Samizdata

Today, I was at a small conference called Turning the Tables on the State held by an organisation called A World To Win. I had been asked to give a presentation on the British government’s plans for Identity Cards and a National Identity Register, which I duly did, and got a few laughs. I’m glad they are supportive of NO2ID, I really am. But I also attended the rest of the conference, which was a strange, strange experience.

Here were all these fairly pleasant, not obviously mad or stupid, people, saying things I wholly agree with about threats to civil liberties. But at the same time most did not leave it there. The presentations were larded with nonsensical quotations from Marx yanked out of historical context and treated as eternal wisdom. The threat to liberty and the constitution could not be anything so mundane as the lust for power and institutional convenience. It must be driven by transnational capitalism’s need to increase its exploitation rate by invading the public sector.

And the ‘rights’ to be defended against monolithic global finance are apparently mostly not of the “first generation rights” – the liberties (correlative of no-right of others to interfere) that most readers and writers of this blog exalt. They are prescriptive rights, to free education, to work, to fair remuneration for that work, etc., etc. And that is what most astonished me.

While rightly distressed by the power of the state being used to impose expressible views and appropriate ways to live on the citizen, these kindly people see no irony in seeking institutions to force their values onto others, in the name of the people. Wish-lists abounded, their real implications for personal lives unconsidered. But the most startling positive right I’ve ever heard suggested was from the report of a discussion group:

We need a right to a rich interior life.

This is a fascinating mystery story. As someone who loves books and has worked in publishing, I have long been perplexed by the massive sales of leaden conspiracy ‘thrillers’ (as I have to write it, being really very ungripped) and of pseudo-histories.

These are strange alien artefacts in the literary world. They appear to be books, having the same physical manifestation. Yet the words in them have no rhythm, and make no sense, the world they portray is all surface, all banality: all invented, but paradoxically without imagination.

The familiar book, grounded in fact or rich in fiction, sells (mostly slowly) to an audience that comes back for more books. These… I need another wordname… reads are bought in vast numbers by people who do not otherwise read. You see them swarming on the tube, at bus-stops, in advertisements as book-club special offers, everywhere. And then they are gone. Where?

Few have the life-span of a book, it seems. But where do they go to die? They are seldom seen in second-hand shops. And why are they so successful when they are plainly so inbred?

The genus is so narrow that there’s always been some doubt in my mind whether it is two species or one. Now a strange court-case may inform us on that matter (if not why the infernal things are so popular). It appears that two of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, a “non-fiction” work of non-history, are suing in the High Court the writer of a fictional read called The Da Vinci Code for copyright infringement.

If the author of a history book were to sue an historical novelist, then we would expect it to be on the ground that passages of text were quoted without permission. For use of expression, not content. There is no copyright in facts.

But weirdly that’s not what is going on here. Jonathan Rayner-James QC for the plaintiffs said:

HBHG is a book of historical conjecture setting out the authors’ hypothesis. The authors’ historical conjecture has spawned many other books that developed aspects of this conjecture in a variety of directions. But none has lifted the central theme of the book

Which is what Dan Brown is accused of.

What could make “historical conjecture” original work capable of copyright protection? Only that it bears no relation to history, it seems to me. Can it really be the plaintiffs’ case that the novel is not novel enough, because their read – sold all over the world labeled ‘non-fiction’ – is in fact a fantasy?

If that is their case, and that case prevails prevails, then I am interested to know what the publishers of HBHG, HarperCollins who also published The Da Vinci Code and are joint defendants, might do. Did their contract with the plaintiffs contain that standard apotropaic against libel, a warranty from the author that “all statements purporting to be facts are true”? The consequence for the pseudo-historical read as a genre could be interesting.

Extinction of the species would be too much to hope for, I suppose. But for once a thriller has me gripped.

‘Stoatman’ from ‘Zuid Holland’ writes in with a remarkable bit of hypocrisy from the Human Rights Industry

Amnesty International, as part of its ongoing struggle for universal human rights, is looking to employ a Discrimination and Identity consultant for its Dutch branch.

The Discrimination and Identity team consists of three paid and two volunteer positions and is concerned with influencing government policy and societal views regarding discrimination on grounds of skin colour, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. … In this position you will develop policy and strategy in the field of Discrimination. This includes research into discrimination, and the development and organisation of lobbying regarding the fight against discrimination in the Netherlands. You will also be responsible for the development and implementation of actions and campaigns concerning discrimination worldwide and in the Netherlands

Before you dust off your CV which bulges with non-jobs in local government and crack open the Dutch taped course, there is just one problem before you can claim your £21-26k salary:

Considering the composition of the team, we are seeking someone from an ethnic minority group

Has it reached the stage now that such discrimination has become so mainstream that nobody even bats an eyelid to such brazen hypocrisy?

(hat tip – The Amazing Retecool)

So if hippophobia is a morbid fear of horses… what would a morbid fear of hippototamii be known as?