Modern Times


	Modern Times Review by John Billingsley
I've got a lot of time on my hands this week, on location in Miami with hours and hours to sit in my trailer and grapple with this exasperating book. I have extremely conflicted feelings about Modern Times, as I suspect any reader must: the breadth of Johnson's research is staggering, and there are - I think - many fascinating stories and a multitude of opinions (many decidedly revisionist) that, while contentiously expressed, are never less than stimulating. This book has certainly made me think, and feel, and has stayed in my consciousness for well over a month (I read it in July, prior to beginning what I knew would be a grueling month of August.) I have to say, however, that in spite of Johnson's erudition and his fluid prose style, many of his fundamental beliefs seem steeped in prejudice and cant, and his palpable anger results all too frequently in outbursts of emotionalism that call his objectivity into question. Someone - forgive me, I don't remember who - asked the question in an early post: 'Is this book a work of fiction?' (The implicit opposite: a polemic, perhaps even a screed). I would have to say that Modern Times has too much ungrounded assertion for me to feel comfortable relying on its historical accuracy. One overt example of his tendency to edge into invective, I thought, was his repeated denigratory references to homosexuality; aways, an individual's homosexuality waws a key indicator of a debased nature (pp 167 and l70, for example). Less overtly, but more insidiously, his treatment of colonialism (pps. 149-162), which - while scrupulous in its dissection of economic cause and effect - never bothered to address the fundamentally opprobrious nature of this (admittedly variegated) policy. Whatever a colonizing country's motives, however reasonable it may have seemed to, as Johnson puts it, "respond to the unequal development of human societies" through conquest, it is still ultimately a dehumanizing act of racism to lay claim to the right to 'engineer' the lives of 'less advanced' people. Johnson's book is devoted to the condemnation of this modern sin, but insofar as his analysis of colonialism is concerned, he seems considerably less prepared to lay the full weight of responsibility on European colonizers: India was "a docile colony", colonialism "came easily and went easily", and "few died to either make it or break it". Well, the colonized might have characterized their 'docility' somewhat differently; might have thought colonialism neither came nor went easily, and probably thought that more than just 'a few' died in the process. Witness the horrors of the Belgian Congo, barely mentioned in this book but detailed in a chilling work of history entitled "King Leopold's Mines": millions worked to death as slaves to enrich a demented (imperial) sovereign. And one more extended quote from Simon Schama, writing about the Irish Potato Famine: "How could the greatest famine in l9th century Europe have persisted in the back yard of the wealthiest empire in the world? . . . The most telling quotation is from Charles Trevelyan, the British Treasury official in charge of famine relief, who as people ate wild cabbage and buried their babies, opined that the best thing for Ireland would be for the misfortune to teach the Irish 'to depend upon themselves for developing the resources of their country, instead of having recourse to the assistance of government on every occasion'." Stunning obtuseness, given Britain's responsibility for the maintenance of a highly prejudicial policy of Irish land apportionment geared towards squelching Cathoolic self-determination, one that was largely responsible for the conditions that brought about the famine. Ah, the essentially beneficent British Empire. The legacy of colonialism is 3rd World rage, and this rage has played a large role in fostering mistrust and disdain for the West. It is this rage which helped propel the Bandung Generation down its admittedly foolish path of quasi-Marxist non-alignment (what was that path, finally, except "Get the hell away from us, you bastards you") Colonialism can hardly be tossed aside as a phenomenon "which could and did change little". It shaped people's perceptions of what they could expect from the 'civilized world': enslavement and oppression at worst, thinly veiled racist contempt and disdain at best. The legacy of colonialism is, I think, dramatically slighted in this book because Johnson, on some level, has a (doubtless more sophisticated) attachment to a Victorian (and Churchillian) worldview: reduced to a snarl, let's say it's "pity the poor wogs, we'll do what we can for them". It is, granted, only subtly racist to say, as Johnson does, that "colonialism covered such a varied multiplicity of human arrangements that it is doubtful whether it describes anything specific at all", but there's something absurdly dismissive about this simple statement: there is, after all, one striking commonality to all of these 'human arrangements'. They were totally one sided arrangements, imposed upon subject peoples by foreign force and coercion. Colonialism may have been perceived as "a cartographic entity" to the Europeans at home who got to go to the trade exhibitions and affix the pretty postage stamps on their leters, but to the citizens (or, rather, non-citizens)in scores of countries across the globe it was a form of enslavement, pure and simple, and it more than sullies Johnson's moral rectitude to fail to say so clearly. There is also, it seems to me, a fatal contradiction at the heart of Johnson's thesis, or at least one of Johnson's primary theses: that one of the great evils of this century was the expansion and enhancement of the power of the state. Johnson defines a legitimate state, however, fairly clearly and in no uncertain terms; he adumbrates the principles of constitutionalism as follows: separation of legislative and executive function, an independent judiciary, equality of rights, one man one vote, a system of statutory law, etc, etc, ad infinitum. A legitimate state, in short, requires a legitimate constitution, one that is rooted in the rule of law, the true substance of political equality. Where I take issue with Johnson and where I think his own ideological preconceptions intrude on the cogency of his argumentation is in the moral equivalence he attempts to draw between progressive Western politicians and terrorists who rise through politics with the ultimate goal of eradicating the rule of law. The true failure of the modern age is the failure to uphold principles of governmental legitimacy. The architects of 20th century terror - Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and a stewpot of third world dictators - are politicians only in a very limited sense of the word: they are wolves in sheep's clothing, criminals whose appropriation of the trappings of statecraft should not lead us to confuse them with legitimate officeholders in fully functioning parliamentary democracies.

	Modern Times Review by Annie
Paul Johnson has a determinate perspective on the world around him, and how it became that way. This book was a fascinating journey into one man's perspective of the 20th century. We join up with Mr. Johnson at the first seconds of a solar eclipse in 1919 , when "the modern world began". We are quickly thrust into the debate of Moral Relativism and Einstein's transmutation into celebrity status. This will not be a facile walking tour - rather, get out the hike boots, we're in for rugged terrain...and I thought I new history. The historical facts are at times blurred by personal commentary. Johnson's, at times, verbose projects take more than a little effort to navigate. Periodically throughout the book, delicious little bombs were dropped, and neatly abated. "And it is significant that all Marxist regimes, based as they are on paranoid explanations of human nature degenerate sooner or later into Anti-Semitism". Quite the challenge, Mr. Johnson - but I feel you left me hanging. I couldn't find the justification for your view. It was at approximately the 100 page mark in this sojourn, that I sought respite, worn out from a plethora of ordinary phrases. There were moments when I wanted to grab him by the ears and look directly into eyes, shouting "I get it! Okay...next!!!!" But it seems, further soliloquies were needed to reinforce the atrocities of Lenin, Hitler, etc. Often entertaining, educational and enthralling, I was left with the overall impression, that Mr.. Johnson did not in fact intend his book to be read sequentially, cover to cover. As each chapter was succinctly wrapped and restated key themes from previous chapters, I couldn't help but wonder if he envisioned his audience skimming here and there, stopping in to visit with events in his timeline of interest to the individual reader. I enjoyed this book, though I do not feel it to be purely historical, rather a brilliantly formatted essay on how one man has seen the world, who in turn asks us to consider, and reevaluate that which we deem to be 'true'

	Modern Times Review by Lenore Leckvold
When I checked this book out of the library I was frightened a bit by its length: 734 pages. I had not read a non-fiction book of this length for many years. I glanced through the chapter titles and thought it sounded interesting and decided to give it a try. I have to say that the one thing I learned from reading "Modern Times" is that I am not a big student of history. I found that I was reading it very much like I used to read assigned books in school, just skimming and reading lightly for the highlights. While doing this I was thankful that I would not be tested on the contents of the book when I was finished! I don't care for reading about dates and events so much as people and the reasons for their behavior. The book did a wonderful job of setting the scene for the events leading up to World War II. I am sure I learned them in school but have long forgotten them. I believe it is good for us to be reminded of what hatred can bring us to as humans. The portion dealing with the atrocities in the Nazi camps was by far the most difficult to read. It was often the trivial things that made me slow down and read more closely. One of these interesting bits was that President Wilson's wife, while he was very ill, wrote orders to cabinet ministers, and forged his signature on Bills. It appears that she was making decisions for him at this time. One senator complained, 'We have a petticoat government! Mrs. Wilson is president!' This was the first I had ever heard of this incident and there were many other such stories in the book. There is no question that Paul Johnson was writing from his very conservative view. His religious beliefs no doubt influenced how he saw certain events and individuals. From some of his comments I would guess that he is a Republican. I fall into these same categories so it was nice to read something from a conservative point of view. I did not by any means agree with everything he concluded in this book. I highly recommend this book for anyone. If you love history, take your time and digest every word. If you are like me and don't care for all the details, just skim and pick out the parts that you find of interest. It will be well worth your time.

	Modern Times Review by Simon (Nickleby)
This review is dedicated to my late friend Stan Plumridge, a long time peace activist and anti-fascist. Introduction: In "Modern Times", the British journalist and historian Paul Johnson writes passionately about the grim history of geopolitics in the twentieth century. Much of it concerns the horrors of modern tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao. For a large swathe of humanity much of the twentieth century was a nightmare of brutality, genocide, repression and numerous acts of political bastardry. Yet Johnson has other fish to fry. He denounces "moral relativism", collectivism and liberalism; and in large part blames these isms for the rise of the aforementioned tyrants. It's an argument he articulates fervently. Though Johnson does go into detail about many events, his writing style is often erratic, jumping quickly from one thing to another; and his tone is that of a priest articulating the rights and wrongs of our history. It is sermonic rather than academic (that is, the book reads more like a sermon than a history lecture). About the book: The first edition was published in 1983, at the height of popular conservatism. President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were both riding high in the polls, and their conservative polices were heralding profound changes in their respective countries, and throughout the whole world. In many ways, Johnson's book reflects popular conservatism in its heyday. He has, however, produced more recent editions in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The only major variation he made was to update the final chapter. The book has 20 chapters, covering the modern era from the end of World War One to the 1990s. In terms of time span it covers the rise and fall of the USSR, or what President Reagan referred to as the "Evil Empire". Each chapter deals with a specific world historical feature of that time span. To give a blow by blow or chapter by chapter assessment would take more time than I have. Therefore, I will restrict my assessment to a few of the issues and events covered by Johnson, and a summation of his book as a whole. Assessment: In the opening chapter, "A Relativistic World", Johnson advances a novel proposition. The descent of the modern world into chaos, as he sees it, was not the result of World War One, hitherto the bloodiest war ever fought, but rather came via Einstein's advancement of his theory of relativity, and its universal application (or misapplication) to ethics. Thus a materialistic ethical belief system of relativism developed which came to replace religious feeling and impulse. This moral relativism denied any clear distinction between right and wrong, as upheld by the Christian Church. It swept the entire world infecting it like a malignant cancer. This consequently led to the rise of various totalitarian systems and their appeasement by a West weakened by domestic liberalism and socialist insurgency. In short, chaos replaced order. Johnson only makes passing reference to the order he says was demolished. From what I can glean, it is shorthand for the European colonial powers, and even more so the United States and its erstwhile master and progenitor, the British Empire. Yet this lasted only until 1919, at a time when parliamentary democracy existed on a limited scale (in most cases, for white men of property only). For its part, the British Empire brought order to the "chaos" of Africa and Asia, and its decline was symptomatic of the disease of moral relativism. "Among the advanced races, the decline and ultimately the collapse of the religious impulse would leave a huge vacuum" (p. 48). Though he never openly proclaims who the "advanced races" are, he implies they are the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Britain and America. This is true to British imperial tradition, whereby races were (and still are) commonly understood in terms of nationalities [ie, the Irish are a separate race from the English, and so on]. The "religious impulse" that lost out to "moral relativism" refers to decline of the moral and secular power of the church in virtually all affairs--political, cultural economic, theological and personal. The ensuing "vacuum" was filled by tyrants, and chaos returned. "The end of the old order, with an unguided world adrift in a relativistic universe, was a summons to such gangster-statesmen to emerge" (p. 48). In the second chapter, "The First Despotic Utopias", the author gives an account of the rise of two "totalitarian" states, Soviet Russia and fascist Italy. Tellingly, Russia gets 48 pages to Italy's 8. Johnson believes that Lenin was a greater tyrant than either Hitler or Stalin, responsible for setting up a regime based upon mass murder and repression. To support his argument he cites all sorts of figures and quotes all sorts of actors in the drama. Yet a lot of what he says and quotes is purely apocryphal (hearsay and rumour), and cannot be verified to any substantial degree. This is not to confirm or deny anything he presents as historical `fact'. It's just that Johnson creates the image of Lenin as a wicked man in an almost theatrical way. "Lenin was obsessed by force, almost to the point of lip-smacking at the scent of it" (p. 55). While I tend to treat every history text I read with some caution, this one seems to need it more than most. There are two other reasons for doing this. First, the history is out of historical context. There is no assessment of why the three Russian Revolutions took place, their causes or motivation. Similarly there is no introduction to what went before. An account of the previous era can serve as a stepping stone into the new era. If we don't have that introductory stepping stone, chances are we'll be wrong footed from the start. Second, ordinary life is messy enough already, but revolutions and wars are more so. And as the saying goes the first casualty in war is truth. Unless the evidence is undeniable, then we have to make guarded statements. Johnson doesn't do this. The trouble with accepting his version of events, is that they are so one-sided, so black and white and so vehement. Lenin is portrayed more as a bloodthirsty brute, than a real historical human being on a revolutionary mission. This is not to defend Lenin. I'm merely saying that we should neither glorify nor demonize historical figures. Such romanticism clouds any objective analysis of the dynamics of history, as well as what really made people such as Lenin tick. By contrast to Lenin, the Italian dictator Mussolini was a pussy cat. "Unlike Lenin, he rarely did the evil thing of his own accord; he nearly always had to be tempted into it, until long years of power and flattery atrophied his moral sense almost completely. He was not capable of embarking on a deliberate course of unprovoked violence" (p. 97). Tell that to the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) whose country he invaded in 1935. This is the first hint we get that Johnson has a soft spot for "mountebank" fascism (as opposed to the more genocidal Nazis). In Chapter 4, "Legitimacy in Decadence", Johnson deals with the erosion of the old order in the West through, among other things, the policy of appeasing Hitler. He suggests that Britain's conservative establishment, influenced by the horrors of the previous war and the ravings of the peace movement, and moreover fearing the USSR, decided to appease Hitler. He doesn't speak about all the moral, technical and financial support the British and French gave Nazi Germany prior to the war. This included large loans for the purpose of remilitarization (which was an illegal act in all three countries). By excluding these details, appeasement is thereby portrayed as a peace policy designed to assuage Hitler. But even with this widely accepted historical fiction, Johnson doesn't blame the conservatives for the policy of appeasement, but Stalin. It seems that certain individuals, in this case the leading statesmen of the British Empire, were not responsible for their own actions. It's Stalin's fault apparently. While he was guilty of many crimes, that does not constitute a valid reason for laying every crime and political disaster at his feet. The only thing Johnson says the conservative establishment was guilty of was a collective bout of naivety. For all of his talk about the rights of the individual, trampled upon by collectivism, he himself argues that the individuals he supports are never culpable. Every bungle, crime and injustice seems to be the responsibility of his political opponents, especially those wretched commos and liberals. Speaking of the "naive conservative", this has become an art in itself. A famous British author and captive of the Nazis, P. G. Wodehouse, actually made war-time radio broadcasts from Berlin, that were construed by the British as treasonous. For this, he was shamed and pilloried. Then fellow British author, George Orwell, came to his defense, suggesting that he was no fascist but a naive conservative who was hoodwinked into making the broadcasts by Nazi propagandists. Most people from all sides of politics eventually came to agree with Orwell, and Wodehouse was subsequently exonerated. Since then conservatives have always excused their support of appeasement as a bout of collective naivety, as few people really knew about the horrors of Nazism in the pre-war days. Yet is this true? Was the entire conservative establishment of Great Britain really that naive, that they never knew about the laws against Jews, the wholesale execution of political opponents, the establishment of ghettos and labour camps, and the rule of violence? This was all known well before the war broke out. Otherwise, why were so many German intellectuals and scientists seeking asylum in the West? I can accept Orwell's defense of Wodehouse and perhaps a few others, but it doesn't hold up as an excuse for the entire conservative establishment. Many of them knew exactly what Hitler was about. And while a small minority, including Churchill, came out against Hitler, most supported him. "The Devils" of chapter 8 are presumably Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. Johnson argues that Nazi fascism and Soviet Marxism were two sides of the same totalitarian coin. "Hitler learnt from Lenin and Stalin how to set up a large-scale terror regime" (p. 296). No doubt, Hitler and Stalin copied from each other, but the Nazis actually learnt a lot of things from a lot of regimes. It is well known that they modeled themselves upon the British aristocracy, far more than the Bolshevik leaders whom they despised. They even took up fox-hunting. And depending upon whom you read, Goering was either proficient or lousy at it. Also, Hitler pointed to British rule in India as an example of how one small nation can successfully rule a vast empire; and he also studied the history of British concentration camps in South Africa and racist law in Australia. For example, the Nazis infamous laws against the Jews were partly based upon Western Australia's 1905 Aborigines Act. Some parts of Nazi and Australian pre-war race legislation are almost identical. To give the impression that Nazism was an inverted form of Communism, or that they were two sides of the same totalitarian coin is overly simplistic. Both political creeds have long, complicated histories that cannot be neatly summed up in such a crude and clumsy way. Moreover, Johnson too easily points the finger of blame for "totalitarianism" on all sorts of people from Josef Stalin to Albert Einstein, from Pablo Neruda to Ernest Hemingway. Pointing the finger in this way is a real cop out; in that it substitutes for critical analysis. It would be a bit like blaming Nazism on the British because of their mistreatment of Boer civilians in the Anglo-Boer War, or upon the Aussies for their racist legislation. The British and Australians are no more to blame for Nazism in this respect than is Stalin, no matter how much of a butcher he was. The atrocities of the Nazis lie directly at the feet of the Nazi party and government. I do have a problem with Johnson's emotive language (something that is unfortunately typical of too many journalists). He overuses terms that are so one-dimensional and value-laden ("devil", "tyrant", "totalitarian", "dogmatic", etc.) that they tend to overawe any objective assessment of important historical figures and events, as well as political regimes and philosophies. Hitler and Stalin are prime examples. There's no doubt in my mind that they represent two of the most loathsome personages in history. Yet to portray them as "devils" precludes any analysis that treats them as real historical human beings. They become, instead, mythologized or demonized monsters. The trouble with this is that we cannot begin to understand why they did the things they did. This is not to be fair to Hitler and Stalin-they're dead. It's to be fair to ourselves. If the subject matter of our discussion is about something or someone we find to be personally objectionable, it is all the more reason to show them a certain respect. Emotive language conveys feeling, no understanding. To increase our understanding requires the wisdom, among other things, to see things from another's point-of-view. It doesn't at all mean that we seek justification for that point-of-view, but we do begin to see where the other person is (or was) coming from. Johnson cites the fascist historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving as one of his sources. Both historians argue that Nazism was based upon socialist doctrine (pp. 293-4). Yet even the Nazis, who often came to believe their own ludicrous propaganda, never at any stage, despite calling themselves National Socialists, believed they were real socialists. Their organizational title was nothing more than a populist slogan, and everyone in Germany at the time knew it. And it's hardly likely that their primary financial backers, several prominent German manufacturers and financiers, would have ever supported a truly socialist party. This ploy gives Johnson the opportunity to label lefties, trade unionists, and even liberals, as fascists. This collapsing of several doctrines, and opposing political forces, into one reactionary fascist mass allows Johnson to condemn them all. It also allows him to condemn them not by their own actions, but by those of fascists. Perhaps more importantly, it diverts his readers, to some extent, away from the essence of fascism and what it really is. Thus the ideological waters become so muddy, and the political terms so confusing, that the reader begins to doubt what's what. To advance his argument that fascism equates with socialism, Johnson also suggests that just prior to his suicide Hitler expressed his regret at supporting the fascist Franco instead of the communists during the Spanish Civil War (p. 413). [Note: the communists advanced a notion that socialism precedes communism, ergo: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]. The trouble with this assertion is that while Spanish communists did oppose Franco, they were part of a very broad alliance that included socialists, liberals and even some conservatives. Moreover, they were deeply divided amongst themselves, and all of the various factions detested Nazism. Why would Hitler single them out for support, especially as they all considered the Nazis their mortal enemies? The suggestion that Hitler was some sort of socialist who regretted helping his supposed left-wing comrades instead of the right-wing fascists is ridiculous. But why should this be of any importance to us? Why should we even care? Because Johnson wants his readers to come to the conclusion that in order to thwart any resurgence of fascism this will require us to oppose liberals, lefties, trade unionists, homosexuals, the "race relations industry", and indeed anyone but the fascists. Johnson seems to be ambivalent about fascism. At various times, he engages in double-talk. For example, he relates examples of Nazi bestiality, cruelty and "gangsterism", but in many other respects he actually admires Hitler and his Nazis. Hitler was "the most successful German statesman since Bismarck" (p. 355). In an on-line interview for Time Magazine he said of Hitler: "I don't think he was a madman at all. I think he was an extremist. I think he was a realistic person and in many ways extremely sane. Until 1939 when he occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, he was a very popular figure in Germany and regarded as a great success, who'd ended the depression there, got back full employment and had restored the self-respect of the German people and made Germany an upright country again. And a successful country, standing on its own feet. He then miscalculated and plunged Germany and the world in to a world war which he couldn't possibly win. That was a miscalculation, not a sign of madness." At one stage, Johnson argues that when it came to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the Nazis were the lesser of two evils. Like many elderly British conservatives, he believes that the Brits fought on the wrong side. Britain's declaration of war on Germany was a "reckless", "irrational" and "hysterical response" to the invasion of Poland (p. 357). After all, that invasion took the Nazis eastward towards the Evil Empire. Had the British kept their cool, then they might have ended up killing two totalitarian birds with one stone-or better still, watch on as the Germans and Russians set about killing each other. This is mere wishful thinking on Johnson's part. There was no way Hitler would have attacked the USSR before France. He knew that Britain and France would have loved a war of attrition between two such mighty powers, thus enabling an Anglo-French alliance to pick up the shattered pieces in the bloody aftermath. Hitler wasn't that stupid. This is what blind hatred of any political system does to people (in Johnson's case his hatred for communism)-it prevents them from seeing the obvious. They see only what they want to see. That's exactly what happened with Chamberlain's government, and why Churchill had to take his place. Both strategically and morally, Britain was right to declare war on Germany for invading Poland. Hitler had to be stopped. Johnson reminds me of my elderly aunt. When I first visited her at her home in Kent at the age of seventeen (just out from Australia), I discovered she was a fascist sympathiser who despised "wogs" (blacks). She told me that "Hitler wasn't as bad as most people make out. He just went a little too far, that's all. Now if he had been British, then everything would have been all right. But he had to be born a bloody German didn't he?" When she saw how uncomfortable I was with this revelation, she sought to reassure me by placing her hand on my knee and saying with a smile, "Well, not to worry, we'll get it right next time". For some fascist sympathisers, the Nazis were not your common variety fascists who exterminated their political opponents, and left it at that. They "went too far" by attempting to exterminate a whole race of people and plunging the world into war. The order-chaos paradigm takes on a new meaning when it comes to dealing with Asia. Chapter 5, "An Infernal Theocracy, a Celestial Chaos", is about Japan and China. "Celestial" is an archaic term for the Chinese. It derives from the Celestial Empire of China. Traditionally, and in this case as well, it serves as a derogatory term equivalent to "Sambo" for African-Americans. The Chinese therefore are presumably racially inferior to Europeans in Johnson's eyes. Thus they are associated with "chaos" as opposed to the "order" of European civilisation. As for Japan, it "became infected with the relativism of the West" (p. 177). What follows in the chapter is a history designed to show that both great nations are less than civilised. Japan, for example, in rejecting Christianity, "failed completely to absorb the notions of individual moral responsibility which were the gift of the Judaic and Christian tradition" (p. 177). Moreover, "[t]he absence of absolute lines between right and wrong, legality and illegality, law and disorder, made Japan particularly vulnerable to the relativism bred in the West after the First World War" (p. 180). This consequently led Japan down the bloody and chaotic road of militarism and war. As for Johnson's attitude to Africa, this is taken up in chapter 15, "Caliban's Kingdoms". As with other chapters, the title is significant to his argument. Caliban is a character from Shakespeare's "The Tempest". He is a "savage and deformed slave" (Shakespeare's description in the list of characters), who eventually rebels against his master Prospero. I don't like the insinuation of racial inferiority that this metaphor suggests, as if Africans are somehow brutish characters who are out of place in civilized society. History has shown us, according to Johnson, that Africa's troubles didn't begin with colonization but with decolonization. He believes that the decolonization of Africa was a disaster since the Africans can't rule themselves, and the result was nothing but a "return to chaos" (p. 506). Colonial rule was order, self-government was tribal chaos. At first Johnson argued that, "It is impossible to make any truthful generalization about colonialism. The same is true of the decolonizing process" (p. 506). Later, he generalized that "most colonies, in most respects, were conducted on harmless laissez-faire principles" (p. 519); and that, by contrast, the decolonization process was a litany of violent coups and wars (pp. 541-3). Both these generalizations are so extremely one-sided as to be untrue. The laissez-faire principles he assures us were mostly harmless usually operated along the lines of forced labour, and the colonies themselves fought wars against both the indigenous peoples and colonial rivals. Britain, the most harmless of all colonial powers in Johnson's eyes, took all its African colonies by force. As for the decolonization process, it was extremely volatile and variable. There certainly was a litany of violence, but a lot of that violence was perpetrated by the colonial powers attempting to hold onto their colonies. France's attempt to retain Algeria in the 1950s was a case in point. "America's Suicide Attempt" (chapter 18) occurred during the sixties and early seventies. It was, according to Johnson, a nightmare from which the United States is only just recovering. The increasing affluence of ordinary Americans led them to become complacent against the dangers before them, and this led to the decline of moral values. This above all was the underlying reason for America's Vietnam debacle. For this defeat he blames the US media and its "witch-hunt" of President Nixon and his aides over Watergate (p. 653). Johnson argues that the civil rights movement led by the "large-scale womanizer" Martin Luther King Jr was not a response to white racism. On the contrary, the movement arose out of the attempts by successive US presidents to improve rights for blacks. The more that the US government gave, the more blacks wanted, and the more they backed up their demands with violence. "The more progress made [in civil rights], the more cash available, the more black anger increased" (p. 645). The main problem wasn't white racism, but black violence. "The scale and intensity of black violence. advanced step by step with [President Johnson's] vigorous an effective efforts to secure black rights" (p. 646). At no point does Paul Johnson accept that any African-American made a positive contribution to the advancement of human rights. It seems the African-Americans only knew one language; the language of street demonstrations and violence. "Physical action was seen by blacks as the answer, and as with the agitation Gandhi created in India, protest tended to degenerate into violence" (p.645). As for US policy on Cuba, Johnson suggested that President Kennedy's directives "suggested an imperfect understanding of America's vital interests and a failure to distinguish between image and reality" (p.629). Yet what did he think Kennedy should have done, bombed the crap out of the island and invaded? Does he realise that this would have precipitated a nuclear war? Worse still, the USA's entanglement in Vietnam was also Kennedy's fault. He doesn't see it as the result of a political culture, then prevailing in Washington, that was imbued with Cold War hysteria. Rather, it was one of individual weakness (Kennedy's) exacerbated by a moral decline in society (again visible in Kennedy's extra-marital affairs). Is there no-one that this guy likes or approves of? If Kennedy, Einstein, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and the sundry other people he chastises, were all wrong, who on earth was right? Oh yes, there are a few-just a few-including the fascist dictators Franco of Spain and Pinochet of Chile. What champs. What shining examples of freedom and democracy. I doubt if all those mothers of the "missing, believed dead" would agree. One other person Johnson likes is the Austrian political theorist Karl Popper, author of "The Poverty of Historicism" and "The Open Society and its Enemies". He also wrote very eloquent and passionate tracts against tyranny, and moreover, blamed almost every great thinker that ever lived for the bloody events of the twentieth century. Both these men share the blame around, and they do so in a very ingenuous and articulate way. Trouble is, such finger-pointing is a poor substitute for critical analysis. Cogent with Johnson's broad brush approach, undoubtedly influenced here by Popper, is his underlying attacks on moral relativism, collectivism and liberalism. All are very broad concepts, so much so, that innumerable groups of people can be ascribed as supporting them and thus summarily condemned. Moral relativism can apply to anything that does not fit Johnson's black and white notions of right and wrong. Anything that has a qualification or hint of gradation smacks of relativism. As for collectivism, that can include any human group at all, whether it be a trade union, environmental lobby, women's group, political party, or even book club. We all come under the broad umbrella of collectivism. Similarly liberalism is also a broad umbrella of generalized principles that includes people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of views. He does not qualify or gradate these concepts, so as to highlight any variations or isolate any possible extremists, since that would be a case of moral relativism. For him, either you are or you aren't, end of story. Accordingly, almost all of us would come within one or more of the ever-expanding circles of moral relativists, collectivists and liberals. In chapter 19, "The Collectivist Seventies", Johnson charts the continuing disintegration of public morals, religious impulse and respect for law and order. Worse still, in his eyes, the seventies were an era where an anti-business climate dominated political thinking. As a result the US economy suffered through excessive government regulation, especially in terms of enforcing certain pollution controls and labour rights. This opened the door to all sorts of groups to advance their supposed rights through the courts, including "women, homosexuals, the handicapped and many other collective entities" (p. 662). I've noted that every time Johnson articulates a controversial argument, whether its his views about blacks or the Kennedy family, he lapses into a diatribe against communism. Sometimes it comes right out of the blue, and bears no relation to the chapter at all. For example, at one point he argued that President Carter's human rights policy, including the signing of the Helsinki Accord on Human Rights, was "ill-considered" and "naive in practice" (p. 673). Then in a roundabout way he implies that this barred the USA from openly helping some Latin American allies. Though he doesn't mention why, it's actually because they operated death squads. Then just as I'm about to be sick, he diverts my attention by launching into a tirade against Josef Stalin and Lavrenti Beria, the head of the Soviet secret police (NKVD, 1938-53). Yet Stalin died in 1953, and Beria was executed soon after. What on earth has this to do with the USA in the "collectivist seventies" and President Carter's "ill-considered" human rights policy? What about the subject of freedom that Johnson advocates so strongly? In the final chapter, "The Recovery of Freedom", he heralds the election of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. They were the champions of freedom and saviours of humanity, restoring order to the chaotic world. Yet freedom is perhaps the slipperiest word in the political lexicon. It is an open and indefinite adjective. Freedom to do what? Freedom to vote? Freedom to safely walk the streets? Freedom to despoil the environment? Freedom to silence one's opponents? Without defining precisely what one means, freedom is an open cheque book. It can justify virtually anything at all. It may sound great and something to cherish, but what does it really mean, and what do people mean when they use it? Johnson is by profession a journalist, and writes a regular column in the British journal The Spectator. In it, he has often advocated the curtailment of media rights, especially the liberal press. Now whatever one's thoughts about the media, what does this tell us about Johnson's voracious appetite for "freedom"? In the name of freedom, he denigrates people who champion the cause of the environment, and campaign against discrimination. One way he does this is by citing some of the more extreme examples of political correctness (see page 782). Well, I'm sure we've all got those stories. But they shouldn't be used as an excuse to tar everyone with the same brush. If someone takes a stand against discrimination that doesn't automatically make them a self-appointed high priest of political correctness. This sort of stereotyping of "progressive" people is a poor excuse for sensible debate. Conclusion: Johnson's "Modern Times" not only reflects his old-fashioned values, but is moreover a manifesto for his ultra-conservative politics. He is a long-time supporter of the British Conservative Party, is feted by numerous conservative organizations (to which he has delivered countless speeches), and even wrote a hagiographical essay on Thatcher (ie, lauded her as a saint). Yet he is not your average conservative who votes for the Republican Party or Conservative Party, but rather a genuine reactionary. The reason I haven't used this term before is because it is far too often misused as a swear word to denigrate people. I don't mean to do this. Speaking in a strictly technical sense, and not as a swear word, he qualifies as a reactionary because he does not seek to conserve the status quo (thus truly conservative), but instead seeks to turn the clock back to pre-Victorian days when only a white male elite had the vote. This was a world in which the Calibans (Africans) and Celestials (Chinese) knew their proper place in the correct order of things, under the thumb of European powers. Technically that makes him a reactionary, albeit an ingenuous one. Johnson is quite clever to hide his racism behind literary metaphors and archaic terms, but I'm quite familiar with them, and know his meaning. I found "Modern Times" to be an accessible, thought-provoking and enthralling read (the very criteria I outlined in an earlier post). Yet I was also sickened by Johnson's obscured racism, sophistry (cleverly deceptive talk and semantic gymnastics), support for Franco and Pinochet, vilification of well-respected people such as Gandhi, Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr, and disdain for humanitarians in general. It was this perhaps more than anything else that inspired me to write such a long review. Though I undoubtedly disagree with much of Johnson's assessment of the twentieth century, his book did encourage me to reflect upon, clarify and even re-evaluate some of my views. For example, I've thought a lot more about the nature of morality, my conception of it, and its role in history. I should perhaps thank Johnson for bringing me to the realization that I'm a true moral relativist.