When Roger Scruton arrived in Czechoslovakia in 1979, he found himself helping many teachers “who had been forbidden to teach” and “students who had been forbidden to learn”. He was obviously aware he was travelling to a country which under the cover of “people’s democracy” suppressed people’s views and punished any form of dissent. Still, he was amazed by how palpable the lack of freedom actually felt, and the extent to which it “invaded and poisoned relations between people”.
Scruton gave a lecture on Wittgenstein to a private circle of intellectuals. He was quick to notice, however, that “they were far more interested in the fact that I was visiting at all”, rather than deliberations on the rather impenetrable Austrian thinker. The sense of togetherness was, according to the recollection of a Czech dissident, “the most important morale booster for us”.
It wasn’t just intellectuals who were in peril. The country, Scruton discovered, contained a sophisticated network of secret agents and snitches. Denunciation was prolific and social scrutiny omnipresent. No one, including the most inconsequential citizens, could feel safe from the Big Brother of the state and social pressure of their peers. The Czech author and playwright Václav Havel made this atmosphere famous when describing the deliberations of a greengrocer, who had to place a pro-regime slogan on display in his shop to avoid being denounced or judged unfavourably by his neighbours.
It is 2024, and in many ways the positions of Britain and Czechoslovakia (now Czechia) have reversed. It is now in Prague where freedom of speech and thought is tolerated, and it is in Britain where it is under assault – sometimes on the social level, but increasingly on the legal level as the recent legislation in Scotland shows. True, people seldom go to prison for expressing their opinions – like Havel did in Czechoslovakia – but lives have been destroyed nonetheless. Sackings, cancellations and character assassinations have proliferated in the country that was once hailed as the cradle of liberalism.
“I think it is an irony that those who once helped us cannot help themselves now,” says Luděk Bednář, a doyen of Czech journalism and once a visitor of a Scruton lecture. Back in the 1970s, he was optimistic about the proverbial arc of history, and participated in underground classes with the vision of restoring justice to an unjust world. Yet the ascent of ‘wokeism’ has made him sceptical about the West’s future. Particularly in Britain and the U.S., he believes, a social movement has been launched which it will be impossible to stop. “It is exactly like here in the 1950s,” he says, recalling how Leftist intellectuals happily jumped on the wagon of illiberal Communist ideology. Famous writers Milan Kundera and Pavel Kohout are just two of many examples.
Another former dissident, Zbyněk Petráček, disagrees. In 1977 he signed a declaration called Charter 77 which appealed to the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia to respect human rights. Paradoxically, the Government did all it could to suppress it and led an all-out campaign against its signatories. “I’m deeply worried about some tendencies in the West,” says Petráček. “When the progressives attack Elon Musk for his reactivation of some Twitter accounts, it does smell fishy to anyone who lived in a dictatorial regime. However, I will still claim that the situation in the West is different than it was here. Primarily because you still have people such as Elon Musk who allow you to post on Twitter whatever you want. We didn’t have anyone like that.“
What Petráček describes might be seen as the difference between Orwellian dictatorship and the ‘social tyranny’ described by John Stuart Mill. Mill says that when society “executes its own mandates” – refusing to tolerate some opinions – it can launch an assault “more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life”. In other words, it might not be relevant that the American or British Governments generally still uphold freedom of speech under the law. The problem as seen by Mill is the power of public opinion and the way in which perceived heresies – such as ‘all lives matter’ or ‘a trans woman is not a woman’ – can lead to social ostracism.
Historical parallels can only take us so far. It might not be the most important thing whether it was worse to be a free thinker in 1970s Czechoslovakia than it is in 2020s Britain. The bottom line is that the free thinkers of Britain feel increasingly in peril, and although they can – for the time being – publish their opinions on social networks, they still face the danger of being sacked by their employers or having their reputation destroyed by a mob of noisy activists. That, for many, is as daunting as the prospect of being persecuted by the state.
What is needed here is a voice from outside. What Czechs can offer to the British is the extended hand once offered to them by Roger Scruton. There are still places in this world which have not gone astray – and people there still care about the experiences of the persecuted. Also, the Czech experience shows that it sometimes takes a group of freedom loving people, however small, to put their neck on the line. The time for the British has come. What they face now might be best defined as social tyranny but much more ominous threats could be in the making. The case of Scotland has shown the way. It is Roger Scrutons Britain needs now – in the future it might need much more than that.
Štěpán Hobza is opinion columnist at Lidové Noviny.
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Micromanaging my Scotch Egg consumption was a bridge too far for me.
FFS, enough with the Hancock nonsense. Yes he was/is a tool, did a lot of bad things etc etc. But it was not and is not about Hancock. It’s about global folly and evil from almost every powerful institution and firm on the planet. Get a bloody grip.
Agree tof.
Hancock was just a lieutenant or captain in the great war of the Rona fascism.
But as with any lost battle or war, someone has to be executed for the failure.
He is an odious stupid little worm, the Hancock.
A tool. And he will be sacrificed.
Meanwhile the entire Pharma-ment save 30 or so should be imprisoned and the endless array of alphabet agencies national and international defunded, withdrawn from, reformed or set to fire.
This is happening in Switzerland & Hancock has an arrest warrant against him.
https://twitter.com/spartajustice/status/1633210206262894592
Is that true, or did you read it on TruthJustice?
From Pascal Najidi himself
He’s just posted this link too:
https://twitter.com/spartajustice/status/1629211410944167937
Brilliant.
Now when and to whom does the “rule of law” apply?
Answers on a postcard or the postcard’s stamp.
“All that lockdowns could ever achieve in those circumstances was to defer some infections until after they were lifted”. Yes and I thought that was what was meant by the ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ mantra, which disappeared as quickly as it appeared, once two weeks had elapsed, and made way for first one and then a second lockdown, both of which completely shut my small business.
Well, I would read it in full if I was prepared to subscribe to that rag. The DT ((like the Conservative Party which it defends, promotes and supports, except when its members elect the wrong leader) is not worthy so I do not ever read it, despoite missing terribly the aryticles by the likes of Deacon, Moore (usually) and Murray (always).
I used to love Charles Moore’s writing.
no longer. Something has happened to be brain…
my mind is clearer from not reading the DT.
To his brain…
I believe Oakeshott has been used. Whether she is aware of this is a totally different issue. All this is just ‘red meat’ for the the skeptics or the average angry punter…Hancock is now not part of the government, nor the Tory party, and being Health Minster as he was through the majority of the ‘Pandemic’, the obvious scape goat. To believe every mistake, bad decision, ludicrous idea, or downright evil intension was down to matty boy, gives him too much credit. Why were most of the world leaders singing from the same hymn sheet ‘Build Back Better’, why were lockdowns introduced, when they were nothing to do with WHO pandemic guidelines pre covid. There were too many suspect coincidences world wide to not suspect wrong doing/conspiracy. There is way more above and beyond Hancocks remit and orders to subdue the population of that little island just off europe to come to light, but will we see it…I doubt it.
Yes, I think she’s being used. The Gates-funded DT is encouraging the idea that egotistical, career-obsessed, lying and scientifically-illiterate Ministers should NOT have control of pandemic policy.
So who should? Well, obviously it should be the “experts” at the apolitical WHO …. those wise people who most definitely aren’t controlled by Big Pharma or the Globalists and who don’t have to concern themselves with the minor inconvenience of getting a mandate in the first place and getting re-elected after “they’ve done what they know must be done.”
‘Care homes, for example, were probably an insoluble problem, given the absence of other places for many elderly patients to go,’
Wow, harsh. We’re talking human beings here: grans, grandads, mums, dads, etc, who all deserved to be treated with respect and dignity not simply viewed as bed blocking useless eaters. With proper assessment some could have gone home or to relatives – remember the retired nurse who was arrested for taking her mum out of care? – , not simply dumped into ill-prepared and understaffed care homes with DNRs + mid/morph scripts then left to die alone. Prior to the 2020 debacle there were proper procedures in place for rapid bed clearance for major incidents with multiple casualties (I was involved several times over the years) yet none were followed in 2020. It was govt sanctioned slaughter of the elderly, pure and simple.
“It was govt sanctioned slaughter of the elderly, pure and simple.”
I held off this in my comment but in truth this is far more apposite.
It’s a bit crassly stated perhaps, but I have a similar view to Sumption.
The very old and vulnerable would most likely have been got by the virus sooner or later. Do we really think that, had Hancock followed Whitty’s advice and enforced testing of everybody before allowing them into a care home, it would have made a huge amount of difference? What with the tests being crap and everything else? I doubt it.
Probably going to get loads of downticks for this next one, but, furthermore, the promiscuous and cavalier use of end-of-life drugs, can, I think, fairly easily be explained by the febrile atmosphere at the time. The blame still does land on Hancock and the medical establishment for encourging that atmosphere to develop, but it seems a bit of a stretch to say that Hancock actively sanctioned the murder of the elderly.
The charge sheet is extremely long of course, and he must nevertheless hang, as must so many others.
I’m still waiting to find out something I didn’t already know from this scoop of Codswallop the “Lockdown Files”
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
“Not all the accusations levelled against him are fair. Care homes, for example, were probably an insoluble problem”
Oh, I think we can say with a high degree of confidence that Midazolam found a solution to the ‘problem’ of old people cluttering up hospitals and care homes.
Every time Sumption writes an article we are supposed to genuflect before his apparently saintly intellect but from the excerpts here what exactly new and insightful understanding has he brought to the debate?
I have said this before – Sumption is a successful marketing exercise but there is no substance behind the facade.
A massive disappointment.
Yes …. what did Sumption actually DO to galvanise other senior Lawyers (including the Human Rights Brigade) to get the civil and human-right destroying restrictions stopped?
Nothing, nada, rien.
And what position is he taking re the very ominous proposals emanating from the WHO?
He is someone who could have an influence, if he chose to be other than supine about it.
Good grief, enough of this BS distraction already! Talking of distractions, such as Hancockwomble and the disgustingly duplicitous Oakshott ( who thinks the midazolam murders are pure fiction ), here’s a rather epic ‘stack listing all of the things being dangled in front of us to divert our attention from the ( listed ) things that are being implemented right under our noses that should be getting our undivided attention. Great stuff. His conclusion;
”While our attention is being distracted by inconsequential shiny things, we are completely missing the fact that we are being divided into groups, herded together and penned up like cattle. We are most definitely being depopulated – any fact checker denying this is completely and utterly bought or is wilfully blind to the the evidence. We are being manipulated and controlled. Our children are being deliberately confused, brainwashed and sexualised. They are being manipulated into believing that the only way they can be happy is to be gay, trans, non-binary or asexual and not to question anything that they are told by teachers or the government. The globalists want to be the single source of everything in our lives – we will eat what we are told because our food will come from their labs and insect ‘factory farms’; we will live and die when they say because our health and immune systems will come regularly from their pharma companies in a syringe; we will learn and know only what they tell us because our access to information will come via their heavily censored and manipulated networks; and we will experience only what is within our local area because we will be managed within gated 15 minute cities and will need special permission and passes to move outside our small half-kilometre square community space.”
https://lawhealthandtech.substack.com/p/but-are-we-actually-seeing-whats
An absolutely first rate article / sub. Thanks Mogs.
I thought so too. You get good value articles from this guy for sure. Lot of research and time has been spent, clearly, and he’s spot on.
Indeed.
Boris Teflon Johnson must also take responsibility for what happened but he appears to have escaped any fallout, so far!
One of the main points of that show.
Not only that, but he is free to flex his corrupted power in the region of Ukraine where, by preventing any negotiations for resolution, he is directly (part) responsible for hundreds of thousands of terrible deaths there, & the utter destruction of the country.
A large, farming country, rich in earth’s resources. Or was.
Absolutely. From what we can glean from the ‘lockdown files’, had Boris stuck with his instincts, we could have been another Sweden/Florida. But he didn’t and was rolled by Gove/Hancock/Cummings.
This is the political class for you. A squirming bunch of parasites. How many more Hancock’s are there? PLENTY.