Belief In Hell As The Basis For Faith

So, an engineer finds herself in hell, and is not happy about it. Recognizing that vast expanses are extremely hot and others extremely cold, she takes measures to harness the energy flow this disparity makes available. Some time later, God checks in with Satan to assure himself that conditions in hell are gratifyingly punitive. Not so, says Satan; as it happens there’s air-conditioning, escalators between the different levels, every imaginable amenity. In fact, the afterlife has become damned comfortable.

This is all very interesting. Of course, it’s not only a twentieth-century phenomenon (you know that, I know, but I thought I’d say). For example, the six big British Romantic poets were all, as young men, political radicals, revolutionaries even; but of the six only one (Blake) stayed that way into old age. Three (Byron Shelley and Keats) didn’t live long enough to see old age, and given what happened to Wordsworth and Coleridge there’s a good chance they’d have followed a similar path, to conservatism, political reaction and hang-em-flog-em Toryism. Is there anything in that? I mean the ageing thing: if you’re not a socialist at 20 you have no heart and if you’re not a conservative at 60 you have no brain. I don’t think that’s true, by the way, but it’s a thing that is said, isn’t it; and I suppose there is some correlation between getting older and swinging rightward. Is that enough to explain the bias you’re talking about? Revisionaries are, by the bald logic of chronology, older than visionaries.

And actually, the part of all this that really interests me is the way Coleridge (so far as I can see genuinely) didn’t believe his political principles had changed at all. That’s part of it, isn’t it? Young Christopher Hitchens is a Communist and old Christopher Hitchens a supporter of the Republican party and cheerleader for the Iraq war, but Christopher Hitchens the writer insists that his principles haven’t shifted one little bit.

Yes, well, the right wingers insist their converts are deep and principled, but they would say their authorities are authoritative, wouldn’t they? And insofar as political conservatism actively endorses mystifications about history, society, the cosmos and morality, any concessions to reality by the convert would be the the motte in the motte and bailey. Also, since the political conservatives’ bailey includes irrationalism, the old habits of critique learned by most leftists who resisted the rote political conservatism they were raised on also provides useful public relations skills.

I suppose I’m saying that the issue of left to right conversions is a non-problem. I doubt very few if any were ever profound and creative thinkers. I think they tend to be very superficial, and trendy. But political conservatism is an old junker that can really use a paint of coat. Superficial thinkers with the latest colors are the best paint, so to speak.

One thing about conversion literature is how useful it is to exaggerate the wickedness of the old life. Or in politics to exaggerate how left wing one was. And another thing is how, if one is going to take up an acceptably conformist political stance, it is so much more comfortable to attribute it to moral revelation, rather than a calculation of interest. That’s why I should think one’s leftism should be assessed by looking for something given up for it.

Shelley got cut off, Byron joined the revolution, well these are easy. Blake took up prophecy so I’m rather inclined to say he went bad as Wordsworth and Coleridge. Unless one defines a disorderly sex life as leftist? Perhaps but this seems extreme. As to why they went right, both Blake and Coleridge had to my mind obvious emotional challenges driving much of their behavior.

As to counterfactuals about the political evolution of Shelley and Byron? I seem to remember reading somewhere that Marx and Engels had played the game and decided Shelley would stick to it, while Byron would break. Personally though I suspect the temptations of conforming to his inheritance and Mary would have driven him right. But Byron’s genuine difficulties in conforming to the era’s sexual mores would always have kept him from going all the way.

I think you miss the importance of political apostates. What they bring to the table aren’t core ideas, but ideas about strategy and tactics. Ex-Communists like Whittaker Chambers and others taught 1950s/60s era conservatives how to sell their ideas, how to organize, how to fight back against the left, which was dominant in that era. Later, the early neoconservatives like Irving Kristol, who were all ex-leftists, helped teach conservatives how to be more academic, empirical and sophisticated in selling their ideas. The foundation that these apostates built for conservatism was essential for the great political success it has enjoyed for the last 25 years. I believe that much of the strategy and tactics the right used to win is just Politics and Public Relations 101 and could be copied by the left. Apostates from the right could help, but no one on the left is interested. Those on the left may not want to hear it, but their political incompetence is a big reason why we have Trump.

Making contact with the title of this thread. From the unreleased continuation of “Philosophy at Play” (Oct 2018, CT)

CECILY We are all creatures of the natural world. We breathe the same air. I’m glad of our common senses.
JH Thank reason for overcoming the limits of the senses. Invisible air yielded to palpable understanding.
CECILY Mind you, Dr Chasuble preaches that the Holy Ghost is invisible and all over.
JH Error is all around us. [Deadpans] Should a cathedral built on such a foundation be blest?
CECILY Seriously, does your professional scepticism soften in private to faith?
JH Serious people have always made themselves foolish by making a political convenience of their religious beliefs and commandments of their political values.
CECILY Is hell so little deterrence?
JH It’s true hell is no use when God is on our side. Otherwise look to the Greeks. For his triumph in battle the ancient gods once required the life of the king’s own daughter.
CECILY Glad I’m no princess. Nor even pretend to know one. . .

Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely artificial
Found on a typewriter in the storeroom—in the spirit of a trivial comedy for serious people

“Former leftist radicals have not merely joined but, to a very considerable degree, defined the modern American right. Made the modern conservative movement. Yep. True and undeniable.”

I’m not in a position to deny it, but may I at least question it?

It would be more accurate, I think, to say something like this:

“Former leftist radicals have defined and made [ the public face of] [the literate wing of] the modern conservative movement.”

Your Irving Kristols certainly did a lot of the writing and pamphleteering and sloganeering of the modern conservative movement. No denying that.

But what about the infrastructure behind them? The money men who made it work, and reaped the profits? The Koch brothers and their earlier avatars in the John Birch society were *not* the public face of the modern conservative movement, because they wanted to stay out of the public.

But did not people like these — whether hard-right plutocrats, or ultra-montanist admirers of Franco, or ordinary Rotary Club racists — do as much to “define the modern American right” and “make the modern conservative movement” as the pamphleteers did?

And few converted leftists among them.

You seem to be talking about leaders. While some become leaders out of necessity, many want to be leaders. Leaders are people who tell other people what to think and what to do — in other words, they exert authority. But authority is the business of the Right, so that once-leftist leaders often find that their inner rightist eventually reveals itself and takes over. That often seems to occur when the leader succeeds in some way and the authority or at least repute he has sought becomes explicit — the inner becomes the outer. A person who seriously moved the other way, deliberately abandoning leadership and fame, would tend to disappear into the crowd. (Thinking of Bob Parris Moses)

To me the post Cold War conversions seem different because of the apocalyptic nature of 20th century politics. What one magic trick caused Hitler? Which one caused the gulag? Surely there’s some cultural development that, if we went back in time and gave it worse reviews, could have stopped the whole thing at the source! Coleridge wanted a better world according to his beliefs, and changed his mind about whether to look forward or backward to find it. Irving Kristol thought the Right was the Devil and then changed his mind and decided the Left was; so did Hitchens, Chambers, . . .

I thought I had a few NYer articles left but apparently I’ll have to wait til next month to read Corey’s piece. Used the last one on the Anderson profile most likely.

If you are looking at defectors from right-wing hell to the left, to compare to those defecting from left-wing hell (and would anyone dispute that Stalinist Russia was genuinely that?) to the right, should you not look for defectors from genuine right-wing hells to the left?

Surely, right wing politics in the USA have never created any remotely comparable hells. Which may explain something.

The closest non-US parallels I can think of are: Curzio Malaparte, Fascist, disagreed with and imprisoned by Mussolini (but survived, not really comparable hell), post-War member of the Italian Communist Party.

Francois Mitterand, Catholic nationalist in youth, worked as civil servant for Petain’s Vichy state (but again, not really comparable hell unless you had the misfortune to be a Jew), awarded Order de la Francisque as a special mark of estimation by Petain, had ambiguous relations with Resistance, declared himself pro-Resistance and fled to London in November 1943; postwar became a Socialist leader and eventually Socialist President of France. Notwithstanding his continued friendship with, and financing by, Rene Bousquet, general secretary of the Vichy police who among other things organised the deportation of Jewish children from occupied France.

Not clear, come to think of it, how far he can really be seen as moving from right to left. Complicated business, politics, especially in France.

The vulgar reductive materialist version goes something like, the right is no-expanses-spared, mass-mediated propaganda for the regime, the left is not.

Adam Roberts’–@ no. 4–mention of British figures moving from radicalism to reaction brought to my mind the shift in the other direction of William Cobbett. Maybe it could be said of this ardent Tory publicist who became even more ardent in support of working people, that he’s an example of someone who contributed greatly to the making of the English working class.

@John Holbo #26: “… the point about how L-to-R converts have always found deep-pocketed backers is true. But why should the convert – rather than the stalwart or old-hand – seem so attractive to those with deep-pockets, looking for a likely investment? Why should it be less winning going the other way?”

But do we really have evidence for the claim that L-to-R converts (on average) are more attractive to (and get more funds from) rightwing economic power than rightwing stalwarts?

@25
Oophs.
John, apologies to you and your family for uncomfortable musings.
Your namesake stars. Anyway, that’s something for a philosopher.
Also notice that a comedy will have absurd touches playing off The Importance of Being Earnest.
Of course, I have been sensitive to putting inelegant (or worse—wrong-headed) speeches in a namesake’s mouth. The last thing I would want if positions were reversed!
Again, any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely artificial.
May I ask for your forgiveness? (Earnestness at this moment is testing)

P. S. FWIW
In part I was playing with your Oct 20 ’18 thread:

I think someone should write Philosophy For Work and Play.
“Error is real.” We could keep the picture the same.

I agree with Sebastian H, the cited people are not serious right wing “thinkers” or politicians. Also they come from a very specific kind of leftism (revolutionary socialism) so the equivalent on the right you should be comparing them to is converted nazis. Of more relevance to most of the world (I hate to have to constantly remind you of this but America isn’t much of the world) are reformed union leaders, democratic socialists, and environmentalists. And there are very few of those.

Just for example, the union movement doesn’t look well on its members jumping ship for corporate gains, and they tend not to do so. The various labour parties of the developed world tend to destroy anyone who turns against them – see e.g. Mark Latham in Australia or Kevin Rudd, who have no intellectual or political influence.

The best and most pernicious example of someone who turned from left to right and influenced politics in a genuinely serious way is Tony Blair. He was a catastrophe for the British left. But people like him are rare, because union and labour discipline stops them rising to the top. And Tony Blair shows that the real history of people from the left turning to the right is of betrayal, not public jumping sides (see also Orwell working with the security services against his former comrades).

I think the quest you’re on here, to find people from the right equivalent to Koestler, is impossible, because Koestler is not representative of much of the left, and the majority of leftist history is not the history of the Soviet Union and its repressions.

Revolutions don’t react to or borrow; for better or worse, they create an untried form. They have no need for defectors

That’s a very odd statement – taken literally it would imply that Danton, Lenin and Subcomandante Marcos had each got up in the market square one day and said, “My friends, what we need now is YABLONGUS!”, and then gone about winnin hearts and minds to this strange new idea. (ObSF: “Rump-titty-titty-tum-tah-tee”) Revolutions do react, and they do borrow (if only to transform): you have to have a shared idea of what an ‘estate’ is and what’s generally due to one, before you can ask Qu’est-ce que le tiers-état?

Similarly, the idea that revolutions don’t need defectors is odd. Never mind Kamenev and Zinoviev, where would that leave Engels? One surely can’t be an actual real-life capitalist – a member of the ruling class, in an age whose ideas are the ideas of the ruling class – without having one’s world-view shaped by capitalist ideology.

I suppose the difference Corey’s pointing to is that reactionary movements borrow ideas and personnel from revolutionary movements, but the latter don’t return the favour – they go to the source and borrow from the ruling class and its ideology. (This would also imply that reactionary ideology is derivative twice over, like taking a détourned comic and replacing the radical slogans with affirmations of capitalism and the American Way.) Intuitively this difference does seem important, but I’m not sure why.

Re: Sebastian H’s notion that conservatism’s disasters were antique or too recent to note: You might want to note that no less a right-wing drooler than Kevin Williamson disapprovingly cited Pinochet recently, and the recent nomination of Elliot Abrams to further muck up the situation in Venezuela reminded everyone of the right-wing holocaust of Central America in the mid-to-late 20th century. (That’s not even to mention the rise of neo-Nazis, merrily reminding everyone of what the Right looks like when it really gets up to speed.) The ability of the corporate media to elevate mediocrities whose main job is to obfuscate and conceal such inconvenient history (e.g., Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks) and others whose function is to amplify the Red Horror (e.g., Anne Applebaum, Bret Stephens) remains the chief reason that left-to-right converts get the traction that they do.

Looking for a few more right-to-left conversions: try Lieut-General Vincenz Mueller, commander of 12 Corps, Army Group Centre, who after his capture in 1944 repositioned himself as a Communist and became Vice-President of the East German Parliament. Or Lieut-General Rudolf Barnier, likewise captured, and later serving as Major-General in the East German security forces.

Minor players with no influence in the USA, obviously. So try Paul de Man, assiduous pro-German antisemitic propagandist in Nazi-occupied Belgium, later established as very eminent vaguely-leftwing or at least deeply anti conservative literary theorist in US.

“Congrats again to Corey hitting the big time. The New Yorker, man.”

I’d congratulate the New Yorker. They have had their moments of greatness, but also their low points— Jeffrey Goldberg back in the early Bush era was probably the lowest. I stopped subscribing a few months ago, as there was rarely much worth paying for in their pages these days.

I am talking about the political articles. The literary bits might be great for all I know. Kolbert is good when she appears.

A huge difference between 20th century right-wing disasters and left-wing disasters (aka as Stalinism) is that right-wing disasters were disasters mostly for the other people, those the right wing leaders defined as the enemy, while those who supported the right-wing leaders were safe; whereas nobody – least of all authentic Communists – was safe from Stalin. This to me seems a real asymmetry.

Also agree with SH, it is complete nonsense to claim that people like Arthur Koestler ever “defined the right”. More to the point would be Mussolini, who did start out as a socialist.

“I’m pointing out that the scale of left/right catastrophe divide is pretty big. ”

No, they’re not. When European imperialism was at its peak the death toll was comparable to the death tolls of communism and possibly larger. I doubt your Batista vs Castro comparison holds up. If you went around adding up the death tolls from various hit wars during the Cold War you would get well into the millions.

Offhand I think the point about fanatical communist regimes chewing up their own vs. rightwing regime’s slaughtering the Other is probably right.

This was probably a distraction from your main points, but I didn’t want to let it go unchallenged. I partly agree with your last paragraph. Swedish Social Democrats and totalitarian communist regimes have little in common. I am not quite so sure about the difference between Reagan and Trump, though yes, Reagan was able to work within the system better than Trump. ( Which isn’t saying much.). The families of hundreds of thousands of people murdered by Reagan’s beloved anti communists in Central America and Angola might not see a huge difference. Even with Yemen, Trump’s body count isn’t as high yet.

Kronstadt: site of an egregious Stalinist atrocity

“… That Word [Stalinist]; I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means,” especially since at the time of Kronstadt, not only was Lenin still in (reasonably) fine fettle, but Trotsky was the Commissar of War (i.e., head of the Red Army) and gave the order to suppress the rebellion. I believe that accusing Trotsky of Stalinism is an unusual, indeed an unorthodox, move.

Faustusnotes—

Whether it is interesting or not, one frequently sees people on the right ( or at one time from the right) claiming that communism killed far more people than the extreme right. The claim raises all sorts of issues and I didn’t want to get into all of them, but I didn’t want to let it pass.

“It’s also not right to say that right wing people kill “the other” while left wing people kill their own. ”

Yeah, I thought about that and probably should have just let it pass.

Donald I also find the debate seductive, but it’s a waste of time for lots of reasons. You’ll note that Sebastian has been hazy about his timeline, so that he can balance all the post-war atrocities of the right against the pre-war atrocities of Stalin, ensuring he wins; marcel proust points out that stalin is held responsible for things he’s not; often people include in stalin’s death toll a bunch of people who died because of his mistakes in the war, not because of any particular leftist failing of his; people like to contrast Castro with Batista because that enables them to ignore the previous 40 years of misrule against which the Cubans were actually rebelling; and in any case if they lose the argument the right will simply assert that “nazism was just socialism anyway (it’s in the name!)” so it’s a waste of time. Mud-wrestling a pig, etc.

On the general theme of defection Left to Right versus the symmetric move, it seems to me that Corey’s frame of analysis is quite adequate. Reactionary politics has been, well, a reaction to the rise in political and economic agency on the part of the dominated segments of society as they achieved universal primary then secondary education. Being on the “left” in the 1600-1970 period this happened just meant favoring the direction of this movement, being on the “right” meant trying to reverse the natural consequences of that movement. A defection from “left” to “right” therefore meant a reworking and reversing of the obvious conclusions that had been previously learned, necessarily an interesting or at least creative intellectual endeavor. A defection from “right” to “left” simply meant coming to terms with the general move of the society and acknowledging the obvious (think what it meant to have been born in a right-wing, Tory family in 1900 England and coming to reflect on one’s own life and society at age 65).

Interestingly, for exactly the same dynamical reason, in our age of entrenched educative inequalities, we might yet see interesting, creative defections from “right” to “left”, if the former is understood (as I think it should be) as the political movement that endorses and accompanies these entrenched inequalities (note that under this bipartition, Trump and Macron fall broadly on the same side, as their actual policies go) and the latter is the movement that tries to reverse or mitigate them.

Sebastian H The last 100 years have had high profile disasters clearly pinnable on leftism so the disillusioned were leftists.

Sigh.

I wonder how you can write this with a straight face Sebastian. What do you think happened 100 years ago, as a direct consequence of the policies of right-wing reactionary governments? And then again 80 years ago, for the same reason? And then again 70 and 60 years ago in dominions, again for the exact same reason (and before you play the “this was done to other people” card, let me point out that the whole point was that these “other people” were then considered “our” people, and that even with the most restrictive definition imaginable – so even with a full subscription to the worse racist ideology imaginable – millions of people still suffered directly)? And don’t you think that that left a good deal of people disillusioned? And that these (shall I say high profile) disasters might have played a certain role in the conversion of many people towards what was a fringe radical leftist movement in the beginning of the 20th century?

“I assume you mean hot wars during the Cold War, but it mystifies me why you think “the right” has to be blamed for them”

Because in some cases the right was doing most of the killing–in Latin America for instance. And because many of the wars wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t jumped in. People would have been better off making their own sometimes catastrophic mistakes without us leaping in to “help”. I doubt helping was really very high on the agenda in most cases anyway.

On imperialism in general, within the US (and possibly elsewhere in the West) there is still a tendency to greatly downplay its cost. So I am happy to concede the cost of communism (with some caveats–see the link I posted above), but I don’t think most Americans or Westerners still fully grasp how much harm we have inflicted or are inflicting now.

My current favorite foreign policy writer at the moment is Daniel Larison, a conservative writer at the American Conservative, precisely because he is a principled opponent of our own interventionist crimes without falling into the trap of romanticizing whoever it happens to be that we are intervening against. Chomsky without the baggage, so to speak.

In your earlier posts you made some points that I partly agreed with, but you had to throw in that extra bit implicitly downplaying the crimes of “imperialism”. Sigh. Maybe I should have just ignored it, as Faustusnotes suggests. Anyway, I don’t want to continue this, so if you want the last word you can have it as far as I am concerned.

Seb@52:
So again, in the context of this discussion, the time frame where much of the left was finally willing to acknowledge the Communist disasters is more relevant than the exact time the disasters took place.

So what does that say about, forex, the general ignorance of the existence of a British-manufactured famine during the period you’re calling exceedingly pertinent, let alone willingness to acknowledge that a right-wing gov’t were responsible for them? That’s exactly what you do by making a distinction between imperialism carried out by right-wing gov’ts, and “real” right-wing actions, I might add. I agree that this sort of argument is adolescent at best, but since it’s typically (and frequently) held up as a some sort of unbeatable right-wing trump card by adults who should know better, I’m a bit reluctant to let a characterization like this to pass without challenge.

(Although TBH Z, Donald, and FN have already said most of what needs said WRT the seriousness of this sort of argumentation rhetorical posturing.)

Sebastian, there is a wikipedia entry about allegation of united states support for the Khmer Rouge. Maybe you should read it?

It occurs to me that part of the reason why there’s such reluctance to compare the crimes of imperialism to the crimes of Stalin or Hitler might be (in addition to the obvious and as-always-noxious invocation of double effect) that most regimes responsible for imperialist horrors were not noticeably extremist. They were run-of-the-mill regimes of their day, not radical “special cases”. With a Hitler or Stalin you can argue that this is what right-wing or left-wing extremists might end up as if left unchecked to reach the maximal excesses of their philosophy, but from such a perspective imperialist evil had no terrible warning signs and basically consisted of superficially decent moderates convincing themselves that those others over there don’t have the same rights and standing that their deserving citizens do.

Admittedly, I’m quite possibly overthinking this, as typical proponents of “But Stalin!” arguments tend to play a sort of reverse version of No True Socialist so they can say that every real socialist gov’t is a totalitarian communist death machine, and thus the reason imperialism gets ignored is probably more often than not simply that this group wants an unequivocal monopoly on moral high ground.

Orange Watch @54: a bit peripheral to the main subject, but you’re so far adrift from reality I have to say something.

That in the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s “a right-wing government was responsible”. Well, it’s true that when the Famine started the UK Government was Conservative, led by Sir John “Orange” Peel. And it’s also true that, in a general sort of way, the Conservatives (ex-Tories) might be reasonably described as right-wing – hostile to the French Revolution, opposed to Reform – and their opponents the Liberals (ex Whigs) as left-wing – favouring the Revolution, bringing in Parliamentary Reform.

But how you could argue that Peel’s Government was responsible for the Famine is beyond me. It was caused by a coincidence of fungal disease imported from America, beyond the power of any government whatever, and the previous traditional Irish custom of subdividing tenancies between heirs, which could only have been prevented by a tyrannical interference with normal law.

When the Famine began, Peel’s Government did all the right things, declaring that the people must not be allowed to starve; importing American maize; nobody starved. The problem came when Peel was overthrown (by a Commons vote including Irish MPs against him) and a Liberal, generally left-wing government, abolished his relief schemes: too late, they brought back British Government relief schemes that at their peak were feeding 3 million a day.

Call that a “British-manufactured famine” if you want to.

For various reasons I’m no longer all that much inclined to read an entire Holbo OP when he rambles (and when doesn’t he ramble?) or every word of the ensuing thread, but I did just read the story in the OP about Art Young napping during his Espionage Act trial and then waking up in time to ruin the prosecutor’s closing argument. It is, as Holbo says, a good story. (Espionage Act prosecutions were, I think, more often successful, as in, among others, the case of Debs.)

A point that some people will already know and others may not is that it was the Espionage Act prosecutions that arguably marked the beginnings of what’s generally thought of as “modern” First Amendment jurisprudence. Holmes’s famous “marketplace of ideas” dissent came in the 1919 Abrams v. U.S. case, which was an Espionage Act/Sedition Act case. The Wikipedia article on Abrams minimizes the subsequent influence of Holmes’s dissent, pointing out (among other things) that the majority in Citizens United (2010) rejected a “marketplace of ideas” argument made by the dissenters. While I assume that that’s an accurate characterization of Citizens United, there is almost a century between Abrams and Citizens United and, except for a short reference to Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Wikipedia article really doesn’t discuss how the Abrams dissent did or did not influence First Am. jurisprudence during that almost-century. Offhand I’m inclined to think it was somewhat more influential than the Wikipedia article suggests. At any rate, since this year in fact marks the hundredth anniversary of Holmes’s dissent in Abrams, it would be a fitting time for someone to have the discussion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some law review symposiums on the subject were in preparation (though I generally don’t read law reviews or, for the most part, legal blogs for that matter).

p.s. I realize the above is off-topic and the thread can now return to political conversions etc.

We can also thank the right for supporting the Taliban, and for the nasty little trick of trying to lay claim to a women’s rights justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, after years of ignoring a feminist campaign to stop supporting the Taliban because of their repression of women. With the extra Orwellian cherry of editing the final credits of Rambo IV to remove the dedication to the “brave freedom fighters” of Afghanistan.

That act of breathtaking hypocrisy is well beyond any of Stalin’s moral gymnastics, which had Koestler so exercised in Darkness at Noon. And of course the Taliban themselves were an intensely right wing organization.

Then there’s the Iran-Iraq war. It’s remarkable how many right-wing moral failures slide out of view, while the rich run around comparing AOC to Stalin…