Hello,
Obligatory shilling. This month I wrote for my Substack subscribers about bars in my town, the death of the Queen, gangs and the police, professional wrestling, my English holiday and the New Age Right.
I wrote for The Critic about the death of the Queen and the shooting of Chris Kaba.
I wrote for The Washington Examiner about a book of Kafka’s drawings.
Let me sleep when September ends. A dramatic month in global terms was a stressful month in personal terms. An English holiday was squelched by a bout of COVID (it can be nasty, can’t it) and when I got back our poor sweet ageing dog fell ill and needed surgery. Hence, I have been less than fully productive. Even this newsletter is late! Ah, well. I’m sure a lot of you have troubles that make mine seem comically trivial. But here is to a richer and more creative autumn!
“I remember where I was when Jack Kennedy nearly killed me.” At The Critic this week, Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski reminded us that this October sixty years will have passed since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Krzysztof’s insightful essay explores the amount of unpredictability that influenced those fateful-but-could-have-been fatal weeks. It is hard to know what increases nuclear risk. We are right to be concerned about escalation in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War, for example, but non-interference and overwhelming Russian success might have raised nuclear risk as well, inasmuch as Putin would have been emboldened and his neighbours would have been more inclined to seek nuclear weapons for themselves. Still, I do think that work should always be done — however fruitless it appears, and, indeed, however fruitless it might be — towards a political solution. Ultimately, the war that does not end with a political solution ends with overwhelming triumph or complete catastrophe — and it is hard to imagine overwhelming triumph being accomplished at the expense of a state with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
Conspiracy realities. So, who killed Darya Dugin? The Ukrainians? The Kremlin? Anti-Kremlin Russians? For a day, we all discussed it. Then we all moved on. Who can blame us? Ten bizarre things happen every day. Now the Nordstream pipelines appear to have blown up. Who did that? The Russians? The Americans? The Ukrainians. I don’t know — but what I do know is that in wartime all contemptuous talk of “conspiracy theories” looks preposterous.
Conspiracies are essential to conflict. I was reading Nicholas Rankin’s Churchill’s Wizards: The British Genius for Deception, which discusses British feats of propaganda and subversion during World War One and World War Two. Most of it was righteous stuff, like the antics of the double agent Juan Pujol Garcia, who pretended to be head of a spy ring in Britain. Some of it left a bad taste in the mouth — with a small but curious example coming when Garcia’s wife threatened to leave Britain and he pretended to have been arrested because of her antics, which scared her straight.
Knowing this, we should expect evidence for all claims regarding attacks, atrocities, assassinations et cetera. That is not to endorse the kind of person who sees his own government’s hand behind an earthquake on the other side of the world. It is only to say that in wartime it would be ludicrous to think any combatant — or their allies — will place honesty above results.
Rainy liberal island. At his indispensable Substack, Ed West has written about how much more right-wing most of European politics has become than Britain’s:
Although I’m not great at predictions, I’m going to make this one: in every western European country with significant levels of immigration from outside Europe, Right-wing populists have reached double figures. Even Britain’s system of first-past-the-post was unable to stop Ukip breaking through from 2014, before the party was killed by its own success. All it takes is for someone to emerge with the charisma and popular touch of Nigel Farage, and the Tories will face the real prospect of being wiped out; and having so recklessly gambled the country’s economic prospects and lied to the public, and with a Labour opposition that seems moderate and cautious in contrast, they’ll deserve it.
Starmbot. Let’s assume that Starmer wins the next election. Has Britain ever had a duller PM? May? She had a sort of endearing anti-charisma. Major? I know he liked cricket. I don’t know anything Starmer likes. Callaghan? Quite boring. But he was a veteran. Of course, being boring is all Starmer needs to be. A dry cheese sandwich is boring but it’s preferable to a big plate of stewed tripe, snails and durian.
Mr Moloch. I enjoyed this essay on the YouTuber Mr Beast — a man who apparently watched Squid Game and thought “great idea” — and “content…ruled by algorithmic desire”. It is interesting how so much online content seems to satirise itself while also being sincere. It embraces its absurdity — but more with a view to ownership than in the spirit of amusement.
Natural immunity. One good thing about recovering from COVID is you feel sort of invulnerable. People cough in a supermarket queue and where once you might have twitched you now smile tolerantly. It would be ironic, of course, if I came down with tuberculosis.
Have a lovely month,
Ben