On Criminals and Capital Punishment

Flick through the numerous TV channels on Freeview on any night of the week, any week of the year, and you are guaranteed to find endlessly repeated episodes of Top Gear. But you will also just as surely come across programmes that bring you up close and personal with some of the most hardened criminals and gang members serving time in some of the world's most notorious prisons. And these shows - even when fronted by someone as likeable as Louis Theroux - have a phenomenally depressing effect.

It could be, I suppose, that some producers are interested in humane reform and want to shock us out of our complacency by forcing us to think more carefully and more compassionately about the issues and the people caught up within the criminal justice system. But most shows simply seem sensational and exploitative; turning human misery into cheap and voyeuristic entertainment.    

Either way, I suspect that many viewers will - like me - come away completely dispirited and despairing about the entire penal system and the deplorable wretches confined within it. And some will find themselves asking what's the point of keeping extremely violent and irredeemable offenders banged up for life behind bars; why not just have them all exterminated without fuss or any further ado?

These viewers are not moral and intellectual monsters and the question is not, I think, completely illegitimate.

Rather, like Lawrence, they have been driven partly by despair and partly by a form of utopianism into thinking such thoughts and into examining their souls for a way forward; they know a new vision of society is needed and that the true criminal should be afforded no place within it; they know that, at a certain point - and due to the very nature of the crimes committed - these shaven-headed, tattooed imbeciles with what Carlyle memorably describes as ape-faces, imp-faces, angry dog-faces [and] heavy sullen ox-faces, have compromised their humanity and, thus, all claim to rights based on such. 

I don't even think we should regard their elimination as capital punishment. It's simply pest control; the necessary destruction of vermin who have no interest in rehabilitation, but just want to steal, rape, torture, and murder for personal gain and personal pleasure; individuals who, as Rod Liddle rightly says, couldn't care less about society or its laws.    

As Liddle also says, if being nice to criminals worked, we'd all be happy to shower them with kindness. But it doesn't. Nor does being cruel and vindictive and it's here that Liddle and I part company; for what doesn't kill these individuals only serves to make them stronger. And so we might as well be honest with ourselves and deprive them not merely of their freedom, but of their foul lives (though this means of course granting to the State - that coldest of all cold monsters - powers that we might later regret handing over).  

See: 

D. H. Lawrence, '[Return to Bestwood]', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 13-24. Lawrence places his call for the execution of those he designates as true criminals within a wider programme of state eugenics, justified by his philosophical vitalism. 

Rod Liddle, 'The Spectator has gone soft - prisons should be much nastier places', in The Spectator, 26 Nov 2016: click here to read online. I'm grateful to Liddle for the reference to Thomas Carlyle that I made use of above.

They Don't Shoot White Women Like Me ...

Photo by Alex Klavens: 

Protestor at a Black Lives Matter event

Boston, MA (4 Dec 2014)

Someone I used to know back in the day has recently got in touch after a thirty year hiatus in our friendship, during which time she's been married and divorced, raised a brat and battled cancer, whilst, it seems, all the time holding true to the radical ideals of social justice and equality that shaped her youth. Indeed, she tells me that she has been re-energized politically by Jeremy Corbyn.   

In the distant, punky-reggae past she was involved in all kind of things, including Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. I don't know who she loved more; Joe Strummer, whom she wanted to fuck; or Nelson Mandela, whom she wanted to free. 

And today, it's still black issues that seem to exercise her most - even though she is herself lily-white and from a privileged, privately educated background. She forgets, I suspect, that this was one of the things that originally caused friction between us, as I grew increasingly impatient with her and those like her who - to paraphrase Jello Biafra - play ethnicky jazz to parade their snazz on their five grand stereos / bragging that they know how the ghettos feel cold and the slums have so much soul. 

I don't know why she does this. I think in part she genuinely cares about the issues and the people she champions. But I suspect she's also trying to enhance her own reputation and self-esteem. Whatever the reason, it irritated me then and it irritates me now, so I won't be renewing our friendship ...

As for black lives ... well, yes, of course, Black Lives Matter. But they matter more to her than to me.

And, without getting all Rod Liddle about this - or playing a game of diversionary tactics - I do wonder if the focus of such a campaign shouldn't be on crime, drug use, gang culture, etc. rather than institutionalised white racism and police brutality. 

The latter are doubtless realities that need to be addressed; as do issues of poverty and poor education. But to deliberately whip up anger and resentment whilst turning a blind eye to the involvement of young black men in the former activities, isn't helpful and isn't honest.      


Note: The lyric I'm quoting (from memory and with slight revision) by Jello Biafra is from Holiday in Cambodia (1980), by the great American punk band the Dead Kennedys: click here to play on YouTube.    

Like the Circles That You Find in the Windmills of Your Mind

According to recent research, how you see the above geometric shape reveals your political personality: if you see it as a circle (more or less), you are inclined to be liberal in your thinking (inclusive, tolerant, non-judgemental, etc.); if, on the other hand, you see it as it is and describe it as such - an imperfect or irregular ellipse - then you are more likely to be conservative in your thinking (sensitive to difference, wary of deviance, disturbed by things that don't quite fit, etc.).

This tells us something crucial about moral humanists and how they view the world - mistakenly. Or, more accurately and ultimately more dangerously, they see things not as they are, but as they would ideally wish them to be. Liberals are almost wilfully blind to any facts that don't coincide with or reinforce their own political wisdom and moral prejudice. 

And this, as Rod Liddle notes in his own inimitable manner, means they suffer from a severe mental impairment - one that effectively makes them self-deluded morons. 

I was reminded of this when, shockingly - but not surprisingly to those of us who don't fantasise a great Family of Man all happily holding hands in a circle - news began to slowly emerge of the New Year's Eve events in Cologne, involving large gangs of non-German males systematically and violently assaulting young women. 

Because idealists like Mrs Merkel refused to listen to those who voiced legitimate concerns about admitting over a million immigrants from the Islamic world and refused to acknowledge that not everything in this world is perfectly smooth, perfectly round, and perfectly compatible with life in a modern, secular society, female friends of mine in cities across Germany now feel concerned for their safety and for the future. And, to be honest, I don't blame them ...


Notes

For those interested in reading the study by Tyler G. Okimoto and Dena M. Gromet on how 'Differences in Sensitivity to Deviance Partly Explain Ideological Divides in Social Policy Support', should pick up a copy of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (American Psychological Association, Nov. 16, 2015).  

For those interested in reading Rod Liddle's article in The Spectator (2 Jan 2016) in which he discusses the 'political wisdom of people who don't even know what a circle is', click here.  

Simon Schama Versus Rod Liddle

A furious Simon Schama finger-points at Rod Liddle on BBC's Question Time 

(15 Oct 2015) and tells him to stick to writing his hack journalism 

and turn his "suburban face from the plight of the miserable". 

I've no reason to dislike the historian and art critic Simon Schama: he's clever, good-looking, cosmopolitan, and compassionate; he's even born on the same day as me (13 Feb). But in his recent clash on the BBC's Question Time with Rod Liddle, Schama did reveal a side of himself that is perhaps not quite so admirable or attractive; a proneness to dismiss those who don't share his moral and sentimental humanism on the subject of Syrian refugees as suburban.  

It is, of course, a term of disparagement with a long and unedifying history amongst English intellectuals; one that is loaded with class contempt for those upon whom they look down and regard as crude, common, and narrow-minded.

And so, whilst I'm perfectly happy for Schama to discuss the European migrant crisis with feeling, he's wrong (and disingenuous) to characterize those who prefer to address the issue as an urgent political problem that requires a practical solution which considers the needs not only of the displaced, but of the native populations asked to absorb a huge influx of people foreign in language, culture and tradition, as provincial and uncaring, or in some way prejudiced. 

Indeed, one is tempted to remind Professor Schama of what he said a few years ago when defending Israel's right to take military action against Hezbollah (including the bombing of cities in Lebanon): "Of course the spectacle and suffering makes us grieve. Who wouldn't grieve? But it's not enough to do that. We've got to understand."

- This Week, BBC One, 24 July 2006

Precisely! And that requires a cool head and what might seem to those who can afford to enjoy the indulgence of tears, a certain hardness of heart.              

Note: those interested in seeing the Question Time clash between Mssrs. Schama and Liddle (as well as reading the latter's take on it in his blog for The Spectator) should click here.

On Homeopathy

Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843): founder of homeopathy 

a practice based on the magical idea that like cures like 

(similia similibus curentur)

One of the more amusing definitions of homeopathy and the often crackpot conditions it is thought to magically cure, is given by Rod Liddle: Homeopathy, he writes, is the practice of treating a non-existent ailment with a non-existent remedy. 

This is a bit harsh inasmuch as some of the ailments are sometimes real enough, but it's spot on about homeopathy as a non-remedy (i.e., not even an honest sham cure, like snake oil); something - to again quote Liddle - of no fucking palliative use at all.

Prince Charles, Gandhi, and newly elected leader of the Labour Party, the sainted Jeremy Corbyn, may believe in the miraculous power of homeopathy and advocate its availability on the NHS - and they may have many supporters who share their faith in complementary medicines and natural alternatives to the drugs provided by the pharmaceutical industry on the back of years of scientific research and extensive clinical trials - but I would hope and trust that readers of this blog do not. 

I wouldn't want to argue that belief in homeopathy is a moral failing, as the political journalist Ian Dunt insists - stupidity isn't a sin and irrationalism doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, even if it does often lead you to make bad choices and say foolish things - but I agree that this is a serious issue and that the rebellion against Western reason, of which it's a symptom, needs to be met face on.          

Torpedo the ark means having done with judgement; but it certainly doesn't demand a sacrifice of intellect, or call for a leap into faith and superstition.   

Notes: 

Rod Liddle, Selfish, Whining Monkeys (Fourth Estate, 2015), pp. 196 and 199. 

Those interested in reading Ian Dunt's post arguing that belief in homeopathy is a moral test should click here.  

Rod Liddle: My Enemy's Enemy

Cover of the paperback edition (Fourth Estate, 2015)

I suppose, in many ways, I have quite a lot in common with Rod Liddle; we belong to the same generation and the same class and, although both born in the South, our hearts belong to the North of England, where our families originated. I even think we had the same (or at any rate similar) tinplate aeroplane to play with as children. 

These things don't necessarily make me like him, but they make me at least want to like him; to find in him a comrade of some sort; a brother-in-arms. Also, the fact that physically he suggests something of my friend Simon, albeit an older, greyer, even more disheveled version, also makes me gravitate towards him (without necessarily wishing to cruise his body, as Barthes would say).

But what of his work, I hear you ask: and what of those nasty prejudices that are said to poison his writing and ultimately make it little more than the sometimes witty but mostly just offensive and tedious ranting of an unusually erudite pub bore - Richard Littlejohn with a social degree (to paraphrase Jaz Coleman).

Well, to be honest, I'm not very familiar with his work; either as a journalist or a writer of fiction. But I have just finished reading his most recent book - Selfish, Whining Monkeys (2014) - and I enjoyed it very much. What's more, I found myself pretty much in agreement with its central argument that, for all the many things we have gained during the last fifty years, we have unintentionally lost something - and something pretty important at that; something which you rather suspect he would like to call our soul, but describes instead as social cohesion and cultural unity. 

That's, when you think about it, quite a conservative claim to make - and, inasmuch as its one that I suspect a majority of people would agree with, pretty uncontroversial too. This professional provocateur may like to swear and throw around terms designed to outrage those who are always looking to police language and correct those ways of thinking they deem unacceptable, but, actually, he's a nostalgic moralist at heart who regrets the passing of values that his parents - and my parents - lived their lives by (although, importantly, he at no time advocates a return to the past, or a getting back to basics).

This makes him sound a bit like Tony Parsons, but he's so much funnier and more interesting - and so much less prone to sentiment - than the latter (who I might also be said to have a fair bit in common with, but for whom I feel no affection).

Of course, I don't share Liddle's nominal Christianity which underpins this book and, for me, the trouble with atheism is that unless it becomes a fairly aggressive anti-theism it doesn't go far enough. That said, I can understand why Richard Dawkins might irritate with his pomposity and smiled at Liddle's disdain for the ridiculous Alain de Botton and his 'Tower of Arse'. 

And what I certainly do share is Liddle's insistence on returning to the subject of class - and, if I'm honest, a good many of his hatreds; of those who have had their struggles too, the super-smug London elite and those on what he describes as the faux-left.

We might not, were we to meet, ever become true friends in a positive sense; but, in desperate times, my enemy's enemy ...