The greatest judge since Pontius Pilate

Dalrymple writes that

for those neither famous nor in a position to ignore their economic interests, and who do not wish to be martyrs to an outcry by the canting Twitterers, fear of repercussion has entered into anything that they say about an increasing number of subjects. Even conversations in private are constrained, due to fear of denunciation. As the Soviets and the Nazis found, private denunciation was one of the pleasures of totalitarianism.

He relates that a 73-year-old part-time lecturer in engineering at Solent University in Southampton

had a conversation with a colleague: a private conversation that led to his dismissal, subsequently upheld by a cowardly minor judge.

Stephen Lamonby had met his superior, Janet Bonar, in the university cafeteria.

During their discussion, he said that Jews were the cleverest people in the world, though they were much maligned for it, and that Germans were good at engineering, which he ascribed to their being part of a society that had long valued and promoted engineering. Bonar was so offended by what he said, even though it was not in a public forum, that, according to Lamonby, she started to shout. In an act worthy of the NKVD, she subsequently reported him to the authorities.

In the university hearing into the matter, Dalrymple reports, the deputy vice-chancellor, Julie Hall, said that Lamonby did not understand that what he had said was offensive, and he was dismissed for ‘gross misconduct’ — gross, mark you, not minor. Bonar said that she was ‘concerned’ about students being taught by someone with his ‘entrenched racist views’. It was not alleged that he was incompetent in his teaching, nor that he was anti-Semitic: he was not one of those conspiracy theorists who will grant that the Jews are clever but use their cleverness to take over the world.

Later, in turning down Lamonby’s appeal, the judge, C.H. O’Rourke, said:

For the avoidance of doubt, I find that it is at least potentially racist to group nationalities, races, ethnic or religious groups, by entire categories and to ascribe certain abilities or talents (or the opposite) to them, when, of course, as with any such group, talents or abilities will vary widely from individual to individual.

He rejected Lamonby’s argument that he was employing a positive stereotype.

With an astonishing lack of logic or attention to the meanings of words, the judge ruled that a Jewish physicist might take offence at his success being ascribed to the fact that he was Jewish rather than to his individual ability or hard work. But since being Jewish and working hard are not mutually exclusive — eminence in most fields is inconceivable without hard work, such that Mozart, a genius if ever there was one, worked and studied extremely hard — no one worth worrying about would ascribe brilliance in physics simply to the fact of being Jewish.

The judge said that the positive stereotype — he did not deny that it was positive —was nevertheless

potentially offensive to the recipient.

Dalrymple notes here the use, for the second time, of the word ‘potentially’ in what the judge said in finding that Lamonby was rightly dismissed. He comments:

Potentially, this use of the word ‘potentially’ could usher in full-blown totalitarianism, for it implies no requirement for any harm to have been caused by a person for him to be punished but only the potential for him to have caused harm. As Kafka put it, ‘Someone must have traduced Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.’

And what is the harm that Lamonby potentially caused, in the judge’s opinion?

In addition to any offence to Jews, non-Jews might be offended, even ‘grossly’ offended, because they might feel that some characteristic — presumably undesirable, though the judge didn’t specify what — was being ascribed to them.

Eggshell theory

The judge, says Dalrymple, was enunciating

the eggshell theory of the human psyche. If someone takes offence against something someone says, that is sufficient to be a justiciable harm. Gone is the ‘reasonable man’ of traditional English jurisprudence, in assessing whether behaviour is threatening or so insulting as to constitute mitigation for a loss of temper: one is threatened, bullied, insulted, offended if one says that one is, and that is enough to be actionable at law. Feelings become legislators.

In his final sally against freedom of speech, the judge said of Lamonby’s views that anyone might be offended because he spoke about things that

were none of his business.

Dalrymple comments:

If people were to be denied employment for saying something that was none of their business, the world unemployment rate would be close to 100%, except perhaps in North Korea. Nor did the judge make any distinction between what is said in public and what in private.

In a world ruled by the judge,

no generalisations about people would be possible, not even such as, say, that the Dutch are the tallest people in the world. To him, it is irrelevant whether such generalisations are true. That Jews are clever, for whatever reason, seems to be borne out by the disproportionate number of Nobel prizes they win. That Germans are good at engineering seems to be borne out by their cars, machine tools, and other products requiring engineering skill. But mere facts, however obvious, must not interfere with the expression of the right sentiments and the suppression of the wrong ones.

The woman who informed on Lamonby, the vice-chancellor of the university, the employment tribunal that said that the university had a duty to its multicultural student body to ‘protect it from potential acts of racism’, and the judge who rejected Lamonby’s appeal

all had substituted cant for thought.

Dalrymple speculates on why. He thinks the answer might be found

in a word: racism. They were furious with Lamonby because, if what he said were true (for whatever reason) — that Jews were clever and that Germans were good at engineering — it must be true also that other people were less clever and less good at engineering, an impermissible thought. Why impermissible? Because, in their heart of hearts, they fear the possible explanations of inequality of outcome. That is why they do not want a society with no legal impediments to anyone, where everyone is left to find his own level.

The mighty Germans

Dalrymple observes that those in Britain who backed Brexit

are often accused of nostalgia for a past in which the country was powerful, but I do not think this nostalgia, if it ever existed, was very widespread. One might say that nostalgia, on the part of France, was and is a driving force in the European Union, since it is only by union with Germany than France can aspire to a semi-Napoleonic role in Europe.

He notes that Germany

is once again by far the strongest power on the continent.

Its interests

are complex and no doubt contradictory:

• it wants the rest of Europe to continue to import its goods
• it does not want to fund, or mutualise, the debts that allow it to do so

The southern countries

would like either to mutualise the debts or inflate them away by debasing the currency, but Germany will allow neither of these solutions to the imbalances within Europe. There would be no better way to re-awake German nationalism than follow the prescriptions of the southern nations; on the other hand, resentment of Germany will grow if they are not followed.

A sure way to revive German nationalism

Oddly enough, the Germans don’t seem keen to furnish the bazooka

Impose redistributive loans on Berlin for Keynesian purposes!

Dalrymple observes that negative-yielding bonds, representing a quarter of debt issued, are

hardly a resounding vote of confidence in the future. They are like an umbrella to protect us from an approaching monsoon.

He points out that economic gloom

is growing in Europe, where growth remains low and youth unemployment in many countries is high.

Yet-lower interest rates, penalising savers,

will not revive EU countries’ economies. Having lost control of their currencies as a result of monetary union, these countries cannot apply a fiscal stimulus.

Lagarde thinks she has the answer

We hear calls, echoed recently by Christine Lagarde, for a large European budget that can apply a stimulus to various countries as necessary. Such a budget, Dalrymple explains,

is seen by some as an antidote to the growth of populist nationalism in Europe, supposedly the consequence of the continent’s economic woes. An editorial in the Guardian, daily bible of the bien-pensants of much of the English-speaking world, was headed: The nationalism that taps into people’s angst and dislocation can be effectively challenged with a bazooka of a eurozone budget. In other words, if only governments of countries in which populism—that is to say, the popularity of one’s opponents—spent enough money to revive their economies, the people would return to their senses and re-enter the social-democratic fold that has served Europe so well—even if it led to the present trouble.

Where will the firepower of the proposed bazooka come from?

There can be only one answer under the present dispensation: from Germany. Oddly enough, the Germans don’t seem keen to furnish the bazooka. They have had some recent experience of large-scale lending, and it was not altogether happy in its results, economic or political.

A genuinely closer political union (the supposed aim of the European Union, but which Europeans have repeatedly said they do not want) might impose redistributive loans on Germany for Keynesian purposes—other countries in the EU outvoting Berlin.

It’s not easy to imagine the Germans accepting this. There could hardly be a better way to revive German nationalism, one of the eventualities that is the target of the proposed bazooka to destroy.

The situation would be even more dangerous because Germany

has achieved its pre-eminent economic position, in part, by not allowing a commensurate increase in the standard of living of its people, who may not be pleased to play the role assigned them by the EU. Polls already suggest that this is so.

 

The prideful Germans beat their breasts

The doctor-writer’s diagnosis of the deep German psychopathology — and why the rest of us always end up paying a heavy price for it

Dalrymple writes that a healthy patriotism

seems to be denied to Germany. The historical reasons for this are perfectly obvious, of course. But it is more difficult to rid oneself of pride than one might think: one can become proud of one’s lack of pride.

Moral exhibitionism

When Angela Merkel agreed to take more than a million migrants,

it was easy in her gesture to see her desire to restore the moral reputation of her nation.

One motive touted,

that with its ageing and declining population, Germany needed more young labour, is absurd: there are millions of unemployed young Spaniards, Italians and Greeks on its doorstep who could have been absorbed with much less difficulty.

Still the bully

The problem arises when Germany,

newly proud of its openness to refugees, tries to make other countries suffer the consequences of its policy, in the name of some kind of abstract principle. Thus other countries, such as Hungary, are to be bullied into taking refugees or face hostility and ostracism. (No one asks the refugees themselves whether they want to be resettled in Hungary. They are abstractions in the European psychodrama, not people of flesh and blood, with desires and ambitions of their own.)

Uriah Heep

The desire of the Germans

to overcome or dissolve their German-ness in the tepid bath of European Union-ness is the consequence of a certain historiography in which all of German history is but a run-up to Nazism: in other words that Nazism is immanent in the German soul, and the only way to control it is to tie it down as Gulliver was. But this supposed need does not exist to anything like the same extent in other countries, which may nevertheless be constrained by German power, influence and financial might to follow suit. The key to contemporary Europe may perhaps be found in the character of Uriah Heep.

Europe’s decay into irrelevance

The auguries for Europe are not good, writes Dalrymple,

not only because of the political immobilism that elaborate systems of social security have caused in most European countries, but because of the European multinational entity that is being created against the wishes of the peoples of Europe.

The European Union serves several purposes, none of which have much to do with the challenges facing the continent. It

• helps Germans to forget that they are Germans, and gives them another identity rather more pleasing in their estimation
• allows the French to forget that they are a medium-sized nation, one among many, and gives them the illusion of power and importance
• acts as a giant pension fund for politicians who are no longer willing or able successfully to compete in the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics, and enables them to hang on to influence and power long after they have been rejected at the polls
• acts as a fortress against the winds of competition that are blowing from all over the world and that are deeply unsettling to people who desire security above all else

Monotony and feebleness of Eurofederalist argumentation

The best hope for the European Union, writes Dalrymple,

would be for it to eventually evolve into an enormous Belgium. More likely, it will evolve into an enormous Yugoslavia circa 1990.

The European political class and its intellectual cheerleaders

appear determined to produce one or the other. Whenever I listen to the defenders of the European Union I am astonished at the thinness of their argumentation and the ruthlessness of their determination.

Here are just three of the feeble and sketchy arguments:

1. European civilisation is superior to all others, for it is the only one that has ever accorded adult status to individuals. From now until 2020, 130m children will enter forced marriages. Without the indispensable infrastructure that is the European Union, Europe will be swept away by ill winds that blow from all directions.

Dalrymple:

Preposterous and cowardly. European civilisation predated the European Union by some years. The malign trend does not reach Europe from all directions—not from North or South America, for example, or Russia. The words are directed against Muslims, though there is not the courage to say so. There is no danger or prospect of forced marriage becoming general in Europe, nor is there any reason to suppose that a Europewide state would be better at preventing or prohibiting it among Muslim minorities than the present nation states are.

2. The only way of combating the kind of nationalism that led to catastrophic European wars is European federalism.

Dalrymple:

Absurd. There is no reason to believe that, but for the European Union, Portugal would attack Estonia, Ireland Luxembourg, or Greece Denmark. The only plausible candidates for a serious military conflict on the continent are France and Germany. What is really being said is that the European Union is necessary to contain Germany. This is to subscribe to the view of the Germans as eternal militarists, the inevitable enemy of France. I do not believe that but for the European Union, Germany would attack France.

3. The countries of Europe must unite politically in order to compete in the world. Large countries such as China, India, and the USA have clout; there is no place for small countries. In order to be of any account, European nations must forgo sovereignty and become part of a heftier entity.

Dalrymple:

This ignores

• the political difficulties of union
• the impossibility of making a functioning democracy of so many different nations
• the inevitable clashes of national interest that federalisation would entail

It also ignores the evidence that many of the most successful countries in the world are small. There is no reason why countries cannot cooperate, including militarily, without pooling sovereignty; such pooling as has occurred in Europe has held its prosperity back. The currency union without any kind of fiscal union has proved disastrous for several countries, and is economically deleterious for all. But the further step of fiscal union could only be imposed by an unelected, authoritarian bureaucracy upon countries unwilling to comply, and whose interests might not be served by compliance. Sooner or later, a federation would lead to war, or at least to revolution.

The arguments of the federalists

are trotted out with monotonous regularity, like the stories of someone with Alzheimer’s, and anyone who raises objections, however obvious and unanswerable, is immediately compared to a rabid nationalist, as if to be attached to a national identity were a symptom of hating everyone else. There are such rabid nationalists, to be sure. Forced federation is the best way of ensuring their increase in numbers and influence.

The badness of an idea

does nothing to halt its progress. Europe is sleepwalking (yet again) to cataclysm.

Bad old habits of the Germans

Dalrymple writes that a common European identity

has to be forged deliberately and artificially, and one of the imperatives for attempting to do so is the need of Germans for an identity that is not German. And since the Germans are very powerful in Europe, by weight of their economy, their need to escape from themselves by absorbing everyone into a new collective identity will sooner or later be perceived in the rest of Europe as the need to impose themselves— as a return to their bad old habits.

The shame of being German

Cologne is noted for its vibrant nightlife

The European Union, writes Dalrymple, is

a bureaucratic monster, unaccountable to anyone resembling a normal human being.

It is also a

vast pension plan for ageing or burnt-out politicians who cannot any longer face the inconveniences of having to be elected.

Why are the Germans so keen on it? Why do they yearn so much for a European identity? Dalrymple’s answer:

So that they can stop being German. This, of course, will deceive no one.

The German longing to travel

For several decades, writes Dalrymple.

it was impermissible for Germans to allude publicly to their sufferings during and immediately after the war, much of which must have been innocent, unless it be considered that all Germans were equally guilty ex officio.

The impermissibility of publicly expressed complaint was

a powerful stimulus of the Wirtschaftswunder.

It also left

a legacy of emptiness that all the reflective Germans I have met seem to feel. Perhaps it explains the German longing to travel, greater than that of any nation I know.

Welcome to Yugoslavia

Boches beware

The old hatreds are stirring

At the end of his book Bismarck Herring: The German Poison, MEP and Parti de Gauche co-leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was a presidential candidate in 2012 (he got 11.1% of the vote), points out that France retains independent military power, with, observes Dalrymple,

the clear implied message that Germany does not.

It was, says Dalrymple,

in the highest degree irresponsible

to cobble together in a monetary union

two large countries – two large blocs of countries – with such different attitudes and interests. One of the justifications trotted out for the European Union is that it brings peace, as if, without it, Slovenia would attack Spain. In fact, by making neither living together nor divorce feasible, it is fostering a conflict such as that of the former Yugoslavia.

Notes on Germany and France

The Germans, Dalrymple explains,

have, or want to have, faith in their currency. The folk memory of inflations is still strong in Germany. Inflation is their bugbear and fiscal rectitude their policy, irrespective of who is in power. The rebuilding of the country and the achievement of monetary stability is their source of national pride. Financial rectitude is visible in their private lives: the Germans use credit cards far less than the French, let alone the British. When the German banks joined in the financial debauchery of the 1990s and 2000s, afraid of missing out, it turned out that they were no good at it. Speculation was not their forte.

As for the French, they

receive good value for their taxation. The country is conspicuously well-administered, as anyone who has driven through it will attest; and, in my experience, French bureaucrats, however much their onerous and Byzantine exactions may be detested, are much more intelligent and efficient than British ones. The French have a faith in their state which is in part justified. Its benefits are obvious every day; its stultifying effects are less evident except to the smaller proportion of the population that attempts something new.

The French duty to cheat the fiscal tyrants

In France there is, Dalrymple discerns,

a cultural predisposition to assume that while private profit is reprehensible, public expenditure paid for by tax is inherently good. This does not preclude a private avidity for money or a belief that cheating or deceiving the taxman is a proper sport, like cycling or swimming.