Guha's Central Vista fiasco.

This blog has frequently marvelled at the cretinism Ramachandra Guha displays in his Hindustan Times Articles. Now he has decided not to write for them because they spiked the following article of his which the Wire has obligingly published. 

I think the HT editor was doing Guha a favor. After all, the man is supposed to be a historian. He should be adding some value rather than simply repeating what someone else has said in some website which the HT would scarcely want to advertise.

In a two-part article published last month in the website Newslaundry, the writer Alpana Kishore subjected the project to redesign New Delhi’s Central Vista to critical scrutiny. The first part asked the question: “Why is redeveloping Central Vista a bigger priority than fixing the capital’s catastrophic air pollution or plummeting life expectancy?”

The answer, of course, is that it isn't a bigger priority at all. But fixing air pollution is a massive task which requires the cooperation of neighboring States. Redeveloping the Central Vista is a relatively small project which should enable the Legislature to function better by giving it a modern building fit for purpose. Furthermore, the Government could save a good chunk of the Rs. 1000 crores a year in rent in pays for office space scattered across the Capital.

In answering this question, Kishore focused on one key element in the project: the provision for a grand new house for the prime minister, on Rajpath.

It was the wrong thing to focus on.  People know that Modi doesn't have a family living with him. Thus his Residence & the PMO will be used for Government purposes- rather than to glorify a dynasty and their sycophants. It makes sense for the PMO to be closer to Parliament and the Secretariat. In this way, both the Executive and the Legislature can function better. Furthermore, ever since the attack on the Indian Parliament, there is an obvious Security concern as well as the efficiency angle. Furthermore, Bimal Patel, the chief architect, is going to beautify the area which otherwise makes the post Independence developments look rather shabby in comparison with the heritage from the British.

Such self-indulgence, she argued, may be common in dictatorships, but was inappropriate for a Republic.

This is a nonsensical argument. Dictatorships generally are Republics. Both Democracies and Despotisms have impressive residences for their Heads of Government. Mussolini's residence was the Chigi Palace. It is now the official residence of the Italian Prime Minister.

If one thinks of Delhi as akin to London or Berlin,

then we ought not to be surprised that Parliament is being rehoused in a more ample building which uses modern technology.

a capital of a democracy, then, argues Kishore, spending hundreds of crores “on a second house for the prime minister ahead of fixing Delhi’s pressing problems like its catastrophic air pollution which causes 80 deaths per day and 45 percent of all premature deaths is a spectacularly insensitive move that puts a powerful elite firmly above the people’s good. On the other hand, if we are in the Beijing-Pyongyang-Moscow axis where citizens are passive spectators, it is absolutely normal.”

Kishore is pretending that this plan is about building a big house for the P.M. It isn't. It is about a big new Parliament building with the V.P (ex officio head of the Rajya Sabha) and the P.M.O located close to it. Symbolically it affirms the Executive's dependence and answerability to the Legislature.

The second part of Kishore’s article focused on the process by which the project was awarded: a process marked by secrecy and subterfuge, ending in the contract going to a firm of architects from Gujarat known to be particularly close to the prime minister.

This is nonsense. Bimal Patel has done a good job on projects like this. If there really was 'secrecy and subterfuge' why has no P.I.L been launched?

This firm’s previous projects, wrote Kishore, had depended for their execution  “upon the removal of “obstacles” like due process, impact assessments, public consultation, and well-established global best practices”.

If Kishore has evidence of this why has she not launched PILs? Where there is a judicial remedy, why has it not been availed off? The answer is that this is fake news run by an unimportant website- not a proper Newspaper. The HT editors could scarcely have been pleased at this extended panegyric to a much smaller rival news outlet. Clearly, its own investigative journalists are utterly shite. That is why Guha has to turn to some poxy little web-site.

The firm’s past record, in sum, was one of consistently manifesting “an innate disrespect for the citizen”.

In the opinion of some two bit scribbler publishing on a 'website'.

In concluding her two-part essay, Kishore remarked:
“The biggest irony remains that a prime minister from the humblest of backgrounds should yearn for a house on Rajpath, no less, to endorse his vision of personal greatness and legacy.'

There is no such irony. The P.M isn't exactly living in a jhuggi. In any case, he knows that this building will stand for a hundred years. His occupancy of it will be brief.

'Would Emmanuel Macron demand and, more importantly, get a house on the Champs Elysées?'

Is this woman utterly daft? Macron lives in the Élysée Palace just as the Emperor Napoleon did.

'Can even Trump order himself a second home on the Mall?'

Why would he want to? This is sheer stupidity.

She added: ‘It brings back embarrassing memories of his name-embroidered Rs 10-lakh suit, only this time the vanity will be at the taxpayer’s expense.”

But the 10-lakh suit was a success. It advertised the superior quality of the Indian textile industry and was sold for a profit to raise funds for charity. There is no vanity here. Rather there is a highly utile building and beautification problem which will enable the Legislature and Executive to work better with improved security and the utilization of modern technology.

Kishore’s essay has no mention of the COVID-19 crisis; evidently it was written before the dimensions of the crisis became known. I shall come to this crisis presently, but let me first state that I share her concerns entirely. This project has been pushed through without wider consultation with the public, or even with domain experts in architecture and urban planning.

But Parliament represents the Public. They certainly have a say in the redesign of their own meeting place. Guha can't get elected rat-catcher. What should concern him is the fact that he has nothing to say for himself and has to rely on repeating an article by somebody else in a rival news-outlet.

In fact, as one who has seen the work of this firm of architects in Ahmedabad at first-hand, I have an additional concern: that they are utterly indifferent to history and heritage.

But Guha is entirely indifferent to his own history and heritage. He can't even speak Kannada or Tamil properly. He isn't from Gujarat. Patel is. If what Patel did was not in keeping with Gujarati heritage, Gujaratis would have told him so in his own language- and, what's more, he'd have listened to them and taken their notes.

A prime example of this was their design of a second campus for the Indian Institute of Ahmedabad. The original IIM-A campus, designed by Louis Kahn,

a very traditional Gujarati man who was immersed in Gujarati history and heritage

beautifully blends traditional and modern practices, using red brick, open windows, and courtyards. It is a joy to see, walk through, study and teach in. Its successor is cold and soulless, built entirely of concrete; those assigned offices there yearn for a transfer to the original and much more welcoming campus.

This may well be true. But Patel won the competition because that is what his client wanted. It may be they wanted something 'soulless' and 'unwelcoming' to stupid jhollahwallah cretins like Guha. The point about Business School is that you should leave it as soon as possible so as to actually do Business.  Those who teach there should be yearning to get back into the Business World, not continue hiding out from it in a place where your students will, within a year or two, earn more than you.

The prime minister’s own justification of the project is that it was to mark not a personal but a national milestone – the 75th anniversary of Indian independence.

Modi found that his beautification projects in Gujarat were a vote winner. He hopes something similar will happen with his plans for Benares. Thus he is backing this project. What he isn't saying is that it will help Parliament work better. The reason for his reticence is that people have a low opinion of legislators.

This is disingenuous, because past anniversaries overseen by past prime ministers had not called for such a spectacular extravaganza.

Because past prime ministers were puppets of a dynasty which has impoverished the country by its corruption, incompetence and ideological cretinism.

Both the 25th and 50th anniversaries of independence had been suitably marked, by a special session of parliament. Apparently, what was good enough for Indira Gandhi and I.K. Gujral wouldn’t quite do for Narendra Modi.

He is expanding the Parliament building so the 'special session' won't look quite so shitty.

To my mind,

but your mind is full of shit

the Modi government’s redesign of New Delhi brings to mind not so much living Communist autocrats as it does some dead African despots.

Did those dead African despots win two general elections? No? Then there is something wrong with your mind- viz it is full of shit.

It is the sort of vanity project, designed to perpetuate the ruler’s immortality, that Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast and Jean Bédel-Bokassa of the Central African Republic once inflicted on their own countries (for more on the first, see V.S. Naipaul’s essay ‘The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro’).

Because everybody knows Modi is a cannibal.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit us, this expensive redesign of the core of the national capital seemed a wasteful and self-indulgent exercise.

Only to shitheads like Guha.

It has now become much more so. For, an economy that was already flailing has been brought to the brink by the pandemic. The ill-planned lockdown has led to enormous human suffering. Working-class Indians, already living on the edge, are now faced with utter destitution.

Had the lockdown been implemented earlier, it could have been lifted by now. What this pandemic shows is the need for superior efficiency and speedy decision making by the Executive and Legislature.

As many economists have argued, the millions of poor Indians rendered poorer by this crisis urgently need financial support from the Central government. Why can’t the funds currently allocated to the Central Vista scheme

currently estimated at 1000 crores not twenty times that sum

– estimated at Rs 20,000 crore and counting – be diverted to help ameliorate their condition?

Because they would be a drop in the ocean. This is not an either/or question. However, it may be that the scheme will be postponed.

Politically, the burden of this economic, social and humanitarian crisis is being borne by the states.

No. It is being borne by both the Center and the States.

They desperately need money – not least, the money the Centre already owes them. A staggering Rs 30,000 crore are still due to the states from the Centre as their share of Goods and Services Tax revenues.

They will get the money. These sums are not 'staggering' to economists.

Why does this still remain unpaid,

It is being paid in phases.

while the Central Vista project has been sanctioned and a schedule for its tendering announced?

in other words, no money has been spent yet.

It will be at least a year – probably longer – before the economy can begin to fitfully recover.

So, no money will be spent nor work commenced till this is behind us.

The restoration of the social fabric may take even longer. Altogether, the country may take at least five, more likely ten, years before it can return to where it was before COVID-19 came to our shores.

Economists don't believe this. Guha is pulling this shit out of his ass.

Surely the moral, political and intellectual energies of our leaders must be devoted above all to this economic and social rebuilding.

But that is exactly what is happening. The Central Vista scheme has no opportunity cost in this respect.

In his speeches to the nation since the pandemic broke, the prime minister has repeatedly asked Indians to sacrifice – sacrifice their time, their jobs, their lifestyles, their human and cultural tendency to be gregarious. Now citizens must ask the prime minister to sacrifice something for the nation as well. His project to redesign Central Vista was always controversial. It is now absolutely untenable. He should drop it.

Nobody knows or cares about this project. There is no popular clamor about it. Once the thing is completed it will be welcomed. Guha's attempts at stirring up controversy through his articles in the HT have always failed. His position there is now absolutely untenable. He should drop the pretense of having anything to say to the Indian public.

Kardtrick Sasidharan & COVID self-sodomy.

Open Magazine- one of the few e-zines from which my comments are not banned- has been publishing articles by Keertik Sasidharan whose book 'the Dharma Forest' is due to be published by Penguin.  I have come to think of him as a younger version of myself- i.e. a verbose South Indian cretin indiscriminately indulging in a modish intellectual eclecticism- little suspecting that his hair will soon start to thin and his belly to bloat and that those near and dear him to will increasingly implore him to get rid of that horrible fungus disfiguring his face at the same time that Occam's razor renders such hypostatic prosopoi as populate his insurrection against Advaita as but the bare ass cheeks from betwixt issues the Hiranyagarbha of Middle Age's himmelfart.

Consider the following-

THE BUDDHA, FAMOUSLY, told his monks: “Cetanaa’ham bhikkhave kammam vadaami.” “Monks: intention, I say, is karma.”

Buddha upheld 'kshanikavada'- a momentary universe- with no past, no future, and no abiding self. A pure intention to 'Moksha' could, however, put you on the Buddhist path. Indeed, it might instantaneously liberate you because you might come to see 'Samsara' and 'Niravana' are one and the same. Thus 'right intention' could deliver instantaneous 'samadhi' or 'satori' or Suntory Whiskey which, I have to say, is fucking excellent.

What is meant by ‘kamma’ (or karma) is more complex: a theory amenable to modifications, a law of the physical universe or a particular way of thinking that solves some problems and no more.

This is not true. Certain actions are held to have soteriological consequences irrespective of their physical or sociological or other psychological effects or lack of any such effects. The Vedas repeatedly say 'such and such 'ritual' act used to have such and such bad effect if incorrectly performed- e.g. gathering the wrong type of fire-wood could cause you to be turned into a woman- but ever since this happened to such and such Rishi, the Karmic law has changed so that provided the intention was good, no evil result accrues.

But this has nothing to do with the 'physical universe' which is unimportant for Soteriology.

What is more important to recognise is that the Buddha’s view was a radical break from the earlier Vedic and Upanisadic literature, where karma was linked to actions performed or merits earned, and not necessarily the intentionality informing actions themselves.

This is nonsense. The Rg Veda depicts a community of ritual specialists who, in a protocol bound manner, are constantly issuing immunities on the basis of 'intentionality' against mistakes or necessary substitutions, or even 'apadh dharma' exigent circumstance based violations, of the prevailing deontics. But this happens with every deontological logic or protocol bound imperative juristic process. Thus, if I am caught pissing on the street, I employ a lawyer to show that my intention was noble- I meant to put out a fire and Bo Jo's straw coloured hair, in the light of the evening sun, looked like a fire and so I pissed on that sad sack of shit so as to prevent a repetition of that Great Fire of London which I remember from my youth. Anyway, the fucker has COVID and my urine is a disinfectant coz in my last life I was a holy Hindu Cow.

For all means and purposes, karma, like certain modeling assumptions in macroeconomics, had become the staple of Buddhist, Jain or Vedic religions.

Nonsense! These Religions- like all Religions- had a market because they were saying 'Soteriology has a way to neutralize karma or make it 'anything goes', not in this life, but after you die and can't sue us for fraud'.

It is not the case that there are any 'modeling assumptions' in MacroEcon (as opposed to, say, Modern Monetary Theory) which say- 'hey guys! Guess what! Everybody can be infinitely rich. Micro-Econ doesn't matter. Thrift does not matter. Hard work does not matter. There's a magical credo you can believe in which will automatically turn you, and everybody else, into a super-rich dude with yachts and penthouse apartments and Beyonce serenading you as you fall asleep on pillows stuffed full with the purest cocaine.'

It was during one of those days, that a wanderer named Moliyasivaka called upon the Buddha, who was then living in the Bamboo Grove in the city of Rajagriha. He asked the Buddha to confirm if it was true, as other monks had told Moliyasivaka that, ‘whatever a person experiences, whether it be pleasant or painful or neutral feelings, all that is caused by what was done in the past’. In other words, he wanted the Buddha to confirm that ‘karma’ causally influenced and affected all that we experience.

No. The guy was asking 'is everything we experience completely pre-determined?' Buddha says 'No. Some things, obviously, are. But not everything. Not most things. These guys are making an invalid inference.'
This is simply common sense- nothing more. But it does not justify Buddhism's 'kshanikavada' either. Just because most phenomena are not rigidly pre-determined doesn't mean there is no past or future and that the Universe exists only for a moment of sufficient duration for a 'cetana' to be formulated.

Keertik takes a different view.

This is the kind of question that the Buddha ought to have hit out of the park, by confirming the doctrine of karma and reasserting its immutable hold on all life.

But, in that case, the Buddha would have to admit that his karma had caused him to assert a doctrine which had signally failed to help his own people in their attempt to defend the source of their own prosperity.
It is interesting that Keertik's view of karma justifies the Hindu view that Lord Buddha was an Avatar specifically created to mislead the 'Mleccha' and get them to adopt non-violence. But, notice, it was the indigenous, but low caste, Mauryas who took this road. Who wants to bet this Keertik dude is not either a Malyallee- i.e. a 'manipravalay' prodigy combining the best of Aryan and Dravidian literary culture- or else, more boringly, of 'Aryan', Brahman, lineage?

But the Buddha did something else. He advised the wandering ascetic that some experiences or feelings in the body arise from disorders of bile, some from disorders of phlegm, some others from disorders of humoural winds inside a body, some from disorders born from changes in climate, some from careless behaviour, some from assaults. Hearing this, Moliyasivaka summarised the Buddha’s words and then told himself that karma then was merely one-eighth of the factors that can produce illness and discomfort. By some scholarly accounts, this dialogue is among the earliest explication of causes and diseases in Indian history—an eightfold division of factors that cause bodily harm which was subsequently internalised by more classical treatises of Ayurveda.

This magpie minded fellow may well have found some such academic 'availability cascade'. But it is foolish. The Buddhists deny it. They say that, as a mnemonic device, the following verse was added by later commentators-
Bile, phlegm, wind, a combination, Season, uneven, harsh treatment,
and through the result of kamma as the eighth.

Keertik is making out that Lord Buddha should not be revered for establishing a Soteriological path that countless beings have found beautiful and utile. Rather he was the progenitor of a type of medicine which we don't use anymore because its pharmacopeia includes things we know to be poisons. Mahatma Gandhi gave up Ayurveda, albeit very reluctantly, because, he said, it made him too ill to be able to faithfully follow it. Only when he was once again in the pink would he resume his experiments with it. 

What is often lost when reading this little excerpt that comes down to us in the Samyutta Nikaya (The Connected Discourses) is that in the face of bodily harm and disease, even the Buddha put aside his usual models of what made the world go around according to him—namely, karma—and instead adopted a different way of conceptualising human frailty.

This is hateful. I may make fun of Buddhist Ontology but I don't, I can't, cast aspersions on the rationality and compassion of Lord Buddha. The fact is no Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist Acharya or Avatara has ever said that Soteriology takes precedence over Epidemiology.  On the contrary, primitive 'pathogen avoidance theory' tended to gain greater, not lesser currency, under the rubric of Organized Religion.  Consider the Catholic 'cult of the leper'. Leprosy isn't particularly contagious. It takes years of living with one so afflicted to develop the disease. Thus it was safe for Bishops to make a big deal out of ministering to the leper. The notion of 'Christ the leper' is quite beautiful and soteriologically fecund. But,  to deal with the bubonic plague you have to have the 'Lazaretto'. There is a discovery process here but the equilibrium is the same. Everything depends on the reproduction rate of the disease.

Buddhism, which spread the notion of untouchability to distant countries like Japan, also spread civic codes of social distancing. Kerala, from where Keertik may come from (Keralites write better English than Tambrams like me) replaced caste-based pathogen avoidance with a medical model and, because those guys have a lot of bats, that part of India is now regarded as a model of how the authorities need to deal with this Crisis.

But Keertik, as befitting a particularly imbecilic interpreter of the Buddha, now lives in New York.

Setting aside our favourite way of thinking about the world—a mental model, if you will, that maximally confirms or addresses the empirical experiences we call reality—is difficult.

Nonsense! We do so all the time if it can make us a bit more money or improve public good provision. That's why our 'mental model of the world' is, at the margin, purely private and involves guilty pleasures.  I once had a red-headed g.f who was way to the Left of me. I thought she really liked me. Then I discovered her stash of Wilbur Smith novels. The reason she rode me so hard was coz I was a big black kaffir from whom she was determined to extract the glistening pearls of my sperm. Anyway, that's why I broke up with her but she went around telling everybody it was coz I gotta tiny dick and am as thick as shit and, anyway, it's not true that my gran had an affair with Mahatma Gandhi.

Rarely has this been seen more vividly, with extraordinary consequences, than during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as we see revelations and evidence pour in that major governmental bureaucracies and financial markets were entirely blindsided because such an eventuality was never paid enough attention in their calculus.

Where has this happened? Taiwan? Kerala? No. This is a problem which Kerala's 'governmental bureaucracy' was well able to deal with. Why? Because it had just coped with the Nipah virus. It wasn't 'blindsided' at all. Kerala has a lot of bats. Thanks to the vigilance of its own people, it has unleashed nothing very terrible on the rest of humanity.

Keertik, judging by his second name, may well be South Indian. Why is he writing this deracinated tripe?

Cognitive blindness was then preceded by policy paralysis—as if the world had suddenly revealed, like some alternative reality in a Haruki Murakami novel, two moons dangling on the horizon. This simply was not supposed to happen. Countries don’t shut down; large financial firms with billions of dollars in assets aren’t supposed to be scrambling to meet margin calls on their leveraged portfolios.

What is this shit? Everybody has to 'scramble to meet margin calls'. That's what's supposed to happen if you mis-price risk. Countries have always had to use quarantines and 'cordon sanitaires' and so forth to deal with epidemics. WTF does this have to do with two moons appearing in the sky?
The answer, of course, has to do with Keertik's own moon like ass cheeks separating so that his fundament can emit its himmelfart.

The irony, of course, is none of this is all too unexpected.

How is that an irony? We know that this risk existed. We also know that a particular epidemiological model- which was utterly shite- had salience only because the Colonialist West's 'gut instinct' re. 'herd immunity' was valorised. We also know that the present lockdown may be reversed.  The Swedish 'trade-off' may become canonical.

At least since early 2000s, the Center for Disease Control has been warning about flu-like pandemics; in the late 2000s, researchers at the University of Hong Kong warned about a ‘ticking time bomb’ because of Chinese wet markets, presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus among bats in the Wuhan area and the rise of international travel. Some others, like the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, have written about the increasing presence of ‘white swans’—transmission of predictable shocks with outsize consequences—due to the changing nature of our social arrangements where interconnectivity bears gifts, but also viruses.

But Kerala- or any other place with a lot of bats- could have been the epicentre of something worse. On the other hand, Kerala- described as  'mad-house of caste' by Vivekananda- defeated Caste by advancing rapidly in Medicine and Scientific Rationality. Yet, the old pathogen avoidance reflexes remained culturally hard-wired. Thus, Kerala's response is world beating.

Despite these assorted warnings and signals, much of our intellectual discourse continued to rely on models where previous iterations of reality are often deemed as the best predictors of what was to come.

Nonsense! It didn't happen in Kerala- coz they have a lot of bats and just a couple of years ago one particularly nasty bat virus- so it didn't happen anywhere.  Why? How do we know? It's coz Kerala subscribes to the same sort of rationality and 'mental models' as everywhere else.

Keertik, despite looking like a South Indian fuckwit, cheerfully ignores evidence from his own part of the world to talk worthless, not eclectic, but imbecilic, shite.

It is as if a creed of eternal growth and optimism about the future were the bedrock assumptions upon which this worldview was built.

But Kerala has that same credo. That's why it did well in containing this pandemic. But its 'bedrock assumptions' are wholly empirical and associated with a Scientific Structural Causal Model.

By contrast, Keertik simply wallows in Politically Correct pig-shit.

From the mainstreaming of laissez-faire economics

Which happened three hundred years ago

to the evangelical zeal to bring Democracy to foreign states

which never existed. Evangelicals did bring anti-Communist Dictatorships to foreign states. There is not one single example of their fostering Democracy anywhere. Keertik comes from the Indian subcontinent. Does he think America fostered Democracy in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka or Myanmar or Afghanistan? How fucking stupid is he?

—the presumption that nature, climate and pathogenic fellow travellers would play along was a convenient and useful fiction.

but only to Keertik for writing krap.

The rise of world-altering technologies like the internet, the human genome projects and the decisive victories of free-trade economics only burnished the sense that the future is golden, if we engineer it right.

but Keetrik was not one of those engineers. He was a kretin who thought the Buddha discovered that, like, dude, the reason you got the clap is not coz of your karma but coz you keep banging ho's whose noses had fallen off.

Keertik does not get that he is the stupidest export from his part of the world. That is the irony here.

There is a certain irony that among the various fatalities of the coronavirus pandemic will be this model of the world which advocated free trade, free markets and free movement of capital in the name of human welfare

There will be only one 'fatality' from this pandemic. Crap maths in Epidemiology. There is a certain irony in the fact that a guy whose surname sounds South Indian is writing stupid shite like this in a Magazine with a South Indian editor.  Us guys are supposed to be good at math.

So far Keertik's English has been okay. Now it turns to krap.

Interestingly, this moment we are now living through resonates the (sic) intellectual climates of 18th century Europe.

The following, being wholly violative of Aristotelian Unities is incorrigibly, canonically,  Babu-

As important theoretical discoveries by Newton, Galileo, Huygens and Snell began to roll in alongside inventions like Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes and powerful telescopes, savants like Leibniz and poets like Alexander Pope began to recast traditional theologies about the Biblical God’s perfection discernible by reason and science. (sic)

Amazing! I'm not saying I didn't write this sort of ungrammatical and ignorant shite when I was 14 in Delhi. But then I went to England. Teachers penalized you for writing nonsense back then even if u woz bleck. This guy mentions Snell. But 'Snell's law' was known to the Arabs. He is early Seventeenth Century. But then Islam has a full fledged Occassionalist ontology three or four centuries before Descartes and Leibniz.

Why does Karteek mention Alexander Pope? Only deeply provincial Continental cunts or Kants thought him a philosopher. The man was a poet.

Even the distress and chaos following the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in 1714 was for Leibniz an opportunity to extol it as a window to study nature more.

There was no eruption of Vesuvius in 1714.  Keertak or Kartick or whatever this fucker is called is simply lying. There was an effusion which stopped short of populated areas and an eruptive column of smoke and ash which likewise caused no fatalities. Liebniz was in the area. He did not say 'Gee! lots of 'distress and chaos' has occurred. Instead of helping the afflicted let us 'study nature more'.

 Why was this? The answer is that, like Lord Buddha, Liebniz was not as stupid as shit. Thus our Kardtrick has both beat.

The emerging fields of new sciences were merely means to directly discover the underlying rationality and order that was assumed to be the omnipresent characteristic of God’s creation.

That's what they did Kardtrik you fucking cretin. Ghosts and Demons and Curses and so on turned out not to exist at all.

This view, of a munificent god being slowly uncovered by science and reason, became the standard model for European intellectuals.

Fuck off! How Babu are you Kardtrik? Munificent? Really? That's your go to word in this context? What you mean is all-beneficent.
Any way, since when did a stupid cunt like you get to say what the 'standard model' of European intellectuals was or is? You know shit about India. Why should we trust you about 'Europe'?

Even the word ‘optimism’ arrived into the world in February 1737, in the Memoires de Trévoux, an influential journal on science.

The thing comes from Voltaire who was an influential poet popularizing Science- that of Newton- against the Occassionalism of Descartes and Liebniz. Why is Kardtrick telling us such a stupid lie?

In 1753, the Berlin Academy insisted that entrants to one of its popular public competitions answer with an essay on the topic of ‘All Is Best’. The entries were expected to burnish their answers with the ‘system of optimism’ that was widely known. But this emergent wave of progress, optimism and discovery found itself undermined dramatically by an ‘act of God’!

Eurocentric much my young Kardtrick? In 2020 the Iyer Academy of Fulham declared you to be a stupid cunt who must go fuck yourself because of Galileo and Science and Buddhism and so forth. Will you actually do any such thing? If not, why not admit that Academies and Essays and shite of the sort you indulge in is MEANINGLESS SIMPLY- save in so far as it accords us opportunities for ridicule or schadenfreude.

Like the 2020 coronavirus pandemic,

which affects people irrespective of where they live

the 1755 earthquake of Lisbon

only affected people who actually fucking lived in Lisbon.

How fucking stupid is this Kardtrick? There is absolutely nothing in common between these two events.

struck and destroyed almost the entirety of that most Christian of cities, full of cathedrals and solemn devotees, killing anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people. Add to it riots and mass deprivation that arose in a short order that shook the intellectual worldviews of European intellectuals.

This cretin is just making this shite up. How fucking ignorant is he? The Lisbon earthquake had a high death toll because Portugal had a fucking horrible economic model- viz. patrimonialism. Anyway, Protestant Europe had little love for Lisbon while, sadly, the Catholics turned up their noses at 'miscegenation'.  In other words, because some white people from that wonderful country did not behave like utter beasts towards vulnerable people of my dark skin color, Portugal was punished because, inevitably, the population would get crowded into the Capital, rather than going the way of the Confederate States.

The emptiness of that rhetoric of optimism was there for all to see.

But nobody was interested. Europe did not give a crap about philosophers then, nor does it do so now. Religions waxed or waned depending on what 'club goods' they delivered. 

They realised that all the clever preening about a compassionate god and ennobling scientific discoveries didn’t change the fundamental fact that there is great suffering in this world.

Nor the fundamental fact that shit smells bad. Fuck is wrong with Kardtrick? Does he really think there was a period when people did not know there was suffering? Did these guys never stub their toe and howl with pain? 

The rabble-rousing

Voltaire- rabble rousing? How fucking ignorant is this cunt?

but influential French philosopher, Voltaire, caricatured Leibniz devastatingly as Dr Pangloss, the ‘greatest philosopher of the Holy Roman Empire’ in his satire, Candide ou l’Optimisme—for his seemingly intractable faith in the perfectibility of human history.

Voltaire favored Newton over Descartes but was still behind the curve. Occasionalism, however, need not be 'optimistic'. Still, because Evolution is true, it  corresponds to Hannan Consistent 'geodesics'.

Within three decades, before the 18th century ended, the old world order of Leibniz and Voltaire had been entirely decimated following the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon that burnt European countryside and cities alike.

Where did this cretin learn history? Within two decades of the 'ending of the old world order', it was re-established by the Concert of Europe.

The biggest casualty was however the models of the world that men like Leibniz and the British poet Alexander Pope held as true representations of the world.

Sheer nonsense! Kant thought Pope a great philosopher- unlike anyone in England. But then Kant was krap. Liebniz remained important because his math don't need 'synthetic apriori deductions' of a Newtonian, substantivist, type. Kardtrick is writing shite for stupid Indians- or so he thinks. Maybe Open Magazine is letting his waggle his tiny genitalia at us so that people like me can slap him down- for having slightly larger genitalia.

We too similarly now face a world where crises of unknown size and uncertain consequences sweep the world, potentially washing away with them all the cows that we were told are sacred: balanced budgets, small governments, economic forecasting, privacy of individuals, technical transnational bureaucracies like the World Health Organization, open border advocates.

Which fucking decade has this cretin been living in? All these things were 'washed away' before I was born. 

The political-economy models of the world, which came of age with the Reagan-Thatcher revolution in the early 1980s, are now in their middle ages; their intellectual arteries are clogged with interest-group politics; their body politic is no longer as nimble as their ideological rivals on the extremes of the left and the right; and their abilities to arouse the masses are non-existent.

Nonsense! Thatcher and Reagan won. The pretence that they hadn't has died a death.  God alone knows how this guy with microscopic genitalia thinks he is 'arousing the masses'. I personally have done so by sticking radishes up my ass. But, Trump and Bo Jo etc still got elected.

To this end, there is a certain irony that among the various fatalities of the coronavirus pandemic will be this model of the world which advocated free trade, free markets and free movement of capital in the name of human welfare.

Fuck off! There will be something called 'Tiebout sorting' which is what laissez faire Econ theory predicts. 
This cretin thinks things were done in the 'name of human welfare'. He probably also thinks his shit don't stink.

What set of models of political economy will come to dominate our collective consciousness in its stead, after this pandemic, is anybody’s guess.

No it isn't. Mimetics will ensure that best practice spreads to wherever that practice is possible. This is not rocket science. 

But if those new set of ideas insist on storming the Bastille and sharpening the guillotines, we ought to be not surprised.

Fuck is wrong with this cunt? There is no 'Bastille' save in places like China. Nobody is going to storm Chinese prison camps because, if they do, they will get shot.  Screw Guillotines. Forced labour and organ harvesting is the way to go.

What will this verbose, cretinous, Kardtrik suggest next? I don't know. I think it will involve self-sodomy for those with a Clinton kink in their dick. If we assume that Kardtrick is self-pleasuring, or self-soothing, himself in this manner when he writes this shite, we come to see his contribution to public discourse in an entirely new light. 

Amartya Sen on Siddhartha Varadarajan

Amartya Sen writes in the Wire-

Steps to undermine democracy in India are becoming increasingly common. The police action by the Uttar Pradesh government – ruled by the same political party that runs the Central government – against The Wire and its founding editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, shows how far-reaching the destructive stabs at democracy have become in India.

What was the police action? They delivered a summons to a Judicial hearing on the basis of a complaint made against Varadarajan for falsely claiming, in contravention of Indian Law,  that the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh had said that devotees of Lord Ram need not fear the coronavirus.

Neither Varadarajan, nor Sen, nor anyone else has said that the police were acting illegally. Yet, Sen claims this was a 'destructive stab at democracy'. How so? A journalist publishes fake news, in contravention of the law. On the basis of a duly verified complaint from a member of the public, the police serve him with a summons. This is perfectly proper.  Editors have no immunity from the law.

The Wire’s views on what is happening differ from those of the government,

The Wire retracted the false claim they made re. what the Chief Minister said. So, their view does not now differ from that of everybody else. Varadarajan will need to show the relevant authority that his paper published a retraction and give an explanation of his conduct to show no malice was intended.

but it is terrible to see, related to that difference, the attempt of the UP police to press the charge of criminality against The Wire, with the possibility of arrest of its editor.

Why is it terrible to see the police doing their duty in accordance with the law? Those laws were established by a democratic process. There is no wrong doing here.

As a proud Indian citizen, I have to hang my head in shame at the gross misbehaviour of our elected leaders – both for their attempt to curb media independence and for their efforts to violate freedom of speech in the country.

Sen is lying. He is not hanging his head in shame. In any case, there is nothing to feel ashamed about. The law places curbs on the media's freedom of expression. In this case, the police acted on the basis of complaints made by members of the public. The fact is, publications like the Wire are helpful to the ruling party because they injure the religious sensibilities of the majority of the population. This causes a backlash in favor of the BJP. Still, the police have to uphold the law regardless of questions of political expediency.

While recording my condemnation of this particular case – and demanding that the charges of criminality be immediately withdrawn –

as we demand Sen get a brain transplant

I cannot but reflect on the general subject of the decline of democratic freedom in my country.

because Sen doesn't like the ruling party and blames it for booting him out of a sinecure as Chancellor of Nalanda University.

The thoroughly unjust criminal proceedings against Varadarajan and The Wire are terrible developments for India.

Nonsense! They don't matter in the least.

They are so not just because they bring out – for the whole world to see – how incredibly intolerant the largest democracy in the world has become under its present leadership.

But people who take this view have no influence anywhere.

India’s fall from democratic norms has been, in recent years, a subject of widespread discussion – and frequent denunciation – in the world, bringing sadness to India’s friends and much joy to its enemies.

None of whom matter in the least.

Serious as this global fall is – from which India’s recovery would take time (after the present political leaders get replaced, as will no doubt happen sooner or later – that is hardly the worst aspect of this terrible police action and of similar acts of authoritarianism in many parts of India.

Sen thinks he and his ilk matter. But they don't because they proved to be as stupid as shit.

The main loss for India from such striking misuse of political power is surely its far-reaching domestic consequence.

But where is the misuse of political power? The police responded to a complaint. They are required to take firm action against people spreading fake news about the virus. Though Varadarajan's aim was to malign the C.M, the fact is by attributing to a Yogi with a huge popular following the view that Devotion to Lord Ram made one immune to the virus, the danger was created that some people in Uttar Pradesh might ignore the lockdown.

Democracy in India has accomplished many positive results.

Because it has punished those who spread fake news.

The persistent occurrence of devastating famines in India, which characterised British India, stopped immediately with the establishment of democratic governance and media freedom.

This is completely false. Look up the Wikipedia article on Indian Famines. The British stopped their occurrence after about 1900. Then, in 1937, they devolved power to the Provinces. The result was a big famine in Bengal in 1942-43 caused by corrupt and incompetent Bengali politicians. Lord Wavell put an end to it. After Bangladesh became democratic, it too experienced a big famine in 1974. Thus, Bengal had two big famines despite having 'democratic governance' and 'media freedom'.

There are many other achievements, for example the major advances by India in intellectual creativity, making use of a combination of democratic tolerance and extensive media freedom.

But 'fake news' is curbed by law. Otherwise, people of different communities would be killing each other in the streets. The very first amendment to the Indian Constitution had to do with criminalizing 'abuse of freedom of speech' by the media. This was in 1951. Romesh Thapar, a leftist and the brother of historian Romila Thapar, had published some criticisms of Nehru's economic policies. The Supreme Court held that he had the right to do so. So the Constitution was amended.

While there are other democratic objectives such as the removal of poverty and of gross inequality which need to be pursued further, they could be achieved with better policies within – and helped by – a democratic political system.

Or one of the Chinese type.

Even if China is seen as having done well notwithstanding its restrictions on press freedom, that is a partial story (China also produced the largest famine in history during the Great Leap Forward), and the achievements are thoroughly dependent on the commitment of China’s leadership to schooling and basic healthcare for all, in line with the core political faith of the leadership, which has no parallel in India. To go against media independence in conditions like India’s cannot be an intelligent development policy.

Yet it was the policy that Nehru and his daughter, with greater ruthlessness, pursued. Sen quietly emigrated to the UK before Indira committed her worst excesses.

By contrast, the BJP wants 'media independence' and gains from publications like 'the Wire' which serve to demonstrate the bankruptcy of the Left.

Winning a general election gives the ruling party powers that can be interpreted in different ways, and sometimes more can be read into it than is constitutionally justified.

But only the Bench decides how the Constitution can be read. Unlike the Nehru dynasty, the BJP- being meritocratic- wants an independent Press so as to get rid of its own deadwood and to promote those who are perceived as doing a good job.

The issue is not so much whether the spectacular outcome in the 2019 general elections was strongly influenced by a war – which tends to favour ruling parties (as the Falklands War turned Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from trailing in the polls in 1982 to a resounding victor in 1983), nor whether it was pivotally influenced by the immensely larger electoral resources that the ruling party had.

Sen is being silly. Churchill won a war but lost the elections. George Bush won a war but lost to Clinton. Thatcher won in '83 because Labour had split in 1981. The SDP/Liberal alliance won 25 % of the popular vote against Labour's 28 percent. Had Labour been united, it could have beaten the Tories.

Mention of 'electoral resources' too is silly. The fact is Dynastic Parties sometimes prefer to pocket the funds they raise rather than spend them on buying votes. That's what has been happening in the last couple of Indian elections.

It concerns, rather, the misinterpretation of the powers that legitimately follow from a victory in a legislative election.

Sen has an unusual view as to what 'powers legitimately follow' from electoral victory. He thinks the new Government, no matter what the manifesto it was elected on, should only do stuff he approves of. Otherwise it is being naughty. No one shares this view of his.

A victory here does not give the rulers the moral – or even legal – authority to identify someone as being “anti-national” merely because he or she is opposed to the government (which is not the nation).

Everyone has the moral and legal right to identify a person acting against the national interest as 'anti-national'. Under Indian law, this is not an abuse of freedom of expression. Winning an election does not result in the loss of this right.
It is not an offense, under Indian law, to be anti-national. However, certain actions against the national interest are punishable by law.

Nor does it allow the government to characterise a political disagreement with it as “sedition” (as has been repeatedly done by the Indian government).

Sen is saying 'Victory in an election does not allow the government to do something which, as a matter of fact, has been repeatedly done.' This is like saying 'Cats can't say miaow as they have repeatedly done.' There is no way this sentence can be true. It contradicts itself.

Nor, in the present case of the UP government’s police action, can any criminality charge be drawn based on a journalist’s different reading of facts from what the government wants people to believe.

This is utterly false. The complaint against Varadarajan is that he sought to create enmity against a specific religion by falsely claiming that Yogi Adityanath, a holy man from that religion, said 'Lord Ram would protect devotees from the coronavirus'. This would cause people to fear that devotees of Lord Ram would behave irresponsibly and thus spread this terrible disease. One day later, the Wire retracted this statement. Maybe, this will be enough to satisfy the magistrate. Still, many people in India may take a dim view of the professionalism or impartiality of the man who uttered this falsehood.

I end with two final points. First, no government lasts forever, even though the ruling groups might have the illusion that they would.

But this is equally true of the false beliefs that characterize people like Sen. They too will fade away.

The terrible departures from acceptable norms that the government may be able to push through right now may not be viewed in quite the same way in the future.

But what Sen is protesting here is not a 'terrible departure' at all. Journalists who spread fake news during a lockdown should be held responsible in accordance with the law of the land.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s famous poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’, written in protest against President Zia ul Haq’s rule, pointed to a time in the future, when today’s deeds would be judged differently.

But what was that future for Pakistan? The fact is, Benazir helped the Taliban come to power. The country has gone much further down Zia's, not Faiz's, road. Where is the Left in Pakistan today? For that matter, where is it in India or the UK or the US? 'Hum dekhenge' means 'we will see'. What have we seen? Faiz's and Sen's brand of Socialism has no takers anywhere- even Venezuela or Bolivia. But radical Islam has gone from strength to strength. Look at Turkey. Where are its Left-Secularists now?

Zia was all-powerful then, but how is he viewed today?

Zia is the father of modern Pakistan. The Army has a pliant tool in the shape of Im the Dim- with his Islamic clairvoyant wifey. Zia's Afghan strategy looks as though it will finally pay off. Trump has done a deal with the Taliban. Of course, the country has now fallen behind Bangladesh. But that would have happened even if, Faiz's pal, Bhutto hadn't been hanged and his dynasty had presided over that country's decline.

And how are the politically invincible authoritarian rulers of Latin America of the past typically seen today?

Chavez's successor, Maduro, is still around. Castro's brother still runs Cuba. What point is Sen making? Only the truly brutal authoritarian regimes survive there? Corruption is not enough?

Are powerful rulers in India thoroughly indifferent to judgments that history will make?

Yes. Historians are quite cheap to buy. 

The second point concerns our national history. India fought for democratic rights for a long time during its struggle for independence – many people gave their lives, and others went through huge hardship, to establish an independent democracy in our country – with a wonderful combination of citizens with many different religions, persuasions and convictions.

But Ceylon got universal suffrage in 1930. India did not precisely because Muslims were a large enough minority to prevent Democracy, save at the price of Partition.

That struggle was not for the arbitrary governance by an imperious regime that fits the UP police action against media freedom, combined with the attempted arrest of great journalists.

There was no 'attempted arrest' of a fat- not great- journalist. The man, or rather his wife, was served with a summons.

We did understand in our colonial past the inferior status of being a citizen of the British Raj. But can we really accept having a similar subjugation in our own democracy?

Siddhartha Varadarajan is an American citizen. Sen is not- but he left India long ago to further his career. He made no protest, from his vantage point of safety in the UK, against Indira's Gandhi's Emergency. Can we really accept him as a moral authority on Indian democracy?

Why Philosophers write foolishly about Fascism

Fascism flourished during a brief period when elites were afraid to use the Army to crush the Communists just in case troops mutinied. During this interregnum, gangsterish mass movements, funded by the rich, appeared a good way to defeat the Communists in street-battles. The reason these mass-movements needed to have an Il Duce or Fuhrer, was so that, once they had taken power, they could be called to heel rather than continue to run amok. That's why there was a cult of the Supreme Leader who could kill off his own lieutenants if they didn't get with the program.

Predictably, it turned out, this 'cure' was worse than the disease. An absolute Leader can be an absolute Idiot and plunge the country into wars it is bound to lose. As Sinclair Lewis said, it made sense to infect a person with malaria to cure syphilis (by driving up the body temperature till the spirochetes all died) but it made no sense to do the opposite. Thankfully, once the Cold War got underway, the US was prepared to fund anti-Communism anywhere in the world. Thus regimes which outdid the Nazis in their obsession with racial purity- countries like apartheid era South Africa- could remain 'liberal democracies' as far as the favoured race was concerned. Thus Fascism lost any appeal it might otherwise have had. Yet, for pedagogues in worthless disciplines, it became more and more of an obsession because their students had declined so steeply in quality that it seemed important to warn them against strutting around in jackboots bashing each others' brains out.

This development raises a question- can a Professor of Philosophy write a single sentence about Fascism which is not foolish, disingenuous or downright false?

Let us examine an article published by Prof. Jonathon Wolff in Aeon Magazine in the hope of finding a counter-example.

Ours is the age of the rule by ‘strong men’: leaders who believe that they have been elected to deliver the will of the people.

There have never been elected leaders who sought to convince voters that they were weak and that they would not 'deliver the will of the people'. Why? Saying- 'I'm a big sissy. Vote for me and I promise I will do the opposite of whatever it is you want'- is not a good political strategy.

We don't live in the age of 'strong men' who can kill any or all of their own lieutenants if they get out of line. This is because we haven't chosen one bunch of gangsters to protect us from another bunch of psychopaths. However, we do expect our leaders to have strong convictions and to negotiate hard on the nation's behalf.

Woe betide anything that stands in the way, be it the political opposition, the courts, the media or brave individuals.

What great woe has betided those who stand in Trump's way? Has the BBC been crushed by BoJo? Has the Supreme Court been disbanded? Have Judges been strung up with piano wire?

While these demonised guardians of freedom are belittled, brushed aside or destroyed, vulnerable groups, such as refugees, immigrants, minorities and those living in poverty, bear the brunt.

When has it not been the case that vulnerable groups were...urm..vulnerable?  Obama deported more than Trump but Clinton deported more than either Bush or Obama.

What can be done to halt or reverse this process?

Faster economic growth- d'uh.

And what will happen if we simply stand by and watch?

Professors of Philosophy have been standing by, sure enough, but they haven't been watching properly. That's why they recycle the same nonsense decade after decade. Eight years ago, Prof. Roberto Unger was explaining why he couldn't vote for Obama- that Fascist!- for a second term. Thankfully, he is keeping mum now- or at least no one is paying any attention to him. His native Brazil is now ruled by Bolsanoro thanks to the corruption of the regime in which Unger held a Ministerial Portfolio.

Some commentators see parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

But Fascism established itself in the 1920s! What enabled it to do so? The answer is the threat of a Communist insurgency. If there is no Communist threat, there is no Fascist response. However, if the State shows a willingness to beat the Communists with vim and vigour- as McCarthyite America did in the Fifties- then there is no need for Fascism. The same holds if the Communists prefer talking nonsense to actually killing class enemies.

Others agree that democracy is under threat but suggest that the threats are new. A fair point, but with its dangers. Yes, we must attend to new threats, but old ones can reoccur too.

Why not simply say let us attend to threats? The trouble is Democracy already does so better than any bunch of cretinous 'commentators'. It is one thing to keep crying wolf- you may simply be a very cowardly person who jumps at his own shadow. It is another thing entirely to claim that the Burgermeister must be a werewolf because no actual wolves are discoverable in the vicinity. 

Stefan Zweig, the Austrian author of Jewish descent, saw his books burnt in university towns across Germany in 1933.

No he didn't. He wasn't crazy enough to go to Germany to enjoy the spectacle. Zweig showed a remarkable survival instinct by emigrating first to England and then America while the going was good.

His memoirs paint a picture in which everything was normal until it wasn’t.

But he topped himself, taking his wife with him like the male chauvinistic pig he was, immediately after finishing it. Either the guy wasn't right in the head or he was a narcissistic sociopath who thought suttee better than a life insurance policy when it comes to providing for one's widow.

But it would be wrong to think that we can predict how things will turn out. Who foresaw where we are now? The French philosopher Simone Weil, writing in 1934, probably had it right: ‘We are in a period of transition; but a transition towards what? No one has the slightest idea.’

Weil, like Zweig, wasn't exactly a poster child for good mental health. She starved to death. The English coroner reported ' the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed".

Which period has not been a period of transition towards what is not yet known? Crazy people, like Weil and Zweig, might think this is a big deal but nobody else does.

Liberal democratic institutions, such as those we have now, exist only so long as people believe in them.

Nonsense! Liberal democratic institutions don't exist. Some people may believe that certain institutions are liberal or illiberal or democratic or elitist or whatever. But what exist are institutions, not the adjectives used to describe them.

When that belief evaporates, change can be rapid.

 Belief is irrelevant. If a set of Institutions represent incentive compatible mechanisms then they persist over time in a robust, 'anti-fragile', manner. People may no longer believe that those institutions are good but they endure if they are useful. Thus, in 1921, the vast majority of 'thinking' Indians thought that British institutions- e.g. Law Courts, Schools, Universities, etc- were bound to disappear. Yet, a hundred years later they are still with us. A far larger proportion of Indians than ever before now use the English language and take essentially British Institutions for granted.

Beliefs, no matter how widespread, don't matter. Expectations do matter. But Expectations are not Beliefs. They are Bayesian and empirical, not ideological or subjective.

Beware leaders riding a wave of crude nationalism.

Beware leaders doing stupid shit. There are no 'waves of crude nationalism or lewd feminism or rude anything else'. Effective propaganda can generate a popular upsurge but it is not the case that the polity is an ocean with tides and currents and big waves which surfers can ride.

Beware democracy submerging into a vague notion of the will of the people.

Why not be wary of writing meaningless shite like the above? Democracy is not a submarine which can suddenly 'submerge' into something. What people want is not a 'vague notion'. It is the subject of Social Choice- a branch of an empirical Discipline- viz. Political Economy. Philosophers are too stupid to contribute to it.

But why now?

Because you have a worthless book to promote.

In 1920s Germany, it was obvious. The novelist and journalist Joseph Roth remarked: Without the free food [that the unemployed man in Hamburg] gets in assembly halls he would starve to death. And in these assembly halls, where people used to go to smooch and drink, they are now daubing swastikas and Soviet stars on the grimy walls.

Roth wasn't German. He didn't understand why the Weimar Republic fucked up- viz. its promoters simply didn't get that Germany's next war would be its last. The country was bound to destroy itself and half of Europe because it did not accept that its Army was as stupid as shit and bound to lose any war it started.

Incidentally, it is completely untrue that 'free food' in 'Assembly Halls' kept the unemployed from starvation. Unemployment relief was consolidated in 1923 and in 1924 a comprehensive Public Assistance program replaced the old Poor Law legislation.

Mass unemployment isn’t what threatens us today.

The good Professor speaks too soon.

Instead, we’re facing something closer to the situation observed by Hannah Arendt in 1951: 

It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence … and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.

This is sheer nonsense. In 1951, the State was mighty, the individual a mere ant. Now everybody has more computing power in their pocket than NASA did when it put men on the Moon. Currently, mankind is divided into those who think philosophers are cretins and those who think they are lazy, lying, cretins.

Powerlessness can lead to detachment.

Or it can lead to attachment. But if it is truly powerless, nobody notices. The thing can be ignored because it can have no effect on anything.

But it can also lead to exuberant support for whomever seems to be on your wavelength.

But the support of the powerless is about as much use as the approbation of field mice.

This is what happened in the 1930s. In considering the parallels between then and now, the Irish journalist Emily Lorimer’s book What Hitler Wants (1939) – written in October 1938, a month before Kristallnacht, and just after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia – is a remarkable resource.

No it isn't. We now know far more than Lorimer did. The fact is people like Robert Vansittart, Britain's top Diplomat, understood that Hitler would start a war as soon as he was strong enough. British rearmament could have started in 1933 and been well on its way by 1935. As with France, the problem was with the old fogeys on the General Staff. That is why Vansittart had to suggest an accommodation with Hitler. It seems likely that he tipped the wink to Hitler that the UK would cave on the Sudenten issue. But once Britain showed it could rearm properly, Vansittart took a firm line.

The fact is, the American journalist Dorothy Thompson, who interviewed Hitler and was kicked out of Germany for her frank assessment of him, had alerted the English speaking world to the Nazi menace. However, Mein Kampf was taken as asserting a 'drive to the East'- in other words, the West expected Hitler to make terms with the French so as to have a free hand against the Soviets- and thus the full text of that poisonous work contributed to appeasement.

Lorimer realised that the English translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925) was highly censored; for example, it left out Hitler’s detailed plans to invade England.

There are no 'detailed plans to invade England' in Mein Kampf. Nor was there any 'censorship' in the Dugdale abridgment- though the Nazis insisted on further abridgement. But, in those days proficiency in German was a requirement for serious scholarship and thus the lack of a full English translation made little difference. Incidentally, Lorimer seems to have been under the impression that the translator was German, not an English officer and gentleman.

Few English people could read German, so Lorimer set out to make an English-language digest and summary of the key elements of the book. She suggested that three key elements drove Hitler’s initial plans: a concern for workers’ rights; a desire to create a purely German state; and violent opposition to social democracy.

Lorimer's book came out in January of 1939. By then few English people believed the man was 'concerned with worker's rights' or that his chief grievance was against Left Liberals or Trade Unionists or 'Social Democrats'. Rather, they thought that Hitler wanted nothing less than total war. What came as a surprise was the Hitler-Stalin pact which meant that he struck to the West rather than to the East. Yet, it was Britain's guarantee to Poland- which was never made good- given in March, which drove Hitler into Stalin's arms. I suppose, Franco's victory in Spain and Italy and Japan joining the anti-Comintern pact meant that the British Admiralty saw the writing on the Wall. The 1935 Naval pact with Germany had been a deal with the Devil. Britain had made all the possible mistakes it could make. It needed to prepare itself for one hell of a beating before the other side started to make even bigger mistakes of its own.

The concern for workers’ rights is surely the forgotten element in far-Right ideology.

This is utterly bonkers. The far-Right may talk about the dignity of labor but, by that, they mean the dignity the crossing-sweeper attains when he puts on his party uniform and goes out with his mates to bash in the skulls of dem dirty furriners and homos and people wot talk clever. 

In the first instance, far-Right ideas can bloom in those who consider themselves wronged or ignored by their political leaders.

But so can Centrist or Leftist or sensible ideas. That's the problem with ideas. They can bloom anywhere. What matters is whether there is an incentive and an opportunity to act upon them in a politically meaningful way.

Early fascists latched on to low-paid workers, war veterans and others who felt betrayed by a system that gave them nothing in return for their sacrifices.

So did the Salvation Army. So did the Communists. But the Weimar Republic was more successful because it reformed the Social Welfare safety net. Unfortunately, it did some very silly things at the same time- e.g. printing money to support the strikers in French occupied Rhineland.

As historian Samuel Moyn writes in Not Enough (2018): ‘It is no accident that the inventor of the still most widely used measure of national inequality, Italian statistician Corrado Gini, was a Fascist.’

But he developed it in 1912 long before there was any Fascism anywhere! How is he to blame if some crazy Serbian shot some Austrian Archduke? Had there been no First World War there would have been no Bolshevik Revolution and no 'March on Rome'. Anyway, if Gini was a Fascist, what about the other inequality indices we use? Was Thiel a Fascist? What about Tony Atkinson- Piketty's mentor? I can name a dozen people doing inequality studies right now. It would be great if I could taunt them as 'Fascists' on the basis of 'Moyn's Law'.

Gini wasn’t just any fascist, either; he was the author of the paper: ‘The Scientific Basis of Fascism’ (1927).

So what? The guy came up with a plan for America to take over all the Democracies and run them so as to achieve 'perpetual peace'. Like many people who are good at Statistics, he was as stupid as shit.

Yet, surely, national inequality is an obsession of the Left rather than the Right?

It is an obsession of the stupid.

In the end, what is the difference between fascist and Left-wing ideas?

None, but you can only teach them at Ivy League if you pretend they are Left-wing.

According to Oswald Mosley – the leader of the British Union of Fascists from 1932 to 1940 – the British Labour Party was pursuing policies of ‘international socialism’, while fascism’s aim was ‘national socialism’.

But, according to everybody else, Mosley's aim was the glorification of Mosley. The net result of his antics was that Labour- and Mosley had once been a rising star within that Party- developed a stronger stomach for Laskian Leftism.

Mosley might have been wrong to regard mature fascism as a form of socialism.

Might? Mosley was wrong. He is a P.G Woodehouse character, nothing more.

But he was right about its origins. Early Italian fascism broke from socialism only on the grounds of nationalism. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proposed giving women the vote, lowering the voting age to 18, introducing an eight-hour workday, worker participation in industrial management, heavy progressive capital tax and the partial confiscation of war profits. Of course, he also advocated extreme nationalism and Italian expansionism, but the pro-worker aspects of his programme are striking.

This was cheap talk. What did Mussolini actually deliver? Women got the vote in national elections only after the scoundrel was hanged. Apparently, they couldn't hold a political office, unless all eligible men turned it down, till 1963. There was no 8 hour day or penal taxes on 'war profits'. 'Corporatism' was no panacea. Fascist controls on emigration depressed real wages and though unemployment did fall towards the end of the regime, real wages fell faster.

In Germany, as early as 1920, Hitler set out his 25-point manifesto for the Nazi Party, of which points 11 to 15 concern workers’ rights:
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalisation of all trusts.
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
Connoisseurs will spot the antisemitic notes – ‘unearned income’ and ‘war profits’ – but, on the face of it, these points could have been taken from the manifesto of the German communists.

Lorimer makes this point but also tells us that Hitler was paid by the German Army to do all this. Recall, it was the same bunch of geniuses who sent Lenin to St. Petersburg in a sealed train. The thing was purely tactical but spectacularly myopic. 

Mosley, who fell out with the socialists over their compromises with big business and what he perceived as the weakening of their principles, quipped: ‘The Socialists wore red ties until they faded pink after the last Labour Government.’

Is the author serious? Does he really expect us to believe that Mosely, backed by Lord Rothermere, was Rosa Luxembourg in disguise? Why stop there? Say- 'Rabbi Mosley fell out with the Board of Deputies of the British Jews because of their compromise with the bacon industry.'

He added, in terms with which it is hard to quibble: ‘Real freedom means good wages, short hours, security in employment, good houses, opportunity for leisure and recreation with family and friends.’

It is easy to quibble with nonsense. Real freedom means really being free to do what you want to do. You may find an employer in Saudi Arabia offering you better wages etc. but you may not have the freedom to say what you think- if you think in a certain way. If I were a believer in the ideology of the Caliphate I would not really be free in Europe or America. If I acted on my beliefs I am likely to find myself in prison.

Mussolini and Mosley are a reminder that espousing a concern for workers’ rights is not, in itself, a protection against authoritarianism.

They are also a reminder that the fact that your surname begins with M does not necessarily mean you will start wearing Black shirts and giving long boring speeches.

In the United Kingdom today, there is a growing belief that it was the Labour Party’s failure to embrace nationalist policies – thought to be favoured by its traditional voters – that led to its humiliating electoral defeat in 2019.

Rubbish! There was a growing belief that Jeremy Corbyn was shite even though he had the strongest credentials as an anti European 'nationalist'. Why did this belief grow? The answer is that Corbyn genuinely was shite. People from Islington generally are.

There’s also the conviction, shared by some of the less thoughtful activists, that as long as they remain supportive of trade unions and retain pro-poor policies, their Left-wing credentials will remain intact, even if they embrace crude nationalism.

Only Professors care about credentials. Nobody else does. What matters is utility. Activists are either useful or they are a nuisance. They are welcome to embrace anything they like in a crude or lewd or very very rude manner so long as they do it in behind closed doors and drawn curtains.

But this terrain needs to be navigated very carefully indeed.

Nonsense! This terrain can be safely ignored. Only if some activist is embracing something very crudely and lewdly on your door-step should you call the police or pour a jug of water on the randy bugger.

In practice, fascism’s initial championing of the rights of workers came to little.

Whereas Communism's championing of the right of the peasant to the land he tilled came to much less.

But, especially in Germany, fascists relentlessly pursued their second goal of creating a racially pure state.

By importing hordes of slave workers. Also a lot of Indians and so forth were recruited into the Waffen SS. The end result of the Nazi experiment was the rape of Berlin. But for a highly proactive abortion policy, the genetics of the region would have changed quite substantially.

The nation, said the Nazis, was being ruined by traitors and parasites, and it was essential that purity be restored by any means necessary. And, of course, the traitors were the communists and the parasites were the Jews.

No doubt, our distinguished author believes he is telling his readers something they had little suspected. Apparently Hitler was against Jews. Who knew?

The idea of the need to restore national purity is common to all fascisms.

Nonsense! Italy did not enact racial laws till it allied with Germany. This notion was not in its original program. Franco could be considered a Fascist. National purity wasn't on his agenda. He used Moroccan troops to rape Spanish women so as to crush resistance to his regime. That is why he took such a long time- greatly to the vexation of this Italian and German allies- conquering the country. Rape is a laborious business and Franco was determined that the thing be done properly.

On the other hand, several American States had far more stringent anti-miscegenation rules, till the 1980's, than any Fascist regime. Incidentally, a Japanese or Han Chinese man (both of whom were considered 'Aryans of the East') could marry a German woman at a time when neither could marry a 'White woman' in parts of America.

Apartheid South Africa was not Fascist but certainly had draconian laws to do with 'national purity'. Salazar's Portuguese Empire, which could be considered Fascist, had a very different moral atmosphere.

As the American political scientist and historian Robert Paxton wrote in The Anatomy of Fascism (2004): ‘Fascisms seek out in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilising a mass movement of regeneration, unification, and purity, directed against liberal individualism and constitutionalism and against Leftist class struggle.’

Was the Italian Risorgimento a Fascist movement? What about Mahatma Gandhi's Indian National Congress? De Valera's Ireland had more of the rather dour qualities Paxton mentions than Mussolini's Italy- which was a pretty comfortable place for cosmopolitan ex-pats in the Twenties and Thirties. Stalin's Nationalities doctrine meant that the Soviet Union sponsored chauvinist linguistic sub-nationalist ideologies- for e.g. among Tamil language speakers- through Yulian Bromley's Institute of Ethnography till the very end. I remember meeting a gas-station attendant from Sri Lanka who had been brain-washed there. I was astonished at his vitriol against 'Iyers' like myself. He had never himself met one. But he could recite all our misdeeds from the time of the Great Flood downwards.

The truth is Fascism was a fad from long ago. It was like other fads of the period except in one particular. It was supposed to deliver victory in a total war. Instead, it delivered total defeat. So, it died out except in comic books and the vapourings of psilosophers.

This allows a person ‘the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings’.

Like what happens when you attend a football match.

In fascist literature, we see repeated a language of enemies, traitors, parasites and foreigners, and the dehumanising metaphors of pigs, dogs, rats and cockroaches, accompanied by the readiness for violent action by paramilitary and extrajudicial forces.

But this was equally true of Communist literature from the period. But the Commies won their war and gradually cleaned up their vocabulary as their nomenklatura prospered and aged.

A mob in coloured shirts exudes an aura of organised – yet brutal – force, even when those assembled have no training and little individual muscle.

This wasn't what happened in Cable Street. Working class Jews beat the shit out of the Blackshirts. Moseley looked a right dick for wailing about the bruises his Blackshirts received- despite having been accorded police protection. That's what is fatal to Nazi scum- the spectacle of having to hide behind the police like the precious little Mamma's boys that they are.

In the 1930s, nationalist parties around the world dressed not just in black and brown, but also in blue, green, grey, orange, silver and khaki and, not to be forgotten, the more elaborate white outfit of the American white-supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.

So, there was nothing special about Fascism. It was imitating American Democracy.

As the British philosopher Brian Barry remarked in the 1980s, Anglo-American academia and liberal intellectual circles have had a difficult time with nationalism, regarding it as ‘inimical to civilised values’.

But British people have long thought that Philosophers and Academics and 'liberal intellectual circles' are inimical to being able to think their way out of a paper bag. The plain fact is Victorian England made heroes out of Kossuth and Garibaldi and so forth. 

Yet, this has left a gap that has been exploited by ruthless opportunists, as made evident in the 2016 Brexit vote.

Coz 'liberal intellectuals' have so much power. They aren't as stupid as shit. If they 'leave a gap', ruthless opportunists exploit it. What a self-serving view of the world for a philosopher to have! No doubt this COVID virus is ruthlessly exploiting some gap in the liberal intelligentsia's comprehension of epidemiology. Oh dear. I just farted. My fart must have ruthlessly exploited a gap in my anus left by liberal intellectuals. Fuck you very much liberal intellectuals! But for that gap you so carelessly left I wouldn't have to hold my nose at this moment!

The Leave campaign claimed a monopoly on British values.

I claim a monopoly on the carnal attentions of beautiful virgins. Much good this claim has done me.

Fringe elements of the campaign were openly racist.

But so were openly racist people who didn't give a toss about the campaign.

Even members of parliament and parts of the press joined in the hostility to immigrants and foreign residents, with all the unpleasant imagery of ‘swarms’ or ‘floods’ of refugees and low-paid workers at the UK’s doors.

Yes, yes. But all that unpleasantness, like the fart I just released, was the fault of some gap left by the liberal intelligentsia. Clearly, each and every member of that clique had not spent enough time writing worthless books and articles about Fascism and Nazism and the Spanish Inquisition.

In response, many on the Left have adopted an unashamedly pro-immigrant stance.

That is news to me. Right wing economists like immigration. The Left has to pretend to like furriners. But it doesn't really. 

But some Left-wing and centre-Right politicians have taken a different tack, attempting to capture nationalist sentiment without resorting to discriminatory or racist language, attitudes or policies.

How can a sentiment 'be captured'? I suppose what the Professor means is 'attempting to capture the votes of those who harbour nationalist sentiments'. But, successful politicians need to gain votes from people and thus must try to find out their sentiments and devise means to appeal to them. But everyone knows this already. Why dwell on the matter?

Intellectuals have ignored nationalism at their peril.

No. They ignored reality so as to pose as intellectuals. No great peril was involved because they were already as stupid as shit.

Yet they could adopt it at their peril too.

Right! It's like if you adopt a Nazi baby you will turn into a Nazi and then you'll discover you are actually of Gypsy heritage and have to put your head in the gas oven. Shit like that goes down all the time.

The terms ‘progressive patriotism’ and ‘liberal nationalism’ have been used to try to capture this type of view.

But that type of view had to be released because it was a smelly old fart which had opportunistically escaped from some gap left by the liberal intelligentsia.

But what does it stand for?

Who gives a toss?

There are a number of ways to explain a distinction between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ nationalism.

But all those ways are as stupid as shit.

Bad nationalism, in the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s words, is ‘a mindless loyalty to one’s own particular nation’.

But loyalty- which is intentional- can't be mindless. Suppose your spouse has her brain removed. She can't be loyal to you anymore than she can beat you for peeing in the sink.

Good nationalism, or what MacIntyre calls patriotism, is a matter of valuing the achievements and merits of one’s country, both because they are achievements and merits, and because they are ours.

So, a nation with no achievements or merits can't have 'good nationalism'. Its people should not oppose an invader.
I think a group of people who look at what they could achieve if they worked together and were bound by ties of mutual affection and loyalty may display something good which is describable as 'nationalism'. It is the potential gains from cooperation and fraternity, not past achievements or inherited merits, which are the proper focus of Political Economy.

What keeps this type of more sophisticated nationalism, or patriotism, liberal or progressive is that it is intended to be nonexclusive.

In which case it will be neither 'liberal' or 'progressive' because it will correspond to a 'tragedy of the commons'. Economic theory tells us that a good which is non-excludable will be underprovided. This includes Liberal Institutions because they too take up scarce resources.

You take pride in your country’s achievements while recognising that other countries can take pride in theirs.

Pride doesn't matter. What does is that your people are working together to provide necessary public goods such that a superior correlated equilibrium can be reached.

It may be that there are very small children who don't get that other kids have Mummies and Daddies whom they think are the bestest Mummies and Daddies in the world. But, by the time kids are able to speak, they understand this perfectly well. Perhaps, this Professor's students are 'special' and need 'special education' to understand that foreigners love their countries very much same as we love our country very much.

And you don’t exclude or demonise outsiders.

You do exclude outsiders from 'club goods'- i.e. stuff insiders have collectively paid for. You may 'demonise' free-riders because what they are doing is tantamount to theft. The incentive compatibility of the mechanism providing the club goods has been compromised. There may be a superior mechanism which is more 'inclusive'- i.e. ladles off the creamy layer- but that is an idiographic matter.

But how easy is it to maintain this position?

Very easy indeed unless you are dealing with people who have very special educational needs.

At the very least, it takes work to prevent it from sliding into the dangerous blind loyalty that breeds racism and xenophobia.

I picture this Professor struggling to prevent his students from suddenly shouting racial epithets and stabbing each other repeatedly.

The crowd can form too quickly.

No doubt, this poor fellow is speaking from experience. He begins his lecture 'Nazism is bad, okay? Don't be a Nazi. Just say no' and then suddenly his T.A jumps up and shouts 'Zieg Heil! Kill all the kikes!' and a crowd forms too quickly and they burn down the library and set up a concentration camp.

Yet some philosophers argue that we have no real choice.

Name and shame the buggers, why don't you?

We cannot wish nationalist sentiment away.

But, clearly, you guys have tried your level best to do it. Why not choose some other profession? How about wishing away the sentiment that Philosophy Professors are insufferable cretins?

Much of ordinary political and cultural life depends on it.

Nonsense! Life evolved under scarcity on an uncertain fitness landscape. Ordinary political life is still about Social Choice under scarcity. Sentiments may have a signalling and screening function. They may aid in solving preference revelation or concurrency problems in ways which are not obvious. Still, they represent coordination and discoordination games between which arbitrage opportunities exist. In other words, the potential exists to move to a superior correlated equilibrium.

Pride in national traditions of food, wine, sport, art, music and literature. Attachment to a particular, bounded, territory. Solidarity with those with a shared history. How else can, for example, the campaign for Scottish independence, supported by many liberals, be understood?

The answer is simple. North Sea Oil.  Thatcher used it to deindustrialize the country and fuel mass unemployment. She trail-blazed the poll-tax in Scotland. No wonder a generation grew up determined to take back power from Westminster.
No one, since the days of Sir Walter Scott, doubts the strength of Scottish National sentiment but it wasn't till the economic picture changed that the Independence movement took wing. The same thing could be said for Brexit. It has led to a fall in the real exchange rate which is good for young people. Still, the final outcome remains to be seen.

Following the Second World War, intellectuals have ignored nationalism at their peril.

But the world's peril has decreased as intellectuals have been increasingly ignored.

Yet they could adopt it at their peril too. As the Israeli political scientist and former politician Yael Tamir writes in Why Nationalism (2019): ‘Without the balancing power of liberalism and democracy [nationalism] can easily turn destructive.’

Without democracy, you have Dictatorship. That can turn destructive for obvious reasons. There is no reason to drag in mention of Liberalism or Socialism or anything else. If we can't kick out our leaders every few years, what guarantee do we have that they won't fuck us over?

All the more reason for strengthening liberalism and democracy to keep nationalism in check.

 Strengthening Liberalism can mean letting the genie of chauvinistic sub-nationalisms of various types out of the bottle. If the organs of the State fail to deal with sedition, they may be disintermediated from a Civil War or a general breakdown of law and order. Look at Venezuela. Had Chavez been executed after leading a failed coup, that country would not be in such a mess right now.
As for 'strengthening Democracy'- that means reducing Judicial checks and balances- again, not a clever thing to do.

How do we keep our country from doing stupid shit? The answer is that we need to ridicule or ignore shitheads.

The third key aspect of the Nazi programme, according to Lorimer – after support for workers’ rights and the creation of a German state – was to defeat social democracy.

This was also a key aspect of the German Communist party's platform. The first 'anti-fa' movement was aimed at the Social Democrats, not the Nazis. In the event, the SDs sealed their fate by voting for Hindenberg and letting him rule by decree.

I’m especially interested in this assault on liberal democracy and its institutions.

The Weimar Republic was financed by foreign loans. When the money spigot was turned off, it collapsed. The German people voted for the Army- Hindenberg was President but Luddendorf couldn't be Chancellor coz he was batshit crazy. During the Munich putsch he was ranting against Catholics, not just Jews. Anyway, he refused to go to jail so Hitler eclipsed him.

Fascism has the knack of turning democracy against itself.

No it doesn't. That's why Mosley's crew failed. Fascism does not have any knack whatsoever.

Democracy has been used as a stepping stone to power, only to be dismantled and replaced by authoritarian rule.

But Democracy has been replaced by authoritarian rule without any such rigamarole much more frequently.

Leadership, parades, celebrations and rallies take the place of politics.

Is this man crazy? Does he not know that Democracies have 'Leadership, parades, rallies, etc'? That's part of politics.

With them, a whole host of institutions and safeguards that keep political leaders in check are undermined.

Nonsense! You can have loads of parades and rallies but unless the Army and the Judiciary and the Administration are all subverted, no safeguards are undermined.

This process generally has two stages, both of which relate to philosophical debates about democracy.

There is no process whatsoever. Philosophical debates are shite.

The first stage concerns the basic question, What is democracy?

We know that this basic question basically has no answer. Democracy is a word which some countries use to describe themselves- e.g. the Democratic Republic of Korea.

Naturally, we identify democracy with majority rule.

We do this stupidly, not 'naturally'. If the majority are poor and unlettered we don't expect illiterate poor people to rule.

Going back on a decision made by the majority seems to be the epitome of antidemocratic arrogance, often represented as a form of elite capture of the state.

What seems to be the case to stupid people is still stupid shite. It doesn't matter whether something is represented as that which it is not because stupidity comes in so many different shades that the thing just cancels out as noise. You may say 'aha! this proves elite capture of the state' but the guy next to you is saying 'aha! this proves Capitalism's final crisis is upon us'.

Yet, the 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill is among many who have warned of the danger of majority rule.

Which he didn't live to see. The majority of adults in the UK were women.

Before democracy was established, theorists had assumed that it would solve all our problems.

Nonsense! Nobody thought it would cure cancer.

If the people make the laws that bind them, why would they ever choose to oppress themselves?

Stupidity.

But Mill points out that democracy exposes us to a new sort of tyranny: the tyranny of the majority.

But this was bleeding obvious!

At the heart of democracy is a tension between the rule of the majority and the protection of the rights of the minority.

Rubbish! Where is there this tension in the UK or the US or anywhere else Democracy has firm roots?

Protecting minority rights means that, in practice, liberal democracy limits the rule of the majority.

Actions have consequences. The likely consequences are the only constraint on what actions are chosen. Protecting rights has costs and benefits. This calculus is what informs decision making.

Many countries have a written constitution, covering issues that are simply too important to be left to ordinary day-to-day politics.

But most such countries ignored them or are ignoring them.

They need a special, drawn-out process for change.

Which, however, nobody might bother with.

For some matters of even greater importance, change can happen only at the hands of the international community.

Till those hands get burned.

And these, of course, are human rights.

Which turn out to be meaningless because there is no corresponding obligation holder.

A simple majority should not be enough to overturn constitutional or human rights.

Yet both are overturned all the time without any vote or, indeed, any public acknowledgment.

Fascism disagrees.

But the thing was kicked to death long ago.

Mosley wrote: ‘The will of the people is greater than the right of the minority.’

Mosley was right as a matter of constitutional law. A minority of British people had a right to a hereditary seat in the House of Lords. Till 1948, they could elect for a 'trial by their peers'. Interestingly, it was a majority in the Lords which abolished this right with the help of the Labour majority in the Commons.

The leader is there to carry out the will of the people, irrespective of the consequences for particular individuals. No one has the right to stand in its way.

One merely has to gloss the above by saying 'the Spirit of the Laws is the Will of the People' and substitute 'Chief Magistrate' for 'Leader' and the thing would hold for any country under the Rule of Law.

Liberal democracies have evolved a vast web of institutions that can interfere with an overreaching leader’s plans in different ways, and that collectively protect minority rights.

This is not the case. In general, there is something like a 'doctrine of political question' or 'executive privilege' such that the true limits to the Chief Executive's powers remain undefined. Even such checks and balances as do exist are not, speaking generally, about 'minority rights' but rather 'the public interest'. The problem is that even if the Executive, as obligation holder, is ordered to provide a remedy to a minority, it is unclear what sanction can be applied if the Executive drags its feet or subverts that order.

The most visible are the formal mechanisms that limit power or authority. These include the rule of law and law courts. The upper house in parliament keeps watch over executive overreach.

But, in the British system, it can always be defeated.

Local government provides an alternative source of concentrated authority.

Again, in the British system, this is an ineffective check.

Healthy politics includes a ‘loyal opposition’, supporting the system but opposing the government of the day.

An unhealthy politics would boast the same feature.

The test for whether leaders understand this concept is if they dismiss expressed opposition as ‘treason’.

If a leader says 'x has committed treason' but doesn't prosecute x, or just kill the fellow, then the leader looks like a blowhard or a liar. So, this is really a test for imbecility or drunkenness.

Weil applies the Bolshevik leader Mikhail Tomsky’s comment on the feudal Russian regime to fascism: ‘One party in power and all the rest in prison.’

This is silly. There were factions within Fascism and Stalinism and so forth.

Other institutions publicise and debate government policies and their effects. These include the free press, independent think tanks and universities.

But a servile press and dependent think tanks and universities do the same thing.

Museums and archives remind us of our past glories and mistakes.

No they don't. They are deeply boring places. Anyway, the only thing matters is whether we are adapting to new circumstances and challenges.

Trade unions provide a collective source of strength.

Or a useful revenue stream for the Mafia though occasionally a Jimmy Hoffa may get too big for his boots. Still, his son seems to be doing very well for himself at the moment.

Finally, informal institutions of day-to-day life provide asylums relatively free from state control: think of religious communities; clubs, such as local history societies; adult education and more.

What about actual lunatic asylums? And why no mention of crack dens?

Even some form of free economy, allowing diverse ways of making a living, is also a critical component for bolstering minority rights.

Livelihoods aren't rights.

Think of the many small businesses run by immigrants.

But don't think of types of crime in which immigrants take the lead.

Sometimes this is not a choice, but the only available avenue when the job market closes ranks. A vibrant and free cultural world of art, films, novels, plays and poetry holds more than just intrinsic value; it also acts as a powerful source of critique and resistance. Authoritarian governments detest activities they don’t control.

And have no difficulty getting the artists to sing to their choir sheet.

If the first stage of the fascist dismantling of democracy is to prioritise the will of the majority over minority rights,

But this wasn't 'the first stage' of what Mussolini did. He was a Fascist but his party had nothing against Jews or other minorities.
Hitler was a Nazi. His 'first stage' was the Reichstag Fire decree and the Enabling Act which concentrated power in his hands. This had nothing to do with 'minority rights'. That came later.

the second is to contest how the will of the majority is made manifest.

No. That was what Hitler did first.

Is it by majority vote?

Yes. Hitler needed Hugenberg's help to get his 52% majority. Without it, he'd have been a lame duck.

No, said Hitler, in a speech to Dusseldorf industrialists in 1932. In an argument reminiscent of Plato’s Republic, Hitler argued that democratic voting: is not rule of the people, but in reality the rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of half-heartedness, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy … Thus democracy will in practice lead to the destruction of a people’s true values.

If you are speaking to industrialists scared by the Communist vote share, you say democratic voting is stupid. Then they give you money. However, to consolidate his power, Hitler did hold a plebiscite in 1934 after Hindenberg's death. He purposely allowed Jews, Poles etc to vote so that they could be blamed for lack of patriotism in not endorsing him. It was only in the next year that Hitler stripped them of their citizenship and their votes.

Suspicion of the electorate is as old as democracy.

But boundless faith in it may be yet older.

Recently, a new layer of concern has emerged.

There is nothing new under this particular Sun.

Social media is manipulated by political parties but, more insidiously, spreads stories on the basis of their commercial value rather than truth.

The problem of the yellow press predates the First World War.

Scandalous allegations are much more widely read than their retractions, and the public too often shows its enthusiasm for hounding those who are already vulnerable. Social media, despite the initial promise of the internet, is helping to create a deluded, or at least misinformed, public.

While Professors of Philosophy are revealing themselves to be more deluded, or at least more misinformed, than the public.

Something must be done – but what?
The concern for workers’ rights, the creation of a pure state and the opposition to social democracy – the three aims of the Nazis, as identified by Lorimer – came together in the development of a majority-pleasing nationalism, in which the will of the people steamrollers anything in its way.

No. They came together in the project of National enrichment through military conquest. When the outcome was defeat and impoverishment, Fascism and Nazism withered away. Franco suddenly started babbling about all the Jews his country's diplomats had saved. Thankfully, being anti-communist was soon a good enough excuse for even the most hideous, Papa Doc Duvalier type, Dictator and so all was well that ended well.

We hope never again to see the extreme form developed by the fascists.

But they were soon outdone. We have seen worse and will see worse.

But defeating fascism didn’t destroy its seeds, and some observers think that they can see its shoots once more.

Fascism isn't a plant. It does not have seeds. Some observers are paranoid lunatics or hysterical attention seekers. We have grown tired of their crying wolf.

Authoritarian leaders, who believe that they have been elected with a mandate of radical national renewal, can become easily frustrated with the spider’s web of institutions that prevent them from exercising power as they wish.

But the same thing is true of authoritarian leaders who believe their people hate them and want to see them strung up with piano wire.

The press is biased; the news is fake; the judges are the enemies of the people; the universities crush free speech and promote subversive ideologies; the trade unions stand in the way of progress; local government is a viper’s nest; and the upper chamber is full of deluded, self-interested fools.

Thus has it always been- but since stupidity comes in so many different shades, it cancels itself out as noise.

The protective institutions of liberal democracy are being persistently chipped away.

In which case, they can't really protect anything. We need pest control against those persistent varmints doing the chipping.

The task we now face is to restore and renew the vibrant intermediate institutions that can best protect vulnerable groups, and to create the political virtues that make democracy work.

Yet, vulnerable groups tell us, they were never protected. No 'vibrant intermediate institutions' existed. A tragedy of the commons is not a story of Eden lost to some Satanic force. It is the story of something ornamental and cosmetic being grasped at as something that could be homesteaded.

I see two particular dangers.

Nazis in jackboots or else non-Nazis who for some reason are wearing jackboots and goose-stepping their way to a Nuremberg rally.

The first is the most obvious: the increase in Right-wing authoritarianism. But I’m also worried about a growing tendency on the Left: the idea that, in order to regain majority support, it’s necessary to adopt nationalist polices. This might be true, but it’s also playing with fire. Some, with roots in the traditional Labour movement, seem to think that, as long as they support trade unions and pro-poor policies, they are on the side of the righteous – whatever else they believe – and that this grants them moral immunity from criticism.

Alas, how deluded these people are! They don't understand that they will soon be wearing brown shirts and jackboots and be singing the Horst Wessel song.

But we have seen this combination of views before.

When? No, don't tell me. It was during the Spanish Inquisition!

It was the starting point for both Mussolini and Mosley, and possibly even for Hitler.

Oh. I thought it was a trick question and so the answer would be 'the Spanish Inquisition' because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition whereas you can't crack a political philosophy book nowadays without running into Hitler and Mussolini every second line.

An acceptable nationalism would have to be tempered by liberalism.

Thus British nationalism would be acceptable provided everybody agreed to become Polish for at least one day of the week.

It would also need to be held in check by democracy that strongly supports the rights of the minority.

Yes. We should have a Caliphate enclave in every large City.

We should never accept the argument that the intermediate institutions of government and civil society are standing in the way of the will of the people.

Even if they are sodomizing our children and killing our grandparents.

On the contrary, they must be supported and strengthened. This is our best chance of keeping the unthinkable unthinkable.

Talking shite about Fascism is the best way to keep unthinking Professors like our author from ever having to think about anything at all.