Back and Forth

Time for a little general conversation, on popular music, happiness versus pleasure and various other matters raised by correspondents. My favourite comment comes from a James E. Shaw, who writes ‘The fact that you dislike pop music and no doubt regard yourself as civilized because you enjoy classical music makes you no more an enlightened or civilized human being than it made Adolf Eichmann.’

Well, that’s telling me, isn’t it? But, apart from telling me that Mr Shaw is not very good at arguing (note that he actually attacks me for a claim I have not made, but which he nonetheless kindly makes on my behalf so that he can go on to link me with a mass murderer), what do we learn?

This isn’t really a question of self-regard. As I’ve said before, I may indeed be one of the nastiest people to walk the planet, wicked, selfish, ugly, you name it. But the question at issue is ‘Am I right?’, and I might in fact *be* right while also being ugly, cruel, etc etc. It is simple ad hominem crudity to imagine that my personal niceness or nastiness has any bearing on the quality of my arguments, or whether my facts are correct.

I am not quite sure what Mr Shaw is driving at with his reference to Eichmann.  I do wonder if the German National Socialists would have seen the uses of pop music to their cause had it existed in their era.  True, they didn’t like modern pictorial or plastic art, and disliked Jazz. But they did have some things in common with the sexual revolution, and the cultural one. One thinks of the more or less pornographic publication ‘Der Stuermer’ ,  which as well as being full of Judophobic ravings, slanders and lies was spiced with pornography so vile that respectable people objected to it being displayed (as many National Socialist publications were) in glass cases on public streets and squares, where their children might see it. One also thinks of the personally irregular and libertine private lives of many of the National Socialist elite, notably Josef Goebbels, and the encouragement of sexual ‘freedom’ among the SS. Homosexuality, though officially disapproved of by the laws of the Third Reich, was also far from unknown among active and senior National Socialists. And of course the National Socialists despised Christianity, and sought to bring up German children to despise it too.

I mention these things to rebut, once again,  the crude . defamatory and frankly bird-brained suggestion that conservatives, by being ‘right wing’ (whatever that means) are in some way connected with, or philosophically linked to the German National Socialists.

I have always seen this smear as the left’s nervous, defensive riposte to the perfectly valid criticism that the left have always been too forgiving of, and secretly sympathetic to, the excesses of Communism. I think Freud would have called the left’s attempt to slander conservatives  ‘projection’, as there is in fact far more in common, philosophically and in many other ways, between social democracy and communism than there is between National Socialism, Mussolini Fascism and conservatism. The clue is partly in the name of the NSDAP,  in some important ways modelled on the Austrian Social Democrats, whose all-embracing mass organisation Hitler much admired, even if he didn’t like most of their policies(See Kershaw’s biography for details of this) ; one should also note that Mussolini began his political life as a socialist.  Both The fascists and the NSDAP were *mass* parties, designed to take advantage of widespread suffrage and the manipulation of mobs - see the previous posting on democracy. Hitler also made a lot of use of plebiscites, the ultimate democratic instrument.  Stalin’s Bolsheviks had their origins in the Russian Social Democratic Party, as the full name of the Bolshevik Party shows. The same is very much true of Europe’s other major Communist Parties, especially that in Germany, where the Communist party originated from a split in the Social Democrats. Social Democracy is slower than Bolshevism, but it becomes more intolerant the more powerful it gets, as we see in modern Europe.  

Conservatism, by contrast, has largely been swept aside by mass politics, with its crudities, hero-worship and marketing techniques, many of them pioneered by Dr Goebbels and his accomplice, the genius of propaganda films, Leni Riefenstahl.

One of the problems with great music ( I think particularly of J.S. Bach) is that its power to lift the human heart can be abused, precisely because it is independent of literature and the human voice, and speaks directly to us without moderation. Therefore if the propagandist cunningly couples it to his message (especially in company with filmed images), it may reinforce that message.   Bach wrote every note to the glory of God, and had no reason to expect that it would ever serve any other purpose. But other idealists, other utopians, can of course gain solace from its power. When I was a revolutionary socialist, I was particularly in love with Beethoven’s Third, Fifth and Seventh symphonies (the second movements, in each case, seemed the most sublime). I still am, but I understand them quite differently now. Because it bypasses words, such music can serve any purpose that matches the emotions it evokes. In any case, Beethoven was a political radical, and I may even have understood him better as a Trotskyist student than I do now as a reactionary columnist. Bach, because so much of his work is linked to choral works of Christian majesty, is harder to recruit to non-Christian causes.

Nor, obviously, is it impossible for someone to appreciate great music and to be a savage barbarian in other aspects of his life. Lenin loved Beethoven, and refused to listen to music lest it diverted him from his Utopian goal. National Socialist Germany retained a great deal of musical talent, and Hitler was, of course, obsessed with the works of Richard Wagner. Wagner , interestingly, was a sexual revolutionary and a radical.

As I might have expected, various wiseacres demand to know if there is anything I enjoy, and why I am so miserable etc etc.  ‘Let’s have a smile, eh, Peter?’ they drivel, like aunts at a knees-up trying to ‘cheer up’ a small boy who would rather be reading a book. As it happens, I have been very fortunate in my private life, and have many personal pleasures (which I don’t propose to discuss ere, as they are nobody’s business but my own).  But that does not stop me fearing for the future of my country, or being angry or distressed about aspects of British life, manners and morals.

In fact, I would regard myself as irresponsible and complacent if I allowed my own enviable personal circumstances to close my ears to the many very bad things going on around me. I might add that, because I am prepared to criticise where others are complacent, I receive many private communications from people who take the trouble to inform me in detail about how they are compelled to live their lives. Many of them are so wretched and sad, and I am so powerless to help them, that the least I can do is to campaign against the wrongs which have been done ( and are being done0 to them.

My reference to ‘getting down with the kids’ was surely obviously a mockery of the pathetic attempts of the old to ape and engage with popular culture, which are invariably misplaced. As someone who never gets down with the kids, and has no wish to, I do understand that Paul McCartney is even older than me.  I don’t think anybody really answered the central point, that the Jubilee has reduced the Queen to the winner of a national Best-Loved Granny contest, drained of all political and moral significance, shoe popularity cannot pass ( as her lost majesty ought to have done) to her heirs and successors. Which is why they will not survive long. There’s no genuine solid support for monarchy. Also, I don’t go in much for flag waving, and nor I think do most British people. Millions may wave a flag one day, and discard it the next week.

On the matter of pop music lyrics, I was always told that , and it was widely believed at the time of its release that  ‘O bla di , o bla da’ (in which I believe you can hear the words ‘Life goes on, Bra!’ , if you listen carefully) was intended as a satire on such suburban sentiments.  I don’t doubt that there have been one or two songs which contain regrets about the effects of drugs. But I doubt if any of them has had one thousandth of the effect on popular culture of ‘A Day in the Life’ and of the general endorsement of drugs (mainly by using them, but also by signing aout tem)  by the Rock Aristocracy.   And it was pop music in general that was the subject of my complaint ( as I pointed out in in ‘the Abolition of Britain’, which lots of people think they have read,  but they generally haven’t, Manfred Mann sang in the 1960s ( ‘Dooh Wah Diddy’ ) of marriage as the object of love (‘I’m hers, she’s mine wedding bells are gonna chime’). But by the 1990s, ‘The Beautiful South’ did quite well with a song called ’Don’t marry her, **** me’. Then we have the blatant ‘Let’s spend the night together’ , and the subtle sneers at family in ‘She’s leaving home’ plus the dismissal of faith and the mockery of quiet lives in ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (‘no-one was saved’).

‘Anthony’, an American who lives in London, misses the point. He says he was cheering a ‘shared love of liberty’. Well, what has the British monarchy to do with that, as it happens? During Elizabeth’s reign liberty has been greatly reduced in Britain. Only last week I wrote about the scandalous plan for a national police force under the control of government. The Equality and Diversity agenda, the European Union and many other aspects of this reign have led to a much diminished area in which British people are fee to speak, especially if they are publicly employed.

As for the sentimental British ‘alliance’ with the USA, I am sorry to say that I regard this as completely bogus. Our two countries have been bitter commercial and diplomatic rivals for a century, and the rivalry has now ended in British subservience (notably in our recent forced surrender to Irish terrorism, under US pressure) ,made no more tolerable to me by being patronised about our Great Little Queen.  Nor do I ‘admit’ that the past was not a ‘golden age’. The word ‘admit’ suggests that I am under some sort of pressure to do so, and really would prefer to maintain the past had been a ‘golden age’. This is the opposite of the truth.  I state, over and over and over and over again , that I have never believed in any kind of ‘golden age’ and that I am comparing what is possible with what exists. The Britain of today could be a lot better than it is, if we hadn’t got rid of so many of the good aspects of the past. That has nothing to with a golden age.

And I am sneered at for saying that my non-allegiance to popular music is dangerous. These people have probably never had the experience of being howled at by a liberal mob. I have. I think there is a dangerous intolerance loose in this country, and that sooner or later people like me will face growing pressure to keep quiet. The fact that it does not necessarily take the shape of prosecution or persecution will not mean it is not there, or that is not dangerous.  I think popular music is a powerful expression of modern cultural conformity, and an open unwillingness to like or endorse it often gets me bitter denunciations. Complacency is easy when you’re happy with the spirit of the age. Otherwise, not.

I am grateful to ‘John of Dorset’ for pointing out that it is quite legitimate to see a connection between beauty and goodness. If you therefore believe in an absolute objective good, as I do, certain forms of music, as well as of architecture or graphic art, are good and virtuous and truthful. Others are not.

I know I take a great risk by saying this, of activating Mr ‘Bunker’ and the other members of the League of the Militant Godless, but taste in music and art is, like most important matters, a religious question at bottom.

Some of you may have missed an enjoyable  posting on a moribund thread (Agony Aunts..) from a person who entertainingly styles himself or herself ‘Thinking, not ranting’, and who seems to think that I am female, or to know nothing about the French language .

It runs ’ Two questions for La Hitchens: 1. On the Radio 4 debate he made a ludicrous statement comparing 1961 crime figures with now. Ludicrous because it did not include any evaluation of there being more crimes now, more people, more reporting, etc. Q1 - did he at any stage try to get these figures evaluated by a statistician? 2. A quick Google will provide statistical evidence that the suicide rate in prison is 15x the national one. Q2: Is this evidence that: a. Prison may be a difficult place for some people; b. Prison may house may vulnerable people, some of whom may need specialist or medical treatment appropriate to their conditions; c. Both of the above; d. None of the above; e. Prisoners nowadays are soft and deserve to die.’

Where do I begin? What does he mean ‘evaluated by a statistician’? Does he think there is some neutral place where one can go, where statistics can be weighed and measured and pronounced unquestionably sound?  (presumably it’s somewhere near the Institute of Right Science’, which rules on which scientific theories are respectable and which are untenable). The figures I quoted (as I recall) were taken from the British government’s own official compilations, before many of the statistical series were altered, so making comparison over time much harder, and they began to rely on an opinion poll, rather than on actual figures, as their chief source of information about the level of crime. I’m still amazed by the rage provoked by the suggestion that crime figures might actually be manipulated for political reasons. I gather there was a sort of Twitter storm about this.  I mean, the very idea that a government might manipulate statistics to suit its own ends. . Such a  thing could never happen, could it?

As for suicide in prison, I don’t think I’ve ever expressed an opinion about it. But if I have, it certainly isn’t encompassed in the silly simplifications provided above.

A small mention of something I may return to. I see Christopher Snowdon (my opponent in a recent drugs debate) has done some excellent work on the growing interdependence between government and charities. For all that we clashed quite bitterly over drugs, I think Mr Snowdon should be complimented on this.

Dr Lefever has also written interestingly about ‘antidepressants’, elsewhere on the Right Minds site.