Theresa May, Hubris and a Decline in Classical Education

Seeing this on Facebook today gave me some food for thought. This is the second example of a Conservative Prime Minister initiating a vote, expecting to win - and then losing. David Cameron fully expected to win the referendum on Britain staying in the EC, convinced he would gain a Remain victory which did not happen, and was forced to fall on his sword and resign. Theresa May called this General Election confidently expecting a Tory landslide, based upon a very strong showing in the opinion polls. She appeared on TV this morning looking surprisingly calm and without a red face, which she ought to have been wearing, following a humiliating failure at the ballot box.
I think this all points to one thing: a lack of knowledge of the classics, and a decline in the teaching of Latin and Greek. Mrs May went to a grammar school which later became a comprehensive, so probably never got to study Latin or Greek. David Cameron went to Eton, where, as Wikipedia says:
"His early interest was in art. Six weeks before taking his O-Levels he was caught smoking cannabis. He admitted the offence and had not been involved in selling drugs, so he was not expelled but was fined, prevented from leaving the school grounds, and given a "Georgic" (a punishment which involved copying 500 lines of Latin text)."
This punishment might well have affected Cameron's attitude to the Greek and Latin languages. Either way, neither Mr Cameron or Mrs May seem to have understood the word "Hubris" before they announced their disastrous votes.

Hubris is a word that gets bandied about a lot, so it's important to clarify what it means. Generally speaking, it means foolish pride or reckless overconfidence. As Wikipedia (not always wrong) says:

  "In its ancient Greek context, it typically describes behavior that defies the norms of behavior or challenges the gods, and which in turn brings about the downfall, or nemesis, of the perpetrator of hubris...In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride combined with arrogance. Hubris is often associated with a lack of humility. Sometimes a person's hubris is also associated with ignorance. The accusation of hubris often implies that suffering or punishment will follow, similar to the occasional pairing of hubris and nemesis in Greek mythology."
In Biblical terms, this is expressed in Proverbs 16:18 as:
"Pride goeth (goes) before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall".
Both David Cameron and Mrs May must now rue neglecting their classical and religious education.
If we look back through literary fiction and historical fact, we find numerous examples of hubris.
There is John Milton's Paradise Lost, where Lucifer tries to incite other angels to worship him, but is cast into Hell by God and His loyal angels. Victor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manifests hubris in his attempt to become a great scientist by creating life through technological means, but eventually regrets this previous desire - as might some atomic scientists of the 20th century. Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus portrays the "hero" as a scholar whose arrogance and pride lead him to sign an agreement with the Devil, without any regard for the consequences. The most prominent example of hubris in classical literature, of course, is that of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, which led to his (literal) downfall.
If we look back through history, we can see hubris at work in the massacre of the Roman legions in the Teutoburger Wald slaughter in AD 9 through to Hitler's last stand in Berlin, 1945. There is the ignominious defeat of the Second Crusade in 1147. and, much later, the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 which was, as Saul David says:
"...a squalid episode...characterized by Custer's naked ambition, lack of regard for his men and foolish contempt for his foe".
Custer is quoted as saying after he launched his doomed attack:
"Where did all those damned Indians come from?"
This same recklessness was displayed by E. J. Smith, captain of the Titanic, Lord Chelmsford at Isandhlwana, 1879, General MacArthur in Korea, 1950 and by French generals at Dienbienphu in Indo-China, 1954. And there are many more such examples for those interested.
Looking back over all these debacles makes me wonder why David Cameron and Theresa May did not take account of them - but, that's hubris for you. Or is it caused by a decline in the study of the classics and the ancient Greek and Latin languages? In 2015, Harry Mount, writing in the Daily Telegraph, in his article, "The Greek Tragedy in our Classrooms", laments:
"The game is up for ancient Greek in comprehensives.

From now on, the high-minded, mind-expanding beauties of Greek will be confined to public and grammar schools. The gap between comprehensive and selective education will yawn wider and wider..."
Oh, well, perhaps that is why Theresa May called this election. Her school became a comprehensive while she was there. Mount continues:
" The 1988 Education Reform Act didn’t include Latin in the National Curriculum. Within five years, the number of students studying Latin in state schools halved."
None of this excuses David Cameron, of course. Fee-paying schools still teach Latin and Greek. Perhaps his Latin punishment turned him against the wisdom of Socrates, Sophocles, Marcus Aurelius and all the other great minds of antiquity?
If any adverse consequences flow from this election, just think: it could all have been avoided by greater attention to classical literature by two Conservative Party leaders.
"Caveant, consules!"

"Denial" the Movie - Truth on Trial

On Monday, I received the DVD of “Denial”, the film about the 2000 David Irving libel trial starring, among others, Rachel Weisz and Timothy Spall. The trial was highly publicised at the time, and it is no spoiler for the film to say that Irving lost his case.   Some people think the trial was about Irving being tried for Holocaust denial, but in fact, the action was brought by Irving against American historian Deborah Lipstadt. As Tom Robey says, Irving claimed:
“… she’d libelled him repeatedly in her book Denying the Holocaust. The case went to the English High Court – where the burden of proof is on the defendants, unlike in the US, where the burden’s on the plaintiff”.
In her book, Lipstadt accused Irving of being a Holocaust denier, a bigot, a racist, and a bender of documentary evidence. The film, and the book of the same title, detail the efforts of Lipstadt and her legal team to prove that Irving had distorted historical fact in an effort to whitewash Hitler and deny the systemic nature of the Holocaust.

Irving was on the radar of anti-fascists and the Jewish community in the UK for many years before he tried to sue Professor Lipstadt. He began his career as a “historian” following an unsuccessful university career by writing a book about the Dresden bombing, in which he grossly inflated the civilian casualty figures. In 1967, he wrote “The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17”in which he libelled a Royal Navy veteran who successfully sued Irving, forcing Mr Irving to pay out £40 000 in damages. In the 1970s, Irving wrote “Hitler’s War”, in which he claimed that Hitler did not order the Holocaust. He made numerous trips to Germany where he addressed meetings of neo-Nazis; he provided public support to an openly Nazi student at London University and his books featured on the reading lists of the National Front and British Movement.
On this evidence alone, it is no exaggeration to say that Irving can, at the very least, be described as sympathetic to the Third Reich. In the 1980s, I found confirmation of this when I ill-advisedly borrowed “Hitler’s War” from the local library. In the first couple of chapters, I found clear evidence of Irving’s bias when I read his unusual expression of sympathy for the French people after D-Day. According to Irving, the French were plagued by Allied troops who looted everything in sight, while the well-behaved Germans had never dared to do such things. I took the book back.
None of this was used in the trial, nor does it appear in the film. Suffice it to say that the team of legal experts and historians who supported Lipstadt were able to refute all of Irving’s silly arguments and win their case convincingly. Given some of Irving’s antics before and during the trial (at one point, he called the trial judge "Mein Fuhrer"), it should have been a push against an open door. For example, Irving was on record as saying:

"I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz”.

"I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz … It's baloney, it's a legend.”

“I'm going to form an association of Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, or the ASSHOLS."

In fact, the trial does not move as smoothly as that, but, as I think we should all watch the film, I will say no more about the plot. As for the film, I was left thinking that, able as Rachel Weisz is, an American actress might have been a more appropriate choice to play Deborah Lipstadt. Much praise has been lavished upon Timothy Spall’s portrayal of Irving, but, good as it is, it presents Irving sometimes as little more than a pantomime villain. Irving, as his books reveal, is no joke.

Some critics have said that the film suffers from the lack of a moment of supreme, Hollywood style, emotionally-charged courtroom drama, but this is eyewash, in my opinion. The film succeeds, as did Ms Lipstadt’s defence team, by a gradual demolition of Irving’s “arguments”. To do anything otherwise would have been an Irving-like distortion of the truth.
On that note, I think that this is the main point of the film: the primacy of the truth. In an age when “false news” is so influential, it is important that we do not compromise on this issue. The Holocaust happened; Donald Trump attracted a smaller inauguration crowd than Obama; David Irving was imprisoned for Holocaust denial in Austria in 2006. Oh, and Elvis is not working in a chip shop in Brighton. This film, despite its artistic flaws (can any film be flawless?), is a clarion call for honesty and the defence of historical veracity. As Peter Bradshaw said in The Guardian:
“…denial is fashionable again. Irving himself is gloating at the way “alt–right” fascists are threatening to make him and his poisonous flat-earthery acceptable once more. The US president himself believes in “alternative facts”. So for me this film, telling its story with punchy commitment and force, was a breath of fresh air”.

For those worried about David Irving, who was bankrupted after the failure of his libel suit: do not be concerned. He now lives in the Scottish Highlands, in a 40-room mansion near Nairn provided by an anonymous benefactor. Besides this, Irving claims that his books are selling well, his YouTube blurbs are doing famously, and well-wishers are sending him money:
“It used to be small amounts, and they still come in, but people are now giving me very large sums indeed – five-figure sums. I now drive a Rolls-Royce. A beautiful car. Though money is completely unimportant to me.”

The struggle continues.

ISIS, Simple Arithmetic and the London Bridge Atrocity

ISIS, which is slowly losing ground militarily in Iraq, is reacting like a mortally wounded beast, lashing out wildly in all directions. There is little point in quibbling about whether or not last night's murderers were ISIS members; the late attackers (not late enough) were clearly acting in accordance with ISIS encouragement and, by all accounts, met with online ISIS approval for their actions.
This is the third major terrorist attack in the UK this year (so far) and there is a chilling sense of normality creeping over us. Last year on this blog, I was often writing about the danger to us all from released homicidal mental patients. This year, I find myself writing about murderous terrorists. I have to pinch myself at times to be able to distinguish between them. The same epithets I used about one (appalling, hideous, atrocious, etc) I use about the other. Another common factor seems to be their demeanour while carrying out their attacks. Holly Jones, a BBC reporter who witnessed the slaughter of pedestrians on London Bridge last night, said of the driver of the van that mounted the pavement:
"He didn't look scared. he looked demented".
The same could be said of any of the mentally deranged killers who have featured on this blog before. As we seem to have accepted murders by such people as part and parcel of the risks of everyday life, we are, perhaps, becoming inured to terrorist atrocities, keeping calm and carrying on. Perhaps.
While I share the revulsion that we all feel about last night's massacre, and salute the security forces for their prompt action in liquidating the perpetrators, I was interested in Theresa May's analysis of the root cause of the problem, which, coincidentally, I discussed in my last blog post. The PM said today:
" ...while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism...It is an ideology that claims our Western values of freedom, democracy and human rights are incompatible with the religion of Islam."
All well and good, but no clear indication was given how to combat this ideology. As ISIS can be described as "the active arm" of Salafism, Mrs May must surely know that Saudi Arabia finances Salafism in the UK and elsewhere. But then, Saudi Arabia is our ally, and buys huge amounts of weapon systems from our arms manufacturers.
As for the attack, and others, it is understandable that people are baffled yet again at these horrific events. After the terror attack in Tunisia in 2015, a friend of one of the victims said:
"I can't make sense of it, I just can't understand the logic of what they have done."
Similar sentiments were expressed after the Westminster Bridge incident, the slaughter of the innocents in Manchester, and yesterday's massacre.
The trouble is, if we examine what ISIS has done in the past, and their stated reasons for their actions, it is possible to discern an underlying strategic rationale, with several objectives:
1. Revenge upon the nations that fight against it in the Middle East.
2. Such acts maintain the morale of their fighters and activists who perceive these horrors as being victories.
3.These actions, if persistent enough, as in Iraq and Syria, create a climate of fear.
4. Their atrocities keep Daesh in the public eye via media publicity, reminding us that they are still a force to be reckoned with.
5. The attacks, while punishing the citizens of enemy countries (who are all guilty because they do not share the ISIS dogma), tie up huge resources.
Anyway, while we mourn our dead, our politicians make statements and we engage in gestures of defiance and solidarity with the victims, ISIS will be doing some simple arithmetic and analysing last night's events in London with an eye to the planning of further crimes against humanity. Back in June, 2015, I commented that ISIS would be making calculations from the results of the Tunisian murders, carried out by the late and unlamented Seifeddine Rezgui . In exchange for his "martyrdom", 38 innocent tourists died. ISIS bragged that they had 4000 operatives in Europe and I postulated that, if ISIS were doing their sums and if each operative killed as many people as Rezgui, 152 000 European citizens would die.
Last night's crime will give ISIS much food for thought. In the space of eight minutes, their three operatives inflicted 55 casualties, dead and wounded. Rounding up the decimal point, that equals 7 victims a minute. Now, this happened in central London, with a well-trained police firearms squad not far away. If their next atrocity happens in a less well protected location like a country town or a seaside resort, it will take longer to deploy a force to deal with them, and the toll of victims will be higher. A half-hour's rampage at the same rate would inflict 210 casualties. For the strategic planners of ISIS, humanity does not enter the reckoning; it is a matter of simple and brutal arithmetic. As it is with all terrorist movements, they do not count the cost of their actions to their victims; what matters to them is the simple arithmetic of the body count.