Plus c’est le meme chose, plus ca change….

George Orwell, in 1941, in his essay “England Your England“

The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality. Many intellectuals of the Left were flabbily pacifist up to 1935, shrieked for war against Germany in the years 1935-1939, and them promptly cooled off when the war started. It is broadly though not precisely true that the people who were the most “anti-fascist” during the Spanish civil war are most defeatist now. And underlying this is the really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia - their severance from the common culture of the country.

In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse-racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God save the King” than of stealing from a poor box.

All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judge that they were “decadent” and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible….

It is, of course, an open question as to whether the American Left can boast a single “intellectual” when their model for house intellectual is Charlie Rose or worse, Bill Moyers. But if Paul Johnson’s definition is apt (”an intellectual is someone who cares more about ideas than about people”) there might be a few.

Albert Gore doesn’t quality but Noam Chomsky probably does. The former is a raving lunatic on all fronts, but the latter poses interesting ideas about linguistics even though he has detestable opinions about politics.

Fortunately for the West, Britain could decline into leftist irrelevance because America sat in the wings ready to rescue the world from barbarism. But today, if not us, who? The worms are in the apple.

Archived in: Europe, History, Liberalism, Pacifism, Patriotism, United Kingdom