So, yeah, anyway, I came out of the Odeon in Oxford yesterday (not the coffee shop, the new one) when I noticed a man looking at the cinema with an expression I can only describe as baleful. Had this been the coffee shop it would be sort of understandable (I have been known to glower at the indignities inflicted on a formerly exemplary cinema myself), but no. And, what was more, I sort of recognised the man. It took me a while to figure out where from, because it does when you see somebody in the flesh who you’ve only previously seen on TV or in a photo. I eventually figured out who the guy was (or at least who he strongly resembled) – it was Peter Hitchens.
That at least explained the baleful stare, because baleful is really Peter Hitchens’ default mode. Peter Hitchens is – well, you know, when I was planning this thing out in my head on the bus home I was all set to go with ‘Peter Hitchens is one of the arch-dukes in the demonic hierarchy of that circle of Hell managed by the Daily Mail’, but you know what, I’m not going to. I appreciate that by even letting you in on that I am rather ineptly trying to have my cake and eat it, but you know what, it’s a good line and I’d hate to lose it completely.
So I’m not going to stick the boot in on the guy but stick to facts he himself would agree with. Peter Hitchens is a journalist and commentator, appearing primarily in the right-wing UK press and as a purveyor of conservative viewpoints in the media. He is a conservative himself, but – if I read the situation correctly – would demur if described as a Conservative, quite simply because he considers the party to currently be utterly lacking in backbone and not nearly aggressive enough in pursuing a conservative agenda.
Some examples of Mr Hitchens’ personal opinions: he considers Labour’s abolition of the hereditary principle in the House of Lords as ‘constitutional vandalism’. Based on recent pronouncements on TV, I suspect he would also have negative things to say were there to be any attempt to abolish the principle of primogeniture (basically, institutionalised sex discrimination) in the UK royal succession. The largely peaceful resolution of the Northern Irish conflict was a ‘collapse and a surrender to lawlessness’. Fighting against Nazism in the Second World War was a mistake: ‘Imagine: no European Union, probably no Nato, no United Nations, no courts of Human Rights, no Starbucks, no McDonald’s, no kilograms, no mass migration’ (disagreeable consequences of the conflict, in Mr Hitchens’ view). Some people deserve to live in poverty (and, furthermore, there are no ‘truly poor people’ in the UK). He is pro-death penalty and anti-abortion, but then you could probably have guessed that.
[Believe it or not, folks – and I’m not entirely sure I do myself – but someone claiming to be the one and only Mr H got in touch with me (see comments section below) and complained, with uncharacteristic mildness, that I had misrepresented his views on the Second World War. He didn’t go into details as to how, but in the interests of fairness, and to avoid accusations of quote-mining, here is Peter Hitchens’ original article so you can see for yourselves where he’s coming from.
PS. A bit later: or check out the comments section where Mr H recaps what he actually thinks on this topic. Nothing if not scrupulously fair, wot?- A]
My own views are, of course, considerably different, but then this is not really surprising given that even David Cameron, who emanates from roughly the same area of the political spectrum, has publicly described Peter Hitchens as a ‘maniac’.
I’m not sure I’d go that far. I vehemently disagree with virtually everything Hitchens comes out with – every time I take the plunge and glance through one of his Mail on Sunday columns a peculiar gloom and low-level fury grips me, possibly almost as a Pavlovian response – but he comes across as a sane, rational and intelligent man, the substance of his views excepted, of course (put it this way, he’s more cogent than Richard Littlejohn). I have known of him and followed his thinking for nearly 15 years, since a Mail piece frothing about the ‘evil knowledge’ released into the national bloodstream by people swearing on TV in good old This Life (‘These Nasty Lives Will Poison Real Life’ was, I believe, the subheader).
And so to the question I posed my (Mail reading) landlord and landlady some time later: what exactly is the appropriate response for a civilised socialist upon encountering Peter Hitchens in the street? Ray, my landlord, had an easy answer: ‘You go up to him and punch him on the nose.’ I have to say this never really occurred to me as an option. Satisfying though it might well have been, lamping Hitchens was never really on the cards, largely due to my own matchless lack of both physical courage and co-ordination, but also because, well, it’s not really my style.
Of course, there was also the issue of it perhaps not being Hitchens at all. Lamping some unfortunate stranger already saddled with the drawback of being a dead ringer for Peter Hitchens would, surely, just be adding insult to injury. But I did momentarily consider going up to him and saying ‘Peter Hitchens, I despise you, everything you write and say, and everything you stand for: you and people like you are a drag anchor on the culture of this country and a major cause of whatever misery and other problems are currently besetting it’.
But, as you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t. Hitchens went off to glower balefully at something else in Oxford city centre (God knows what; I shudder to think) and I buggered off to GBK for a cheeseburger. My spleen remained unvented; Hitchens remained oblivious.
And I think part of the reason why is due to Hitchens’ attitude towards people like me, not all of whom show such restraint. After all, there was for a while a Facebook group named ‘Peter Hitchens Must Die’. One importunate beggar who only received Hitchens’ views on charitable giving (‘few things are more wicked’ than modern begging and its practitioners) did indeed stick one on him, if Hitchens himself is to be believed.
Quite possibly amusing though all this is it does just provide ammunition for Hitchens and his acolytes to sneer at people holding differing views to them. Oh, those immature, hate-filled, intellectually-incontinent Lefties! They can’t win an argument so they just to try to win a fight! It just provides another opportunity for people on the Right to rehearse the arrogance and presumption of the right-to-rule that we see every day in the workings of the Tories in our current government.
So lamping Hitchens or giving him an earful would just be counter-productive. I think progressives are better, more intelligent, more decent people than the Right would have the world believe. I think liberal and socialist ideas are more coherent and humane than anything the other side can come up with, and I think this can be proven in any venue you care to mention.
But in order to do this I had to treat Hitchens with a courtesy I don’t think his ideas strictly deserve. You know the old saw: ‘one of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness’ – perhaps not completely applicable in this situation, but you know what I mean. I wandered off to GBK feeling I had probably retained the high moral ground.
Of course, there are a couple of downsides to all this. One is that, as a result of my civilised inertia, Hitchens remained completely oblivious to the soul-searching and victory of liberal thought to which he was a party. The other is that, as a result of all this, the last time I met someone I genuinely admire, we ended up having a mild row, while the last time I encountered someone I heartily dislike we went our separate ways without him being at all perturbed or rattled in his objectionable worldview. It isn’t easy being the good guy, I suppose.
P.S. A bit later: It occurs to me that even publishing this piece gives Peter Hitchens ample material for an item in his column along the lines of ‘Smug Lefty believes showing basic good manners are grounds for considering oneself superior’. You just can’t win with some people I suppose. Maybe I should have lamped him or just called him names after all.
An interesting read. Minor celebrity has all kinds of delights and disadvantages, one of them being that people know who you are while you don’t know they are. You should have said something. You might have learned something. I enjoy arguing with opponents.
And, by the way, your summary of my position on the Second World War is inaccurate. Nor did the beggar object to my views, so much as to my suggestion that he was raising money to buy drugs.
I apologise. I tried to be scrupulous in not misrepresenting your views and it was a question of finding a quote from the Second World War article that summed it up without being overlong. If you point out the substance of the inaccuracy I will do my best to amend it.
As for not approaching you – well, as I said, I wasn’t sure it was you at the time, and – as I’m sure you appreciate – there are probably quite a few people who would treat being approached by a stranger asking ‘Are you Peter Hitchens?’ as a bit of an insult. I couldn’t see it being very productive as I hadn’t prepared anything to say – much as I disagree with most of what you say, I do respect both your intellect and your skill as a debater. Plus, there was the question of where does one start…?
The problem lies in the statement that I think ‘Fighting against Nazism in the Second World War was a mistake’. First, I don’t think we fought against ‘Nazism’. We fought against Germany, which happened to be under a National Socialist dictatorship at the time. We quite readily lived at peace with Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939, having diplomatic relations and even making significant treaties with its government. If we’d been at war with Germany because it was Nazi, or at war with ‘Nazism’, that wouldn’t have been the case.
This is all part of the fantasy that World War Two was some sort of moral crusade, when it was nothing of the sort. We fought against Hitler, who was indeed very wicked. But we fought with ( and brought great advantages to) Stalin, who was just as wicked.
Nor, as I’ve pointed out, did we go to war with Germany to save the Jews of Europe. We went to war over the independence of Poland, and we didn’t, as it happened, save many Jews or take any direct actions to rescue Jews, stop their persecution or halt their murder. What’s more, our principal ally in the war against Germany was the USSR, a dictatorship at least as wicked and murderous as Hitler’s.
Third, my main objection to Britain’s war policy is the idiotic timing of our entry, and the absurd pretext for declaring war. We had guaranteed Polish independence without having the slightest intention of fulfilling that promise. And even if we had wanted to, we didn’t have the strength to do so. And, as it happened, we did two parts of nothing to help Poland, either during or after the war.
Had we waited ( as the US did) for the Berlin-Moscow alliance to break down and turn into war, and intervened then (by which time our army would have been some use in a continental war) , we might have come out of the war a good deal better off, and perhaps done more good. This is a wholly different thing from what you say I have been as brief as possible. If my critics tried a little harder to work out what I actually thought by reading what I actually say( I have written several books and have a carefully-indexed blog where I deal with many subjects,including this one, at length) they might be less crudely hostile.
Then again, it wouldn’t be as much fun as the crude hostility, would it?
Crude hostility? Not sure if you’re talking about me at that point. I am a fan of crudity possibly even less than I am of hostility (I would never dream of describing you as a maniac in a public forum, for instance).
Anyway, I would like to (gently) point out that I did go to the trouble of reading the original piece prior to using the quote, and also that (in the wake of your original objection) I amended the piece to make this clear and provide a link to the piece so people can, as you say, read your actual opinions.
My main objection to the piece itself was that it seemed to be suggesting that negative consequences of the war, some of them many years later, meant the decision to enter the war was the wrong one. I thought this was the kind of retrospective morality I heard a lot of in connection with the Iraq invasion in 2003: ‘if we invade and find WMD, the decision to invade will have been right’, that sort of thing. I don’t think ethics work that way.
In any case, you may be interested to know that our (non-)encounter, the researching of the original post, and this exchange have led me to reexamine some of my opinions. (‘When facts change, change your mind,’ as someone said recently, and I’m aware that’s a paraphrase of a quote.) It’s one thing to hurl abuse at a name on a page, quite another when it’s someone who you’re actually in contact with, as I’m sure you appreciate.
First of all, I understand better now that most of your beliefs ultimately arise from your religious faith – one I don’t share, but that’s irrelevent. I wouldn’t dream of criticising someone for being a belief, only if they used that belief to justify violent or inhumane acts, and I don’t believe you have ever done that.
Secondly – and this was something which rather surprised me – quite a few times in the last week I have found myself in agreement with people who in general political terms I have nothing in common with. I am in favour of gay marriage, but against gay adoption, which would probably make me the target of, er, crude hostility even from some of my friends. This even extends to some views you have come out with in the past, and not even the ones about Slippery Dave. (Many others I find strongly objectionable, so don’t worry: you’re not losing your touch.) Your opinions seem rather more coherent and principled than those of the Mail in general, and I think that’s an important distinction.
So, basically I would like to apologise for suggesting that I despised you as a person. I don’t; I don’t think we will ever be sitting down for tea and buns and a cosy chat, but I do respect your integrity and the quality of your arguments. I think it would be interesting to talk, not necessarily to argue but to see what kind of common ground we do genuinely share. (Yes, another conflict-shy spineless Lefty refuses to stick to his guns.) I forgot to thank you for taking the time to contribute; thanks.
An impeccable display of politeness Awix. Thanks for the good read.
My pleasure, and thanks for your generosity of spirit. The crude hostility I mentioned is epitomised in your landlord’s suggestion that you should have hit me. I think that is a) crude and b) hostile. But there are plenty of lesser examples of a similar feeling – that somebody who holds different opinions from you must therefore be bad. I may well be bad, and have many other unlovely characteristics. But the question is ‘Am I right?’
I suspect that it’s my opinions (formed through life experience, living and travelling abroad, the University of Fleet Street, etc) which have led me to Christian belief, rather than the other way round, though of course once you’ve got there it begins to influence everything.
I was only trying to explain my position on the war, not to rebuke you for criticising it. My point about the outcome (for this country) is that it was almost wholly bad. We also used methods, notably the mass-killing of German civilians by aerial bombing, which were at best dubious. In that case, was this outcome justified, and were these methods justified, by the alleged good purpose? Was the purpose genuinely good? These were uncomfortable questions for someone brought up ( as I was) when World War Two and ‘The Finest Hour’ were close to being a quasi-religious cult (see my book ‘The Rage Against God’). The Iraq war, which I opposed from the start, was what alerted me to this problem. The pretence that iraq was the third Reich and Saddam was Hitler and that opponents of war were Neville Chamberlain was blatantly false. But what if the myth of World War Two, so often trundled out to make the case for other ‘good’ wars, was false as well? On examination, I came to the conclusion that it was. I didn’t like this, but I decided many years ago to follow where facts and reason led me, and not to resist their cnclusions out of cowardice,
I feel I should say that, firstly, my landlord was almost certainly joking, and, secondly, the pair of you apparently have form (though I only discovered this recently) – he is severely dyslexic and took great exception to a column you wrote on this topic questioning its severity as a condition. (Apparently you wrote back in person to apologise, which impressed me.)
You almost make believing in Christianity sound like a cool and rational choice, which is at odds with what most Christians I know say (and I come from quite a religious family) – for most of them, it’s based on having (or believing they’ve had) first-hand experience of the presence of God. In my own studies of the subject, even the most pragmatic or logically rigorous positions (Pascal’s wager or the ontological argument) never made me contemplate actually following a religion – I’m not sure that’s something most people could actually make a premeditated choice about.
Given the benefit of hindsight, no doubt there are many key decisions politicians everywhere would have taken differently – but then being a leader would be much easier generally given this faculty. Putting undesirable consequences of the war to one side, was entering it the right decision to take at the time? Pragmatically, possibly not. Morally, I would tend to say so. My opposition to the Iraq war was not that I didn’t think Saddam was a wicked despot, but that armed conflict was not the only option available and the reasons given by Bush for invading were clearly only a pretext and his own motivation was clearly political and possibly even personal. There were, and remain, plenty of other wicked tyrants in the world and the President of the USA seemed to be fixating on the one who was arguably indirectly responsible for putting his father out of office.
I fully appreciate how uncomfortable it can be to discover one’s beliefs are built on sand, but – like you, I think – I would rather feel justified in my ideas than as comfortable with them as I might wish. Being prepared to actually think about these things and change your position is a sign of maturity, and, I suspect, the only hope for the world.
Good of you to say that I almost make Christian belief sound like a cool and rational choice. So it is, for me. I couldn’t believe in it any other way, and wouldn’t expect anyone else to either. Because of course it is a choice, made in my view as a result of open or concealed preference for one sort of universe or the other ( see my book). Truth and logic cannot take you any further than agnosticism. Religious (or Atheist) faith requires a decision.
Well, the reason I said that was simply because most Christians who I’ve discussed this with have said quite different things – I’m wary of describing their kind of faith as irrational, because of the negative connotations involved, but it did seem that way, in the technical sense that belief in the existence of God was a fundamental emotional conviction for them rather than an intellectual decision – many of them seemed genuinely baffled that anyone could *not* believe in God. Believing in God was, for them, no more a matter of choice than believing that the sun had risen that morning.
I forget who it was who said that the fact that many highly intelligent people firmly believe in God, and many others equally firmly don’t, suggests there’s something distinctly odd about the universe. Certainly it indicates this particular question does not lend itself to rational resolution. It leaves me reluctant to jump either way, as far as the existence of God is concerned; the coherency of specific religions I have different issues with, but possibly due to my cultural background I find I have (broadly speaking) fewer disagreements with Christian ethics than with those of most other religions.