Spiked, May 24, 2019

The EU is an empire in decay
It is Brussels – not Salvini or Orban – that is a threat to peace in Europe

Spectator Coffee House, May 22, 2019

 

It is now fashionable to describe Nigel Farage as an ‘extremist’, ‘far right’ or ‘fascist’ politician. Last month, Dame Margaret Beckett denounced his ‘brand of extreme right-wing politics’; this week, Armando Iannucci tweeted:

‘Any vote for Farage on Thursday won’t be seen by him as a protest but as support for his brand of far-right UK politics.’

And on Monday, the author and journalist Ben Goldacre described the Brexit Party leader as a ‘far right ideologue who wants to abolish the NHS.’

 

So what prompts otherwise intelligent people like Iannucci and Goldacre to describe Farage as ‘far right’? And is that description really fair?

A quick glance at Farage’s politics suggests it isn’t. Farage has spoken out against interventionist wars abroad. He has also voiced his support for decriminalising recreational drugs. And he is supportive of Muslims integrating into British society. Such positions are hardly typical of a supposedly far-right politician.

Another charge against Farage made by his critics is that he wants to privatise the NHS. This may be his intention or not. But if it is, a true far-right fascist would surely seek to do the opposite: centralise the health service in order to monitor what kind of person is – and is not receiving – care, ensuring that foreigners don’t get access.

 

The Brexit Party also has representatives from across the political spectrum. One of its leading lights is Claire Fox, who for twenty years was an activist for the Revolutionary Communist Party.

 

What’s more, if recent polls are anything to go on, the party is backed by a third of the British population. Surely they can’t all be fascists. So clearly there is something awry at this ‘far-right’ name-calling.

It’s true that Farage has said some justly nasty things about Islamists. He has also made comments that are arguably open to misinterpretation about the Jewish financier George Soros. And Farage has spoken of the need for tougher borders.

But a fascist he is not. And if we call Nigel Farage ‘far right’ how do we describe the actual far right? You know, actual fascists and racists who would rather there were no Muslims in Britain at all. And would rather have no immigration at all than controlled immigration. Should they be known as the ultra-right? Right-wing extra? I Can’t Believe It’s Not Right Wing?

Applying the epithet ‘far-right’ to Farage – a man who now openly speaks out against his former party Ukip for being of that very ilk – is clearly absurd. It is also bound to backfire for those who chuck such an insult around.

Part of the blame for this name-calling lies with social media, a narcissistic and needy arena where people employ ever-more dramatic and fantastical language in order to draw attention to themselves in order to get likes and retweets. On Twitter, ‘far right’ is far more eye-catching than the more accurate ‘populist’.

 

A second factor is that hardcore Remain supporters have grown ever more panicky and furious at the prospect of a Brexit Party victory tomorrow. These people didn’t get their way in 2016 – and they will not get their way this week, making some incandescent that the masses are still refusing to change their minds about leaving the EU. For too many ardent Europhiles, this fury has resulted in them resembling Rick from The Young Ones, a character who also disparaged everyone vaguely objectionable as ‘fascist’.

 

When intelligent discourse is replaced by gestures like throwing milkshakes – apparently a commendable action in the eyes of some – it is a sign that one side is losing the argument.

 

‘Far right’ and ‘fascist’ have become part of the armoury used by Farage’s opponents to alarm and cajole the Brexit Party’s supporters – and the undecided. I suspect that most people will see through this desperate distortion of the English language.

 

Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)

Spiked, April 19, 2019

Notre Dame: incarnation of civilisation
Without our history and collective memory, we are but animals.

Spiked, March 29, 2019

The BBC is institutionally Remainist
Working-class, pro-Leave voices are becoming ever-more rare.

The Catholic Herald, March 8, 2019

Diderot's self-centred rebellion
Patrick West on the 'utter scoundrel' of the Enlightenment Diderot and the Art of Free Thinking
By Andrew Curran,

Other Press, 320pp, £22/$29

The late, great, arch-reactionary Fr Jean-Marie Charles-Roux often began his sermons at St Etheldreda’s Church in Holborn, London, with a denunciation of that atheist figurehead of the Enlightenment, Denis Diderot, best known as the editor of the landmark Encyclopédie. Diderot was an appropriate target because he was a fervent atheist in the way we understand the term today. For the most part, thinkers of the Enlightenment weren’t atheists. Voltaire, for example, was typical of this movement, being a Newtonian deist and non-Christian believer in some higher power, designer and creator.

The paradox is that, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Diderot came from an intensely religious family, with many ancestors who belonged to the clergy. Diderot even became an abbé himself in youth, before renouncing religion, not primarily for theological reasons. His rebellion was principally one against authority.

While so many philosophes had been driven to reject Christianity by having read Spinoza’s anti-Theist theology, Diderot “had an ingrained tendency both to chafe at authority and to question the ideas upon which authority is founded”, writes Andrew Curran. He was particularly horrified by the bitter squabble between the Jesuits and Jansenists, which he saw as a ludicrous and appalling, akin to Jonathan Swift’s depiction of the wars between the “big-enders” and “little-enders”.

It was this propensity to cock a snook at authority which led Diderot to include in his Encyclopédie under “Cannibals”, cross-references to “Altar”, “Communion” and “Eucharist”. There is something almost juvenile in doing so, in what was purported to be a serious compendium of knowledge and progress in the 18th century.

As Curran explains in this marvellous and eye-opening book, Diderot’s life story was more nuanced than the reader might assume. He is remembered for clashing with the Jesuit order on account of the Encyclopédie’s perceived irreligion and potentially corrosive influence. But there were liberal, intellectual Jesuits – “priests of letters” – who objected to the Encyclopédie not for its dangerous atheism, but because they weren’t included: they had assumed that they were going to contribute to the endeavour.

“While some historians who have written about the ‘battle of the Encyclopédie’ tend to assign the Jesuits to an ‘anti-Enlightenment’ group,’’ writes Curran, “the truth was that this Roman Catholic order of priests had long considered themselves key players in the scholarly arena.” These liberal Jesuits objected to the perception that the Enlightenment was a project diametrically opposed to traditional religion.

The hugely industrious Diderot contributed 7,000 articles to the Encyclopédie. And despite some schoolboy lapses of taste, most of his entries are sober and serious, addressing subjects such as anatomy, architecture, astronomy, clock-making, gardening, hydraulics, medicine, physics and surgery. By the time the Encyclopédie was finished in 1772, Diderot “had carried the ideas of the Enlightenment forward in a way that no person, not Voltaire, and certainly not Rousseau, had done”.

By this time, Diderot had largely abandoned writing and publishing under his own name, having been spooked by his arrest and incarceration in 1749. His later works on sexuality, race, theatre, morality and politics would not see the light of day in his own lifetime.

Despite Diderot’s erudition, Curran details what an utter scoundrel he was in real life. He was a serial adulterer, sponger, dilettante and swindler.

It was perhaps destiny that he should have befriended Rousseau. We should not be surprised that these two selfish reprobates eventually fell out. A final ignominy came in the 1790s when the protagonists of the French Revolution that he had inspired came to denounce his writings. Diderot’s atheism was deemed incompatible with Robespierre’s deism and notion of a Higher Being.

Although Diderot influenced subsequent thinkers such as Marx and Freud, he never achieved repute as one of the finest exemplars of the Enlightenment. He is not a literary great, unlike many of his contemporaries. Yet his thought does warrant him the place in posterity that he was so keen to achieve, and he deserves to be remembered alongside Voltaire and Montesquieu as one of the giants of his time. He spoke out against slavery at a time when abolitionism was in its infancy and was in favour of tolerance for gay people at a time when it was deeply unfashionable in France.

What is more, he remains relevant in 2019, in a Europe in which the notion of democracy has come into question. As Diderot put it: “There is no sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.”

Spiked, March 8, 2019

Michael Jackson - why do we believe his accusers?
There has been a cultural shift towards a presumption of guilt - and that should worry us all

The Spectator, February 16, 2019