Decline and Fall

Could we please stop with the relentless politicisation of ancient history? The past should not be deployed in a superficial and tendentious manner by someone with no understanding of historical research, all to support a wholly contemporary agenda intended to make Britons feel bad about themselves and their society. It’s a betrayal of the great tradition of historiography since the Enlightenment, and a devastating indictment of the British university system that it’s turning out people with no actual knowledge or critical sense, who simply parrot the latest trendy ideas they’ve read on the internet.

Yes, the Roman Empire variant of the anti-woke mind virus has hit British politics. In a rambling screed about The Crisis Of Western Civilisation at a gathering of contrarians and fascists, that pushed the Decadence Klaxon beyond normal tolerance levels, the alleged heir to centuries of respectable conservative politics decided that a bit of Roman history was in order. In recent decades, this sort of reference has tended to indicate a favourable view of the classically-embellished racism of Enoch Powell; in this case, I don’t think we can dignify it with anything like that sort of intellectual tradition, but rather it’s just another bit of sycophancy towards the Dork Lord of Mars and his cabal.

“It was fiscal weakness, not just war, that led to the decline of the Roman Empire.” Oh dear. One assumes she will expect credit for going beyond the usual right-wing version of Decline And Fall, blaming everything on terrifying hordes of dark-skinned barbarians overwhelming the frontiers at the same time as the liberal elites indulged in luxury and immorality. But it’s not at all obvious what she means. Diocletian’s Price Edict, intervening in the operations of the free market? The phenomenon of agri deserti and the crisis of the cities in the fourth century? The recruitment of federate troops rather than funding the army properly? The flow of gold to pay for spices from the Orient? The Eastern or Western empire..?

Actually the line is even stupider in context, one of a string of random non-sequiturs that presumably seemed to her and/or her speechwriter as a series of bold, insightful declarations:

Immigration is far too high. We cannot support all those who wish to come to our country. We have no obligation to do so. The British people must come first. We cannot keep racking up debt for our children, It was fiscal weakness, not just war, that led to the decline of the Roman Empire. We need smaller government and smarter spending. The belief that the state and not business creates wealth has become normalised. The world owes no one a living. Millions of people cannot just sit on welfare and expect to be paid to do so, and if they don’t like it, that’s their problem, not the state’s. Our country is not racist. We don’t need to apologise. We don’t need to pay reparations or give away the Chagos islands. Free speech matters. Some cultures are better than others, and it’s only contentious to say this because honesty has become impossible. Most of all, we need to get up off our knees and start fighting not just for the UK, but for the west and our values.

What does Rome add to that, other than a bit of virtue signalling to the excessively online fascism crowd? One might hazard a guess that there’s some sort of mental association with immigration and cultural superiority and Western Civilisation – but manifestly this has nothing to do with genuine history, and everything to do with the poisoning of minds in right-wing circles, to the point where you can actually see the remnants dribbling out of their ears.

Note: I do have a tendency to write posts as if they will only ever be read by the usual crowd of twenty or so people who have a pretty clear sense of my take on things and so will immediately recognise, in a case like this, that either I’ve been kidnapped by the thought police and am putting out a disguised call for help or that I’m being sarcastic. For anyone else who’s stumbled across this: I don’t believe that a wholly objective and wholly apolitical historiography is possible – and I certainly have no time for those who, like Badenoch but also the vast majority of the anti-woke crowd, attack e.g. historians researching imperialism and slavery, the National Trust, universities etc in the name of Proper Objective Historiography and then produce this sort of unhistorical nonsense in the service of their own ideology or just to suck up to far-right billionaires.