В колекцію окцидентофобів
із останнього випуска "Спостерігача"
The ranks of the Free Syrian Army have been swelled by radical Islamists from as far afield as Iraq and Libya, who are being armed and funded by Qatar via Lebanon and Turkey. The Emir of Qatar, darling of the West, has at least had the decency to make his own intentions in this crystal clear: he wishes to overthrow the last secular Arab regime. The Emir recently renamed the tiny island’s main mosque after Mohammed ibn Abul Wahhab, founder of the insane Wahhabi cult that hijacked this so-called Arab Spring at the outset. He has installed its proxies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and aims to do the same in Syria.
The House of Saud cares nothing for ordinary Syrians - its interest in the fight is purely strategic. Along with its undeclared ally Israel, it too would like to see a group of Sunni, Wahhabi despots, hostile to their common enemy Tehran, replace Assad, who has collaborated with Iran’s ayatollahs.
This would make life easier for many western countries, which fear a nuclear-armed Iran above all else. The foreign policy wonks’ line about Syria is not idealistic but pragmatic: while the Wahhabis may be cuckoo, they are the perfect allies when it comes to containing Iran. Islamists are coming to power throughout the region, so we may as well back some biddable ones, so the thinking goes, especially as they are all conveniently turning out to be proxies of our Nato allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
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Yet now the events of 1940 are coming in for re-examination, both in fiction and in the cinema. I’m not impartial on this: my new novel, Pantheon, published under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, is set in 1940 and, drawing on some forgotten parts of the historical record, shows that our memory of that period is not as complete as we like to think.
Of course we know already that there were British voices opposed to military confrontation with Hitler’s Germany; central to the heroism of Churchill was his prescience in seeing the Nazi threat when others did not. But the popular-culture version of this history holds that by the time war broke out in September 1939, the appeasers had melted away and the country was united.
The truth is not so neat. A secretive organisation known as the Right Club, founded by the Scottish Conservative MP Archibald Maule Ramsay, was functioning well into the first year of conflict. Its membership list, contained inside a locked red-leather ledger, included MPs, peers and military brass as well as a smattering of aristocracy. When the club dined at the Russian Tea Room in Kensington, the fifth Duke of Wellington was in the chair. Close by was Lord Redesdale, father of the Mitford girls, including Diana (wife of Oswald Mosley) and the Hitler-worshipping Unity. Also on hand was Lord Lymington, who dreamed of an agrarian England populated by fair-skinned men and flaxen-haired maidens, living on an exclusively organic diet. Listed too in the ‘red book’ - now housed at London’s Weiner Library - alongside hardcore fascists such as Arnold Leese and the co-founder of the future National Front, A.K. Chesterton, was one Captain George Henry Drummond. Guests at Drummond’s parties at Pitsford Hall were expected to comply with an unusual dress code: Nazi uniform. All the better for admiring the hall’s swimming pool, the floor of which was decorated with a swastika.
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The Cold War fears of Russia were elaborated by the defence industry, and the military, to justify their programmes, their budgets, and their losses. And they were further intensified by electoral politics, and the temptation in Senator Vandenberg’s advice to Truman to sell international aid by ‘scaring the hell out of the American people’. But it was not simply a conspiracy of defence contractors: as Alexander, (whose time as a parliamentary sketch-writer has left him with a singular sensitivity to the character of politicians) observes: ‘The effect of propaganda … is often greater on those who propound it than on the public which receives it. The messengers become prisoners of their own propaganda.’
In Alexander’s view, the US fight against this misconceived and exaggerated threat was harmful. US leaders assumed that any ‘appeasement’ would encourage Soviet expansion, whereas, in fact, the most dangerous Soviet actions were provoked by US assertiveness. The Soviet Politburo, for example, preferred a non-communist Afghanistan, and was keen not to get involved on the ground. But the apparently strong US position in Pakistan and Iran, and the CIA ties to the Afghan president, ultimately convinced the Soviets that they had no alternative other than nervously to embark on the catastrophic invasion, which ultimately led, via a million deaths, to the horrors that continue to define Afghanistan today. It was not over-confidence but fear of US ambitions which drove Soviet policy. And, as Alexander demonstrates, almost every element of US policy for decades - including the Marshall plan, the Berlin airlift and its defence investment - further intensified the paranoia and aggression.
Alexander builds his case through quotes from primary sources, from National Security Council documents, speeches, telegrams, presidential letters and Soviet archives. His patient, understated discoveries are shocking. Here is a general, commenting on the Japanese: ‘When we knew we didn’t need to do it and they knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.’ The Attorney General Tom Clark proposes that
those who voted Communist would be deemed ineligible for entry into the USA, let alone for citizenship …William Donovan, the wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services, saw to it that Italians were warned through short-wave broadcasts that a communist victory could see them transported to Russia for forced labour. In 1954, a survey conducted by a Harvard professor found just over half the population in favour of imprisoning all communists.
The ranks of the Free Syrian Army have been swelled by radical Islamists from as far afield as Iraq and Libya, who are being armed and funded by Qatar via Lebanon and Turkey. The Emir of Qatar, darling of the West, has at least had the decency to make his own intentions in this crystal clear: he wishes to overthrow the last secular Arab regime. The Emir recently renamed the tiny island’s main mosque after Mohammed ibn Abul Wahhab, founder of the insane Wahhabi cult that hijacked this so-called Arab Spring at the outset. He has installed its proxies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and aims to do the same in Syria.
The House of Saud cares nothing for ordinary Syrians - its interest in the fight is purely strategic. Along with its undeclared ally Israel, it too would like to see a group of Sunni, Wahhabi despots, hostile to their common enemy Tehran, replace Assad, who has collaborated with Iran’s ayatollahs.
This would make life easier for many western countries, which fear a nuclear-armed Iran above all else. The foreign policy wonks’ line about Syria is not idealistic but pragmatic: while the Wahhabis may be cuckoo, they are the perfect allies when it comes to containing Iran. Islamists are coming to power throughout the region, so we may as well back some biddable ones, so the thinking goes, especially as they are all conveniently turning out to be proxies of our Nato allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
====================
Yet now the events of 1940 are coming in for re-examination, both in fiction and in the cinema. I’m not impartial on this: my new novel, Pantheon, published under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, is set in 1940 and, drawing on some forgotten parts of the historical record, shows that our memory of that period is not as complete as we like to think.
Of course we know already that there were British voices opposed to military confrontation with Hitler’s Germany; central to the heroism of Churchill was his prescience in seeing the Nazi threat when others did not. But the popular-culture version of this history holds that by the time war broke out in September 1939, the appeasers had melted away and the country was united.
The truth is not so neat. A secretive organisation known as the Right Club, founded by the Scottish Conservative MP Archibald Maule Ramsay, was functioning well into the first year of conflict. Its membership list, contained inside a locked red-leather ledger, included MPs, peers and military brass as well as a smattering of aristocracy. When the club dined at the Russian Tea Room in Kensington, the fifth Duke of Wellington was in the chair. Close by was Lord Redesdale, father of the Mitford girls, including Diana (wife of Oswald Mosley) and the Hitler-worshipping Unity. Also on hand was Lord Lymington, who dreamed of an agrarian England populated by fair-skinned men and flaxen-haired maidens, living on an exclusively organic diet. Listed too in the ‘red book’ - now housed at London’s Weiner Library - alongside hardcore fascists such as Arnold Leese and the co-founder of the future National Front, A.K. Chesterton, was one Captain George Henry Drummond. Guests at Drummond’s parties at Pitsford Hall were expected to comply with an unusual dress code: Nazi uniform. All the better for admiring the hall’s swimming pool, the floor of which was decorated with a swastika.
====================
The Cold War fears of Russia were elaborated by the defence industry, and the military, to justify their programmes, their budgets, and their losses. And they were further intensified by electoral politics, and the temptation in Senator Vandenberg’s advice to Truman to sell international aid by ‘scaring the hell out of the American people’. But it was not simply a conspiracy of defence contractors: as Alexander, (whose time as a parliamentary sketch-writer has left him with a singular sensitivity to the character of politicians) observes: ‘The effect of propaganda … is often greater on those who propound it than on the public which receives it. The messengers become prisoners of their own propaganda.’
In Alexander’s view, the US fight against this misconceived and exaggerated threat was harmful. US leaders assumed that any ‘appeasement’ would encourage Soviet expansion, whereas, in fact, the most dangerous Soviet actions were provoked by US assertiveness. The Soviet Politburo, for example, preferred a non-communist Afghanistan, and was keen not to get involved on the ground. But the apparently strong US position in Pakistan and Iran, and the CIA ties to the Afghan president, ultimately convinced the Soviets that they had no alternative other than nervously to embark on the catastrophic invasion, which ultimately led, via a million deaths, to the horrors that continue to define Afghanistan today. It was not over-confidence but fear of US ambitions which drove Soviet policy. And, as Alexander demonstrates, almost every element of US policy for decades - including the Marshall plan, the Berlin airlift and its defence investment - further intensified the paranoia and aggression.
Alexander builds his case through quotes from primary sources, from National Security Council documents, speeches, telegrams, presidential letters and Soviet archives. His patient, understated discoveries are shocking. Here is a general, commenting on the Japanese: ‘When we knew we didn’t need to do it and they knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.’ The Attorney General Tom Clark proposes that
those who voted Communist would be deemed ineligible for entry into the USA, let alone for citizenship …William Donovan, the wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services, saw to it that Italians were warned through short-wave broadcasts that a communist victory could see them transported to Russia for forced labour. In 1954, a survey conducted by a Harvard professor found just over half the population in favour of imprisoning all communists.