Sunday West: October 23

Britain goes from strength to strength

Good morning. It’s all happening in Europe right now. Britain continues in its new role of being the continent’s comic foil, while Italy and Sweden both have new populist Right-ish governments. On Monday I wrote about how Sweden was an extreme example of a high-trust European society having difficulty with immigration.

I’m a big fan of urban life, and I love being within easy reach of all the theatres I’m never going to go to, but I find it frustrating how many fellow urbanists underplay the issue of crime, a point I made on Wednesday, but then a lot of people are sanguine about this; some like cities being a bit edgy. There is also a tendency to sneer at conservatives for feeling afraid of crime. I know that Simon was making an age-specific comparison, referencing the 1980s when Beirut was a byword for danger, but it should trouble Americans that their country has such an extraordinary amount of violence, and that some American cities have far higher murder rates than Northern Ireland at the peak of the troubles. Cities need to be civilised.

On Friday I wrote how, if the boomers are the luckiest generation in history, their grandchildren are cursed. This article is FREE, which means you zoomers can save a bit for a mortgage on that family home within reasonable distance of a decent job, friends and family (good luck!).

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Elsewhere, Rob Henderson looks at why and how human being became so relatively peaceful.

The implication that hunter gatherer communities disperse into smaller groups not because of resources or ecological reasons, but because of social conflict, is consistent with other findings indicating that the reason human intelligence evolved is not to solve technical problems, but rather to navigate perilous social terrain. This is called the “social brain hypothesis” or the “Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis.” At a certain point in human evolution, the most prominent and serious dangers were no longer the environment or external predators. The real threats were other people.

This might also explain why highly intelligent people are often more susceptible to social pressures and ideological capture. The psychologist Keith Stanovich, in his book The Bias That Divides Us, has written:

“If you are a person of high intelligence...you will be even less likely than the average person to realize you derived your beliefs from the social groups you belong to and because they fit with your psychological propensities.”

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James Marriott writes about how tedious art galleries have become, because of politics.

At the Tate Britain’s recent exhibition of paintings by William Hogarth there was a distinct air of post-revolutionary ennui. A label next to a Hogarth self-portrait showing the painter sitting on a chair in an empty room pointed out that “the chair is made from timbers shipped from colonies via routes that also shipped enslaved people”. It went on to wonder: “Could the chair also stand in for all those unnamed black and brown people enabling the society that supports his vigorous creativity?” You can practically hear the curator who wrote that one muttering, “will this do?”, and knocking off for lunch. It’s worth noting that the bad old ways of art history — the Great Men at their easels purveying “universal” truths, the blank ignorance of any civilisation east of the Adriatic, the serene disregard of politics — were themselves rotten and boring.

Uncritical nostalgia for the haughty simplicities of the past is misplaced. The moral indignation of the progressive generation who began to dismantle those ideas in the 1970s was well aimed. Sometimes colonial history or gender politics are relevant. But moral indignation is only thrilling when it is wielded by insurgents. When it is the establishment mood, it becomes sour and directionless. At whom can an institution as ancient and respectable as an art gallery level accusations of moral impurity? At its visitors? At itself?

I found this when I visited the Tate in January. It’s just endless, and obsessive. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to call the current ideology ‘soft authoritarian’ because, while progressives in 2022 aren’t interested in the violence and cruelty of 20th century totalitarian regimes, they share the idea that politics is relevant to everything. I find this especially now with history; the people who want to make everything in history about their core obsessions — race — don’t even take joy in history. It’s purely a means for politics. It’s boring, and drains the fun out of everything.

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Ben Sixsmith wrote about the phenomenon of cockwomble, a subject he has tackled before.

Have you ever heard somebody use the term “cockwomble”? “Wankpuffin”? “Spunktrumpet”? For some reason, this combination of Stephen Fryesque linguistic silliness and Frankie Boylesque aggression caught on in a big way among older millennials and younger Gen Xers. In time, “cockwomble” has become a byword for a certain kind of not-quite-young-but-not-quite-old British male.

The representative of the cockwomble kind is the sort of person who swears at absolutely everything. The sort of person who is obsessed with British sitcoms from the 90s but thinks Graham Linehan is a “TOTAL C**T”. The sort of person who “f**king loves science” and binge-watched QI but doesn’t know a lot about history or science beyond a smattering of “interesting facts”. The sort of person who combines being effortfully, ostentatiously cynical with fervid moralism.

Correct, and this is why swearing is lame 95% of the time. Most people who behave overtly subversive towards yesterday’s taboos are cringingly subservient towards today’s.

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Ari Blaff has written a piece for The American Conservative on a subject I am also working on, but have not yet published because of cowardice: on Jews being safer in Hungary than in western Europe.

As I learnt during my recent travels across a dozen European countries, the securitization of Jewish life across the continent is the norm, not the exception. Every Shabbat service I attended, whether it was in Prague or London or Majorca, required submitting passport photos, documentation of my connection to the Jewish community, and sometimes even a rabbinical reference. Today, European Jews can effectively only practice their religion behind a defensive fortress. I call it Stockade Judaism….

Reality bears out these concerns. Hungarian Holocaust researcher László Bernát Veszprémy argued in Newsweek recently that while many European nations were shattering their antisemitic records, Hungary was generally placid. “Different organizations measure different numbers, but they all agree that in 2020 no more than 70 such events happened, of which only one was physical,” Veszprémy wrote. 

For perspective, in 2021, the UK experienced 2,255 antisemitic attacks. Germany eclipsed its 2020 antisemitic incident rate only ten months into 2021, totaling 1,850. Neighboring Austria went from 257 antisemitic episodes in 2020 to 562 in the first half of 2021 alone—this with a Jewish community numbering between 8,000 and 15,000 people. Hungary, by comparison, has a Jewish community estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000.

The contrast is striking if you visit Hungary. Walk past synagogues in Vienna, Paris or Berlin, and you will see armed police with machine guns outside. Jewish venues near me in north London all have some form of security. It goes without saying that this is exceptionally sad, and in my view partly preventable; next time there are groups of people in the middle of London shouting, ‘Kill the Jews,’ and ‘Rape their daughters’, deport or jail them, and make a big show of it. If a law stops you doing that, repeal the law. But also, more importantly, don’t allow unfiltered immigration in the first place. My basic take is that if a country has armed guards outside religious buildings, its model is failing.

Meanwhile in Budapest you can walk past synagogues and — it just’s a normal religious building like anywhere else. (Ditto for Christmas markets, which don’t have security barriers all around them.)

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I promised to feature some of the best comments, so here is one to start with! Basil Chamberlain writes on the most recent piece:

Just want to take issue with one factual claim. Is it really true that Britain didn't have a Baby Boom? Of course, it didn't have one on the scale of the US. But as I mentioned in a reply to another of your posts, the UK birth rate had been below 2 every year between 1929 and 1942; it was above 2 every year from 1943 to 1973. Surely that's a boom of a kind. Yes, the early postwar bump was relatively modest and short (peaking at 2.69 in 1947, and falling to around replacement for a few years in the early 1950s). And yes, the years of highest fertility, when we came close to 3 children per women, were in the early to mid-1960s.

But actually the picture in the US isn't very different - except that all the numbers (pre-Boom as well) are somewhat higher. US fertility reached what was at that time its lowest low in 1936, but that year still saw a fertility rate of a little above 2.1 (i.e., roughly replacement nowadays, though I guess, due to higher infant mortality, below replacement then). The early postwar boom in the States, as in the UK, peaked in 1947, then fell a little around 1950, then started rising again. It peaked a little earlier (1956-61) than in the UK, but similarly, the later peak saw higher fertility rates than the earlier one (which means Americans in their sixties, not their seventies, are the largest Boomer cohort).

And the numbers in terms of the difference between lows and highs are strikingly similar. The peak early postwar fertility rate was about one child per woman higher than the 1930s lowest low in both countries (UK: 1.72 in 1933 versus 2.69 in 1947; US: 2.15 in 1936 versus 3.27 in 1947). The late 1950s / early 1960s peak fertility rate was about 15% higher than the 1947 rate in the US and about 10% higher in the UK. The patterns are different, but they're not that different.

It would be interesting to do a fuller comparison of the postwar experience across Western Europe and the Anglosphere; and I'd love to read some in-depth research on the assumed reasons for different fertility patterns in different countries. For instance, France has quite a similar demographic pattern to the US (an fairly dramatic early postwar boom, a slight dip, and another boom in the late 1950s / early 1960s); but there, unlike in the US, the late 1940s peak is higher than the c.1960 one. Why? Denmark had a dramatic postwar jump (TFR between 2.1 and 2.2 through the 1930s; hitting 3 in 1946); but fertility quickly levelled off and hovered around 2.5 to 2.65 every year between 1949 and 1966. Why was there no Danish equivalent of the later boom experienced elsewhere? Canada's TFR never fell below 2.65 even in the 1930s; it was higher than 3 every year between 1943 and 1965; it came close to 4 in 1959. Were economic conditions simply better there than elsewhere? Did Canadian governments pursue specific pro-natalist policies? How much did Quebec's then devout Catholicism skew the statistics?

Speaking of Catholicism, if you're really looking for a country that didn't have a postwar baby boom at all, there's Italy. TFR was actually higher in 1937/38 (2.9-3.0) than it was in 1947/48 (2.8-2.9), and it settled at 2.5 or below for the whole of the 1950s. Even the mid-1960s jump, which Italy had in common with most Western countries, was a decidedly modest one.

Yes, he has a point, although it depends on fertility v total births. UK fertility jumped in 1947 to 2.68, then fell until the early 50s and rose to its peak of 2.93 in 1964, not longer after the Beatles first LP. US fertility rose to 3.25 in 1947, then declined very slightly but reached a peak – 3.75 – around 1958.

In terms of actual births, Britain did have a sharp post-war increase, peaking at over one million a year in the late 40s, then peaking again in the mid-60s (today’s it’s just two-thirds of that). US births actually peaked a bit later, around 1957. So I accept this ‘fake babyboomer’ theory overeggs it a little bit, but Britain’s babyboom was certainly a fair bit later.

The Italy thing is interesting. Presumably victorious countries had much bigger babybooms, and maybe it wasn’t just material difference; maybe it’s a hormonal issue similar to how fertility jumps among supporters of victorious football teams.

Thanks for subscribing, one and all. Incidentally, I plan to make a longish visit to the States next year at some point, so if any American subscribers want to meet up, let me know here or email me (you can just reply to an email and I get it). I’m not entirely sure about my schedule yet, but it will be spring or ‘fall’, and there are lots places I’d like to visit which I haven’t yet. I hear Jackson, Mississippi is very nice!