rage
Much of the Islamic rage can be traced to neo-imperialism in the Middle East. The current phase began in earnest with the invasion of Iraq, and has culminated in this attack on Iran.
Christopher Hitchens’ worst intellectual error, inexcusable in my view, was to support the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq. He was, indirectly, supporting, though he might not have seen it, an even worse form of religious fundamentalism directed against another.
In works such as Culture and Imperialism (1994) and Orientalism (1978) the Palestinian author Edward Said author asserted that ‘Patriotism, chauvinism, ethnic, religious and racial hatreds can lead to mass destructiveness.’ He cites our own Conor Cruise O’Brien to the effect that imagined communities of identity are hijacked by the petty dictators of state nationalism, like Benjamin Netanyahu.
In Marxist terms, religious fundamentalism can be traced to growing disparities of wealth and structural inequality, as well as a lack of opportunities to gain a rounded education. We have seen an all-too-great an emphasis on technical or scientific education for economic advancement, as opposed to a broad liberal education that inculcates critical thinking.
In these straitened times extremism speaks of a need to belong to a cause, leading to belief in something ethereal, no matter how ludicrous. Belief in an afterlife defines people’s existences and justifies even self-immolation.
As the wheels come off the neoliberal economic system and the societal bonds wither, extremist Christian nationalism and the demonisation of the other has stepped into the void to provide solace.
Passion Conferences, a music and evangelism festival at Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, in 2013.
U.S. Evangelism
In the United States, we are witnessing an unholy synergy between Evangelical Christians and racism. Far-right demagogues have articulated a view that ‘our’ country is being overrun by immigrants and that the dominant ethnic group must ‘take back control’ from a phantom intellectual Marxism espoused by liberal elites, Harvard or straight socialism. All of these apparently emanate from the decadence of a mixed race cosmopolis. The fire is spreading to Europe, U.K and Ireland too.
Thus, we find a global descent into the extremist and racist abyss, where those we disagree with are scapegoated and targeted. This is a product of a dualistic mode of thinking, which Sacks identifies with a need to define God in relation to the Satan residing in others. This leads to the demonisation of those we disagree with, evident also in social media vilification.
What the Christian far-right in the United States and elsewhere offer is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, which involves isolation of the righteous few in gated communities, segregating the rich chosen people from the disaster they inflict on others.
The now tarnished Noam Chomsky once claimed that the Republican Party is the ‘most dangerous organization in world history.’ Chomsky also claimed in a BBC Newsnight interview that nearly 40% of the American public believe that the Second Coming will occur by 2050. So, Pete Hegseth may be preaching to the converted.
Brazilian President Lula with Pope Francis 21.06.2023 Foto: Ricardo Stuckert/PR
Religion as Agent for Good?
Alternatively, in The Godless Gospel (2020) Julian Baggini calls for forms of religion shorn of hatred so we may realise our best intentions and develop empathy and compassion. He envisages a commitment to personal humility and an obligation and commitment to the truth, causing as little harm as possible. There are clearly good values that Christianity may teach to those of a secular persuasion presently lacking in moral clarity.
Above all, the atheist and perhaps the leading intellect left on the planet Jurgen Habermas recognises how religion engenders social integration, and can be a basis for communicative action, his core concept. As far back as 1978 he argued, from a secular perspective, for the necessity of religious ideas to humanise society. These would be religious ideas where we learn to communicate reasonably without resort to falsetto Jihadism.
The former Pope Francis’s experiences in the barrios of Buenos Aires also appear to have shaped an empathy towards the wretched of the Earth. He preached tolerance and engagement, as well as social and economic justice. The present Pope has, encouragingly, in un-American fashion, condemned what is happening, however mutedly. Let us hope that he is untainted by the dark money of the Vatican and does not go the way of John Paul II.
Christian socialism is a potentially vital force if it reflects the values of what Philip Pullman calls that great man Jesus, but not the values, as he equally presents, of that scoundrel Jesus Christ. This latter is a distortion of New Testament values, dedicated to the accumulation of capital, a lack of compassion and political manipulation.
Neo-feudalism
We appear to be witnessing Old Testament fury, but beyond the zealotry it seems that neoliberalism is morphing into neo-feudalism. The Book of Genesis sanctions man’s dominion over the Earth, which appears to be permitting a scorched earth approach, but this is a smoke screen. Institutional Evangelical Christianity is wedded to the exchange of goods, along with the exchange of gods. Drill Baby Drill.
The last word I leave to Clarence Darrow, who represented a progressive America of another era in his closing speech in The Scopes Trial:
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more.——-, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
Those who suffer from toxic nationalism, toxic religious mania and toxic racism are beyond reason and must be overcome.
Feature Image: Some of Pete Hegseth’s tattoos, 2021
Many of those featuring in this series wrote top class journalism, including Albert Camus, Noam Chomsky, Voltaire and George Orwell. None of them, however, are pre-eminently or exclusively associated with their journalism. There is one intellectual who is however. That of course is Christopher Hitchens – the non pareil journalist of our recent age, and perhaps the last of the just.
The purpose of this essay is not to deal with types of journalism or codes of ethics, or to deal with the complex relationship between editors and proprietors, and indeed now social media exerts control over journalism. Instead, I seek to identify which hacks, from Fleet Street or otherwise, have singularly, through the restrictions and obsession with news and sensation, stood out to become true Public Intellectuals.
There has never been a greater need for a mass circulation public intellectual. I open this debate by suggesting five choices, at least two of whom displayed superiority in this arena to Hitchens.
The Criteria
A Journalist-Public Intellectual must seek the truth, understand the nature of fact-gathering and vocationally support speech rights even at the outer limits. He or she must also form a bulwark against the degradation of language. In this respect the Promethean storm of social media opens the door to ever more unregulated and unfiltered opinions, often deliberately orchestrated by far right-wing or absurd woke viewpoints to enforce wrecking ball compliance and control.
It begs the question: compromised by corporate control how can a journalist in the mainstream press now become a Public Intellectual?
Recently I visited my friend Patrick Healyéminence grise of Irish Public Intellectualism in Amsterdam. He is a retired professor of architecture, painter, writer and a global authority on Karl Kraus. So let us get to the first of my five choices. The first greater than Hitchens and Swift greater than all.
Karl Kraus
In my piece The Austrian Mind I omitted Kraus given the challenge of writing on him, as Jonathan Frantzen in effect suggested in his interpretation of certain of his texts in The Kraus Project (2013). How do you grapple with so protean or unclassifiable an intellect? He seems almost incomprehensible in the present age.
Kraus acted as editor from 1899-1936 of the leading Viennese magazine Die Fackel (The Torch) which he used as his own personal soapbox. He was the exclusive writer from 1911 onwards. People feared his intemperate pen. A satirist, polemicist, aphorist and playwright, writing in the Golden Age of literary Vienna, which ended very abruptly. All shortly emigrated and dead. The fate of Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth.
His targets, not unlike the later Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, was the mediocrity of the Austrian Bourgeoisie and above all their distortion and abuse of language, particularly his fellow journalists. He could often be seen for half an hour trying to work out the insertion of a comma in Café Mozart!
In his book on Kraus Frantzen primarily deals with an essay on the German national poet Heine, where with very effective pastiche Kraus crucifies Heine and by implication those like him, saying: ‘Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts.’
He was a scathing aphorist and two of my favourites are applicable to our own age. First, is the idea that ‘corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.’ The second is also quite relevant: ‘Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.’
Reading the entirety of Die Fackel is an experience not unlike an extended viewing of Peter Cooke’s four great impersonations of English archetypes, judge, football manager, naturalist and rock star for the Clive Anderson show shortly before his death. Peter Cook was also Lord Gnome, the proprietor of Private Eye. He employed Ian Hislop and was by indirection a journalist and public intellectual. In fact, his impersonations, his support of and informal and sometimes formal contributions to Private Eye make him an intrinsic if not central choice.
Krauss epic play The Last Days of Mankind (2015), which Patrick Healy has translated, is an attack on press barons, hacks facilitating, through mass orchestration, Populist bellicose hysteria, and the First World War. Its uneven tone demonstrates his evolution from aristocratic condescension to social democrat. The play is a mammoth fifteen hours long for voices or rather a voice best read by Kraus, or as a substitute Patrick, attacking stupidity in all directions.
Die Fackel also attacks psychoanalysis as a quack science; antisemitism, though his own antisemitism as a self-loathing Jew is also evident; corruption, not least the police chief of Vienna who he forced out of office; the pan-German Populist movement; laissez-faire economic policies; and numerous other subjects.
He dies at the very precipice of collapse, of natural causes, after a self-enforced interregnum when he suspended publication with the rise of Hitler, only for one last push of part of an extended essay The Third Walspurgers Night (1936). Its essential argument is that through their devotion to the pastime of palaver and tactics, the social democrats had facilitated Hitler’s rise and had lost all material gains. He despaired at their belief ‘they could break [the] magic circle [of Nazism] by means of the Constitutional Court.’ Consequently, the essay supports the Austrian Christian-Democratic Chancellor Dollfuss, as anything other than Hitler was needed. Historic desperation.
The opening paragraph of the essay is devastating in its implications for today I interpose.
As to Hitler, [read Trump or any other contemporary ‘strongman’ leader] I have nothing to say. I am aware that as the upshot of extended reflection, of repeated efforts to grasp the phenomenon and the forces driving it, this falls far short of expectations. They were, after all, pitched higher than ever before at a polemicist who is popularly – but mistakenly – expected to take a stand; and who, when confronted by any evil that appeals to his temperament, has indeed been prepared to “stick his neck out”. But there are evils which not only make the neck cease to be a metaphor but may also prevent the associated, ….?
The rest of the essay deals with the propogandists and the facilitators primarily Goebbels [read Musk, The Daily Mail, and indeed other legacy media].
The best reading of Walpurgis Nacht as Patrick Healy suggests is that satire is as the Roman genre par excellence satura tota nostra est – and should point not only in the direction of rhetorical agility, but also use mockery, insult, indignation etc, fusing the voice of the moralist and the skill of a standup comic. Indeed, the word also a meaning of stew bringing all ingredients together.
Jonathan Swift
The only equal of Kraus as a Journalist-Public Intellectual, and thus also greater than Hitchens in the pantheon is, in my view, Swift. Incontestably, the greatest satirical essay in the English language is A Modest Proposal ((1729). Kraus was in fact pleased to be compared to Swift on the basis that false modesty was the most arch kind of hypocrisy.
Swift’s essay argues, in light of a policy of Malthusian liquidation, that rather than allowing children starve to death a profit could be made that would contribute to the common weal. Apparently informed by an American friend, the author says that children make a very fine dish. A passage towards the end of the essay perfectly encapsulates much of the awfulness of that time, and our own:
I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever.
Swift wrote other great journalistic tracts such as The Tale of The Tub (1704) and in a golden age of satire his skills were venerated. His exact contemporary Alexander Pope, particularly in his epic poem The Rape of the Lock (1717) stirring up the upper classes, was more lyrical than trenchant. In fairness Pope’s wonderful Dunciad (1728-43) castigates stupidity in all its manifest forms and is dedicated to Swift. Indeed it was possibly partly written by him. It is also apposite to our time. Two quotes suffice.
How with less reading than makes felons scape, less human genius than God gives an ape
And out of context but an elaboration of the above.
To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead.
Consider also the final book of Gulliver’s Travels, where ‘Yahoos’ – a term that has entered the lexicon as a pejorative description of humans – describes lawyers and judges in the following unflattering terms:
Judges… are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office.
Or
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.
H.L. Mencken
In Kraus’ own time only the legendary muckraking American journalist H.L. Mencken is comparable. He wrote a fantastic treatise on The American Language (1919 and revised) and was the bugbear of the American bourgeoisie of his time. In colourful terms Mencken referred to the religious right in his day as ‘gaping primates, anthropoid rabble’, and the ‘boobiesie’. Famously through the Baltimore Sun he briefed Clarence Darrow to defend the teacher accused of the criminal offence of teaching Darwinism in the Scopes Trial (1925).
Darrow’s opponent as prosecutor was three-time Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Bryan won, but Darrow won the moral victory not least in his devastating cross examination of Bryan on expert lessons from the Bible. The verdict was reversed on appeal. One week later Bryan died and Mencken penned his infamous obituary of William Jennings Bryan to a chorus of disapproval. Here is a flavour of it:
Bryan was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted. He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. … He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.”
The thread that unites Kraus, Swift, and Mencken is fearless satire and rhetoric and opinion of the most audacious type, built on the defence of rationality against institutional, governmental and fundamentalist abuse.
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens could not write a bad sentence, a line Edmund Wilson used about Scott Fitzgerald. The towering achievement of his gifted polemics is in my view The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), which he argues that he ought to be arrested for war crimes. There was an equally famous and blasphemous text about the ostensibly good Mother Therese of Calcutta The Missionary Position (1995). Irreverent journalism of this type is now sorely lacking!
Ryszard Kapuscinski
The book on the Islamic Revolution in Iran Shah of Shahs (1982) or his equally famous book on the fraud that was Haille Selassie The Emperor (1978) are eye-witness accounts, and rightly lauded. He had no fear, like Hitchens, of wading into dangerous territories, but his wisdom is contained in other more reflective books.
Whereas learning about the world is labour, and a great all consuming one at that. Most people develop quite antithetical talents, in fact-to look without seeing, topreserve oneself within oneself. Travels with Herodotus (2004)
Or best of all in Imperium (1993), his best book and a summation, he writes:
Three plagues, three contagions threaten the world. The first is the plague of nationalism. The second is the plague of racism. The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism.
All three share one trait a common denominator an aggressive all powerful total irrationality. Anyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that waits its sacrificial victims.
The final word is left to Karl Kraus, who I regard as the second greatest journalist of all time, after Swift:
Those who now have nothing to say because actions are speaking continue to talk. Let him who has something to say come forward and be silent.
Irish Times journalistNaomi O’Leary wrote an article recently commenting on how journalists are curtailed in what they can write by the threat of defamation actions, which contributes to an omerta or code of silence, undermining free speech.
This leads to self-censorship, dictated by fear of suit. But the Irish Times trust also appears to be compromised by association with vested interests, which dictate the blandishments and glorified stenography passing for journalism commonly encountered in its pages.
In the aforementioned article, O’Leary cited emotive evidence of a landlord attempting to evict ‘an entire apartment block’, and a civil society group ‘highlighting privatisation in healthcare’ being silenced. She notes, fawningly, that Minister for Justice Simon Harris this week ‘laid out a planned defamation reform, saying it should not be perceived as a “rich man’s law”.’
Does she seriously think that any reform of defamation laws has simply been designed to restrict the casino capitalism of the current level of awards in defamation cases?
Indeed, in some instances a high level of damages is appropriate. For example, Lord Aldington was entitled to millions in damages for the outrageous slur that he had participated in sending the Cossacks back to Stalin. The unjustified staining of reputations with crimes against humanity requires vigorous restraints.
Predictably, the draft guidelines for what lies in store do not look auspicious, as it appears designed to protect the powerful, who dominate legacy media.
It should be noted that recently both Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin suggested that Sinn Féin were using legal action and menacing solicitors’ letters to undermine free speech and robust questioning of political motives. There was obvious concern arising out of strict conditions for an RTÉ interview with Shane Ross, discussing his biography of Mary Lou McDonald.
I have some empathy with Ross – whose views I generally find abhorrent – as when I went on RTÉ they stipulated certain matters, such as overt criticism of the Gardaí, were out of bounds.
What Ross wrote about the Sinn Féin leader may not have been defamatory, but simply ideologically tainted. After all, Ross has what might be regarded as extreme views on certain issues, as, arguably, do elements within Sinn Féin. The difference is that Ross is indulged by the establishment with publishing deals and a column in a Sunday paper. Go figure.
Moreover, remarks made by Leo Varadkar last year in an interview with the Sunday Times to the effect that those associated with the Leo the Leak story in Village Magazine were Russian sympathisers is a classic example of the degradation of contemporary political discourse, conveyed by media which offers an uncritical platform to those in power. It was, of course, clearly defamatory towards its editor Michael Smith, who has been vocal in his condemnation of Vladimir Putin.
He might not expect a justified windfall, however, if the case comes before a Fine Gael-appointed judge, as opposed to a jury, as the defamation bill proposes.
The renowned jurist Geoffrey Robertson QC has criticised gagging orders silencing critics, which serves the interests of the kleptocracy, including Russian oligarchs, in a recent book. but be we should be careful for what we wish for.
A gagging orders might have been appropriate to counter Labour’s recent absurd slur against Rishi Sunak, which Keir Starmer doubled down on despite internal criticism from within his own party. All too often it has been the fake left, epitomised by Alastair Campbell, which has pandered to press hysteria in criminal justice in the UK.
I note the word ‘aggressive’ being used by Ms O’Leary in the context of pre-emptive threats, which is similar to the menace required to ground the criminal offence known as blackmail; the definition of which is menace backed by threats. Such tactics are something the government parties in Ireland and apparatchiks in the police and justice department know a considerable amount about.
So, spurious defamation actions for ulterior motives may come close to the criminal charge of blackmail backed by threats, but only if these are spurious and untrue. But what if they are true? And where should the balance lie?
It is almost universally agreed, including, apparently, by the incumbent Minister for Justice, Simon Harris that ‘Democracy cannot truly flourish without robust protection for the right of freedom of expression.’ In a certain respect, however, this Bill will in fact seriously curtail freedom of expression, a point that Naomi O’Leary strikingly ignores.
Indeed, one wonders whether the whole article was conceived in cahoots with said Minister, who she has previously quoted approvingly over his role in the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, while ignoring that he once adopted a Pro-Life stance. The article is also presented with a flattering shot of the Minister emblazoned over it, depicting him as the champion of free speech.
Freedom of expression is the central hallmark of a democracy. Anthony Lewis, referring to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, said that free speech should be a search engine for the truth. The great legal scholar Ronald Dworkin argued that free speech is a condition of legitimate government and a counterweight to hysteria and unreason. Stephen Sedley, a great English judge, called it the lifeblood of a democracy. Freedom of speech also opens the government and indeed opposition to intense scrutiny. The prior restraint of gagging orders invites scepticism.
So, bearing this in mind, let us explore the motivation of the current government for reforming the defamation laws.
The proposed government Bill on Online Disclosure applies to all media, including Twitter, and potentially criminalises certain categories of ‘hate’ speech.
It could amount to the most dramatic curtailment of free speech in the history of the state. Thus, if Naomi O’ Leary had the temerity to compare Leo Varadkar to a wart on the sole of one’s foot in jest she might be prosecuted, and appear before a Fine Gael appointed judge.
The much-trumpeted new Whistleblowing Act ineffectively opposed, and badly amended, is also worth considering. It does not protect media breaking stories; nor does it adequately protect employees including journalist from reporting externally.
A legal environment that favours legacy publishers that employ expert legal advice in advance of publication, as opposed to private individuals ranting on Twitter – often to very small audiences – also ignores the restraints imposed internally by an increasingly corporatized press, which acts as a stenographer to the powerful. This is a role which Naomi O’Leary herself seems proud to perform.
The Irish Times is a trust, but dependent on its sponsors and connections; so it does not, and arguably cannot, provide genuinely truth-driven coverage that a true democracy requires. It is institutionally neutered and not just by prospective defamation actions.
Defamation suits and pre-emptive injunctions chill free speech, and are frowned on by lawyers and responsible journalists. Such injunctions sought to shut down Watergate and Wikileaks. The judgment in the seminal US constitutional case the Pentagon Papers frowned on it. Politicians ought to be thick-skinned when it comes to obloquy and ridicule, it goes with the territory of assuming power.
What we are dealing with is a far wider problem in contemporary political discourse. Jürgen Habermas – perhaps the leading public intellectual alive on the planet – developed the crucial idea of ideal speech or communicative action, which serves as an argument to the effect that speech should be proper and non-ideological in order to achieve optimum technical outcomes that are also morally purposeful.
Sadly, most of what passes for debate in Dáil Eireann would be at the very opposite pole to the kind of Enlightenment salon discussions he imagines.
The criminalisation or suing or gagging of speech – generally of those that most need protecting – is an awful feature of these woe-begotten times.
Given the approving coverage that legacy media already provides to representatives of the parties representing large corporations in Ireland, the least we might expect is that debate on online fora continues remains robust, and, in general, conducted without fear of suit.
Rarely, if ever, does the Irish Times land a blow against vested interests in Ireland, channelling instead a latent anger against distant caricatures over whom we have no control. Online fora at least offer an opportunity for citizen journalists to provide accounts that challenge dominant narratives in a way that legacy media does not.
Naturally, speech has its outer limits. Hate speech that inspires violence against minority groups cannot be tolerated in a civilised society. Social media publishers have a responsibility to moderate content, but cannot be allowed to decide what constitutes ‘disinformation’, and censor according to the whims of bodies that may be subject to regulatory capture. Censorship is always dangerous.
Surely, with respect to Fine Gael for example, one should be allowed to describe them as crypto-fascists, or indeed suggest that Mary-Lou McDonald is associated with terrorists as Mr. Ross seems to have done.
Fintan O’Toole constantly warns against the dangers posed by Sinn Féin, but rarely does he offer a searing critic of the corporatocracy and dominant political parties. His sympathies seem to lie with a weary establishment, which ‘have no choice’ but to coalesces with the neoliberal parties.
Untrammelled freedom of expression should only be accorded to those who say something of significance – those who have something to lose by speaking out.
Robust Debate
The solution, of course, is not litigation but robust debate in civil society; as one of the great defenders of speech the late great Christopher Hitchens put it: ‘If you disagree with me, do so and stand in line so I can kick your ass.’ Or words to that effect. Possibly slurred.
A defamation action can ruin a person’s life. A casual disregard for the truth in Ireland and premptive publication fed by the police and its journalistic cohorts in the gutter press can have serious consequences. The Irish Independent and much of RTÉ deserve no special protection.
Given the platform he is accorded, nor should the gaffe-prone Leo Varadkar be allowed to shelter behind loose laws that should be designed to protect real journalists. His big mouth was most recently in evidence with his crass sub–American Monica Lewinsky comment.
Indeed, give the parlous state of media in Ireland, one shudders to think what nonsense will be published if we are to dispense with reasonably strict defamation laws, and jury trials.
Nonetheless, I can agree with a certain amount of what Naomi O’Leary’s recent article argues. No doubt defamation awards should be curtailed and are out of kilter with other jurisdictions, but negating jury trials where liars are exposed would be a retrograde step, and the criminalisation of the nebulous concept of hate speech could be disastrous, rendering satire almost impossible.
Freedom of expression has its limits. Indeed, one wonders about the responsibility of a publisher such as the Irish Times, which gives a platform to an ideologue like Michael McDowell, who attributes the world’s problems to Vladimir Putin as opposed to the neo-liberal shock brigade that he and his Irish Times acolytes belong to. They have provided cover for mass evictions, a declining quality of life and incipient far-right fascism.
At a recent debate organised by the English-Speaking Union (ESU) at its HQ, Dartmouth House in London, we considered whether the British government’s response to Covid placed too great a priority on security rather than liberty. Naturally I took the liberty side of the argument.
I expressed the fear that such a public forum as the ESU had convened could represent an interregnum, or lull in the storm, but hope springs eternal.
A central hallmark of a democracy is freedom of speech. In terms of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, Anthony Lewis argued free speech should act as a search engine for the truth. Ronald Dworkin argued that free speech is a condition for legitimate government, and a counterweight to hysteria and unreason. Stephen Sedley, an eminent English judge, called it the lifeblood of a democracy. Freedom of speech also opens government and private enterprise to intense scrutiny. Above all, it encourages diversity and tolerance.
Christopher Hitchens.
Right to Ridicule
It is not for the faint of heart. Christopher Hitchens remarked that freedom to speak inoffensively is meaningless, while Dworkin insisted on a right to ridicule.
The overarching argument for speech rights was expressed beautifully in extremis by Hitchens when he said, ‘if you disagree with me that is your prerogative, so stand in line while I, rhetorically, kick your ass.’
Conflict is resolved best through argument with the truth sacrosanct, ideally via open-ended public debate.
This should not merely be rhetoric, but include arguments of substance. And the ESU provides, or can provide, that forum. Perhaps uniquely so. Indeed, it was heartening to encounter a multi-generational debate that included insightful youthful interventions.
In retrospect, Hitchens represents the tail end of a tradition beginning with his hero Thomas Paine, mediated through his other great hero George Orwell, and culminating in him through a rich tapestry of public intellectuals and journalists, who fundamentally believed the pen to be mightier than the sword: that speech and words matter.
Alas today speech has degenerated in the popular press into public titillation and gossip. It is also noticeable that the great traditions of investigative journalism, evident during the golden era of the Washington Post under Katherine Graham and The Times under Harold Evans, is in serious decline. Today most investigative journalism is a sham. The intellectual culture of the press has been degraded beyond belief.
Social media is now a form of speech-driven pornography, where legitimate and illegitimate expressions of speech are proving impossible to disentangle. Character assassination and casual defamation have become the order of the day. The Internet may be a force of liberation in some respects, but also permits public display of ever more bizarre and outlandish commentaries. Mark Zuckerberg has unleashed a Promethean conflagration that remains untamed.
Today’s emphasis on brevity and soundbites in politics conceals how the truth often requires explanation, as it is often nuanced.
Aneurin Bevan talking to a patient at Park Hospital, Manchester, the day the NHS came into being in 1948.
Like paying a visit to Woolworths…
Aneurin Bevan, as good an orator as Churchill, once remarked that listening to a speech from Labour leader Clement Atlee was like paying a visit to Woolworths: ‘everything was in its place, but nothing was above the value of sixpence.’ To be convincing speech should have the necessary brio to rouse an audience.
From Jeremy Bentham’s Speech Acts, Jürgen Habermas, develops the crucial idea of Ideal Speech or Communicative Action. This is an idea that speech should be formal, and not tainted by an unthinking recourse to ideology. He also suggests that such dialogue in the tradition of the Enlightenment salon will provide technical outcomes that are also morally purposeful.
In Communicative Action he wrote: ‘Speakers coordinate their action and pursuit of individual (or joint) goals based on a shared understanding that the goals are inherently reasonable or merit worthy.’
It succeeds:
insofar as the actors freely agree that their goal (or goals) is reasonable, that it merits cooperative behaviour. Communicative action is thus an inherently consensual form of social coordination in which actors “mobilise the potential for rationality” given with ordinary language and its telos of rationally motivated agreement.
Although not all speech should have to be taken seriously, it is important that a forum such as Dartmouth House is maintained for popular shibboleths to be dismantled in public debate.
George Orwell.
Doublespeak
So, propaganda should not be taken seriously, nor modes of advertising, without close and detailed inspection. The opinions of many putative experts fall under the same category. Certainly, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The use of language – however cloaked in notional expertise – to undermine freedoms is a very worrying development. The employment by officialdom of complex legal discourse and manipulation of language may represent the onset of what George Orwell referred to as ‘doublespeak’. This can be exposed in civilised public debate in a neutral forum.
A certain degree of puff and blow will always be found among business-people. Advertising lubricates the wheels of commerce, but when almost non-existent standards permit multinational corporate entities, including the pharmaceutical sector, to fabricate, falsify and frankly lie, thus precipitating financial and environmental collapse, this may represent a return to the dark ages.
Sadly, mainstream political debate has disintegrated. Notably, Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton engaged in a travesty of a public debate before the US Presidential election of 2016. It was more like a staged reality TV show. Its nearest equivalent was the format of a farcical game show, such as the Jerry Springer Show.
Thus politics has become part of the entertainment industry. Despite his Classical education, Boris Johnson invokes Peppa Pig before business leaders.
So, an unconditional respect for freedom of speech should be offset by an understanding that certain speech does not warrant protection. Nonsense is best resolved by forensic debate – cutting through crap in common parlance.
Surveillance Capitalism
The criminalisation of unpopular opinion is a worrying feature of our times, and it is ‘subversives’ such as Julian Assange – along with those who dared to hold a referendum in Catalonia – that are accused, prosecuted, and convicted of treason. It is these dissidents that need protection.
Under the Facebook and Google dispensation people become products to be profiled and mined, a point made brilliantly in Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
Moreover, political correctness has also led to the intensification of extremism. I would argue that this includes attempts by the transgender lobby to ban esteemed academics from the airwaves or campuses. ‘No platforming’ undermines public debate, as do unsubstantiated complaints to academic authorities that lead to the removal of a radical professor.
So, when in Georgetown University certain radical professors indicated they were far from unhappy at the death of the arch conservative Judge Scalia, their conservative colleagues sought their removal on the basis that the ‘snowflake’ generation of easily upset students would be offended at the disrespect.
We must maintain a right to protest, engage in civil disobedience and crucially – in an increasingly controlled and technocratic age – the right to offer truth-bearing, fearless and independent criticism.
KKK rally near Chicago in the 1920s.
The Limits of Freedom of Expression
Speech has its outer limits, where there is a clear and present danger of imminent lawless action. This tension is explored in Snyder v Phelps, where a fundamentalist Christian group demonstrated outside a gay serviceman’s funeral.
Upholding speech rights, the Court concluded that:
Westboro believes that America is morally flawed; many Americans might feel the same about Westboro. Westboro’s funeral picketing is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible. But Westboro addressed matters of public import on public property, in a peaceful manner, in full compliance with the guidance of local officials. The speech was indeed planned to coincide with Matthew Snyder’s funeral, but did not itself disrupt that funeral, and Westboro’s choice to conduct its picketing at that time and place did not alter the nature of its speech.
Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.
Moreover, in Brandenburg v Ohio 359 U.S 44, the Court went so far as to protect even racial abuse at a Ku Klux Klan ‘rally’ held at a farm in Hamilton County.
One film showed twelve hooded figures, some of whom carried firearms. They were gathered around a large wooden cross, which they burned. No one was present other than the participants and the newsmen who made the film. Most of the words uttered during the scene were incomprehensible when the film was projected, but scattered phrases could be understood that were derogatory of African-Americans and, in one instance of Jews.
The Supreme Court concluded that this was speech protected under the First Amendment on the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation, except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
In contrast, the ECHR will not protect either racist speech or Holocaust denial. And even the ESU may feel the Americans went too far.
But the detailed US decisions show how far the US courts are prepared to travel to protect speech. It is an important point that it is the speech we most dislike and most disagree with that needs the most protection.
Village stocks in Bramhall, England c. 1900.
Enemies of the People
Whistle-blower legislation protects those who want to expose official corruption and protects speech. However, as I have found, the spectre of criminal prosecution under Official Secret’s legislation is always a suspensive and possible threat. Anyone blowing the whistle must evaluate the risk of prosecution, including the almost inevitable consequence of job loss and ostracism.
Henrik Ibsen’s Enemies of the People – perhaps uniquely in his oeuvre – was overtly political. The premise is simple: a prominent and well-connected local engineer whose brother is the town mayor is asked to conduct a survey of the waters of the town. The town in question has become famous as a spa resort attracting a great deal of tourism, but when he tests the waters, he finds that they are polluted and informs the town and indeed his brother.
It is the reaction to this that is interesting. Rather than lauding him and complimenting him for his finely attuned sense of ethics and correct analysis, they turn on him with ever-increasing ferocity. A storm of hatred is unleashed.
He will destroy the local economy. Their livelihoods will be affected. The industry of the town will be negated. He is shunned, ostracised, victimised. His family is torn apart, and he becomes an ‘Enemy of the People’. The mob descend in all their unfettered glory. Sound familiar?
Thus, we must protect freedom of speech as it vitalises a democracy, but we must also recognise the rules of civic discourse.
Yet I fear that a great tradition of oracy, public communication, rationalist discourse and generalist interest is in decline: usurped by the purveyors of false information, false speech acts and blandishments.
If the English-Speaking Union can revitalise the young with a passion for genuine public communication, it will be performing a great service, training a new generation of professionals in the essential and transferable skills of advocacy, public communication and, above all, respect for the truth.
The English-Speaking Union (ESU) is an international charity and membership organisation underpinned by Royal Charter working to give all young people – regardless of background – the speaking and listening skills and the cross-cultural understanding to enable them to thrive.
Our programmes are underpinned by over 100 years’ expertise in the field of debate and public speaking delivery, policy and research.
Founded in 1918 by the author and journalist Sir Evelyn Wrench, the ESU brings together and empowers people of all cultures and nationalities by building confidence and shaping communication skills, so that individuals can realise their full potential. In our 36 branches in England and Wales and 54 international branches, the ESU carries out a variety of activities such as: competitions, debating, public speaking and student exchange programmes, teacher training, classroom outreach, research and scholarships. All of these encourage the effective use of the English language around the world.
To find out more about our work, please go to: https://www.esu.org/ and so consider joining the ESU: https://www.esu.org/support-our-work/become-a-member/. Please contact Matthew Christmas, Head of Engagement, if you would like to know more or to volunteer with us: matthew.christmas@esu.org.
Dartmouth House, in the heart of Mayfair, is our International Headquarters and, as Covid recedes, we are delighted to be re-starting our regular public debates where we encourage civil discussion and informed debate where all ages can get involved.
The next Dartmouth House Debate is on Monday 09 May 2022 at 1830 hrs to debate the motion that “This House believes that cryptocurrency and NFTs are a hyped-up fad.”
We hope that will want to find out more and get involved with the ESU.
Say it to me if you have something to confess
I was born on the wrong side of the tracks like Ginsberg and Kerouac Bob Dylan, Key West (2020)
Notwithstanding my loathing for fundamentalisms of all strands, I have always preached from a gospel of love, or at least a form of reason that leads to moderation in the Public Intellectual Series.
Ideas about religion and the existence of God based on reason, such as that articulated by Thomas Aquinas, must yield to the facts as these emerge. The ideas contained in natural philosophy – with its harmony of the spheres – available to a medieval monk has been superseded by the discoveries of the Enlightenment that brought the hitherto unknown field of science. Yet, this yielded quantum physics that permits a layer of uncertainty, wherein the nature of an object may shift depending on one’s perspective.
The ‘uncertainty principle’ seems to have been anticipated by the Ancient Greeks, as Albert Camus explains in his essay ‘Helen’s Exile’ (1948):
Greek thought always took refuge behind the conception of limits. It never carried anything to extremes, neither the sacred, nor reason, because it negated nothing, neither the sacred nor reason. It took everything into consideration, balancing shadow with light.
This he contrasted with ‘Our Europe’ which:
off in the pursuit of totality, is the child of disproportion. She negates beauty, as she negates whatever she does not glorify. And through all her diverse ways, she glorifies but one thing, which is the future rule of reason.
We may find, therefore, an excess of reason breeding dogmatism that gives rise to unreason, or even scientism. Thus, the subtlety of the Greek mind, now reflected in the thinking of Jurgen Habermas, permits a space for religion in the public sphere, but certainly not the rule of religion, or a single moral vision.
An awareness of the limitation of reason, or really any one individual’s capacity to reason in a divinely inspired way is not, however, to dismiss the true nature of objective facts in a given situation. As Karl Popper (‘On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance’ (1962)) points out:
belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of justice, and of freedom, can hardly survive the acceptance of an epistemology which teaches that there are no objective facts; not merely in this particular case, but in any other case; and that the judge cannot have made a factual mistake because he can no more be wrong about the facts than he can be right.
Therefore, dogmatism of all kinds – especially couched in religious terms – should be excluded, but we must also accept facts insofar as we are capable of ascertaining these, using the intellectual tools inherent in science and history that have served public intellectuals through the ages.
Extremism of Our Times
Where divine revelation is treated by true believers as factual is truly dangerous. Thus moral philosopher Professor John Finnis assumes the existence of one God ‘the Almighty’ to be self-evident, leading to a fixed moral view that does not allow for diversity, or even mild eccentricity, within our private lives.
In recent writings, Finnis illustrates a dominant extremism of our time. Marriage is for him exclusively between a man and a woman. Therefore, gay marriage is not a good. Furthermore, marriage involves sexual congress, which has as its aim the production of children. Not sex for the sake of having sex, but only for conception. Thus, Finnis considers homosexual congress and sex outside marriage as intrinsically shameful, immoral and harmful.
Some argue that he derives such normative conclusions about homosexual relationships from factual premises of heterosexual physical contact. Moreover, in the civilised world, many of the practices Finnis sanctions are considered by homosexual and heterosexual couples both within and outside of marriage as part of normal sexual congress and behaviour.
The issue highlights how sexuality has warped contemporary Christianity, negating more important issues around the real suffering of human beings in this world, a concern that Pope Francis is at least beginning to address. In his latest encyclical Fratelli Tutti (‘All Brothers, 2020) Francis condemns, ‘a concept of popular and national unity influenced by various ideologies … creating new forms of selfishness and a loss of the social sense under the guise of defending national interests.’
Shaming Culture
The advent of shaming culture as opposed to a justice culture, involves the demonisation of others and is a reversion to social primitivism, akin to burning witches at the stake, or René Girard’s idea of the reconciliatory victim or scapegoat. It is allied to a rise in Populist hysteria and religious mania.
The leading contemporary Jewish philosopher in the U.K., Jonathan Sacks, in a balanced way seeks to exonerate religious belief from its critics. In God’s Name (2016) is a defence of religion in terms of the values it produces. Sacks rails against extremism, a theme he revisits in Morality (2020), where he outlines positive religious values, including a focus on dignity, associative levels of responsibility, community and a sense of public service and the common good.
Jonathan Sacks
Christian jihadism encompasses such forays as the invasion of South America by Spanish Conquistadors and the Crusades, leading to mass slaughter and the destruction of indigenous civilizations. In modern times the Blairite justification, couched in Christian terms, for the war on Iraq was also used to mask narrow self-interest in oil.
Sacks equates altruistic evil with the thinking within the neoconservative group, wherein we are considered good and those outside our group are evil. This leads to the arrogant assumption that we are doing it for ‘their’ own good, killing multitudes will pave the way for democracy.
Crusades, whether modern or ancient, are invariably cloaked in the garment of religious ideology, but are really about resources and the ruthless pursuit of self-interest. They also still permit mass murder. The connection between religion and unbridled capitalism has long been evident, and is, alas, woven into the fabric of institutionalised religion.
All of these examples are truisms historically about the search of the Church and its believers or fellow travellers for gold and money – the Kingdom of Mammon, as opposed to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Both Christopher Hitchens, and indeed Richard Dawkins, have written extensively about the new forms of religious extremes we are witnessing, with the finger of blame primarily being pointed at Islam. That religion of course provides graphic examples of brutal beheadings, mass executions, stoning to death for adultery, planes hitting the Twin Towers, as well as the murder of journalists. All of this is unconscionable, but much of the rage can be traced to neo-imperialism in the Middle East, culminating in the invasion of Iraq. Christopher Hitchens’s greatest intellectual error was to support the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq.
Power Vacuum
So what is the root cause of Islamic extremism and Evangelical and Catholic extremism?
Blame is rightly attached to the misguided and illegal wars in Iraq, and going all the way back to the 1920s, the creation of client regimes in the Middle East. The unintended consequences of the occupation of Iraq led to a power vacuum in Syria, which gave an opportunity to well organized religiously inspired militants.
This, however, was the culmination of long-term trends within Islam, wherein successive generations had been radicalized by preachers who exploited a loss of identity in the face of Western consumerism, segregation and enduring poverty.
In Marxist terms, religious fundamentalism can be traced to growing disparities of wealth and structural inequality, as well as a lack of opportunities to gain a rounded education, with all too great an emphasis on technical or scientific education for economic advancement, as opposed to a broad liberal education that inculcates critical thinking.
Primarily, however, this extremism speaks of a need to belong to a cause, leading to belief in something ethereal, no matter how ludicrous. Belief in an afterlife defines people’s existences and justifies, as far as they are concerned, even self-immolation.
But the secularist response in France especially – under the aggressive application of laïcité – to ban or regulate the wearing of the burka or nijab, upheld in the European Court of Human Rights in the SAS case, only appears to inflame the issue. This is really little more than a sideshow to a wider collapse in values.
A Group of Women Wearing Burkas. Afghanistan women wait outside a USAID-supported health care clinic, Afghanistan, 2003.
As the wheels come off the economic system as we know it, and where people are searching for words and expressions to convey their understanding of the withering of societal bonds, extremist Christianity has stepped into the void to provide solace.
In the United States, at least, we are seeing an unholy synergy developing between Evangelical Christians and right-wing Catholicism. Far-right demagogues, led by Trump, have articulated a view that ‘our’ country is being overrun by immigrants and that the dominant ethnic group must ‘take back control’ from a phantom intellectual Marxism, liberal elites, or straight socialism – all emanating from the decadence of the mixed race cosmopolis.
This a descent into the racist abyss, where those we disagree with are scapegoated and targeted. It is a product of a dangerous dualistic mode of thinking, which Sacks identifies with a need to define God in relation to the Satan residing in others. This is the demonisation of those we disagree with, which is also evident in social media vilification.
Real Suffering
The suffering expressed through religion is the genuine sigh of oppressed creatures. In Marxist terms, the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
In a world of poverty, of diminishing resources and human degradation the appeal of an afterlife is obvious. What the Christian far-right in the United States and elsewhere offer is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, which involves a veneer of protection against the unbelievers. This leads to isolation of the righteous few in gated communities, segregating the chosen people from the disaster they have inflicted on others.
The pandemic has led to the recrudescence of a millenarian ethos and sense of doom that is creating a society not dissimilar to that found in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, enforced against men and women alike.
The philandering Donald Trump is merely a front man for larger interests, who control the puppet on the chain. He dances to the beat of the dark money of the Republican Party, appointing the Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was his parting gift.
End of Days
Another hallmark of the present distorted religious influence of the neoliberal world order is the denial of climate change, and the employment of post-truth reasoning – the denial of objective facts underpinning the rule of law as Karl Popper saw it – to justify this.
The Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, in his simple and illuminating Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, closes his account, with a reflection on how centuries of discoveries affect an understanding of ourselves. While generally positive, one stark passage stands out for its relevance to the challenge of addressing climate change.
I believe our species will not last long. It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed the turtle, for example, to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years; for hundreds of times longer, that is, than we have even been in existence. We belong to a short-lived genus of species. All of our cousins are already extinct. What’s more, we do damage. The brutal climate and environmental changes which we have triggered are unlikely to spare us. For the Earth they may turn out to be a small irrelevant blip, but I do not think that we will outlast them unscathed – especially since public and political opinion prefers to ignore the dangers which we are running, hiding our heads in the sand. We are perhaps the only species on Earth to be conscious of the inevitability of our individual mortality. I fear soon we shall also have to become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its own collective demise, or at least the demise of its civilisation.
Carlo Rovelli
This exemplifies the difference between a man of science and objective facts, and those of a fundamentalist bent that place mankind atop the pyramid of Creation.
More terrifying than where Ravelli places us in the grand scheme is the end of days preacher who cannot countenance that we may indeed be just an irrelevant blip on this Earth, but instead sees the Earth as something created for us to plunder and exploit.
Cognisant of this threat, Noam Chomsky recently claimed that the Republican Party is the ‘most dangerous organization in world history’ He has deliberately corrected many interviewers who mistakenly stated that in fact he said it was the most dangerous organization in the world today.
Chomsky also mentioned in a BBC Newsnight interview that there has to be connection between the denial of science, and active attempts to undermine it, with the belief of nearly 40% of the American public that the Second Coming will occur by 2050.
Why would a deluded mind bother saving life and civilization, when it is prophesised that it will all be over soon? Christian End of Day’s logic, or lack thereof, is not so prevalent in agnostic Europe at present, but the breakdown of the social order through the austerity shock doctrine, and now the coup de grâce of the pandemic, leaves the continent exposed to those same forces, which may be articulated in an equally millenarian scientism that sees human beings as vectors of disease.
Loss of Meaning
In a 2004 essay Václav Havel foresaw much of what we now find in a piece called ‘What Communism Still Teaches Us,’ describing ‘supposed laws of the market and other invisible hands that direct our lives.’ There remains an abject lack of humanism in neoliberal politics and society, comparable in certain ways to Communist totalitarianism, not least in the brainwashing of the young through solipsistic social media.
With the loss of religious forms, however, many living in modern technocratic societies experience a loss of meaning, and even a moral void. The social structure of religions fostered close relationships and inculcated a sense of community, as well as charity, the protection of human dignity and a commitment to public service. The Bible injuncts kindness towards strangers, and to do unto others as you would wish them to do to you, which also derives from Aristotelian philosophy.
To rectify contemporary problem such as poverty and environmentaldegradation, undoubtedly we need to shift from a conception of ‘I’ to ‘we’ as Sacks argues.
In The Godless Gospel, Julian Baggini also calls for a form of religion shorn of hatred for our age, where we develop personal and social goods through deeds not pious words. Through this we may realise our best intentions and develop empathy and compassion, a commitment to personal humility and an obligation and commitment to the truth. Above all we should try and do as little harm as possible he asserts.
All of these are good values that Christianity may teach to those of a secular persuasion lacking in moral clarity.
Thus from a secular perspective, Jürgen Habermas understood how religion engenders social integration, and is the basis for communicative action. As far back as 1978 he argued, from an agnostic perspective, for the necessity of religious ideas to humanise society. Those of faith must learn to communicate reasonably, which means the renunciation of violence and extremism. We must learn to talk and communicate our differences, agreeing on facts to ground the rule of law.
Pope Francis
Pope Francis’s experiences in the barrios of Buenos Aires appears to have shaped an empathy towards those afflicted with extreme poverty and subjected to degradation. He preaches tolerance, engagement and social and economic justice. This has largely been stripped of the condemnation of sexuality and sexual expression evident in his predecessor John Paul II.
Let us hope the liberation theology that is intrinsic in Francis’s message is not tainted by the dark money of the Vatican, and he does not go the way of John Paul I, or ‘God’s Banker’ Roberto Calvi, found hanging from Blackfriars bridge in 1982, just outside the site of my Chambers.
Christian socialism is a potentially vital force if it reflects the values of what Philip Pullman calls that great man Jesus, but not the values, as he equally presents, of that scoundrel Jesus Christ. This latter is a distortion of New Testament values, dedicated to the accumulation of capital, a lack of compassion and political manipulation.
If inequality grows any further – amid ever-greater accumulations of wealth – then neoliberalism may well give way to neo-feudalism. Viewed in this regard it is easier to understand the potential for an alliance between church and capital in subjugating the masses. The Book of Genesis sanctions man’s dominion over the earth which has led to a scorched earth approach towards environmental regulations that will ultimately impoverish us all. For too long Christianity has married the exchange of goods with the exchange of gods.
Scopes Trial
In parts of American Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is accorded equal weight and validity as Creationism in schools. Children are taught that the world was created by God the Almighty in the space of seven days.
It’s been a long time coming. In the Scopes Trial of 1925 – where a High School teacher was put on trial for teaching Darwinism – the legendary American attorney Darrow anticipated what happens when a society abandons reason altogether.
Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? In addition, tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. Soon you may ban books and newspapers. Then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!
In a period of declining belief in a broad liberal education, and where the art-repeneur has taken over from true artists, there is a desperation for something to cling on to, whether Creationism, neoliberalism or even scientism. We are living in an age of pervasive ignorance, which can be traced to our putative higher educational institutions, where students are taught to believe and comply. Or as Foucault would have it, punishment is becoming internalized through control vectors.
Lost in all of this is the message of Christian socialists such as Pope Francis, Sacks, and even their ideological fellow-traveller Habermas. This is a form of Christian decency that reflects the needs of human beings battling for survival in an increasingly hostile environment, where adequate nutrition, shelter, health care, education, housing and even dignity are denied.
Thus organised religions appear to be experiencing an existential battle between the neoliberals and Christian socialists. Exclusionary family values that are a hallmark of religious neoliberalism conceal a corporate existence and controlled sexuality. Its tenets are designed to diminish any radicalisation among the young.
But let us hope a new-found empathy with the Wretched of the Earth can emerge, in Catholicism at least under Pope Francis, and perhaps other Protestant more tolerant faiths. This would reflect the moderation and human decency of public intellectuals in this series such as Jürgen Habermas, Albert Camus, George Orwell and Edmund Burke, all of whom in their own ways rejected the moral absolutes that lead to human degradation.
No Time to be Making Enemies
On his deathbeds the great Enlightenment intellectual Voltaire (1694-1778) was asked by a priest in attendance to renounce the devil. Voltaire considered this advice, but approaching the pearly gates he decided against doing so: ‘This is no time,’ he said, ‘to be making new enemies.’
At this stage in our history it is important to be open to all belief systems, including Christianity in spite of its diabolical history. Christianity, and other religions, must confront a dark past, but can provide moral guidance in the face of a culturally dominant neoliberal cost-benefit analysis of life. Dogmatic secularist should concede that there are lessons to be drawn from religions. These may help generate a genuine brotherhood and sisterhood among human beings to confront the real evil in this world.
Like errant flames from the dying embers of a once great fire, there is much fakery to be found emanating from a previously proud tradition of public intellectualism in the U.K., and elsewhere. The English philosopher John Gray (1948-) is at least not one of the self-help gurus, such as Jordan Peterson, that have gained public attention and earned ample remuneration in the process.
We do not find in Gray’s work the resigned intellectual play-acting evident in many books randomly grappling with our universe, and which provide the kind of quotable flourishes that play well at north London dinner parties. He is the doyenne and most garlanded of U.K. intellectuals today and so demands engagement.
Gray is no worshiper at the alter of the Enlightenment or the humanist tradition. He does not believe it provides us with the coping mechanisms for our current challenges. Ultimately, he has little faith in the ability of civilization, or rationality, to overcome the barbarism of a liberal experiment riveted by self-contradiction.
In short, he sees, both historically and now, the extent to which human irrationality governs actions. Thus he is decidedly anti-utopian, an empiricist and pragmatist. He holds out little hope for the realisation of lofty objectives, such as we find among technological evangelists or Bible-belt Christians. This is a theme he explores in some detail in his book Black Mass [2007].
In fact, all forms of demonist eschatology, chiliasm or end of day’s nonsense is parsed thoroughly in the text, from religious fundamentalism to neo-conservativism, to Marxism and Nazism. Quite correctly he identifies Tony Blair as a neo-conservative.
Thin Veneer
One suspects Gray would endorse Lon Fuller’s remark in a different context about legality and civility providing a thin veneer of civilization if the underlying culture is barbaric. This covering is growing thinner by the day I would argue.
And yet – although he may beg to differ – he displays a residual fractured humanism, and embraces certain conservative values. In effect, he is a Tory of the old school, with modest liberal leanings; the sort of person who, although he writes for the New Statesman, would equally happily associate with Tory grandees. His Disraeli-esque conservatism is one I would share some common ground with.
He has thus embarked on a voyage of passage from an earlier more doctrinaire, Thatcherite conservatism. He no longer venerates a laissez faire approach to the economy, and seems to have recognised that that approach went seriously awry. He is a fellow-traveller in a way with Jonathan Sumption, who has also arrived at a modified conservatism on his own intellectual pilgrimage.
Rather than seismic shifts – in that very British way – Gray argues that change should arrive incrementally, with allowance for the exercise of individual responsibility.
He also argues for a bridge between conservatism and the green or environmental agenda. He expresses a desire to create a Burkean ‘community of souls’, preserving that which is good and noble. But this seems a forlorn hope given how the Antarctica icebergs are on the brink of collapse, and international accords are torn apart with a pandemic upon us.
Covid-19
In a recent article for The New Statesman John Gray argued that the Covid-19 pandemic is a turning point in history, which will bring lasting changes to human behaviour. This will see online interaction rather than face-to-face communication becoming the norm, and a Hobbesian state becoming ever more intrusive, and with people increasingly accepting of this.[i]
In his view the populace will submit to the imposition of increased control, permitting a gradual and imperceptible erosion of civil liberties.
In effect we may be seeing the arrival of a new society of unfreedom, and the arrival of a technological serfdom evident in China, where Bentham’s Panopticon is writ large. But also in Western countries we are seeing surveillance from private and public bodies covering all of society.
One advantage, however, of the ‘Great Pause, of quarantine, as he points out, is that it could lead to a recalibration of ideas and fresh thinking. In silence new thinking may occur. But in order for this to happen we must escape from the distraction of what Frank Armstrong describes as the ‘Doomsday Machines’: the smart phones that prevent us from realising our true selves.
As Fernando Pessoa put it: ‘only by methodically, obsessively cultivating our abilities to dream, analyse and attract can we prevent our personality from dissolving into nothing or identical to all the others.’ It is certainly time for reflection but the path that lies ahead is shrouded in uncertainty.’[ii]
Gaia Hypothesis
John Gray is a convert to James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis that the Earth is a self-regulating organism which maintains the conditions for life on the planet. It is a word he invokes regularly, and without exclusively focusing on humans.
Indeed, Gray appears to have a uniformly negative view of human nature and human beings. In his seminal text Straw Dogs (2004) we are depicted as rapacious, destructive and transhumanist. I suspect he is even more of this view now. Yet he clings on to a belief in decency and the exercise of personal responsibility, and liberally urges for peaceful co-existence to prevail.
As a Green Conservative and an opponent of neo-liberalism, he cautions against what Greta Thunberg described as the fairy tale of growth-without-end, and recognises how this is destroying the planet, and making human lives impossible. The pursuit of profit for its own sake of profit has led human activities to spiral out of control.
While I warm to his Gaian sympathies, there are more disturbing aspects to his ideas that I take issue with. He appears to venerate a Malthusian liquidation or winnowing of the human population in the aforementioned New Statesman article. If there are too many of us I wonder does he regard himself as expendable and surplus to requirements?
In fairness it is ultimately a point about human progress having to be off set against scarcity. Yet it is easy to be sanguine – or even blasé – about meltdown when you sit atop the academic food chain. Stoical acceptance of human absurdity is not what is needed right now. It is a time for action after reflection.
Gray may have glimpsed the gorgon’s head of the dangers we confront, but seems to shrink from urging the radical responses required. I suspect donnish privilege has softened the attack and brought a modus vivendi with these circumstances. After all, his own life has been a success by most measures, so he can at least take refuge in haughty disapproval, or at least he could prior to the Corona-pocalypse.
But of course, in the interests of fairness, his prescience should be noted in pointing out that dwindling planetary resources, and wealth inequalities, are undermining what we cherish, and accelerating Malthusian dynamics.
Any invocation of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) nonetheless reminds me of Jonathan Swift’s indispensable ‘A Modest Proposal’ (1729). Swift responds to the genesis of the ideas that Malthus would go on to articulate with withering satire, expressed with deadpan seriousness: he promotes the consumption of babies as a way of solving the problem of over-population.
Gray walks the same Swiftian line – though without quite the panache – in an essay on torture in which he mocks liberal values. Tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek, he argues torture potentially promotes human rights:
Self-evidently, there can be no right to attack basic human rights. therefore, once the proper legal procedures are in place, torturing terrorists cannot violate their rights. in fact in a truly liberal society, terrorists have an inalienable right to be tortured.[iii]
Religious Fundamentalism
I share Gray’s contempt for religious fundamentalism. He does not display the dogmatic atheism or extremism of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, but allows for Christian worship in a tolerant way, and merely warns against barbarism, and end-of-day’s eschatological chiliasm.
Yet the solution in his new book of jettisoning both the sweet poetry of Genesis and secular humanism engenders in Seven Types of Atheism(2018) a rather denatured Arcadian spirituality, which is neither flesh nor fowl or even a guide to a more meaningful existence for the varied lives he believes we should lead.
It’s almost an intellectual Flake commercial, which tastes like religion never tasted before; although it should be acknowledged that he is resolutely anti-consumerist, and critical of the manufacture of insatiable desires. At one level he is arguing for makeshift true grit or graft to cope with unbounded irrationality. We must, he suggests, develop new patterns of living to cope with the new disorders and challenges we face.
Intellectual flake commercial.
He says anyone can live in a variety of ways, and I suppose we all do need to slow down and embrace both distraction and silence. But I believe the finality of total silence is always to be resisted – ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light…’
The Good Life
There are many ways, Gray contends, of living well. Differing types of the good life, but he is insufficiently specific as to what these are.
With the changing world of work, and a lack of employment prospects for many, one suspects he has an overly optimistic understanding that whatever fulfils someone is what they ought to be doing, which is all well and good, but that doesn’t necessarily put supper on the table. I fear most of us will have to find different survival strategies to cope with our disposability in a world that cares for us less and less.
John Gray is reliably sceptical of junk science that is now crashing into us in ceaseless waves, most recently with Donald Trump’s proposal to inject disinfectant to prevent Covid-19.
A useful example Gray has provided is in the recrudescence of phrenology, where criminal patterns of future behaviour are derived from skull sizes, which feeds into racial stereotypes. Our criminal justice system, in allowing bad character admissions, has dangerous preludes of pre-crime and conviction by demonization.
It will take a brave leader, of men or opinion, in future to insist on civilized values. John Gray has intimated, and I agree, they will not matter.
In his esteem for silence to avoid distraction and enhance contemplation Gray comes across like the effete aristocrat in Turgenev’s Father and Sons, as the Bolsheviks steadily take control. But at least The New Statesman provide him with a platform, and the books continue to sell to a dwindling educated public.
Featured Image: Joseph Wright’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768, National Gallery, London.
[i] John Gray, ‘Why this crisis is a turning point in history’, New Statesman, April 1st, 2020, https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/04/why-crisis-turning-point-history
[ii] Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, The Serpent’s Tail, London, 2017, p.107
[iii] John Gray, Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings, Penguin, London, p.222
