“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
― John Milton , Areopagitica
Last week I gave a talk, entitled ‘Free Speech in Authoritarian Times?’ to an audience of 24 or so people, mainly but not exclusively English, brought together by Phil and Francesca Harrison under the banner of the Kalamitsi Arts Group in the old village school of Kalamitsi Amigdali. It was sweeping, ridden with obvious silences and contradictions. I had no intention of posting it here. My desire was no more than to raise questions in an often unquestioning world. However, whilst walking this morning, worrying about to what extent I am doing anything useful politically anymore, it struck me that, if nothing else, I should continue to scribble. Trying to write personally and politically is some sort of activism. And it’s long overdue that I cease self-censorship, that I rid my head of today’s puritanical authoritarians, housed in both corporate and state institutions, academic and bureaucratic or employed as no more than stenographers in the mainstream media. Being immersed in John Milton and J. S. Mill recently has strengthened a conviction that I should cast caution to the winds in order to speak freely and eccentrically.
“In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
In the next few weeks or so I’ll revisit my scattered, handwritten notes and post a revised version here.
In the meantime I’ll begin, as frequently promised but rarely delivered, drawing your attention to writing I find challenging, precisely because it is often but not always at odds with much of my ‘Left’ history.
First off the mark is :
The Most Dramatic Narrative Shift in Modern History
Jeffrey Tucker, the author of this article, is described as a libertarian anarcho-capitalist and is the president of the Brownstone Institute, which, in its words, is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded May 2021. Its vision is of a society that places the highest value on the voluntary interaction of individuals and groups while minimizing the use of violence and force including that which is exercised by public or private authorities. This vision is that of the Enlightenment which elevated learning, science, progress, and universal rights to the forefront of public life. Presently, it is constantly threatened by ideologies and systems that would take the world back to before the triumph of the ideal of freedom.
It represents a liberal tradition, which has been sidelined by both neoliberalism and social democracy. Given both these ideologies are in crisis and sliding deeper into authoritarianism, the supporters of the Institute see the possibility of a renewal of its creed. Certainly at this particular moment their interpretation of the Trump phenomenon is generous, contrary and even naive. Yet theirs is a voice that needs to be heard.
These few paragraphs in themselves deserve discussion.
As it turns out, generations of ideological philosophizing had been chasing fictional rabbits. This is true for all the main debates about socialism and capitalism but also the side debates about religion, demographics, climate change, and so much more. Nearly everyone had been distracted from seeing the things that matter by hunting for things that did not actually matter.
This realization transversed typical partisan and ideological boundaries. Those who did not like to think about issues of class conflict had to face the ways in which the whole system was serving one class at the expense of everyone else. The cheerleaders of government beneficence faced the unthinkable: their true love had become malevolent. The champions of private enterprise had to deal with the ways in which private corporations participated and benefited from the entire fiasco. All major political parties and their journalistic backers participated.
No one’s ideological priors were confirmed in the course of events, and everyone was forced to realize that the world worked in a very different way from what we had been told. Most governments in the world had come to be controlled by people no one elected and these administrative forces were loyal not to voters but to industrial interests in media and pharma, while the intellectuals we had long trusted to say what is true went along with even the craziest of claims, while condemning dissent.
Rightly or wrongly I’ve felt a certain disdain from both Left intellectuals, politicians and activists towards the notion of the deep state. I’ve found this perplexing, especially as Chris Mullin, a Labour MP wrote a successful novel, ‘A Very British Coup’ back in 1982. Within its pages Harry Perkins appears as the left-wing Leader of the Labour Party and Member of Parliament for Sheffield Central. Beating all the odds, Harry becomes Prime Minister following a landslide victory in the 1989 general election, and sets out to dismantle media monopolies, establish Britain as a neutral country through withdrawal from NATO, the removal of American military bases from British soil and unilateral nuclear disarmament, achieve public control of finances, revive manufacturing by withdrawing from the Common Market and imposing import controls, and create an open government. Many people in the media, financial services, and the intelligence services are deeply unhappy with Harry’s win and his policies, and they unite with the United States government to stop him by any means.
For those of us involved in the labour movement of the time, often Leninist in our outlook yet supportive of the charismatic Methodist Socialist, Tony Benn, the scenario painted was certainly credible. However its diagnosis of the political situation was deeply worrying, especially for the Labour Party’s leadership at all levels and its membership. It suggested, at the very least, that the parliamentary road to socialism was fraught. The conclusion that the Party could not be a vehicle for radical change was too much to bear. Perhaps the demise of Corbynism has put paid finally to the illusion that there is a party political path to emancipation.
In recent years, as Christian Parenti, a professor of economics at the John Jay College, CYNU. notes, in the following article, the idea of the deep state has become a key part of MAGA [Make America Great Again] politics. My belief of four decades ago that a deep state stood firmly in the way of revolution was described as Far Left. To argue still that the deep state is a profound obstacle to implementing the demands of working people is to be Far Right.
The Left-Wing Origins of ‘Deep State’ Theory
Christian Parenti begins:
War has come to the deep state or so it seems. During Donald Trump’s first weeks in office, he summarily fired a dozen top FBI officials and a similar number of US attorneys deemed hostile to the White House, and nominated deep-state critics including Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for cabinet posts, while issuing executive orders to declassify all documents related to the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency dismantled the CIA’s favorite cutout, USAID.
Given the centrality of the “deep state” to the MAGA worldview, merely uttering the phrase will immediately code you as a Trump partisan. But until quite recently, the concept was the province of the political left. Understanding its origins and evolution makes clear that the stakes are far greater than the political fate of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. The deep state is a cancer that undermines popular sovereignty. Those who wish to restore democratic rule, regardless of political orientation, must therefore take it seriously.
He ends:
“The deep state is a cancer that undermines popular sovereignty.”
A robust national debate is also essential if we are to prevent the deep state’s relaunch from within the “reformed” remnants of old agencies. In short, this surgery cannot be left to the experts: It requires the disinfecting sunlight of declassification and public discussion. If the vaults of files are not disgorged, then it will be clear that Trumpian efforts against the deep state are nothing but limited insider-vs-insider score settling. Popular pressure must be exerted now to help us avoid that fate.
CHATTING CRITICALLY 