Sphinx

In Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, academics who fell foul of the regime – merely for expressing ideas that didn’t fit the party line – were censored, silenced, forced out of their positions and even imprisoned. It’s no exaggeration to say that exactly the same thing is happening today, in the very countries which once stood for freedom and liberal values. Totalitarian regimes tolerate no dissent; we see academics once again being denounced simply for discussing inconvenient ideas, forbidden from organising lectures (and hounded by organised mobs if they do so), forced to hold seminars on radical ideas under conditions of the greatest secrecy, barred from publication in mainstream journals, and persecuted on trumped-up charges simply for trying to engage students with political issues.

These colleagues need our help and support – and we have the historical example of brave liberals like Roger Scruton and the Jan Hus Educational Foundation to show us the way. We need to show these beleaguered intellectual heroes that they are not alone, and make sure that their ideas can still be heard despite all these attempts at censorship. We propose the formation of a new organisation, the Conservative Academic Network Trust, to coordinate the activities of the academic underground. This will, for example, arrange plausible cover stories for those wishing to participate in clandestine seminars on imperialism without attracting the attention of the authorities, make and distribute homemade YouTube videos of inspirational lectures and interviews, and ensure the publication of forbidden ideas – preferably in multiple copies, to evade the censors.

We have already recruited academics willing to travel to ideological wastelands like Oxford and Stanford, ostensibly to deliver lectures on cultural Marxism and post-colonial gender theory, where they will be able to meet secretly with persecuted academics and hand over vital supplies of paper, green ink and tweed. But this requires money – more money than our few supporters among the proprietors of international media empires are able to provide. Please donate whatever you can. If simply being a conservative apologist for racism, sexism and imperialism is a thought crime, then we should all be Spartacus!

I’ve been re-watching Francois Ozon’s magnificently silly comedy 8 Femmes – a wonderful means of relaxing, that can be enjoyed just as a bit of fun but offers so much more if you’re in the mood. If Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven offers one sort of hommage to the films of Douglas Sirk, revealing the real darkness and painful secrets within such stories, Ozon revels in the melodrama and visual sumptuousness. One of its glories, and of course the major selling-point, is the simple fact that it packs eight great French actresses into a snowed-in house with a murder mystery and eggs them on into acting off against one another in contrasting styles. I can’t help wishing for a Hearts of Darkness documentary in which we discover the real dynamic behind Catherine Deveuve hitting Danielle Darrieux with a bottle or wrestling on the floor with Fanny Ardant, or the multi-layered stares exchanged between Emanuelle Beart and Virginie Ledoyen. Continue Reading »