On Having No Sense of Humour

This is an accusation which cuts both ways, and which has some interesting effects. I have actually laughed quite a lot at the po-faced responses which my previous posting (‘What I think about Rape’) produced.  ‘Mr Hitchens! You really have no opinion on rape ! I am shocked!’ etc etc. Thanks to the Internet,  anyone can find out what I have, in the past, said about this interesting subject.  Now who has no sense of humour?

 

My point, perhaps a little satirical, is that it is now more or less futile to offer any sort of reasoned opinion on this subject. There are others, notably homosexuality,  where the same rules apply. Islam is very difficult. For instance, in my recent controversy with a Muslim journalist, I never attempted to provide an exact parallel to his remarks about cattle, in which a fictitious Christian made a fictitious comparable statement about followers of that person’s religion. I did not do so because of the danger that such a parallel might be unscrupulously attributed to me as if I had myself said it, and that enough people would then choose to believe that I had said this for it to do me serious damage.

 

As for the Thought Police,  it is true that the real police do increasingly patrol the boundaries of speech and thought (and those who doubt it are reminded, yet again, of the worrying cases described in my ‘The Abolition of Liberty’, and of the current worthy but probably doomed campaign for the revision of the 1986 Public Order Act). But the imposition of speech codes in public life is generally achieved through different methods. An excellent study of American campus speech codes (‘The Shadow University’) explores the way in which the powerful protections of the First Amendment to the US Constitution have been overridden, in places where speech should above all be free. Similar problems exist in many British universities, where there is no First Amendment, policed by militant student societies.

 

I have described (largely in vain because my howling pack of instinctive critics invariably dismiss it as personal special pleading, or complaining at my ill-fortune,  which it is not)  the demonstrable narrowness of the British book publishing industry.  Anyone here who seriously believes that the BBC is open to all political persuasions just hasn’t been paying attention. Nobody needs to be arrested. Their stuff just isn’t published, or if it is, it languishes in the publisher’s warehouse or in the back of the shop, unreviewed and unread. While the books that are approved of are widely reviewed, placed on display tables, their authors are interviewed in the papers, on BBC radio and on TV, their books become ‘book of the week’ or ‘book at bedtime’ on the BBC and (quite often) those authors are given TV series in which they can promote themselves further.

 

Then there are the broadcasting figures (this is quite common in the USA)  who are suddenly snatched from the air after they have made some unacceptable remark. The point that I was making about rape (some people even asked me if this was a coded statement of agreement with George Galloway. No. ) was that any dissent from a very hard line radical feminist view on this subject is not greeted with reasoned criticism, but with a campaign to drive the person involved out of public life. If you cannot see what is wrong with this, I am at a loss.  The result of this is – as all deterrent enforcements of rules are – an effective restriction on the expression in public of an ever wider range of opinions.  Will I end up in jail for my opinions? If current trends continue,  and I live long enough, I think it quite conceivable. How many things now take place in this country, that were unimaginable and ludicrous a mere 20 years ago?

 

By the way, I get some criticism here for writing long posts.  Nobody has to read them. This blog has almost from the start been an experiment on doing what others don’t do, which I rather enjoy and which I know some readers appreciate.   I have spent many years writing for newspapers with absolute limits on length. I still do so. Here on this weblog I rather enjoy not having such constraints. If I want to dissect and rebut an argument I disagree with, I can do it here at as much length as I want.  In that way, I come to understand my opponents better, and occasionally, they come to understand me better as well. Some people, I know, quite like this. Others don’t. That is as it must be. I cannot please everybody, and don’t seek to.

 

I personally find it useful for clarifying my own thoughts. It also compels me to research and to learn. One result of it is that I am now planning a book, provisionally titled ‘ The Phoney Victory’ which will discuss the national illusions and self-deceptions over the British role in the Second World War. I’m currently reading an excellent book on British-Polish relations in 1939,  and a companion volume by the same author (Anita Prazmowska) about subsequent relations between the two countries. I’d never have done that if it hadn’t been for long discussions we have had here on the subject. I’m also, quite incidentally, deep into ‘A Line in the Sand’  by James Barr, kindly sent to me by a reader, Richard Carey, which explores the extraordinary conflict between Britain and France in the Middle East and which everyone remotely interested in the question should read.  Current French posturing about the wickedness of the Assad regime is particularly ridiculous, in the light of that country’s far-from-gentle record as the colonial power in Damascus. As for William Hague…

 

But of course, if you prefer Twitter, you can always go there, and read its illuminating , if brief, articles, which almost universally agree that Peter Hitchens is a ****, and has no sense of humour. QED.