Saturday 2 November 2019

From John Gray's essay in the New Statesman: 'The closing of the conservative mind: Politics and the art of war'

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"The proximate cause of the breakdown in British politics is the extreme lengths to which the Remainer elite has gone in their attempt to derail Brexit. Hard Brexiteers also sought to derail Theresa May’s agreement because they wanted no deal; but most proved ready to compromise when the time for a final decision arrived. In contrast, for the haute-Remainers that dominate many public institutions there can be only one rational position. For them, Brexit is not a political issue but an eschatological struggle between light and darkness.

"The haute-Remainer mind is an example of what the 20th century’s subtlest and most original conservative philosopher called political rationalism. Michael Oakeshott (1901-90) used the term to describe totalitarian ideologies such as Leninism and National Socialism, but he was clear that any kind of political tradition could succumb to rationalist ideology – including conservatism. (His own version of conservatism – an ultra-liberal variety, in which the ideal role of the state was that of an umpire – itself did.) The core of rationalism in politics is an idea of politics itself. Rather than being a practice in which people negotiate the terms on which they co-exist with one another, politics means the imposition of an idea. The idea is self-evidently true; anyone who questions it is ignorant and stupid, or else wilfully malignant. Though they claim to embody reason in politics, haute-Remainers cling to a view of the EU in which facts are secondary or irrelevant. " 

"Today the tacit understanding of liberals in all parties is that the world would be far more civilised if the grubby business of politics was replaced by the legal adjudication of justice and rights."


"That superior intelligence is found among the practitioners of populism is a fact of our time. When liberals talk about reason they mean a mishmash of ideas they picked up at university. Scraps of Rawls, Dworkin and Thomas Piketty, together with a smattering of modish conspiracy theories, form the folk wisdom of the thinking classes.""

7 comments:

  1. G&G are, however, weird in the art world in being strongly pro-Brexit. When I raise the topic George states, with a hint of weariness, that his standard response is: “Good afternoon, Trump, Trump, Trump, Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. Now can we address the exhibition please.” But they are nevertheless quick to warm to the theme. When Gilbert asks what is wrong with being a sovereign country, George expands: “We Brexited from Rome 500 years ago and did very nicely out of it thank you. We wouldn’t have had the industrial revolution without it. And to our American friends we say, ‘You Brexited from us, and you’ve done fine.’ To all of our young friends, who come from all over the world, Australia and New Zealand and wherever, we say, ‘Well, you’ve Brexited to Britain.’ Anyway, you can’t leave Europe, it’s a continent, look at an atlas. We can leave Brussels, though.”

    What then do they make of the current situation and the rift in politics and society Brexit has caused? “Brexit will happen or it will be a disaster and we will be a damaged colony of Europe,” reckons George. The damage has already manifested itself in other ways. “Perfectly normal people, gentlemanly and ladylike people, turn into spitting dogs when the subject comes up, or like cats when they go mad. Nicely dressed women — it’s wrong.” What’s more, they believe there’s incivility on the European side too. “If a man resigns from his club in the West End the club secretary says: ‘Oh we’re so sorry Mr George, is there something we can do?’ But Europe has not behaved like that.

    “We think Europe is building a wall for itself, and you are either in or out. They want selective free movement of people but only of the right sort of people.” What’s more, “They are anti the Anglo-Saxon world, whether by design or chance.” They see Brexit as the chance to leave “some United States of Europe” that is not really an agglomeration of 28 member states but the plaything of just two, Merkel and Macron.

    The Critic Interview: Gilbert and George
    https://thecriticmag.trystandfirst.com/issues/november-2019/gilbert-and-george/

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    Replies
    1. They are permitted to be right-wing. They were BNP years ago. Perhaps still are.

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    2. A jester, court jester, or fool, was historically an entertainer during the medieval and Renaissance eras who was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain him and his guests. A jester was also an itinerant performer who entertained common folk at fairs and markets.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia › wiki › Jester

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    3. “We are living in a French street which had a synagogue which used to be a church and is now a mosque. We’re living on top of a Roman cemetery. When we came here it used to be Yiddish-speaking. There was an opium den here. There were the Russian vapour baths. We can walk to the grave of William Blake, Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan.” Now it is a predominantly Muslim area — cut with a sprinkling of hipsters — famous for the curry houses of Brick Lane and the street signs in English and Bangladeshi.

      At that point in the 1960s, “The men were happy to be here, away from their villages. They could be free, they could buy bell-bottom trousers here. They used to have fancy hairstyles, they wanted to join in.” The idyll was not to last. “Everything changed once the mullahs came. In the early days, when the men went to the mosque they carried their hat in their pocket and as soon as they stepped inside they put it on and as they came out they whipped it off. Now they wear it 24 hours a day.”

      Things have got much worse: not long ago the doors of seven houses were kicked in one night. Nothing was taken. They were, says George, all non-Muslim houses, and “there were leaflets outside with drawings of the Twin Towers with the airplanes going in.”

      The Critic Interview: Gilbert and George
      https://thecriticmag.trystandfirst.com/issues/november-2019/gilbert-and-george/

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    4. https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/a-district-in-play/?fbclid=IwAR2o7aBvD2Y2iGizbI1qVXyQvH9yclISXzBA0s7i8fs1x5nfrloq-VcnJpk

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    5. Thanks. I bookmarked https://www.derek-turner.com/

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  2. "In the early days, when the men went to the mosque they carried their hat in their pocket and as soon as they stepped inside they put it on and as they came out they whipped it off. Now they wear it 24 hours a day."

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