Shah Shah a Come Come

Wrong Side of History Newsletter #65

Good morning, and happy summer solstice to any pagan subscribers.

There are still a few tickets remaining for next Wednesday’s Canon Club event, if you’re in London - Alexander Lee will discuss the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. (If you don’t know what the Canon Club is, this will explain.)

On Monday, I will also be speaking at this event in Westminster, organised by the Roger Scruton Foundation, so if you want to be cheered up on a Monday morning, come and listen to me talk about how we’re doomed.

Since the last newsletter, I have written about anarcho-tyranny in the UK.

I wrote about the rise of substack (free) and why it seems to be political moderates making all the money.

I also wrote about preference falsification cascades, and on a similar theme, about late Soviet Britain.

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I’ve spent the week going through notes on Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature, which came out in 2011 and explained how the world has become a lot safer and less violent. Although I broadly agree with the book’s conclusion, I wanted to see whether it really was one of those unfortunate titles, such as the 1911 The Great Illusion predicting that a European war was unlikely, subsequently proved wrong by events. (Even that book was not incorrect, in that Norman Angell foresaw that a European war would be devastating even for the winners). My general feeling is that things will be fine, and Pinker’s thesis will continue to hold up, but the 2020s are turning out quite grim and things have now taken a turn for the worse with fighting between Israel and Iran.

Ali Ansari wrote about Iran and nuclear nationalism.

Having initially dismissed the Shah’s nuclear programme as a western conspiracy to siphon off money (Ayatollah Khomeini also notoriously lampooned the Shah’s ambitions ‘to harness energy from the sun’ as fantasy), the programme was resurrected in 1984 as the revolutionary government became aware of Iraq’s nuclear programme. The impetus for the Islamic Republic, then grinding out a protracted war with Iraq, was clearly different.

But it effectively appropriated the Shah’s plans - and his economic justification - divested of its wider context and its broader energy strategy. More obviously the vagaries of revolutionary Islam ensure that there was little if any prospect of twenty reactors being built. Indeed so far Iran has a single reactor - completed by the Russians in 2011 who supply the enriched uranium required. In the midst of power shortages Iranians rightly question why so much investment has yielded so little. There is nothing else in the pipeline.

My impression from limited conversations with Iranians is that even those opposed to the regime - and most of those in Britain are - are pretty nationalistic. I remember one very long conversation with an Iranian taxi driver who so loathed the mullahs that he’d foresworn Islam altogether, wore a Zoroastrian pendent around his neck and had changed his ‘Abrahamic’ name to something more Persian. He saw Islam as a form of Arabic imperialism and just wanted Iran to be the strongest power in the region, but I didn’t get the impression he’d have tolerated any sort of western overlordship.

I don’t have strong views about what can be done about Iran, because foreign policy always has too many unknown unknowns, although I tend to be against regime change. I do, however, agree with this point made here about monarchy: ‘For once, just imagine what would be possible if British foreign policy was monarchist. A section of the Foreign Office just for identifying the most legitimate heirs, for preparing them for constitutional Government, and for offering them to transitional Governments when wanted’.

Instead, Britain seems to follow American foreign policy aims based on ‘democracy’, when a much bigger concern is that countries have stable governments that might build institutions, the rule of law and traditions of tolerance. There is a much stronger rational case for monarchy than for democracy, and while Iran’s late dynasty were certainly not ideal, imagine Jordan without the Hashemites.

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How to reverse regional decline.

The UK could look to Lille. The French city’s strategy, adopted in the 1990s, focused on making the city more attractive to residents and more competitive economically by creating a denser inner city and limiting further outward expansion. Traditionally dominated by single-family homes from its industrial past, Lille set a goal to build two-thirds of new housing within existing city limits, with minimum density requirements. Central brownfield were converted to mixed-use areas, including housing. Today, Lille ranks as France’s third-largest service hub, and has a significant financial sector. It has also developed strong clusters in mail-order and large-scale retail, supported by auxiliary industries like logistics, graphics, and advertising.

France does so many basic infrastructure things better than us.

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Conor Fitzgerald on ‘talking to men’:

Men are the same about their own lives and instincts. The things most men instinctively value and want most for themselves - to live in a kind of piratical spirit, to be strong, accomplished, useful, life-embracing, brave and so on, to own something, and to continuously expand those capacities into the world - these things have downsides. It’s not often stated because it sounds callous - but left to their own devices they will take the downsides of the suicides and homelessness and the unemployment and addiction as the inevitable point where your quest for a life worth living runs aground. These things are terrible and cruel and should be managed and minimised, and we should feel sympathy for people caught in those nets - that’s all true. But it’s also true that risking something, trying something, battling for life, expressing and proving yourself - none of that means anything if you can’t fail, and can’t feel personally responsible for some part of that failure.

I think that’s true, and also relates to the issue of ‘men’s mental elf’ which Conor has also written about. Male self-esteem really stems from a sense of accomplishment in some form, and for this to exist there must be failure, too.

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‘Then that Cobain pussy had to come around & ruin it all. I'll tell you somethin’, I hate the fuckin’ 90’s.’ So said Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson in The Wrestler, and James Marriott agrees

According to the popular story, a series of earthquakes shook us out of paradise: 9/11, the 2008 crash, social media, mass migration. But as Curtis shows, our unhappy age is a natural evolution of, not an aberration from the 1990s. History doesn’t rupture, it mutates. The myth of the blissful end of history is just as bogus as the myth of the long Edwardian summer (in the years before the First World War, readers will recall, Britain was on the brink of civil war over the question of Home Rule for Ireland).

The seeds of our present discontent were already germinating in that lost Eden at the end of history. The world Curtis portrays in Shifty is quite spookily familiar. The sleazy politicians of John Major’s decaying government (the Starmer administration fleetingly strikes the viewer as almost attractive) have lost both public trust and the capacity to direct events. In the furious eyes of miners filing grimly out of shuttered pits in County Durham you glimpse the first sparks of the populist conflagration soon to engulf western democracies (and, perhaps, a foreshadowing of the AI-driven white collar deindustrialisation to come). Above it all, the unaccountable barons of high finance perch in their glittering silver towers.

My main impression of the 1990s, as a teenager in London, was that it was pretty violent and menacing; the Bakerloo Line might today look like 1980s New York, but it is immensely safe compared to the late 20th century when it was notorious for mugging gangs. In 1989 the New York Guardian Angels even began a franchise on the Tube.

Similarly, I often see Americans hark back to 1991 as the idea golden age, which was the year they won the (Cold) war, but also the second most murderous year in American history. (1980 was the worst)

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Marriott discussed AI with Ian Leslie on his latest podcast episode, and I have to admit I find it pretty alarming. On a similar subject, Ethan Mollick wrote about the long singularity

And yet, there is also evidence that things have slowed down in the last few decades. The twin engines of growth: productivity growth and scientific innovation, seem to be progressing more slowly. Someone born at the time of the Wright Brothers, when horse-drawn transport ruled, would be 66 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon in 1969. That is the equivalent of someone alive today being born in 1957. While there are many technological advances since 1957, it isn’t as clear that they have as profoundly affected our day-to-day life as much as the ones in the previous 66 year span. Compared to entire massive industries that appeared and dissolved in the prior 2/3 of a century, only one of the 270 jobs in the 1950 census has since been eliminated by technological advancement: elevator operator.

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Adam Zamoyski on Poland’s new president, who is an, er, colourful character.

What kind of a Polish President Karol Nawrocki will make is not immediately clear. Described in the media as a ‘conservative historian’, he is certainly no crusty academic; a keen boxer and footballer, he has been known to take part in organised punch-ups between several hundred fans of rival teams. And although he took an MA in History at the University of Gdańsk and was awarded a doctorate for a thesis on ‘Social Resistance to Communist Power in the city of Elbląg 1976-89’, the list of his subsequent publications suggests a greater interest in football than history.

It may be that it was his love for the beautiful game that brought him into contact with its more exuberant variety of fans and the confraternity of neo-Nazi bikers with whom he has been alleged to consort, or it may just be an interest in people. He has fended off questions about contacts with members of the criminal underworld by stressing his concern for social issues, explaining that he met many as a prison visitor. The repeated allegations that, when working as a security guard at the Grand Hotel in Sopot, he used to supply its clients with prostitutes may well have a similarly innocent explanation. That he is fascinated by low-life, there can be no doubt. In 2018 he published, under the pseudonym Tadeusz Batyr, the biography of a notorious gangster who had been murdered in a turf war. In a curious twist, posing as Batyr and heavily disguised, he agreed to give an interview, in which he lavished praise on the great historian Karol Nawrocki.

So he’s basically a cross between Dominic Sandbrook and Tommy Robinson.

I wrote about Zamoyski’s History of Poland a while back.

David Goodhart on a London lost

London also has plenty of poverty, an unusually high number of single people who will need extra help from the state when they age, plus a disproportionate number of single parent families – more than 40% of children live in single parent households in Southwark, Lambeth, Islington, Lewisham, Hackney and Greenwich.

But to the rest of the country some of these trends look like the self-inflicted wounds of the dominant Anywheres, merely echoed by Sadiq Khan’s City Hall. Meanwhile provincial Britain drifts further away from London because its children are less likely to work here, unless seriously high achievers, thanks to international migration. I hear far fewer regional accents, let alone proper cockney, among London workers than I did when I was growing up in the 1970s.

London has been sucking in people from the rest of Britain for centuries, and even skeletons from 14th century plague pits showed that huge numbers came from every part of the kingdom; that historical norm reversed in the mid-2000s, and more people now leave London for the provinces than arrive. On the Tube I mainly tend to hear regional accents on Saturday afternoons, or the week just before Christmas, when people come down for musicals.

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At the Spectator, John Power writes about social housing.

They are not alone in feeling this way. Another woman I spoke to recently bought a flat in a converted west London maisonette, only to find Japanese knotweed growing into her garden from a neighbouring property. ‘If I had normal neighbours, this would have been fixed years ago. But because the flat happens to be owned by a housing association, they’re not dealing with it.’ She could lose tens of thousands on the value of her home, while her neighbours don’t face any consequences.

This sense of imbalance is not new, but it’s becoming harder to ignore. One woman found herself living above a man who is fresh out of prison. He was placed there by the local authority and uses the property to deal drugs, smoke weed and house his illegal XL bullies. When she complained, he threatened her with his dogs. When she spoke to the council, she was told the placement was intentional, to keep him away from ‘negative influences’ in a nearby estate.

Many such cases. I’ve heard some shocking stories from friends and acquaintances whose lives were made a nightmare by troublesome - sometimes actually insane - neighbours. If I was an MP, I’d propose a law allowing homeowners to sue councils or charities which place troublesome or violent people next to them.

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Louise Perry on one of Britain’s core industries, OnlyFans

But Blue (whose real name is Tia Billinger) wondered if life might not have more to offer her. So she left her husband, moved to Australia and pursued a new business idea: having sex with hundreds of (in her words) ‘barely legal’ teenage boys and uploading the footage to subscription-based, content-sharing platform OnlyFans. ‘I just wanted a better life,’ she insists. And, in her opinion, OnlyFans gave that to her.

Now 26, Blue has become world famous for the escalating depravity of her stunts. She was planning to host what she called a ‘petting zoo’ event this weekend, in which as many as 2,000 men would be given sexual access to her over 24 hours, all on camera. She cancelled the stunt after an online backlash, but promised to replace it with the ‘craziest, largest livestream ever’ instead.

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Aporia reviews Nigel Biggar’s book on reparations.

Biggar underscores that plantations were not unique to the Americas. The Fulani people of West Africa established massive plantation economies in the Sokoto Caliphate in northern Nigeria, and the Omani Arabs operated similar economies on the East African coast. In fact, the Sokoto Caliphate rivaled America in terms of the total number of slaves. Large-scale, plantation-based slavery was a global institution, not some colonial aberration.

Biggar is particularly critical of the popular claim, put forward by Eric Williams, that the industrial revolution was built on the profits of slavery. Drawing on recent research, he argues that slavery’s contribution to Britain’s industrialisation was modest at best. The historian David Richardsonestimated that, by 1790, profits from the slave trade were responsible for less than 1% of domestic investment. Likewise, David Eltis and Stanley Engerman have shown that the economic gains from slavery were small relative to the economy as a whole. They also point out that Portugal transported about two-thirds as many slaves as Britain. So if slavery fuelled Britain’s industrialisation, Portugal should have been richer per head of population—yet its economic performance was far less impressive.

A sizeable part of the book is dedicated to the myth of African innocence. Biggar notes that African kingdoms such as the Asante Empire not only sold slaves to Europeans but also practiced human sacrifice. These societies even resisted attempts to abolish slavery, viewing it as essential to their political survival. Remarkably, the Jamaican Maroons—hailed today as symbols of black resistance—owned slaves themselves.

As a Grandpa Simpson-style aside, the tendency for post-2013 history books to use ‘enslaved persons’ rather than ‘slave’ really grates.

In brief

In ‘Woke is not dead’ latest, the Harvard Law Review apparently removed 85% of pieces using a rubric that asks about ‘author diversity’, including one by Asian scholars which failed because there were ‘not enough Black authors’.

On a similar subject, this story about a new edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four is pretty funny.

‘The introduction to the new edition, endorsed by Orwell's estate and written by the American author Dolen Perkins-Valdez, is at the center of the storm, drawing fire from conservative commentators as well as public intellectuals, and prompting a wide spectrum of reaction from academics who study Orwell's work.

‘Perkins-Valdez opens the introduction with a self-reflective exercise: imagining what it would be like to read 1984 for the first time today. She writes that "a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity," noting the complete absence of Black characters.’

Wow, imagine an English author writing a book about London in the mid-1940s not including any ‘Black characters’.

Also in the Woke Files, remember that time Starbucks allowed anyone to use their toilets because of yet another race drama? I didn’t know this:

This led to a 7.0% decline in attendance at Starbucks locations relative to other nearby coffee shops. The effect is 84% larger near homeless shelters, and larger for Starbucks’ wealthier customers. Remaining Starbucks customers spent 4.1% less time per visit. Public urination citations decreased near Starbucks locations.

The great John Derbyshire is hanging up his boots after many long years, having reached the grand old age of 80. Enjoy your retirement, Derb, and happy birthday.

Modern housing in St Petersburg, as seen on Google street view in 2025. Looks horrendous. Add to the ‘Russia is not based, actually’ files.

‘Eight labs situated across the U.S., Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and the Netherlands tested whether stereotype threat was holding back women's mathematics performance. They did not replicate the effect.’

Percentage of American parents who wish the following had never been invented.

Nate Silver looks into the political happiness gap On Twitter, Cremieux also delves into the data, on a subject that interests me.

Americans of the Left have become much more free trade. This is how humanity progresses - by people reaching the correct conclusions, for totally stupid reasons.

Jaws came out fifty years ago, on 20 June 1975. It reminds me of this fascinating story about how Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son, found a missing woman by watching the beach scene.

An awesome poster from the German tourist board. The artist Jupp Wiertz tragically died in an accident in January 1939, although if I were to look on the bright side, he didn’t miss much.

A lovely story about British understatement:

On June 24, 1982, British Airways Flight 9 flew into darkness literally and figuratively. At 37,000 feet above the Indian Ocean, en route from London to Auckland, the Boeing 747 unknowingly entered a massive cloud of volcanic ash from Indonesia’s Mount Galunggung. Moments later, one engine failed. Then another. Then another. And then—all four engines stopped. In the cockpit, panic could’ve taken over. But Captain Eric Moody took a breath and reached for the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”’

That line would go down in aviation history—not just for its dry British understatement, but for the sheer steadiness behind it. The aircraft began to descend rapidly, essentially gliding through ash-filled skies, the cabin filling with thick sulphuric smoke, the crew desperately trying restart procedures. At 13,000 feet—just minutes from potential ocean impact—one engine roared back to life. Then another. And another. Miraculously, all four restarted.’

AI history videos are really taking off

Japanese monk adopts abandoned dog, dog saves his life

The Conquest of 1066, in which the Bretons played a significant role, reintroduced a lot of Celtic features into the English language, according to this 2023 paper. Sent by reader Aidan Barrett. I’m fascinated by the Norman Conquest, including its effects on our language and our social class. On that subject, I’ll sign off with a book plug.

Enjoy the longest day – and remember, it all gets darker from now on!