We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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It is not difficult to sneer at the new King Arthur movie. One can sneer at its historical errors – for example where is the mention of Ambrosius Aurelianus, who even writers who believe in the existence of Arthur admit was the original leader of British (or Briton or Romano-British or whatever you prefer) resistance to the Germanic invaders (dividing people into neat tribes ‘Angles’, ‘Saxons’ and so on is harder than might be thought). And Ambrosius Aurelianus was certainly a leader of south west Britian (his centre of power would have been in areas like the Cotswalds – places like Cirencestor). Nothing ‘northern’ about him.
And one can sneer in simple film-story terms. For example if going north of Hadrian’s wall is so dangerous, why is there such a lightly defended villa (containing such important people) doing up there?
But to sneer is to miss the point. This is a very brave film.
For example to make the point that there were different sorts of Christian in Britain and that the ideas of Pelagius on free will and moral responsibility might have political importance is to touch on matters that most films seem to assume are well above the heads of the audience.
The avoiding of “all Christians good, all Pagans bad” or (more likely in a modern production) “all Christians bad, all Pagans good” is brave.
Also brave was the direct treatment of de facto serfdom in the late Roman Empire. Whilst formally free men, peasants had been tied to the soil (originally for reasons of tax collection) since the time of the Emperor Diocletian. The Emperor Diocletian (with his price controls and semi serfdom) did not rule Britain at first (there was great resistance to him in this province), but his writ eventually ran here. → Continue reading: King Arthur: a brave movie
Today is the 60th Anniversary of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power in Germany. In the 12 long years of the Third Reich, it was the only serious attempt that was made to remove Hitler and his vile regime.
Graf von Stauffenberg was a mid-ranking Colonel who had been severely injured during service in North Africa but he was a talented officer so he was sent to Berlin. to fulfill a staff role in the ‘Home Army’. As part of his duties, he was to give briefings to Hitler at his Rastenburg headquaters.
On the day itself, Colonel von Staufffenburg hid a bomb in his briefcase and made sure he left in in Hitler’s main working room. It was placed so that the blast would be lethal to the dictator. But another officer found it was in his way and moved it, critically, so that a leg of the heavy table that the papers and maps for the briefing was between the bomb and Hitler. So when the bomb went off, although many were killed, Hitler himself survived.
Colonel von Stauffenburg had planned his escape well, and flew back to Berlin, blissfully unaware that Hitler had survived. There, he tried to organise his co-conspirators into taking power, but their attempt was feeble, and once word reached Berlin that Hitler was still alive, the attempt failed miserably. Colonel von Stauffenburg was shot that night; a merciful end compared to the barbaric fate that awaited some of his collegues, and many more who had done nothing.
The ramifications of the affair sent shockwaves through Germany until the total destruction of the Nazi regime. Although it is not well remembered, Germans now honour Colonel von Stauffenberg and his collegues who tried to actually do something about the hideous regime.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the Air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
– Memo composed by General Eisenhower, 5 June 1944.
Today, we commemorate one the most glorious chapters of German arms: the lightning-fast response of 21 Panzer Division to Eisenhower’s overconfident thrust, a response that rolled up the British left flank and culminated in the annihilation of the British and American invaders.
How appropriate it is that, lacking the the confidence in race-destiny that comes so naturally to the Germanic peoples, the Allied commander had actually composed his memo taking responsibility for failure beforehand!
Despite the somewhat tense international situation, the commemorative ceremonies have proceeded with our customary German precision. It is certainly a sign of how the bitter memories associated with the dawning of the atomic age over Hamburg, Smolensk and Manchester all those years ago have faded that for the first time we have welcomed to our remembrance the President of France, speaking from Vichy by audio-visual link, and the General Secretary of the British Communist party speaking from London. Many have seen in this technical and political triumph a sign of a possible convergence between the two great systems, National Socialism and Communism, that currently dominate our world.
Our own Natalie Solent posted a really good piece at her personal blog last night, about the fact that many, many bad things continue to be done to the world, but that the difference is that they are soon liable to be done with equal relentlessness everywhere, spread around the world evenly, in a way that will make it much harder to notice and complain. Time was when evil was done with maximum ferocity in country A, but hardly done at all in countries B and C, and the evil done by the evil was eventually obvious to all, even to those at first most inclined to support it. Sometimes it was even easier than that:
… To help you along to this conclusion the goddess History primly laid out several countries split into communist and non-communist sections so that you could watch one half sink and one half rise and draw appropriate morals. …
But not any more. Will the day come when that same goddess ordains that we are all to be governed by the same benign, suffocating, righteous, repressive elite, and no comparisons between them ruling and them not ruling will possible, because everywhere will be theirs?
What I fear is that a time will come when there will be no significant examples of difference left in the world. That possibility is still far off but for the first time in history the technology is in place for it to happen. Think about that. …
She mentions that extraordinary moment in history, notable for the fact that hugely important and portentous things were made to not happen:
I am haunted by the tale of the fleets of Zheng He, recounted in Guns, Germs and Steel. China’s vast program of exploration, greater than anything Europe ever had, was turned off click! because of some otherwise obscure quarrel between two factions at court. The reason that there was only one switch was that China was unified.
And the worry is that, unlike the blood-sodden grindings and thrashings of evil in the twentieth century, the clicks we are about to be subjected to will be inaudible.
It is a beautiful and melancholy piece. David Carr rewritten by Jane Austen. It contains at least another half dozen sentences I wanted to copy and paste here, but since it is all there, go there, and read it all.
You wait for articles on Dickens and suddenly, three turn up at once. Fortuitously, I have just concluded “Sketches by Boz”, a book that recommends itself to the commuter. It is not a novel to take up, put down or plough through. Published in periodical form, it lends itself to the daily article or chapter, preferably read after Motspur Park and before Earlsfield, and, one likes to think, approximating the reading experience of the early Victorian.
One of the joys of reading Dickens is his written observations of life and lowlife in London, including the accents of the denizens of Seven Dials. Three women in a gin palace (“Scenes: Chapter V: Seven Dials”):
“Vy don’t you pitch into her, Sarah?” exclaims one half-dressed matron, by way of encouragement. “vy don’t you? if my husband had treated her with a drain last night, unbeknown to me, I’d tear her precious eyes out – a wixen!”
“What’s the matter, ma’am?” inquires another old woman, who has just bustled up to the spot.
“Matter!” replies the first speaker, talking at the obnoxious combatant, “matter! Here’s poor dear Mrs Sulliwin, as has five blessed children of her own, can’t go out charing for one arternoon, but what hussies must be a comin’, and ‘ticing avay her oun’ ‘usband, as she’s been married to twelve year come next Easter Monday, for I see the certificate ven I vas a drinkin’ a cup o’ tea vith her, only the werry last blessed Ven’sday as ever was sent. I ‘appen’d to promiscuously, ‘Mrs. Sulliwin,’ says I—–“
The last time that I heard someone swap v’s for w’s and w’s for v’s was on ‘Allo ‘Allo – a pantomime BBC sitcom. This speech pattern was used to mock German officers during WWII.
However, the joke is on us. If Dickens accurately portrays the table talk of Londoners, then some of us used to sound a lot more German than we do now.
I am in my kitchen, reporting on one of my last-Friday-of-the-month meetings. It is still in full swing. Most of the London events you read about on Samizdata are booze-ups at Perry’s, and at my meetings, there is also booze. From 9.30 pm until around midnight the drink flows and the conversation bubbles merrily, and I can hear it bubbling now. But there is also, always, an agenda. Starting at 8 pm, and proceeding until 9.30 pm, there is a speaker lead discussion.
I have been hosting these things since the late 1980s, and there a moment, a few years back, when I was finding them something of a drag to organise. Only the enormous inconvenience that would necessarily have continued, every last Friday of the month, even if I had stopped holding these meetings, in the form of regulars knocking on my door and demanding entry to a non-existent event and then having to be diverted (which might not be much fun) or told to go away (which might not be wise or kind), persuaded me to persist with these events. But then along came email, to the point where even I had it, and now they pretty much run themselves. I fix a speaker, email everyone on the list on about the Tuesday telling them of exactly who will say approximately what on the Friday, and of any other future meetings that have already been fixed. (Speakers for July and November are now settled, but nothing else is certain as yet, other than that someone will speak.)
 Tonight, Sean Gabb spoke about “Demography and History”. He is the second from the right in the picture, with our own David Carr lending an ear in the foreground. The guy in the corner is Bruce, a real photographer, who would have done a far better picture, but with him as with me, you get what you pay for, photographically speaking.
When Sean speaks about current affairs, he is always interesting, but so are most of us. We all have worthwhile opinions about what is happening now. But when it comes to speaking about the whys and wherefores of the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in the Sixth Century or for that matter about the history of Eastern Europe in the years before the outbreak of the First World War, Sean is, in the London libertarian scene, in a class of his own. Not being burdened with false modesty, Sean was recording his talk, on his laptop computer, and I understand that it will be available on the Internet. He had to leave promptly at 9.30 pm to catch his train down to the South Coast where he now lives, so I can not be sure of the details of this, but I will supply a link to his talk as soon as I can, and maybe some more comment on it. → Continue reading: Of meetings and plagues
Useful Idiots
Mona Charen
Regnery, 2003
It must have struck many people besides myself that anti-Americanism, so much a world-wide sentiment and problem, is, to an extent it is hard to quantify, an American export. No nation, surely, has produced such a large volume of self-criticism, proceeding through self-denigration to self-hatred. Is it surprising that the rest of the world has listened to, copied, and amplified the message? Yet it was not always so; indeed Americans fought both World Wars and the Korean War with little dissent. Television may have been the ultimate morale-breaker in the Vietnam War, but why did those responsible use it for this purpose, even turning good news into bad, as with the crushing of the Vietcong “Tet offensive”? This book doesn’t give the motivations, just the facts.
“Lenin is credited with the prediction that liberals and other weak-minded souls in the West could be relied upon to be ‘useful idiots’ as far as the Soviet Union was concerned,” states the author and I have been unable (like her, I suppose) to find any source for Lenin’s insight in the handful of books of quotations I have consulted; it would be interesting to know to whom it was first contemptuously applied. If the function of a useful idiot is to support a cause detrimental to his best interests, then the definition is perhaps a little imprecise, for few, if any, of the useful idiots described in this book have received their come-uppance. But then, their cause didn’t triumph. Or didn’t where they lived; elsewhere, it was a different matter. → Continue reading: Idiots (complete with a big list of idiots)
Today I bought a great book in a remainder shop. It is a year by year history of London, strong on strange and intriguing events, not heavy with the theorising. Lovely.
It is a blogger’s delight. I have already culled three postings from it – two for here and a ‘how very odd’ posting here.
Here is another fascinatingly odd factoid, entry number six for the year 1729:
WIFE-SELLING IN THE CITY
It was reported that ‘Last Wednesday one Everet, of Fleet Lane sold his wife to one Griffin of Long Lane for 3 shilling bowl of punch; who, we hear, have since complained of having a bad bargain.’
A salutary reminder that ‘Christian’ men could be fairly primitive to Christian women, not so long ago. Many Muslims still are, of course. But if we Christians can mend our ways, they surely can too.
The Confederate crew of world’s first submarine (or more correctly ‘submersible’) use effectively used in combat, were buried with military honours yesterday in Charleston, South Carolina. Their boat, the CSS Hunley, was discovered in 1995 and raised in 2000 from where it sank in Charleston harbour in 1864. The Hunley went down shortly after having sunk a blockading US Navy armed sloop, the USS Housatonic.
This is an interesting end to a fascinating chapter in military history
Sometimes a widely-practised custom falls out of use in a way that, looked at with hindsight it seems amazing to us that humans could behave in the ways they did. Consider the Romans’ love of gladiatorial combat, for example. Perhaps in future our descendants will read with amazement about the habit of inhaling tobacco smoke or drinking intoxicating and health-affecting beverages known as wine and beer.
Well, one activity to have disappeared from Western life is the practice of duelling. I thought about this after watching a remarkable film, recently released on DVD, called The Duellists, a film set in Napoleonic France and starring Harvey Keitel and David Carradine. One of the earliest directional efforts of Ridley Scott (who later did stuff like Gladiator and Bladerunner), it is an excellent work. Keitel’s character obsessively pursues his vendetta against his opponent, although the affair ends not in the death of either, but the humiliation of one. → Continue reading: Pistols (or swords) at dawn
I’ve been dipping into a book called Churchill’s Generals, which was published in 1991, having been edited by the redoubtable John Keegan. I’m now reading the piece by Duncan Anderson about Field Marshall Slim. During the retreat from Burma in 1942, Slim did very well, no thanks to his superior, the nice but dim, and rattled and incoherent, Alexander.
Alexander’s responsibility as army commander now lay in maintaining the efficient functioning of the rear areas for as long as possible, supervising an orderly withdrawal, and ensuring the successful demolition of access routes. It was Slim’s task to keep the frontline forces intact and conduct rearguard operations. The conduct of these two aspects of the retreat is instructive. The rear areas rapidly fell apart, the administrative troops degenerating into bands of pillaging brigands. Confusion reigned supreme. Major Michael Calvert waited for days for Alexander’s order to demolish a vital railway bridge – an order which never came. Conversely, Major Tony Mains, acting under Alexander’s explicit orders, destroyed a stockpile of fuel outside Mandalay which was almost essential for the successful withdrawal of Slim’s 7 Armoured Brigade. Years later Slim had still not forgiven the unfortunate Mains.
The retreat of the frontline forces, however, proceeded with almost clockwork precision. A brilliant rearguard action at Kyaukse delayed the Japanese, and at Monywa and Shwegyin, Slim extricated his forces from near disaster with considerable skill. Once contact was broken with the Japanese at Shwegyin, the retreat became as much a race against the monsoon as against the advancing Japanese. Slim marched back with his exhausted and now disease-ridden columns up the Kebaw Valley to the relative safety of Tamu on the India – Burma border. Thin and ragged as they were, they still carried their weapons like soldiers.
By rights, Slim’s conduct of the two-month retreat should have earned him recognition in the highest quarters as a general of first-rate ability. Yet in the event it was Alexander as army commander whom the waiting press men interviewed, Alexander who was the hero of A Million Died [the first book written about the Burma campaign, published in 1943], Alexander whom the BBC extolled as ‘a bold and resourceful commander, [who] has fought one of the great defensive battles of the war’. Stilwell knew better. He had seen both generals under stress and knew that ‘good old Slim’ rather than ‘Alex [who] has the wind up’ was the real hero of the piece. ‘Vinegar Joe’ lived up to his name in his acerbic dismissal of Alexander’s BBC publicity as ‘crap’.
What? Biased BBC, in 1942? Yes. In those days the BBC was biased in favour of a previous, more aristocratic sort of establishment, the sort personified by Alexander, and then only being challenged by likes of the strictly meritocratic Slim, whose father was a Birmingham ironmonger.
Slim eventually got the recognition he deserved. His ‘forgotten army’ is not forgotten now, by anyone who knows much of the British military effort in World War Two.
A statue of Slim stands, eccentrically but proudly, outside the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, alongside Montgomery and Alanbrooke, no less.
Alexander is nowhere to be seen. Is there a statue of him in London, anywhere? There must be, but where?
Mohammed and Charlemagne
Henri Pirenne
Barnes & Noble, 1992
In view of the debates, controversies, outraged cries and tactful statements regarding the relationship between Islamic and (for want of a better word) Western civilizations, it is of interest to read this classic work (his last) by the great Belgian historian, Henri Pirenne. And when the reader comes to its end and wonders how to sum it up, prior to making a judgement, what could be more convenient than to find that the author, in his Conclusion, has done it for him in masterly fashion? So here it is, almost seventy years after the author’s death.
From the foregoing data [some 260 pages, broadly dealing with the Mediterranean economy from 300 to 800 AD], we may draw two essential conclusions:
The Germanic invasions destroyed neither the Mediterranean unity of the ancient world, nor what may be regarded as the truly essential features of the Roman culture as it still existed in the 5th century, at a time when there was no longer an Emperor in the West.
Despite the resulting turmoil and destruction, no new principles made their appearance; neither in the economic or social order, nor in the linguistic situation, nor in the existing institutions. What civilization survived was Mediterranean. It was in the regions by the sea that culture was preserved, and it was from them that the innovations of the age proceeded: monasticism, the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons, the ars Barbarica &c.
The Orient was the fertilizing factor: Constantinople the centre of the world. In 600 the physiognomy of the world was not different in quality from that which it had revealed in 400.
→ Continue reading: Henri Pirenne on the impact upon Europe of the advance of Islam
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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