The past Isn't past

 

The Past Isn’t Even Past

 

A fond farewell to Catholic Truth and its Catholic Truth (Scotland) blog after twenty-four years fighting for the Faith; it will be sorely missed. “Ae farewell and then for ever.” We wish its editor, Patricia (Pat) McKeever, every blessing on all her future endeavours. 

            The newsletter once published a letter in which I replied to a priest who had said he could never make any sense out of why The Three Musketeers had been on the Index of Prohibited Books.  We learn what we learn in the course of our formal education – and even that in itself is subject to the vagaries of an individual’s schooling – then we forget much of it if not quite all.  What might remain to us is a general impression that can serve as a broad foundation for our future prejudices; but in many cases we do not retain even that, and the entirety of our attitude to any particular subject will be formed on the basis of our cultural environment, which is to say our media environment.

            Having mentioned historical fiction we must give it some further consideration because it is necessarily the most vivid and engaging material that sticks in the memory and shapes our understanding of history, and that will very often be fiction whether written or broadcast.  Who controls the past controls the present: who controls the present controls the future because the past isn’t really even past as our interpretation of history underpins our social, political and cultural attitudes.  Indeed, much of our political development in the nineteenth century may be traced to the embrace by conservatives under the novelist Disraeli of the Catholic alternative to the Whig interpretation of history understood as a Tory version. We are who we are because we think we were who we think we were, and that includes being a ‘we’ in the first place as well as what ‘we’ might think of ‘them’ whoever ‘they’ might be.

            Returning to my example, The Three Musketeers is a work the contents of which are generally transmitted to British youth at an early age while the details of French history are not.  That transmission might possibly include reading the book itself, or extracts from it, in the mid-teens, but more often does not.  There are simplified texts and illustrated versions for the under-tens along with films and television series so children encounter it repeatedly.  Was that your experience? 

            The condemnation of the amatory fictions of the Alexandres Dumas, père et fils, along with the younger Dumas’ pamphlet advocating divorce, was not due to their ‘amatory’ nature – censorship on the basis of decency was a matter primarily for the secular authorities – but because such beguiling and exciting works draw readers into their creators’ mindset or general outlook.  That is more true of broadcast works than written material because they are usually imbibed in a more passive manner with less discernment on the part of the consumer.  Hence works proceeding from the dangerously flawed mentality of undesirable types like the Alexandres Dumas should be avoided as simple entertainments – and should be consumed only warily if at all. 

            The Dumas were Bonapartists, (the father even joined the self-proclaimed emperor’s meritocratic aristocracy) and their works were shot through with all the attitudes and opinions that that implies.  If you had the experience I described of an early introduction to The Three Musketeers, might I ask how much of it you believed, and how much of it sticks in the memory?  The book presents the court of Louis XIII as having been a thoroughly decadent nest of intrigue with a weak and ineffectual cuckold of a king, a flighty adulteress of a queen and a scheming villain of a minister; a regime, in short, ripe for revolutionary overthrow even then in the days of French glory.  Yet these were among the greatest figures in the history of France!  Of course, there is an implication that what had been true of one branch of the traditional monarchy was true also of that reigning at the time of publication in the 1840s.     

            As was normal under a Catholic polity, and had been the case with our own Lords Chancellor before Henry VIII’s time, the first minister of France (the keeper of the king’s conscience) was ordinarily a bishop made a cardinal as a mark of papal approval of the close connection between Church and State, and with it between secular and divine law, under such an arrangement.  To depict Cardinal Richelieu as a scheming villain amounted to an attack upon the clergy (backed up by the characterisation of various other clerical figures across the Dumas’ oeuvre) and not an argument but rather a certain measure of pressure in favour of disestablishment.

            The Dumas did not promote the excesses of the Revolution but its general objectives and its outcome as realised, in their opinion, under their supposedly imperial hero.  Similarly, in our own day, popular historical fictions such as Dame Hilary Mantel’s (adapted for stage and small screen) Wolf Hall Trilogy, tend not to endorse the contentious actions of their protagonists, but by their choice of heroes and villains, their characterisation of people real and fictitious, and their interpretation of events by which they impose an artificial narrative arc upon carefully selected facts they make clear where their creators’ sympathies lie and they insinuate all manner of ideas deep into the intellectual subconscious of the consumer.

            As we all know, the imposition of an ideologically contrived narrative is not restricted to material presented as fiction but transforms narrations of historical events, objective facts, into effective fictions.  While events as they occur certainly have a coherence in the light of divine providence, the coinage of eternity is not spent in a television studio packaging the past in neat and tidy parcels congratulating today on having evolved through history into a wonderfully enlightened present.  Written history may be flawed in many ways, but one definite advance in modern practice is that in print the inclusion of footnotes indicating sources, and giving at least some clue as to where facts and their interpretation can be distinguished, has become almost universal.

            It is quite clearly possible to create historical narratives, whether of fact or fiction, in which that which is believed to have occurred is presented in a manner compatible with Church teaching by rejecting the Pelagian myth of constant moral progress under the weight of human effort, or the alternative of natural evolutionary development in the direction of freedom from antiquated moral norms.  It is also possible to create narratives in which the ‘boo and hooray’ words and names accord with the perspectives of faithful Catholics in wherever the narrative is set.  The EWTN films we promote do exactly that.  What is not possible, however, is a narrative that is both narrative and a neutral presentation of life as it actually happened.  ‘The past is another country’ we do not have a visa to visit; historiography is not only possible but obligatory if we are to achieve an understanding of history that might allow us to build the future we want to see, but history itself is irrecoverably impossible to grasp.  The past remains ever with us in its moral, social and political effects precisely because we can only ever see it recreated one way or another, interpreted for us or against.

By Prayer Crusader St Philip Howard

 

 

The news media and the Ukraine war

 

Don’t you know there’s a war on? 

Journalists sent to cover anti-war demonstrations are familiar with the slogan ‘War, war, what is it good for?!’  They have an answer to give if the pacifists meant to yell it in any but a purely rhetorical manner, and that answer is: ‘News media, that’s what!’  If the general public can be persuaded at the outset that any particular conflict is in some way our business, then high levels of engagement with news media are practically guaranteed for the duration of a short war, and at least for some considerable time (a year or more) of a longer one provided the journalists are even half competent.  The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has, then, been a definite winner for newshounds of every stripe but, eighteen months on from the start of this phase of the conflict, public interest is on the ebb and both broadcast audiences and print readership are back down to pre-invasion levels.  It was good while it lasted but it is time now to move on – unless, that is, the media can come up with something to re-inject this old story with the excitement of last year.  The hunt – have no doubt about it – is on for that something.  

            This phase of conflict has been treated throughout as a media event, neatly packaged and edited to fit a certain already popular narrative and sold – very much the mot juste – to the public for their entertainment, or ‘infotainment’ as the fairly recent coinage has it.  A war, however, is a reality and not a fiction, and the only narrative concerning it is that known only to God. 

            There are some certain facts, but all facts are always open to interpretation; they may be set in one context or in another like a jewel in a tiara for a wedding or on a pendant at a funeral.  The most salient of those facts would seem to be these:

      That the fall of the Soviet Union was characterised by a comparatively weak and chaotic Russia contrasted with relatively well organised secessionary states under more or less (generally less) dynamic leaders with the weaker and less organised Republics remaining in a federal relationship with Russia    

      Consequently, that culturo-linguistic Russians tended to vote for the secessionary states in border polls on the basis of a transient desire for stability thereby, paradoxically, introducing structural instabilities into those states which then had to be recognised in their new constitutions, legislation and policy choices.  Fresh border polls have not been held even where Russian minorities have developed a clear and enduring aspiration to rejoin the Motherland, hence the secessionary conflicts within states that had themselves seceded from the post-Soviet iteration of the Russian empire: Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. 

      That, under its balanced post-Soviet constitution, the Ukraine voted for Victor Yanukovych on a manifesto promising to pursue trading links with both the European Economic Area and the Commonwealth of Independent States.  He was then re-elected having been ousted unconstitutionally, this time on a promise to negotiate the best deal available with both blocs or either should both demand an exclusive agreement.  Pres. Yanukovych then agreed terms with the EU, prompting the Russian Federation to offer better terms which he then accepted; exclusivity might have been implied but was never actually incorporated definitively into either agreement.

      That the second agreement triggered the colourful Euromaidan protests which culminated in a second putsch, again ousting Mr. Yanukovych and this time resulting in a change in the national constitution that removed all ambiguity by making a commitment to seek membership of the EU and NATO’s European arm, the WEU, which is formally designated as ‘the defence component of the European Union and as the means to strengthen the European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance.’  The most visible element amongst the Euromaidan protesters consisted of self-proclaimed Nazis who demanded EU and WEU membership for their country on the basis that these institutions are the latter day incarnation of the Greater German Reich for which their grandfathers’ SS battalion had fought.  Nazism has, however, enjoyed no prominence in the political culture of post-Euromaidan Ukraine even if the objectives its representatives demanded have been adopted by those who are responsible for the current regime.

      That cultural Russians, who had (unlike those in some other newly independent nations) accepted their post-Soviet constitutional and legal position in the Ukraine, rejected the post-Euromaidan regime and effected the secession of parts of the Donbas region prompting the Ukrainian regime to launch a vicious war against them.  The Russian Federation, which appears to have armed these areas surreptitiously, finally federated these territories to itself only last year following a referendum.  The Ukrainian war against them appears to be being conducted by the regular forces and militia with little reference to the political leaders of the regime, and the same might be said of the war against Russia.  Poroshenko and Zelensky might then escape conviction on charges of having had command responsibility for the crimes with which both wars have been characterised, most notably indiscriminate bombing of civilians, rape and pillage raids by militia units, and the extra-judicial killing of leading opponents of the Ukrainian regime.  In the current phase of conflict, and immediately prior to it, proponents of a negotiated settlement with either the Russians within the 1991 borders or with the Russian Federation have also been assassinated.  Political leaders refuse either to support peace negotiators or to condemn their murder.  Our media have been notably silent on this subject with the sole exception of the case in which the target was someone like them, a girl off the telly.

      That before last year’s invasion the Putin administration made only desultory attempts to negotiate a peace and appeared largely indifferent to the conflict in the Donbas.  The invasion of last year would appear to have been justified on the basis of a ‘right to protect’ the Russian enclaves. Although the Russian Federation effectively precluded itself from citing such a right by having argued vociferously against the existence of any such right or power to intervene when the Blair administration claimed to exercise such a right against Serbia over Kosovo, its lawyers nevertheless mentioned the prevention of genocide at the International Court of Justice while arguing that the Court lacked any jurisdiction in the case brought by the Ukraine.  The Ukrainian lawyers rightly replied that neither the Genocide Convention nor any other international Treaty included a right or power to intervene.  

            Our media have little interest in facts, and practically none in justice or in peace.  All mainstream British media outlets have volunteered to serve the interest of the Ukrainian ministries of propaganda and economic warfare (and volunteered is the word, our friend Umberto was right on there being no need for a bribe) not because there is any good reason to take their side – there is none – but because taking sides increases public engagement.  “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”      Quite so, but the Russian Federation need be no enemy of ours, although a lazy presumption that it is our eternal enemy can be induced by conflating the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union which maintained, as today’s Russia does not, an ideological imperative to effect the universal domination of its own interpretation of Marxism-Leninism.  By creating a myth of Russian hostility our media have created a previously non-existent enmity.  The long history of British relations with Russia is one of an intermittent friendship dating back to the marriage of Waldemar of Novgorod to Gytha the daughter of Harold II Godwinson, and based upon a shared interest in maintaining a balance of powers across the European continent.  We have fought the Russians only once, in Crimea, over colonial interests which no longer apply, principally Black Sea access to the Eastern reaches of the Empire.  Public opinion now demands an anti-Russian foreign and military policy which our political class feels obliged to adopt against the true interests of our nation.

                This state of affairs is not the result of outright identifiable lies told by journalists – far from it, almost everything said to demonstrate the brutality, venality and politically corrupt illegitimacy of the current Russian regime is true, and much of what has been said concerning Russian conduct during the present conflict is likely to be true although one always does well to discount the most lurid claims on both sides without altogether dismissing them – rather it has been achieved by a partial selection of facts over this conflict and in earlier coverage of foreign and military policy.  Everything to the detriment of the Russian Federation has been publicised while similar facts concerning life under the Ukrainian regime have gone without mention, or have been given too muted a mention to reach the public consciousness.  Russophobes have been selected for interview on a regular basis while believers in a non-interventionist foreign policy have joined Russophiles in exclusion from the airwaves and the pages of our major newspapers.  Journalists who have given up reporting in favour of presenting programmes spent the months after the invasion making trips to Kiev and Lvov to present their shows from out would be ally’s territory.  They earnestly put the case – a case proposed to them by the Ukrainian authorities – for joining the war in support of the Ukraine to every (carefully selected anti-Russian) expert commentator and every politician they interviewed.  Those demands that we actually go to war stopped only when the public had seen several, say six to nine, month’s worth of footage of the fighting.  Since then the whole thing has been treated much like a spectator sport in which we must cheer our guys to the rafters and give a boo and a hiss to the pantomime baddies on the other side.  That is a media strategy it is not a means of framing international public policy.  The problem, however, is that we no longer have serious politicians doing serious politics, we have instead the men and women of our national regime’s political apparat playing party games and taking their lead from the media rather than from any kind of philosophical or moral theory or principles as they strive to distinguish themselves from each other. 

            There is no national interest whatsoever in any measure of British involvement in this Russo-Ukrainian conflict, a war between two brutal and corrupt regimes at a continent’s distance from us.  To the contrary, our interests have been directly damaged by the interruption of trade with the Russian Federation.  The national interest lies in maintaining amicable relations as far as is possible with as many nations as is possible while safeguarding the requirements of the British people at home and abroad, from which it necessarily follows that wide-ranging military alliances are undesirable.  The First World War resulted from big bloc alliances, and British involvement in the second from a military guaranty unwisely given, but our NATO obligations today go much further than any undertaking given then.  At present, any NATO member might provoke an attack, demand British participation in its defence, and then attempt to use joint command protocols to veto use of the nuclear weaponry that would very likely be necessary in a war against the Russian Federation as this country would be a nuclear target.  Of course, it would always be possible to renege on those obligations, but a clear repudiation of them at this stage has the potential to avert such a war while a later withdrawal might not even suffice to prevent our being drawn into the fighting.  We must defend our near neighbours against our enemies (if we have enemies at all and we must strive not to), whether they like it or not, and must work with others to maintain the freedom of the seas; beyond that there is only unnecessary expense and risk to life.  I admit that this sounds like little more than a cynical working out of the implications of Uncle Matthew’s celebrated dictum: that “abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends”; but there is a philosophical robustness underlying a position grounded in national sovereignty and the national interest provided, of course, that it is not pursued without reference to moral principle and the very nature and purpose of government itself.

            We are all familiar with just war theories and with the argument that no such theory can be applicable today given the nature of modern warfare.  It is, however, difficult to see how the latter point can do more than modify the conduct of warfare: or indeed how it may do even that if ‘battlefields’ are not discrete areas and occupations are carried out by civilian populations rather than combatants, and when the majority of wars for which a ‘just war’ argument is advanced have some defensive character to them such that they may be described as the unavoidable reaction to an act of aggression.  A government acts unjustly, which is to say immorally when it precipitates or prolongs a war; hence to send weaponry into a war zone (whether for profit or not) is always immoral as it permits a continuation of hostilities beyond the point at which want of materiel would have forced combatant parties into peace negotiations.  The ‘just war’ argument is both personal and national, requiring on the one hand that the individual ask him or herself whether any participation in a specific conflict is justifiable and whether complying with each set of orders is justifiable in the context in which they are given, and requiring also on the other hand that national authorities and each individual serving within them should ask whether initiating a conflict or continuing to conduct one once started is justifiable.  What it is not is an open invitation to come along and join in the fun; when it is not personal and immediate it is merely abstract.  Everybody can always examine any conflict and form an opinion as to who, if anybody, was in the right and who is in the wrong, who were the most and least honourable combatants and suchlike questions.  These might be academic discussions or just bar room talk, but they are no more than that – questions debated as subjects for debate by people who are not parties to the conflict and have no standing to enter the hostilities.  At the national level, the appropriate response to an outbreak of hostilities is to embargo military supplies to all belligerent parties, declare neutrality and offer any desired assistance in negotiating a peace.  If a conflict is prolonged, it might be necessary for a nation to forgo the benefits of trade with the belligerents and extend the embargo to all trade in either direction and quite possibly even to intern belligerent nationals.  It must, however, be remembered that the scope of a government is by nature limited; it is national in character rather than global, and limited further by its relations with those it governs and the intermediary and parallel institutions of society.  While peace between nations benefits everybody to a greater or lesser extent, and is therefore a suitable aim for a country’s diplomatic endeavour, it is not the business of His Majesty’s Government to stop foreigners killing each other, only to stop them killing us.  A government goes beyond its mandate in any excessive involvement in the affairs of other nations especially as it is likely that any such involvement would prove counterproductive for its own people as well as those of the other nations involved.  Neither a negotiated peace nor one achieved through a military victory can be imposed from abroad but only by the combatant parties under the pressure of their circumstances. 

            We all know how far short of the required response His Majesty’s Government’s response has fallen.  Its decision to ignore the Ukrainian war against the secession in the Donbas – and it is difficult to see how an antisecessionary war or any other conflict to seize or retain territory against the wishes of its inhabitants could ever be justifiable -and then to join with the EU in encouraging Ukrainian opposition to the Russian Federation was objectively wrong, but clearly resulted from an apparent public demand for such a position.  Yet that demand was entirely manufactured by the media, the same media who now reject the idea of peace negotiations and who would have had our own forces fighting now if their early ideas had gained sufficient traction.  These people are utterly ignorant, irresponsible and indifferent to human suffering.  Reject the siren voices, and urge legislators to choose a foreign policy in which the national interest is the international interest namely the rejection of foreign wars and the containment of conflicts to the initial combatants.  Reject the false narratives and refuse to promote them by adopting partisan positions.  Above all, in every personal decision (media choices, shopping, travel etc.) choose Christ. 

 By Prayer Crusader St Philip Howard