Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD on Katherine Birbalsingh's fondness for Roger Scruton.

The Govt's Social Mobility Tsar's blog (2016 - 19) is accessible online. On April 15th, 2017, she wrote that she wants "to give them (her pupils) the chance to be just like Boris Johnson". 😬

tomisswithloveblog.wordpress.com

"I’m in the game to change the stars of the children we teach, to give them the chance to be just like Boris Johnson (ie be articulate & knowledgeable & have all doors open to them in life)... Michaela make(s) social mobility a possibility for anyone who chooses to work hard." 😬

Birbalsingh expresses her adoration for @Conservatives' favourite controversial hard-right reactionary traditionalist contrarian intellectual grifter, Roger Scruton, after a visit to her Michaela school - she compares him to Brad Pitt.😬

Let's talk about Roger Scruton...

Roger Scruton was controversial, reactionary, & frequently outspoken, provocative & deliberately offensive. But he was undoubtedly quick-witted, intelligent & articulate, & was arguably the nearest thing the British Right have ever had to a 'real' English right-wing intellectual.

It would take a small book to discuss Roger Scruton's life & work (he died in 2019), so instead I want to try & get to the essence of what the hard- & far-Right, in Britain & across the world, found so inspiring & attractive about him, giving a few illustrative examples.

Supporters think Scruton was perhaps THE most important contemporary conservative thinker. Critics point to his often racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, & homophobic political views.

He was certainly influential - especially among the UK's tiny band of hard-right elites.

In 2019, antidemocratic authoritarian Viktor Orbán lauded Scruton, calling him a ‘Loyal Friend of Freedom-loving Hungarians’, giving him a prestigious award as he had “foreseen the threats of illegal migration & defended Hungary from unjust criticism.”

hungarytoday.hu/orban-lauds-si…

Scruton was a philosopher & writer who specialised in aesthetics & political philosophy, particularly in furthering traditionalist conservative views, writing over 50 books on philosophy, art, music, politics, literature, culture, sexuality, & religion; also novels & two operas.

His most notable publications include The Meaning of Conservatism (1980), Sexual Desire (1986), The Aesthetics of Music (1997), and How to Be a Conservative (2014).

He was a regular contributor to the popular media, including The Times, The Spectator, and the New Statesman.

Scruton embraced conservatism after witnessing the May 1968 student revolt in France, which began in a suburb of Paris & was soon joined by a general strike eventually involving some 10 million workers.

britannica.com/event/events-o…

Scruton was trained in analytic philosophy, but drawn to other traditions: "when it (philosophy) wanders away from art & literature, I cannot open a journal like The Philosophical Review without experiencing an immediate sinking of the heart, like opening a door into a morgue."

He specialised in aesthetics throughout his career. writing many books on the subject. In a debate in March 2009, Scruton (seconding historian David Starkey) proposed the motion: "Britain has become indifferent to beauty" - but a very traditional conception of beauty.

The public debate - which Starkey & Scruton roundly lost by a huge margin - is discussed in this article, which includes the short speeches of those both for & against the motion: Germaine Greer & Stephen Bayley emerged as victors.

theguardian.com/artanddesign/2…

Scruton's intellectual heroes were Burke, Coleridge, Dostoevsky, Hegel, John Ruskin & TS Eliot. His 1980 book, The Meaning of Conservatism, a "defence of Tory values in the face of their betrayal by the free marketeers" was responsible, he said, for blighting his academic career.

He supported Margaret Thatcher, while remaining sceptical of her view of the market as a solution to everything, but after the Falklands War, he realized that she "recognised that the self-identity of the country was at stake, & that its revival was a political task".

Scruton wrote that he found some of Burke's arguments about the French Revolution persuasive. Scruton was persuaded that, as he put it, the utopian promises of socialism are accompanied by an abstract vision of the mind that bears little relation to the way most people think.

Burke also convinced him that there is no direction to history, no moral or spiritual progress; that people think collectively toward a common goal only during crises such as war, & that trying to organise society this way requires a real or imagined enemy.

#CostOfLivingCrisis

Something Boris Johnson's @Conservatives might consider is that Scruton argued, following Burke, that society is held together by authority & the rule of law, in the sense of the right to obedience, not by what he called the imagined rights of citizens.

Obedience, he wrote, is "the prime virtue of political beings, the disposition that makes it possible to govern them, & without which societies crumble into 'the dust & powder of individuality'".

Can you see why Orbán, Birbalsingh, & other authoritarian right-wingers adored him?

Another lesson for Boris Johnson & others lacking in integrity comes from Scruton's assertion that 'to throw away customs & institutions' is to "place the present members of society in a dictatorial dominance over those who went before, & those who came after them".

Scruton was critical of the contemporary feminism, yet praised suffragists such as Mary Wollstonecraft. However, he praised Germaine Greer in 2016, saying that she had "cast an awful lot of light on our literary tradition" by showing the male as the dominant figure.

In Arguments for Conservatism (2006), Scruton (predictably & misleadingly imho) argued that human beings are 'creatures of limited & local affections' & that 'territorial loyalty is at the root of all forms of government where law & liberty reign supreme'.

In a warning to those like the Tory Ministers in the current UK Government who would mobilise dangerous & divisive populist nationalist rhetoric, he opposed elevating the "nation" above its people, which would, he claimed, threaten rather than facilitate citizenship & peace.

"Conservatism & conservation" are to do with 'husbanding resources', including the social capital embodied in laws, customs & institutions, & the material capital contained in the environment. He argued that the law should not be used as a weapon to advance special interests.

Predictably, Scruton attacked post-modernism, simplifying & mischaracterising it as a claim that 'there are no grounds for truth, objectivity, & meaning, & that conflicts between views are therefore nothing more than contests of power.' A postmodernism thread is for another day.

What I will briefly say is that postmodernism is a broad church with lots of disagreement within it, but a central claim (following Marx), is that prevailing (dominant) discourses in any society broadly tend to reflect the interests & values of dominant or elite groups.

Scruton was of course a supporter of constitutional monarchy arguing it is "the light above politics, which shines down on the human bustle from a calmer & more exalted sphere", somewhat controversially arguing that monarchy helped create peace in Central Europe. 😬

Scruton self-identified as a Christian - an Anglican - & contended that, following Immanuel Kant, human beings have 'a transcendental dimension', a sacred core exhibited in their capacity for self-reflection.

Well, some do, some seemingly do not.

Scruton considered that religion plays a basic function in "endarkening" human minds - the process of socialization through which certain behaviours & choices are closed off & forbidden to the subject, which he considers necessary to curb 'socially damaging impulses & behaviour'.

There are certainly some pretty strong clues about what Scruton considered to be 'socially damaging impulses & behaviour'. For example, in a 1990 essay, "Sexual morality & the liberal consensus" he wrote that homosexuality leads to the "de-sanctifying of the human body". 😬

Scruton argued that gay people have no children & consequently no interest in creating a socially stable future. He considered it justified to "instil in our children feelings of revulsion" towards homosexuality, & in 2007 he argued against gay people having the right to adopt.

I should point out that to his credit, & demonstrating that imho the ability to be open to changing one's opinion in light of good arguments & evidence should be valued, Scruton said in 2010 he would no longer defend the view that revulsion against homosexuality can be justified.

Scruton defined totalitarianism as the absence of constraint on central authority, with every aspect of life the concern of Govt. Advocates of totalitarianism feed on resentment, & having seized power proceed to abolish institutions eg the law & religion, that create authorities.

He argues that revolutions are not conducted from below by the people, but from above, in the name of the people, by an aspiring elite.

But it depends on what Scruton means by 'revolution': does his description fit Hitler's rise to power as much as, say, the French Revolution?

In a quite postmodern turn, the importance of #Newspeak in totalitarian societies, he writes, is that the power of language to describe reality is replaced by language whose purpose is to avoid encounters with realities. On this, I think we can agree.

link.medium.com/UjIWyLo8Oqb

Having said that, he agrees with Alain Besançon that the totalitarian society envisaged by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four can be only understood in theological terms, as 'a society founded on a transcendental negation'.

In accordance with TS Eliot, Scruton again lionises tradition & (imho falsely) believes that true originality is only possible within a tradition, & that it is precisely in modern conditions (of fragmentation, heresy, & unbelief) that the conservative project acquires its sense.

In 2014, Scruton revealingly (given how influential he is on @Conservatives) stated that he supported English independence because he believed it would uphold friendship between England, Scotland, Wales, & Northern Ireland, & because the English would have a say in all matters.

And of course, Scruton strongly supported Brexit, because he believed that the EU was a threat to the sovereignty of the UK, & that Brexit would help retain 'national identity', which he saw as being under threat as a result of mass immigration.

I don't want to get bogged down here in a discussion about 'national identity' (which is constantly evolving & rarely uniform), but I will briefly say that what form post-Brexit Britain's 'national identity' might take is important - & highly contested.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1516338819208990722?s=20&t=H07X81LJN6SOXh1_EpSk7w

For reasons of brevity (it's already a long thread) I've glossed over various other controversies involving Scruton, for example about his alleged antisemitism (which you can read about here in part of a wider thread about Tory antisemitism):

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1355996018538672135?s=20&t=H07X81LJN6SOXh1_EpSk7w

Having given a flavour of how Scruton's ideas feed the Tories' foregrounding of concepts like 'tradition, authority & national identity', you may recall I described him as the Tories' favourite controversial hard-right reactionary traditionalist contrarian intellectual grifter.

Scruton is a "contrarian intellectual grifter"?

What do I mean by this?

Here's where imho it gets really interesting, & where Scruton's 'true' ideology - which is representative of & an exemplar of the @Conservatives' dominant mindset - is revealed.

Scruton was criticized in 2002 for having written articles about smoking without disclosing that he was receiving a regular fee from Japan Tobacco International (JTI, formerly RJ Reynolds).

In 1999 Scruton & his wife — as part of their consultancy work for Horsell's Farm Enterprises — began producing a quarterly briefing paper, The Risk of Freedom Briefing (1999–2007), about the state's control of risk.

Distributed to journalists, the paper included discussions about drugs, alcohol & tobacco, & was sponsored by Japan Tobacco International. Scruton wrote several articles in defence of smoking around this time.

Scruton's articles in defence of smoking included one for The Times (1988), three for the Wall Street Journal (two in 1998, one in 2000), one for City Journal in 2001, & a 65-page pamphlet for the Koch & Big Tobacco funded free-market fundamentalist Institute of Economic Affairs.

The IEA pamphlet 'WHO, What, & Why: Trans-national Government, Legitimacy & the World Health Organisation (2000)', criticized the World Health Organization's campaign against smoking.

iea.org.uk/publications/r…

In the IEA pamphlet, Scruton argued transnational bodies like WHO should not seek to influence domestic legislation as they are not answerable to the electorate - although he was clearly fine with opaquely-funded UK-based organisations representing foreign billionaire interests.

Scruton was certainly not the only senior Conservative figure arguing against Tobacco regulation. Before she became Britain's most controversial Home Secretary, Priti Patel worked in corporate PR, representing the interests of Big Tobacco.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1459100260551303189?s=20&t=H07X81LJN6SOXh1_EpSk7w

The Guardian reported in 2002 that Scruton had been writing about these issues while failing to disclose he was receiving £54,000 a year from Japan Tobacco International. The payments came to light when a September 2001 email from the Scrutons to JTI was leaked to The Guardian.

Signed by Scruton's wife, the email asked JTI to increase their £4,500 monthly fee to £5,500, in exchange for which Scruton would "aim to place an article every two months" in the Wall Street Journal, Times, Telegraph, Spectator, FT, Economist, Independent, or New Statesman.

Scruton claimed he'd never concealed his connection with JTI. In response to The Guardian article, the FT ended his contract as a columnist, The Wall Street Journal suspended his contributions & the IEA said it would introduce an author-declaration policy.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

So what's the point of this #thread, & why did I start it by linking Roger Scruton to his adoring fan, the UK Government's Social Mobility Tsar, Katharine Birbalsingh?

Imho, it reveals how the (UK) Right ALWAYS defaults to protecting powerful interests.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1534864233866854400?s=20&t=H07X81LJN6SOXh1_EpSk7w

From the current UK Govt, through the foreign/non-dom billionaire-owned & funded right-wing press & broadcast media, to the 'intellectual' Right, powerful interests are protected by recourse to abstract concepts such as 'tradition', 'national identity' & 'obedience to authority'.

And as everyone knows, these particular abstract concepts have been mobilised by every single antidemocratic authoritarian autocrat throughout history - no wonder the current Government support & promote the likes of populist nationalist reactionary authoritarian Birbalsingh.