Newsletter #12: Living Freedom, New Atheism Lives, Hoel on Popular Science, the Second Coming, and More
Apologies for missing my Sunday deadline. It’s been quite hectic for me lately, but I thought I should at least get a newsletter out. So, here are some updates and reflections on an eclectic array of things.
Living Freedom. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was recently down in London again. This time it was for the Battle of Ideas’ ‘Living Freedom’ summer school/conference. I was invited along as one of the Free Speech Champions and it was great fun. Essentially, it was a long weekend of talks and debates from people as varied as Frank Furedi and Ella Whelan, by way of Toby Young and JJ Charlesworth. It was a fairly informal weekend; the best part was going to the pubs and curry houses afterwards and speaking to my fellow attendees, the organisers, and the speakers. Late nights were had, conversations were enjoyed, memories were made (and forgotten by the next morning), and bonds were forged. It’s not often that, over a few days, one can smoke with Baroness Claire Fox and neck some wine with Toby Young in the space of an hour, have a long discussion with an avowed Marxist-Leninist on what Utopia will look like (he wasn’t quite sure whether or not free speech will be allowed during the revolution), be psychoanalysed by a random middle-aged northern woman outside a cheap hostel, and end up agreeing with Osama bin Laden on live TV…
Let me explain that last! Some of us were invited by Inaya Folarin Iman to be in the live audience for Andrew Doyle’s GB News show Free Speech Nation. Now, I couldn’t resist the lure of showbiz, so of course I said yes. In the green room we were asked to submit questions, so I wrote one down and it was selected. You can see the clip of me making my telly debut here. I was being a bit facetious in the name of entertainment, but bin Laden’s low estimation of Joe Biden is quite funny—and even astute, as we’ve seen in recent weeks. I’d like to clarify, though, that Biden is still preferable to Trump, in my view, whatever bin Laden might have to say on the matter.
I had some spare time so I had a quick visit to the British Museum and ended up somewhere in West Dulwich after missing my bus stop, where I had a lovely meal. And before I left for my train back to Scotland, I visited Brick Lane, one of London’s oldest immigrant centres, home to waves of Jews, Bangladeshis, and more. It was a very nice area indeed. I even daydreamed a little of living there and looked up flat prices, which quickly disabused me of the notion. The reason I ended up in Brick Lane was that I’m re-reading The Satanic Verses and it’s one of the models for Brickhall in the novel (the other is Southall).
So that was Living Freedom: a most enjoyable long weekend. And I’ll be travelling back down to the metropolis in a couple of weeks for the Battle of Ideas festival in Westminster, where I’ll be volunteering and speaking on a panel. No rest for the wicked!
Speaking of The Satanic Verses… I finished re-reading the novel last night. Its brilliance is often obscured by the fatwa drama, which is a shame because it deserves to be appreciated as the great work of literature that it is. It contains some of the most thrilling imagery and moving scenes that I’ve ever encountered in fiction. It’s quite the achievement and this, more than Khomeini’s response to it, is what should be remembered. That old bat is long dead, but Rushdie lives, and his novels will live even longer. The Satanic Verses is a fine piece of art and no fatwa can change that. In this spirit, I tried to give it a proper literary appreciation in Quillette a couple of years ago: see here. Looking back on it, I think that piece holds up quite well.
Trump. Why do I say that Biden is still preferable to Trump? For one thing, the Afghanistan debacle is Trump’s responsibility, too, and can anyone seriously argue that it would have been conducted better with him in charge?
But more than that, Trump is a dangerous man to hold high office. It isn’t Trump Derangement Syndrome to suggest that a man who, since 2016, has openly boasted that he will not accept election results that displease him, who spent much of last year attacking the integrity of the upcoming election with the intention of overthrowing it if he didn’t win, who stated on the night of the election that he would not accept his clear defeat, who spent months in the courts and haranguing governors and spouting insane conspiracy theories with the aim of overturning a legitimate and fair democratic result, and who ended up inciting a mob to assault the Capitol in what can only be described as an insurrection—it is not, I repeat, TDS to suggest that such a man is unfit for any public office, let alone that of US president. His anti-democratic tendencies, openly displayed since before he won in 2016, should have been enough to discredit him entirely. Instead, the GOP is in thrall to one of the most barefaced political liars in recent history and a sizeable chunk of the American public are members of a political cult.
How can anyone look at Trump’s actions and words over the past 18 months and conclude that he is a democrat? How can anyone read the Eastman memo and conclude that there was not a concerted, deliberate, multi-pronged effort by Trump and his slimy minions to overthrow American democracy itself? How can anyone be aware of the fact that General Mark Milley so feared a Trumpist coup that he was seriously planning countermeasures and conclude that Trump is in any way whatsoever good for America or the world? This is what it comes down to: when the President of the United States is an authoritarian wannabe, when he unashamedly attempts to shatter the democratic process itself, when he lies and lies and lies to preserve his power, when he bullies and blusters and sets a mob of loons on the Capitol because he cannot accept defeat, then unless the alternative is Stalin, there is simply no case to support or defend Trump (even now as Biden flails and fails).
But isn’t Trump farcical? Weren’t the Q-Anon freaks who invaded the Capitol a bunch of pitiable idiots? Yes and yes. But that doesn’t mean they are not dangerous, too. There is no contradiction here: Trump can be a laughable incompetent and a deeply menacing figure. He is both. He might have never had a serious chance of succeeding in overturning the election, but that he tried for so long and with such commitment and that so many powerful people went along, and continue to go along, with it… Well, much of the damage is done, but the danger of Trumpism is far from over. Accuse me of suffering from TDS and I can only respond: why the fuck aren’t you?
Sudan survives. One of the most cheering developments in recent years has been the end of the Islamist regime in Sudan and that benighted country’s slow transition to secularism and democracy. Once the base of Osama bin Laden and a Sharia hellhole, Sudan’s future looks hopeful. Recently, a coup attempt was thwarted, and the revolution continues. Let us hope that Sudan one day reaches the end of the long and winding and painful road to democracy and freedom.
New Atheism lives! Daniel Pipes recently reported on the astonishing growth of atheism in the Islamic world. This is a subject I’ve been banging on about for a while now, and this phenomenon is another heartening development of recent years and decades. See, for example, my Areo review of Ibn Warraq’s book on dissent in Islam in history and the present. One of the most notable things about this phenomenon is the prominence of the so-called New Atheists within it. The Arabic translation of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has been downloaded for free over ten million times and quotes from Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. are plastered all over ex-Muslim social media from across the world. I find this amusing because in the last decade or so, opinion columnists struggling to come up with anything to write about have reached for the ‘New Atheism is dead’ essay topic. Try looking these (usually lazy) pieces up: it’s astonishing how many of them there are and how similar they all sound. New Atheism continues to be a major force for transformation and liberation in much of the world, and if those writers had deigned to rise out of their chairs and glance for even a moment at the wider world, they wouldn’t have embarrassed themselves quite so hilariously.
Hoel on popular science. In a bold move, the neuroscientist and novelist Erik Hoel has recently trashed the genre of popular science. I say ‘bold’ because, in the selfsame essay, he admits he’s working on a popular science book of his own! This is either marketing suicide or genius. I’ve already recommended Hoel’s novel The Revelations and now I recommend his Substack. The popular science essay is particularly good, a very insightful and humorous look at an oft-misunderstood genre. I disagree with some of the emphases, though. For example, he says:
The Selfish Gene isn’t a classic of science writing because Dawkins offers such a pellucid view of genetics, no, it’s because of the final highly playful section where he introduces the idea of memes, a part that is fundamentally amateurish.
Hoel isn’t using ‘amateurish’ in an insulting way, just to clarify. Anyway, I disagree with the assertion that The Selfish Gene is a classic only because of the meme section. I suppose this could be settled empirically, but I think it appeals because it’s a brilliant account of the then-latest developments in evolutionary biology and because it is so elegantly written, and because it is still relevant in the field and to the general public today. I think that Hoel misses one quite important point about Dawkins’ oeuvre. Dawkins is pretty much unique among writers of popular science because he doesn’t just regurgitate settled facts and theories but goes much further, engaging in scientific argument and proposing original ideas in his books (within his field, that is, lest Hoel replies that he isn’t denying originality in pop sci but only stating that it comes about in ‘amateurish’ fashion). Matt Ridley’s piece in the 2006 Dawkins festschrift explains this better than I can here. Unfortunately, I can’t find it online, so here are photos of it from my hard copy:
Anyway, read Hoel’s excellent essay!
The Second Coming. And just to finish off on a lighter note: Russell T Davies is returning to head up Doctor Who from 2023! As the man who brought the show back in 2005 to great acclaim and as one of TV’s very best writers, who better to save Doctor Who from the depths to which it has fallen in recent years? Hurrah, we are saved! If you’re unfamiliar with RTD, you should watch all of his shows. There isn’t a dud among them, from Queer as Folk to It’s a Sin. And the career of RTD stands, in my view, as a riposte to some of the more snobbish types who denigrate TV as an artistic medium. He’s an exquisite writer, nuff said.
And that is that for this week. Thanks for reading.
DJS