In the introduction of Politics, A Survivor’s Guide, Behr sets the scene that recent British politics has been a roller coaster ride at a sinister political theme park. We have had several elections, but Behr says, “adeptness at winning power is no guarantee of competence when wielding it”. He was not to know how apt this would be for Keir Starmer!
By way of analogy, Behr begins by describing how his heart attack on New Year’s Eve 2019 made him realise that his anger at the state of politics was suffering a similar attack. He wanted to “re-engage without getting enraged”. (p17)
Behr describes the way, as an eight-year-old, he viewed his world as “concentric circles” from his London home, through Europe, to the whole universe. Behr’s family has conflicting allegiances, from Jewish to Lithuanian to South African and British.
He invokes the “Clausewitz Principle” whereby “war is a mere continuation action of politics by other means” and its inverse that “politics is the resolution of conflict without recourse to war.” (p37)
Two sides to the argument
On his annual holidays to Israel, Behr states he hears no mention of displaced Palestinians or Al Nakba (p58). He can also understand how the Jewish community feel threatened even in the UK (p72). The attack on the synagogue in Manchester this autumn shows this is justified.
There are always two sides to an argument, and it takes a leap of empathy to recognise parity of emotional investment in the two opposing positions (p119), Brexit being a prime example.
Behr has extensive experience of Russia and describes how the “Potemkin Syndrome” as practiced by Putin, leads people to be “so sincere in your cheers for the liars that the lies start to feel true”. (p138)
He makes an analogy between fracking for shale gas and the power of “disinformation and provocation” to punch holes in an already bruised democracy. The trolling of the Kremlin or Trump’s erstwhile associate, Steve Bannon, has the effect of enlarging those holes and “wilfully inflaming social division”. (pp147-8)
One area where the ensuing chaos engendered extremism was in the gender debate with JK Rowling and Kathleen Stock of Sussex University. (p185)
Confirmation bias
There is a danger of ideology encouraging people to provide convenient “evidence” just to support the ideology. A classic example was Blair’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. Maybe Putin was misguided on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself before the 2022 invasion. (p195)
Conspiracy theories like those propogated by the anti-vaccination movement also fuel disinformation. (p224)
Behr’s family use the Yiddish word meshugas to describe the craziness of politicians like Corbyn and Johnson (p239). The belief that all politicians are corrupt can easily extend to any journalist who doesn’t shoot them down. (p276)
The “cakeism” of Johnson, the disaster of Truss, and the more sober Sunak were a procession of emperors with no clothes. (p314)
“The end of history”
From a personal viewpoint, Behr describes how his wife’s grandfather, a British soldier at the end of WWII, married a German girl so that Behr’s children’s family tree has “one branch that feared the Nazis and another that followed them”. (p320)
Behr chronicles the post-war period, which many thought was the “end of history”, through the momentous events of 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, climate change, Crimea, Brexit, Ukraine, and Trump. Despite all these events, democracy is still here but there is a hubris that Western democracy and market economy are unchallengeable. In fact, he acknowledges that “cyber-idealism yielded to brutal politics and brute commerce”. (p327)
Having viewed the nadir of civilisation in Auschwitz, Behr points to the tolerant democratic (Western) world we have now. There remains a conflict between never appeasing tyrants yet showing empathy for their followers. He still maintains that “no model superior to liberal democracy has been devised”. (p368-9)
Finally, Behr compares his rehab after a heart attack to his rehab from news overload. “I rebalanced my news diet… stopped doom-scrolling”. (p380)
Postscript
Behr admitted that events may overtake his historical narrative – and so they have!
I cannot agree with Behr’s optimism that things will get better. The path Trump has chosen is killing democracy in the USA and Farage threatens to do the same in the UK. Behr’s assertion that “in the end, the truth wins” looks very fragile. (p365)
So I don’t think Behr has made me less enraged at the state of affairs, but he has persuaded me of the value of communicating with those of a different persuasion and trying to understand why they came to their view.
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