Historians From England

"In Britain, however, such anti-Israel attitudes have moved from the radical fringe closer to the mainstream and have even begun significantly to infiltrate the Labor party. Tony Greenstein, chairman of the Labor Committee on Palestine, has for instance been one of the more persistent advocates of the "Zionism is Fascism" myth as well as the thesis of Nazi-Zionist collaboration. Interestingly enough, one of Greenstein's discussion documents on Zionism (entitled "Anti-Semitism's Twin in Jewish Garb") was hailed by an organ of the neo-Nazi National Front as "excellent." Such strange convergences between the Left and the Right are by no means new in modern history, though there is something peculiarly grotesque in the spectacle of self-confessed Nazis expressing their approval of Jewish left-wingers who equate Zionism with fascism!"

"It is hardly surprising that Englishmen would exploit the situation and seek by every means to keep up, if not aggravate, the differences between the Hindus and Muslims. Sir Valentine Chirol’s book, Indian Unrest, published in 1910, serves as an example par excellence of this mentality. “It would be an evil day”, he says, “if the Muhammadans came to believe that they could only trust to their own right hand and no longer to the authority and sense of justice of the British Raj, to avert the dangers which they foresee in the future from the establishment of an overt or covert Hindu ascendancy.’"

"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."

"I learnt more during my school-days from my visits to the Cathedral at Winchester than I did from the hours of religious instruction in school. That great church with its tombs of the Saxon kings and the mediaeval statesmen-bishops gave one a greater sense of the magnitude of the religious element in our culture and the depths of its roots in our national life than anything one could learn from books."

"This distrust of the bourgeois is no modern phenomenon. It has its roots in a much older tradition than that of socialism. It is equally typical of the mediaeval noble and peasant, the romantic Bohemian and the modern Proletarian. The fact is that the bourgeoisie has always stood somewhat apart from the main structure of European society, save in Italy and in the Low Countries. While the temporal power was in the hands of the kings and the nobles and the spiritual power was in the hands of the Church, the bourgeois, the Third Estate, occupied a position of privileged inferiority which allowed them to amass wealth and to develop considerable intellectual culture and freedom of thought without acquiring direct responsibility or power. Consequently, when the French Revolution and the fall of the old regime made the bourgeoisie the ruling class in the West, it retained its inherited characteristics, its attitude of hostile criticism towards the traditional order and its enlightened selfishness in the pursuit of its interest. But although the bourgeois now possessed the substance of power he never really accepted social responsibility as the old rulers had done. He remained a private individual — an idiot in the Greek sense — with a strong sense of social conventions and personal rights, but with little sense of social solidarity and no recognition of his responsibility as the servant and representative of a super-personal order. In fact, he did not realize the necessity of such an order, since it had always been provided for him by others, and he had taken it for granted."

"The Bolshevik philosophy is simply the reductio ad absurdum of the principles implicit in bourgeois culture and consequently it provides no real answer to the weaknesses and deficiencies of the latter. It takes the nadir of the European spiritual development for the zenith of the new order."

"In reality the existing tendency toward social uniformity is far from solving the problem of social organization; it merely provides the material, the unorganized mass, which has to be informed by living spirits and ordered to some higher end. Without this, social uniformity can mean no more than a reversion to barbarism, and democracy nothing more than the rule of the herd."

"For the Liberal the spiritual center of gravity was in the individual, and the realm of private opinion and private interests was the ideal world. Hence, when the Liberal spoke of religion as a purely private matter it was in compliment rather than in derogation. To separate the Church from the State — to keep religion out of politics, was to elevate it to a higher sphere of spiritual values. But today in the democratic world, these values have been reversed. The individual life has lost its spiritual primacy, and it is social life which has now the higher prestige, so that to treat religion as a purely individual and personal matter is to deprive it of actuality and to degrade it to a lower level of value and potency. To keep religion out of public life is to shut it up in a stuffy Victorian back drawing room with the aspidistras and antimacassars, when the streets are full of life and youth. And the result is that the religion of the Church becomes increasingly alienated from real life while democratic society creates a new religion of the street and the forum to take its place."

""By their fruits you shall know them." I always thought Jesus was a rotten theologian, but he is jolly good at politics."

"We're at great risk of dying of niceness [...] I hate niceness."

"English national identity is too important to be left to the loons of the BNP and the EDL [English Defence League]."

"[The governments "British values" should include] queuing, drunkenness, nostalgia, loving pets, self-loathing, wit and eccentricity."

"Freedom of speech wasn’t won by being nice, it has been won by struggle with religion."

"[On Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech] His prophesy was absolutely right in one sense. The Tiber did not foam with blood but flames lambent, they wrapped around Tottenham and wrapped around Clapham. But it wasn't inter-community violence. This is where he was absolutely wrong. [Referring to another participant in the discussion, Owen Jones, author of Chavs: the Demonisation of the Working Classes] What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs that you wrote about have become black."

"[Shakespeare's date of birth (23 April) as a potential English national day] If we decide to go down this route of an English national day, it will mean we have become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish [...] We do not make a great fact about Shakespeare, like the Scots do about that deeply boring, provincial poet Burns, and we do not have national music like the awful bagpipe. The Scots and the Welsh are typical small nations with a romantic 19th-century-style nationalism."

"The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion and black and white boys and girls operate in this language together. This language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England and that is why so many of us have this sense of literally of a foreign country."

"If you think about it, Alex Salmond is a democratic Caledonian Hitler, although some would say Hitler was more democratically elected."

"In fact, they go so far as to differentiate their status between inner scholarii – who have been inducted into the mysteries as Elton's own students – and discipuli, an outer and less privileged band who have only sat at his feet, without the benefit of formal instruction. Long ago, in my own very happy days in Elton's seminar, we used to divide the group into Eltonians and Eltonettes. These were roughly to be equated with 'us' and 'them', English and Americans. Eltonians, we thought, grasped the essence of what Elton was trying to do without needing to imitate the style; Eltonettes reproduced the form to the last perfection of pedantry, but caught nothing of the substance. There is too much in this volume that confirms our arrogance."

"[Advocating for 'leave' in the then forthcoming EU membership referendum] We have a very large trade deficit with Europe, we have a decent trade balance with the rest of the world. Is Europe going to cut off its nose to spite its face? It seems to me so infinitely unlikely. There's no risk. There would be a risk if we were running a German-style trade surplus with Europe. But we're not. The problem of our leaving Europe is a problem for the Germans and not us."

"What are the points of comparison? Well, we have a political movement that has a single historic explanation for why your country is facing such terrible oppression; it’s either Versailles or the Treaty of the Union. You have a particular group of people who are responsible for this; it is either the English or the Jews."

"You have as a symbol the twisted cross: the saltire or the swastika. You have a passionate belief in economic self-sufficiency: known by the Nazis as autarky and the Scots as oil. And also you have the propensity of your elderly and middle-aged male supporters to expose their knees."

"[The English, particularly some on the left, are] incapable of recognising that this is national socialism. And the nationalism is much more important than the socialism, as it was in Germany. The socialism is a very fragile, superficial thing. The nationalism is very real."

"Slavery was not genocide otherwise there wouldn't be so many damn blacks in Africa or Britain would there? An awful lot of them survived."

"The entire machinery of academic promotion and academic endorsement and of academic advancement has been taken over, and therefore heretics like me have to be routed out. It's very similar to what happened to German universities under Hitler. The group that is most vulnerable, I'm afraid, are intellectuals. Right over the country, you have these kinds of implantations of Metropolitan wokeness. The universities are acting rather like Covid spreaders, these are the super spreaders. These people wear a cloak of impenetrable virtue. We've been here before. This is Robespierre."

"I've always had a naughty streak. I've always challenged authority. I'm on the right but it's kind of ironic on the right. I've studied kings, so I’m very aware of the feet of clay of authority."

"The determination is to replace the Holocaust with slavery. In other words, this is why Jews are under such attack from the left, there’s jealousy, fundamentally. There is jealousy of the moral primacy of the Holocaust and a determination to replace it with slavery."

"There’s no point in arguing against globalisation or Western civilisation – they are all products of it. We are all products of it [...] The honest teaching of the British empire is to say it was the first key stage of world globalisation. It was probably the most important moment in human history and it is still with us. As for the idea that slavery is this terrible disease that dare not speak its name. It only dare not speak its name because we settled it 200 years ago. Do you know what, we had Catholic emancipation at pretty much the exact same time we got rid of slavery – in the 1830s - we don’t go on about that."

"In the name of acceptance, of broadening, of anti-discrimination, we're at the risk of undoing what is our only claim to survive in the future. The only thing that's made these little islands what they are is this astonishing burst of creativity of the last 500 years. It is our individualism, it's our bloody mindedness, our awkwardness, our refusal to fit into categories that has made us, dare I use the word, great. And if we lose that we are lost, we have absolutely nothing else. The world that my enemies are trying to create is one that we will just go down the tubes, we are finished. I believe in going down fighting."

"[Responding to a suggestion Prime minister Rishi Sunak appeared to be "detached, or at least semi-detached, from this coronation" from journalist Andrew Pierce] Invisible. I think one of the reasons that I think a lot has gone wrong, for example, why parliament has not been properly represented at the coronation of a parliamentary monarchy, is because the government isn't interested in the constitution. The prime minister, the man of immense talent, of extraordinary skill, but really, not fully grounded in our culture [...] I know that's a difficult and controversial thing to say, but I think it's true. And, again, this coronation is going to highlight far too much our differences rather than what unites us."

"Movements like critical race theory and Black Lives Matter are not what they pretend to be. They are attempts at destroying the entire legitimacy of the Western political and cultural tradition. The idea that they are there to defend black lives is a preposterous notion. They do not care about black lives, they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture. We have to be absolutely clear about this. The narrative of Black Lives Matter is that Western culture and Anglo-American culture in particular are fundamentally morally defective, they are characterised by the mark of Cain and their strategy is to do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust."

"It is an almost universal characteristic among autocrats that they cling compulsively to power, to the detriment alike of their subjects and their reputation."

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

"But though India was never thoroughly subdued by the sword of Islam, and though the country only became partially Mahomedan, yet the whole framework of her institutions was shaken and dislocated by incessant resistance. The Mahomedans disorganized Hinduism without substituting any strong religious edifice of their own, as they managed to do elsewhere. The military adventurers, who founded dynasties in Northern India and carved out kingdoms in the Deklian, cared little for things spiritual; most of them had, indeed, no time for proselytism, being continually engaged in conquest or in civil war."

"Indian annals for the next century were to be written in blood. During a reign of thirty years Mahmud the Iconoclast invaded India no less than twelve times, causing carnage wherever he was resisted, desecrating the Hindu temples and destroying their idols. Mathura, in the centre ; Kanauj, in the east ; Somnath, the gloomy shrine of Siva, on the coast of Kathia war; in such distant and divergent spots he smote the Rajput ; Mathura, or " Muttra," was sacked in 1017, Kanauj in the following year. Somnath, which was under the sovereignty of the Chalukya House of Kalian, was captured after an assault of three days' duration. This was in 1025, when the great statue of Mahadeo is said to have been destroyed, and the doors of his temple carried away to fill the gateway where the conqueror was to be entombed."

"In the Neighing of an Horse, or in the growling of a Mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more humanity, than many time in the Tragical flights of Shakespear."

"Failing at least initial moves towards such a compromise, it does indeed look likely that there will be some form of new Russian attack on Ukraine, though by no means necessarily a large-scale invasion. In the event of war, however far the Russian army marches will be followed by a new Russian proposal for a deal in return for Russian withdrawal. The only difference between then and now will be that NATO will have been humiliated by its inability to fight, the West and Ukraine will be in a much weaker position to negotiate a favorable deal—and that in the meantime, thousands of people will have died."

"Therefore Aristotle is always telling us that Poetry is σπουδαιότερον καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον, is more general and abstracted, is led more by the Philosophy, the reason and nature of things, than History: which only records things higley, piglety, right or wrong as they happen."

"My Russian interlocutors, some of whom I’ve known for many years, are by no means pro-Western anymore; they’re very angry with Western policy in recent years and they’re not pro-Ukrainian. But I have to say they’re horrified by what has happened. They really didn’t expect an invasion on this scale. They thought something would happen, but that it would be much more limited."

"It may also be pointed out that in the Middle East, it is the U.S. that has frequently acted as a disruptor as with the invasion of Iraq, the destruction of the Libyan state, and Trump’s decision to abandon the nuclear agreement with Iran, while Russia has often defended the status quo—partly due to a fear of Islamist terrorism that it shares with the U.S."

"Incidentally, the argument here that this is necessary because it’s up to the Ukrainians — at this point, what is the first country that would be completely destroyed? Has anyone thought of asking ordinary Ukrainians if that is a price they think worth paying?"

"Russia will do their utmost not to target civilians in Ukraine or Ukrainian cities, because their whole political plan depends on keeping enough of the population on their side. But if enough of the Ukrainian troops retreat into the cities to fight it out, then the cities will be badly damaged and lots of civilians will be killed. That will obviously tarnish Russia still further in the eyes of Western and international opinion, but it will also make it even more difficult politically for Russia’s plans within Ukraine."

"The existing crisis with Russia has origins that go far beyond Putin. Russia has a foreign and security blob, just as does the United States, with a set of semi-permanent beliefs about Russian vital interests rooted in national history and culture, which are shared by large parts of the population. These include the exclusion of hostile military alliances from Russia’s neighborhood and the protection of the political position and cultural rights of Russian minorities. In the case of Ukraine, NATO membership for that country implied the expulsion of Russia from the naval base of Sevastopol in Crimea (a city of immense importance to Russia, both strategic and emotional), and the creation of a hard international frontier between Russia and the Russian and Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine, making up more than a third of the Ukrainian population."

"Russian propaganda says that the Maidan Revolution was simply a coup and orchestrated by America. Well, no, because many ordinary Ukrainians, especially younger Ukrainians, including Russian-speaking Ukrainians, desperately wanted to get away from this horribly corrupt, economically stagnant post-Soviet reality and join the West"

"It was remarkable how few people were asking: How does what America is doing or threatening to do or will do as an occupying force — how is that likely to resemble what America did in Vietnam? And how far do the illusions of universal primacy and of supposedly defending freedom and democracy against its enemies — how is that contributing, in fact, to the militarization of U.S. policy and the undermining of global peace?"

"The phrase “a new cold war” is a cheap journalistic formula, but it contains real dangers. The United States’ geopolitical competition with China is fundamentally different from that with the Soviet Union, and if the U.S. establishment frames it in the terms of the Cold War, it may do great damage to the United States and the world in general. ... Beijing’s ambitions shouldn’t be treated as an existential threat to the United States."

"There were 600,000 dead, 14,000,000 driven from their homes 100,000 young girls kidnapped by both sides, forcibly converted or sold on the auction block ... One convoy of Sikhs and Hindus from West Punjab was 74 miles long, and raiders (Muslim mobs) who attack it constantly en route did not need to watch for it: they could smell its coming, for it was riddled with cholera and other foul diseases ... there took place murder, looting, burning and raping such as the world had not seen since the days of Chengiz Khan."

"It would mean the end of civilization. As innumerable studies have shown, it would be exceptionally difficult in those circumstances to avoid escalation to total nuclear war... Humanity as such would survive in extremely poor shape. America, Russia, Europe would not."

"Russia and America are still talking on fairly cordial terms in public, as indeed are Russia and Western Europe, and the dialogue continues on energy and other subjects... The most important element was probably a negative, which is that the U.S. has still not agreed, unlike the rest of the world, to accept Russia into the WTO... the fact of the matter is, given its record at present, the U.S. is in a very weak position when it comes to lecturing Russia on a whole range of subjects, and Putin, on the other hand, is in a pretty strong position, above all, because he does have the support of the overwhelming majority of Russians."

"A central distinction in realist international relations thought is that between vital and secondary national interests. Vital interests are threats to a state’s survival, and can take the form either of conquest and subjugation from outside... Rivalry between the United States and China is not a battle to the death of this kind, and it is very important that the United States not see it as such."

"Russia perceives NATO as an enemy — fair enough: NATO perceives Russia as an enemy — and is determined to prevent major countries on Russia’s borders from becoming members of NATO. Russia, in this way, I have to say, is no different from the United States. Your previous segment was about the history of U.S. coups in Honduras and other parts of Latin America to ensure that this area remains in American sphere of influence, or at the very least that external powers are excluded from that region. It’s called the Monroe Doctrine, right? Russia is no different in that regard. It doesn’t mean that Putin hopes for a new Soviet Union, but he does certainly want to keep NATO out of that region and is prepared to fight, as he’s shown in the past, to stop that happening. The problem about NATO is that it talks the talk, but, I mean, no serious person thinks that European countries, with the possible exception of Poland, will go to war for Ukraine. So, this, as well as the gas dependence, which you mentioned, is, in the end, a major card in Russia’s hand, that — in the very last resort. I’m not saying that the Putin government wants war, but it is prepared to go to war in the very last resort, and NATO almost certainly is not... Zelensky is extremely unpopular now for the failure to improve the economic situation — worsened by COVID, of course — and continued very high levels of corruption."