If many among the people loved him, then this was in part because Nero had offered them the chance to share in his conflation of the heavenly with the earthly. In the wake of the great fire that, in 64, had destroyed much of Rome, he had planted a park in the very centre of the city. The sprawling lawns, lakes and forests that surrounded what he termed his “Golden House” had offered to the masses a feel of fresh breezes, a break from the monotony of smoke and brick, a hint of the pavilions of the immortals on Mount Olympus.
Senators, of course, had hated it. The loss of Rome’s familiar sights to countryside had borne witness precisely to what they had always found most disorienting about Nero: his ability to dissolve the boundaries of everything that they had previously taken for granted. So it was that they had accused him of starting the fire deliberately, as a way of clearing a space for his building plans; and so it was that Nero, looking to shift the blame, had fixed on convenient scapegoats. These culprits, even by Nero’s own taboo-busting standards, embodied everything that decent citizens had always most dreaded about moral upheaval: the adherents of a sinister cult whose motivation was nothing less than, in the words of a Roman historian, “their hatred for the norms of human society”.
“Christians”, these deviants were called, after their founder, “Christus”, a criminal who had been crucified in Judaea some decades before, under a previous Caesar. Nero, ever fond of a spectacle, had displayed a vengefulness worthy of the Olympian gods. Some of the condemned, dressed in animal skins, had been torn to pieces by dogs. Others, lashed to crosses, had been smeared in pitch and used as torches to illumine the night. Nero, riding in his chariot, had mingled with the gawping crowds. Suetonius would include his persecution of the Christians in the list — a very short one — of the positives of his reign.
Among those put to death, so later tradition would record, was a man who in time would come to be viewed as the very keeper of the doors of heaven. In 1601, in a church that had originally been built on the site of the tomb where Nero’s two nurses and his first great love had buried him, a painting was installed that paid homage, not to the notorious Caesar, but to the outcast origins of the city’s Christian order.
The artist, a young man from Milan by the name of Caravaggio, had been commissioned to portray a crucifixion: not of Christ himself, but of his leading disciple. Peter, a fisherman who, according to the Gospels, had abandoned his boat and nets to follow Jesus, was said to have become the bishop of the very first Christians of Rome. Since his execution in the wake of the great fire, more than 200 men had held the bishopric: an office which brought with it a claim to primacy over the entire Church, and the honorary title of “Pappas” or “Father” — “Pope”.
Tom Holland, “When Christ conquered Caesar”, UnHerd, 2020-04-10.
April 4, 2025
QotD: Nero’s persecution of the early Christians
April 3, 2025
1947 Newscast: Spies, Aliens, and Collapsing Empires! – W2W 18
TimeGhost History
Published 2 Apr 20251947 is a pivotal year: The British Empire crumbles as India and Pakistan gain independence amidst violence and mass migration. Truman launches a Cold War against Soviet communism, while spies infiltrate governments worldwide. Nations sign treaties reshaping Europe; Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier, and rumours swirl of aliens crashing at Roswell. Join us for the headlines that reshaped history!
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March 25, 2025
QotD: The nature of kingship
How does one cultivate power? The key factor is legitimacy. To the degree that people regard someone (or some institution) as the legitimate authority, the legitimate ruler, they will follow their orders mostly just for the asking. After all, if a firefighter were to run into the room you are in right now and say “everybody out!” chance are you would not ask a lot of questions – you would leave the room and quickly! You’re assuming that they have expertise you don’t, a responsibility to fight fires, may know something you don’t and most importantly that their position of authority as the Person That Makes Sure Everything Doesn’t Burn Down is valid. So you comply and everyone else complies as a group which is, again, the voluntary coordination of collective action (the firefighter is not going to beat all of you if you refuse so this isn’t violence or force), which is power.
At the same time, getting that compliance, for the firefighter, is going to be dependent on looking the part. A firefighter who is a fit-looking person in full firefighting gear who you’ve all seen regularly at the fire station is going to have an easier time getting you all to follow directions than a not-particularly-fit fellow who claims to be a firefighter but isn’t in uniform and you aren’t quite sure who they are or why they’d be qualified. The trappings contribute to legitimacy which build power. Likewise, if your local firefighters are all out of shape and haven’t bothered to keep their fire truck in decent shape, you – as a community – might decide they’ve lost your trust (they’ve lost legitimacy, in fact) and so you might replace them with someone else who you think could do the job better.
Royal power works in similar ways. Kings aren’t obeyed for the heck of it, but because they are viewed as legitimate and acting within that legitimate authority (which typically means they act as the chief judge, chief general and chief priest of a society; those are the three standard roles of kingship which tend to appear, in some form, in nearly all societies with the institution). The situation for monarchs is actually more acute than for other forms of government. Democracies and tribal councils and other forms of consensual governments have vast pools of inherent legitimacy that derives from their government form – of course that can be squandered, but they start ahead on the legitimacy game. Monarchs, by contrast, have to work a lot harder to establish their legitimacy and doing so is a fairly central occupation of most monarchies, whatever their form. That means to be rule effectively and (perhaps more importantly) stay king, rulers need to look the part, to appear to be good monarchs, by whatever standard of “good monarch” the society has.
In most societies that has traditionally meant that they need not only to carry out those core functions (chief general, chief judge, chief priest), but they need to do so in public in a way that can be observed by their most important supporters. In the case of a vassalage-based political order, that’s going to be key vassals (some of whom may be mayors or clerics rather than fellow military aristocrats). We’ve talked about how this expresses itself in the “chief general” role already.
I’m reminded of a passage from the Kadesh Inscription, an Egyptian inscription from around 1270 BC which I often use with students; it recounts (in a self-glorifying and propagandistic manner) the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC). The inscription is, of course, a piece of royal legitimacy building itself, designed to convince the reader that the Pharaoh did the “chief general” job well (he did not, in the event, but the inscription says he did). What is relevant here is that at one point he calls his troops to him by reminding them of the good job he did in peace time as a judge and civil administrator (the “chief judge” role) (trans. from M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol 2 (1976)):
Did I not rise as lord when you were lowly,
and made you into chiefs [read: nobles, elites] by my will every day?
I have placed a son on his father’s portion,
I have banished all evil from the land.
I released your servants to you,
Gave you things that were taken from you.
Whosoever made a petition,
“I will do it,” said I to him daily.
No lord has done for his soldiers
What my majesty did for your sakes.Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: Thoughts on CKIII: Royal Court”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-02-18.
March 20, 2025
The REAL Cause of the Revolutionary War
Atun-Shei Films
Published 15 Mar 2025What caused the American Revolution? Let’s dive beneath the surface-level understanding of British tyranny and unjust taxation and try to understand the long-term social, political, and economic forces which set the stage for our War of Independence.
00:00 Introduction
03:00 1. The World Turned Upside Down
13:50 2. The Paradox of American Liberalism
28:34 3. The Rage Militaire
38:12 Conclusion / Credits
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March 17, 2025
My Big Fat Greek Civil War – W2W 12 – 1947 Q2
TimeGhost History
Published 16 Mar 2025As Europe emerges from WWII, Greece plunges into chaos. Political polarization, revenge killings, and failed diplomacy ignite a bitter civil war, turning former allies into deadly foes. From communist partisans regrouping in the mountains, to royalists asserting brutal dominance, the battle lines are drawn. Could Greece become the first major flashpoint in the Cold War, threatening peace across the Balkans and beyond?
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March 16, 2025
QotD: The “Social Contract”
Hobbes didn’t actually use the phrase “social contract” in Leviathan, but that’s where his famous “state of nature” argument ends. In the state of nature, Hobbes says, the only “law” is self defense. Every man hath the right to every thing, because nothing is off limits when it comes to self preservation; thus disputes can only be adjudicated by force. And this state of nature will prevail indefinitely, Hobbes says, because even though some men are stronger than others, and some are quicker, cleverer, etc. than others, chance is what it is, and everybody has to sleep sometime — in other words, no man is so secure in so many advantages that he can impose his will on all possible rivals, all the time. We won’t be dragged out of the state of nature by a strongman.
The only way out of the state of nature, Hobbes argues, is for all of us, collectively, to lay down at least some of our rights to a corporate person, the so-called “Leviathan”, who then enforces those rights for us. So far, so familiar, I’m sure, but even if you got all this in a civics class in high school (for the real old fogeys) or a Western Civ class in college (for the rest of us), they probably didn’t go over a few important caveats, to wit:
The phrase corporate person means something very different from what even intelligent modern people think it does, to say nothing of douchebag Leftists. In the highly Latinate English of Hobbes’s day, “to incorporate” meant “to make into a body”, and they used it literally. In Hobbes’s day, you could say that God “incorporated” (or simply “corporated”) Adam from the dust, and nobody would bat an eye. I honestly have no idea what Leftists think the term “corporate person” means — and to be fair, I guess, they seem to have no idea either — but for us, we hear “corporation” and we think in terms of business concerns. Which means we tend to attribute to Hobbes the view that the Leviathan, the corporate person, is an actual flesh and blood person — specifically, the reigning monarch.
That’s wrong. Hobbes was quite clear that the Leviathan could be a senate or something. He thought that was a bad idea, of course — the historical development of English isn’t the only reason we think Hobbes means “the person of the king” when he writes about the Leviathan — but it could be. So long as it’s the ultimate authority, it’s the Leviathan. For convenience, let’s call it “the Leviathan State”, although I hope it’s obvious why Hobbes would consider that redundant.
Second caveat, and the main reason (I suppose) it never occurred to Hobbes to call it a social contract: It can’t be broken. By anyone. Ever. It can be overtaken by events (third caveat, below), but no one can opt out on his own authority. The reason for this is simple: If you don’t permanently lay down your right to self defense (except in limited, Rittenhouse-esque situations that aren’t germane here), then what’s the point? A contract that can be broken at any time, just because you feel like it, is no contract at all. And consider the logical consequences of doing that, from the standpoint of Hobbes’s initial argument: If one of us reverts to the state of nature, then we all do, and the war of all against all begins again.
Third caveat: The Leviathan can be defeated. Hobbes considers international relations a version of the state of nature, one there’s no getting out of. If pressed, he’d probably try to attribute Charles I’s defeat in the English Civil War to outside causes. Indeed at one point he comes perilously close to arguing something very like that New Donatist / “Mandate of Heaven” thing we discussed below, but however it happened, it is unquestionably the case that Charles I’s government is no more. Hobbes bowed to reality — he saw that Parliament actually held the power in England, whatever the theoretical rights and wrongs of it, so even though the physical person of Charles II was there with him in Paris, Hobbes took the Engagement and sailed home.
Severian, “True Conclusions from False Premises”, Founding Questions, 2021-11-22.
March 12, 2025
QotD: A different parable of democracy’s origins
Then one day, somebody came up with a daring suggestion: what if instead of actually fighting a civil war, they instead had a pretend civil war. The two contenders for the throne would arm-wrestle, and everybody would treat the winner as if he had actually won the civil war, and thus many lives would be saved. Everybody applauded this idea, unfortunately the first time it was tried the loser of the arm-wrestling contest decided to try his luck anyways, broke the deal, started the civil war, and won. The problem with this approach is that it’s “unstable”, because one’s ability to win an arm-wrestle is only loosely correlated with one’s ability to win a hypothetical civil war. The rule-by-arm-wrestle system can work so long as nobody challenges it, but as soon as somebody does, it’s prone to collapse.
Then somebody else observed that in the last few civil wars, the side with the bigger army always won, and proposed that instead of settling the succession on the battlefield, the two sides simply count up the number of soldiers they would be able to muster, and the side with the largest hypothetical army would win without the war being fought. Note how different this situation is from the previous proposal! This time, the defeated party of the fake, simulated war has good reason not to be a sore loser, because he’s just seen that if the matter really came to blows, he’d probably lose. The solution is “stable” in this sense, all sides are incentivized to accept the outcome. And thus democracy was born.
I like this as a pragmatic argument for a loosely democratic system. It has nothing to do with the moral case for popular sovereignty, or whether it is right and just for the governed to have a say in government, it’s simply about avoiding violent instability by giving everybody a sneak peek at how the putative civil war might turn out, then all agreeing to not have it. But this theory has another selling-point, which is that it also tells us why democracy arose when it did, and why it may now be on the way out. If the principle is that governments will tend towards a form and structure and rule of succession that’s closely tied to their ability to fend off challengers, the that suggests that the most common form of government will depend heavily on what the dominant military technology and strategy of its era happens to be.
For example: in the early Middle Ages, wars were fought by a much smaller number of people, and success in warfare was more dependent on the actions of an elite group of professional soldier-aristocrats. And sure enough, political power was also concentrated in the hands of this much smaller group, because in the event that somebody decided to contest the state, it was the opinion of this group that mattered, not the opinions of everybody.
Sometime in the nineteenth century, the “meta” for total warfare changed dramatically. The combination of mass production, replaceable parts in machinery, and new weaponry that was deadly even in the hands of the untrained masses, all meant that suddenly the pure, arithmetic quantity of men under arms on each side became a much more potent factor in the military calculus. Is it any wonder that a little while later, democracy began to spread like wildfire around the globe? Mass suffrage and mass conscription are inextricably bound with one another. The people have generally ruled in our lifetimes, but only because a little while before (these things always operate on a lag) wars were decided by masses of conscripts with rifles.
There’s no rule that says this connection between military success and popular support has to hold true forever, and in fact it probably won’t. You can imagine this going a few different ways. Perhaps the conflicts of the future will be settled by vast swarms of autonomous killer robots, and the winner will be whoever can produce the best robots the fastest. This world might be conducive to rule by industrial conglomerates and robber-barons, a return to the great age of oligarchy, but with a less aristocratic, more plutocratic spin. If we look to the past, there was a class of societies whose militaries had an extreme ratio of capital intensity to labor intensity — the Mediterranean merchant republics with their fleets and their mercenary armies of condottieri. If future wars are settled by robots, we may find ourselves bowing to a new, doubtless very different, doge.
There’s another possible world, where control of information becomes supreme. You can think of this world as being an intensification of our current one, with an arms race of ever more sophisticated techniques for swaying the masses. Surface democracy spins out of control as an ecosystem of competing psychological operations vie to program or reprogram or deprogram swarms of bewildered and unsuspecting voters, alternatingly using them as betting chips and battering rams. This is a world ruled by the meme lords — brutally efficient teams of spin doctors, influencers, AIs, and the occasional legacy media organization. Like I said, pretty much just an intensified version of our current world.
My guess, however, is that neither of these worlds will come to pass, but instead a third one. The history of military technology is a history of the ancient contest between offensive technologies and defensive technologies, with both sides having held the crown at various points. We may be about to see the balance shift decisively in favor of offensive technologies, with extreme political consequences. Arguably we’ve been in that world ever since the invention of the atom bomb, but WMDs haven’t affected this strategic calculus as much as you might guess, due to all the issues surrounding their use (to be clear, this is a good thing).
Technology marches on, however, and I believe there’s a chance that it’s about to deliver us into a new golden age of assassination.1 Between miniaturized drones with onboard target recognition, bioengineered plagues designed to target exactly one person, and a host of more creative ideas that I don’t even want to write about for fear of summoning them into existence, it may soon become very dangerous to be a public figure with any enemies — that is to say, dangerous to be a public figure at all. What kind of men will rule such a world, where your reign could end the moment somebody discovers it?
Two kinds of men: men with nothing to lose, and men that you will never find. This world of ever-present threat to those with power is a world eerily well adapted to governance by grey, faceless men in grey, faceless buildings. A world of conspiracies hatched in unobtrusive exurban office parks, of directives concealed within stacks of paperwork, where the primary goal of power is to hide itself from view. In other words it’s the world that MITI already inhabits. As in so many things, the future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed.
John Psmith, “REVIEW: MITI and the Japanese Miracle by Chalmers Johnson”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-04-03.
1. Japan had a high-profile and socially traumatizing assassination just recently. I find it noteworthy that Abe was killed when he wasn’t Prime Minister anymore, but was perhaps more influential than ever as a deep state power player.
March 10, 2025
Rome (2004): HBO’s Untold 5 Season Story
Little Wars TV
Published 6 Sept 2024HBO’s Rome is one of the greatest television shows ever made, but the premium network infamously cancelled Rome after just two seasons. It is a decision HBO executives later admitted was a mistake. In this video essay, we explore why HBO cancelled Rome and what the showrunners envisioned as the full, five-season story arc. Which characters were meant to survive? What historical storylines would have been explored? And what was the show’s final scene supposed to be at the end of five seasons?
We’ll unearth interviews with Bruno Heller and William J MacDonald, hear from actors like Kevin McKidd, and attempt to piece together a vision of Rome‘s full potential if HBO had not cancelled the show prematurely.
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March 6, 2025
As Trump’s tariffs begin to bite, Canadians strike back at … King Charles and Wayne Gretzky?
As if more evidence were needed that Canadians aren’t well-served by our political leaders, social media personalities and legacy media types are pointing at uninvolved figures to be rounded up as the targets of maple-flavoured Two Minutes’ Hate sessions:
Canada’s latest Emmanuel Goldstein replacement, “The Great One” aka Wayne Gretzky
You can’t have an outburst of nationalism without purity tests coming into play, and two prominent Canadian figures have failed theirs in the court of chattering-class opinion: Wayne Gretzky and King Charles III, of all people.
In recent consecutive days, hilariously, The Globe and Mail‘s website published the following headlines to its online readers’-letters pages: “Wayne Gretzky’s fall from grace is a long time coming”; “Let Wayne Gretzky feel some pain”; and “Wayne Gretzky has always been held in the highest regard … now, he is dead to me”.
Gretzky is friendly with President Trump, you see, which is unacceptable. And if Gretzky isn’t willing to publicly disavow Trump, he should be using his influence to sit Trump down and explain that Canada will never be the 51st state … at which point, presumably, something useful is supposed to happen. It’s never clear what that useful thing would be, beyond a cheap nationalist thrill.
Gretzky’s Yankeeism was confirmed when he served as honorary captain of Team Canada in the final game of the 4 Nations tournament in Boston. (Imagine if he hadn’t served as honorary captain!) He gave the American players a thumbs up — which in any other context would have been considered simple good sportsmanship. He didn’t wear a Team Canada sweater, but rather a suit — which in any other context wouldn’t even have been noticed. He didn’t wear his Order of Canada pin — well, now we’re just grasping at straws.
It’s funny that the same kind of people who have no time for the Crown under normal circumstances (even if they’re not quite out-and-out republicans) are delighted to pile on to any accusations that King Charles isn’t doing … something … to fight off the Bad Orange Man for us:
This brings us to our head of state, and the baffling calls in recent days for him to shake his sceptre toward Washington and declare that Canada shall never never never be the 51st state. If these calls were coming just from anti-monarchists, it would be understandable (though it’s odd to hear them suddenly demanding that the sovereign speak on our behalf). But all kinds of otherwise reasonable people jumped aboard as well, as if this was something the King should self-evidently be doing.
It is self-evidently not what the King should be doing — certainly not before receiving advice from the Canadian prime minister, and probably not at all. Charles’s mother wouldn’t have mouthed off, and I have to wonder if she would have gotten the same criticism were she still alive to see this mess.
Indeed, I think a moment like this is precisely when having an apolitical head of state — maybe even one that doesn’t live here — is most valuable. We have more than enough people, elected and unelected, completely and vocally embroiled in the Trump Tariff Wars, pursuing some combination of national, partisan and personal gain. Isn’t it nice to have precisely the sort of democratic constancy the United States now lacks? You don’t throw away an anchor, however rusty, with a gale on the horizon.
February 22, 2025
How the US Turned Iran Into a Dictatorship
Real Time History
Published 4 Oct 2024In 1953, Iran is at a crossroads. After decades of interference by foreign powers eager to exploit its oil reserves, the government decides it will throw them out and take control of the country’s wealth. But with the super powers’ Cold War paranoia and thirst for oil, it won’t be easy – especially once the CIA gets involved.
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February 14, 2025
Henry VIII, Lady Killer – History Hijinks
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 3 Feb 2023brb I’m blaring “Haus of Holbein” from Six the Musical on the loudest speakers I own.
SOURCES & Further Reading:
Britannica “Henry VIII” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/…, History “Who Were The Six Wives of Henry VIII” (https://www.history.com/news/henry-vi…), The Great Courses lectures: “Young King Hal – 1509-27”, “The King’s Great Matter – 1527-30”, “The Break From Rome – 1529-36”, “A Tudor Revolution – 1536-47”, and “The Last Years of Henry VIII – 1540-47” from A History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts by Robert Bucholz
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February 9, 2025
What Was Life Like for a Servant at a Royal Palace? | Secrets of Kensington Palace with Dan Snow
History Hit
Published 19 Sept 2024Dan Snow explores behind the scenes at the majestic Kensington Palace, the glittering centre of the royal court in early Georgian England. It’s a very special time to visit — the Historic Royal Palaces team has been delving deep into the archives to lift the veil of the public facing court and explore the lives of the many people who lived and worked here. Beyond the kings and queens in the stately rooms, there were hundreds of other men and women — people born high and low — who played a vital role in keeping the court going.
This exhibition brings together an amazing collection of objects, many of which have never been seen before. From an ice saw used by Frances Talbot, the “Keeper of the Ice and Snow” to the revealing scribbled notes of the Master Cook’s Book. From the intricate stitching of Queen Charlotte’s dress, contrasting with the plainer uniform of her dresser, Dan gets up close to objects which build a much more vivid picture of life in this palace, upstairs and downstairs. The extraordinary mural of George I’s court on the striking King’s Grand Staircase, as well as detailed portraits of individuals who worked in the palace, shed light on the real, often forgotten, people who worked, lived or attended court within these palace walls.
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January 12, 2025
QotD: Kaiser Wilhelm II
This was completely incompatible with Bismarck’s system, which had centralized power upon his own person. With uncharacteristic focus and subtlety, Wilhelm sought to reclaim the power that his grandfather had ceded to the chancellor. This was not to prove especially difficult; Bismarck’s position had always relied upon his indispensability to the emperor. Thus, when Bismarck offered his resignation (as he often did during disputes) Wilhelm merely accepted it. The last great man of the wars of unification had now disappeared from the balance.
While the German Empire never became a true autocracy, Wilhelm succeeded in creating what historian, and biographer of the Kaiser, John C. Röhl called a “personalist” system.1 The Kaiser had significant power over personnel. Promotions in the officer corps required his assent. Advancement within civil service (from which civilian ministers were appointed) was also dependent on his favor. By exercising this power, Wilhelm was able to ensure the highest levels of the German government were men agreeable to his point of view. Though they were not mere “yes men”, Wilhelm ensured that they were knowingly dependent on his favor for their position. The Kaiser — even to the end of the monarchy — exercised considerable “negative power” (as Röhl termed it.)2 While Wilhelm’s ability to actively make policy was limited, anything he disapproved of was simply not proposed.
Wilhelm II’s reign marked a departure from the more restrained leadership of his predecessors, as he sought to assert direct influence over the German Empire’s governance and military affairs. This shift toward a more “personalist” system, where loyalty to the Kaiser outweighed true statesmanship, weakened the effectiveness of German leadership and contributed to its eventual strategic missteps. The rigid adherence to the Schlieffen Plan and the technocratic focus on material advantages, such as firepower and mobility, overshadowed the need for adaptable strategic thinking. These failures in both leadership and military planning set the stage for Germany’s disastrous involvement in World War I, where an empire led by personalities rather than policies was ill-prepared for the complexities of modern warfare. Ultimately, Wilhelm’s influence and the culture of sycophancy he fostered played a pivotal role in leading Germany down the path of ruin.
Kiran Pfitzner and Secretary of Defense Rock, “The Kaiser and His Men: Civil-Military Relations in Wilhelmine Germany”, Dead Carl and You, 2024-10-02.
1. John C. G. Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Concise Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2014).
2. Negative power refers to the ability of an actor or group to block, veto, or prevent actions, decisions, or policies from being implemented, rather than directly initiating or shaping outcomes.
December 31, 2024
QotD: Pre-revolution Russia satirized by Dostoevsky
As the book unfolds, the satire gets more and more brutal. The real Dostoevsky knew this scene well — remember he spent his early years as a St. Petersburg hipster literary magazine guy himself — and he roasts it with exquisite savagery. As a friend who read the book with me put it: the men are fatuous, deluded about their importance, lazy, their liberal politics a mere extension of their narcissism. The woman are bitchy, incurious about the world except as far as it’s relevant to their status-chasing, viewing everyone and everything instrumentally. Nobody has any actual beliefs, and everybody is motivated solely by pretension and by the desire to sneer at their country.
But this is no conservative apologia for the system these people are rebelling against either, Dostoevsky’s poison pen is omnidirectional. Many right-wing satirists are good at showing us the debased preening and backbiting, like crabs in a bucket, that surplus elites fall into when there’s a vacuum of authority. But Dostoevsky admits what too many conservatives won’t, that the libs can only do this stuff because the society they despise is actually everything that they say it is: rotting from the inside, unjust, corrupt, and worst of all ridiculous. Thus he introduces representatives of the old order, like the conceited and slow-witted general who constantly misses the point and gets offended by imagined slights. Or like the governor of the podunk town where the action takes place, who instead of addressing the various looming disasters, sublimates his anxiety over them into constructing little cardboard models.2 If there’s a vacuum of authority, it’s because men like these are undeserving of it, failing to exercise it, allowing it to slip through their fingers.
All of this is very fun,3 and yet not exactly what I expect from a Dostoevsky novel. It’s a little … frivolous? Where are the agonizingly complex psychological portraits, the weighty metaphysical debates, the surreal stroboscopic fever-dreams culminating in murder, the 3am vodka-fueled conversations about damnation? Don’t worry, it’s coming, he’s just lulling you into a false sense of security. After a few hundred pages a thunderbolt falls, the book takes a screaming swerve into darkness, and you realize that the whole first third of this novel is like the scenes at the beginning of a horror movie where everybody is walking around in the daylight, acting like stuff is normal and ignoring the ever-growing threat around them.
John Psmith, “REVIEW: Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-07-17.
1. In an incredible bit of translation-enabled nominative determinism, the main cuckold is a character named Virginsky. I kept waiting for a “Chadsky” to show up, but alas he never did.
2. Look, the fact that he’s sitting there painting minis while the world burns makes the guy undeniably relatable. If you transported him to the present day he would obviously be an autistic gamer, and some of my best friends, etc., etc. Nevertheless, though, he should not be the governor.
3. For some reason, there are people who are surprised that Demons is funny. I don’t know why they’re surprised, Dostoevsky is frequently funny. The Brothers Karamazov is hilarious!
