Conservative Naivety about Power

Richmond Theatre, London

Here is a 2021 article about left-wing bias in contemporary London theatre. It was written by the Spectator’s theatre critic, Lloyd Evans.

I should begin by acknowledging that Evans is clearly not an idiot. The article is far from wholly stupid and does make some good points. However, it repeatedly shows a general attitude that I have come to expect of conservatives, and which I think dooms them to defeat by radicals.

The conservative’s idea of culture has become very lightweight. A sizeable percentage of conservatives, both among the commentariat and the general public, seem to want drama (film, TV, theatre) to be entertaining, and nothing more. Evans bemoans:

[In today’s theatre] words like ‘showbiz’, ‘entertainment’ and ‘fun’ are almost taboo

Here he is asking for theatre to be entertaining and to steer clear of “issues”. This makes sense, given that, in his (incredible) opinion, theatre has no social or cultural influence:

theatre-makers… have little chance of reshaping Britain according to this belief system. They’re simply too far from the levers of power. The primary engines of change are parliament and Whitehall [politicians and civil servants].

If it were true that theatre has no influence and therefore leftism in theatre is futile, it wouldn’t be there. Those in control of things (the funders of theatres in this case) wouldn’t be making it happen. But Evans doesn’t realise it is a top-down phenomenon. He thinks it is bottom-up, and idealistic theatre-makers are stupidly hoping to change the world when they have no power to do so! Ha, those impractical, starry-eyed lefties!

He also denies that “fiction can change individuals and societies for the better”. So then, what is the point of it? What is the point of any of the arts, if not to nourish the individual and improve society? Again, he seems to be saying the only purpose of art is to be “fun”.

Yet elsewhere, he bemoans that theatre ignores right-wing concerns:

Can you imagine a play that looks at Islam’s attitude to homosexuality, or a script that criticises the NHS, or a show that questions the role of migrant charities in facilitating people smugglers? It couldn’t happen. How about a drama set in a village that resists an aggressive traveller camp, or a monologue by a former trans woman who regrets having surgery, or a show that asks if Donald Trump actually won that election, or a drama exposing the fight against climate change as a power-grab by predatory multinationals?

He even says that theatre’s refusal to explore such things is making it irrelevant to ordinary people:

Issues like this are discussed daily up and down the land. Theatres avoid them. And so people avoid theatres.

He is contradicting his earlier desire for theatre to just be “fun”, but leaving that aside, I couldn’t agree with him more on this. Absolutely, theatre should be addressing these issues, exploring these stories, etc. The trouble is, as soon as they did, men like him would be attacking them for not being “fun” any more, and for trying to change the world, for being political, for having concerns, for denying theatre-goers “a fun night out”.

But really my ire regards one particular paragraph in the article. Without intending any malice towards Mr Evans, I want to analyse it so as to show how naive the archetypical conservative is. Here we go:

At Shepherd’s Bush, the local playhouse... supports prejudice without realising it. The Bush offers bursaries of £7,500 to theatre-makers with ‘Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee’ status. No whites, in other words. So there it is. Systemic racism but with a smiley face... So if there’s a young Joan Littlewood or a budding Caryl Churchill in Shepherd’s Bush, the local theatre will shut her out. In the end it doesn’t matter to individuals with talent because they’ll always find a way. But it’s sad to see the Bush practising apartheid rather than championing art.

This paragraph contains at least five examples of conservative naivety.

1. The notion that the Left “supports prejudice without realising it”, ie. that the Left is, in principle, opposed to prejudice and would therefore only support it “by accident”. This is astonishing. Evans actually believed, in 2021, that leftists “know not what they do”. Even after the statue-culling Summer of Floyd, he still hadn’t realised that this is all conscious and deliberate, and in fact, gleeful. In other words, he still made the perennial conservative error of believing that the Left are not malicious, just mistaken. It’s like the rosy-eyed middle-class parent whose psychopath child is running rings around him while he makes endless excuses for the child’s behaviour.

2. The notion that “systemic racism” (or rather, a society being geared for a particular kind of person) is something shameful. Nobody would ever say this about any non-white society, so we know it is drivel. Yet the white conservative believes it about his own society - that it should be geared for everyone, not just people like him. Tragically, he only believes this because the Left have trained him, like a dog, to believe it. A century ago, every conservative would have believed that Britain should be shaped and optimised for native white British people - because that was the status quo belief at that time.

3. His assumption that bursaries for BAME actors and crew will not affect “individuals with talent because they’ll always find a way”. This fits a standard pattern of conservative behaviour: assume that the Left is like a silly child - annoying, but can’t do any real harm. It also demonstrates a characteristic that seems to have emerged in conservatives as a by-product of their impotence: the dreamy belief that things will somehow turn out for the best regardless of short-term unpleasantness. In truth, no, things will not turn out for the best: the careers of countless white actors and actresses will be aborted as a direct result of bursaries such as these. This is real. We are paying to remove ourselves from our own culture, which means (subtly but surely) diminishing our right to predominate in our own society, which means (subtly but surely) diminishing our very legitimacy as a people, as a type of human being. This could not be more real.

4. The final sentence reaffirms the conservative’s obsession with principles over actualities, as if what really matters is not what happens, but the principles that underpin it while it happens. So, in this case, even though no actual bad effects will occur (they will!) from these BAME bursaries, it’s “sad” to see a theatre failing to honour certain principles. Now, of course principles matter, but crowing about them is something often done by losers unable to acknowledge that they are losers. Unable to influence events, they instead critique the battle from the sidelines, like chattering old women.

5. The principle that the conservative is crowing about and wishes the theatre would honour… is the principle of egalitarianism! Is there any principle more antithetical to his worldview? Dutifully, he does his enemy’s work for them.

The conservative is the Left’s best friend. Continually, he fails to understand what they are doing. Continually, he appeases them. Continually, he works against his own interests.

This is ironic, since he conceives of himself as the parent (responsible, sensible), and the Left as the child (silly, naive). But the tail has wagged the dog, for a hundred years and more.

Perhaps the true dynamic is even more perverse: the conservative is a slave who deals with his impotence by imagining himself to be socially and intellectually superior to his master.

Either way, this feigned scoffing at the Left does not get conservatives anywhere. It has only ever aided their own castration.

Conservatism seems to be a state of mind more than a set of principles or beliefs. As such, the ordinary everyday conservative is a sleepy, docile creature that really just wants to be left alone and for things to remain roughly the same as always. He doesn’t have strong convictions, he certainly doesn’t want to transform the world. His ideal is tranquillity, familiarity and stability. There are two problems with that mindset.

1. When such a person exists in degeneracy, he will defend it rather than advocate the radical change necessary to fix it. Like the depressive who fears getting better because depression is at least familiar, the conservative will (reluctantly) accept degeneracy because it is familiar whereas change is deeply unsettling.

2. When opposed, such a person will (reluctantly) accept the radical transformations suggested or demanded by his political enemies rather than suggest radical transformations of his own that would bring about his ideal. It’s not that he doesn’t have an ideal, it’s that he is weak-willed and his ideal is vague and unadventurous. Also, he knows his ideal is vague and unadventurous, so he would feel sort of silly advocating it when his enemy’s ideas are much more interesting and colourful.

The conservative, in other words, is somewhat bound to acquiesce to his enemies, if they are insistent enough.

This is bad news when his society is peaking, because it means he will acquiesce in its descent from that peak. But it is good news at a time like ours when society is declining, because it means the conservative will acquiesce to the demands of people like us, who actually have ideas and will. He is an unwitting servant to whoever has zest, because fundamentally that is what he lacks.

It means that, in a way, he is actually worse than the NPC. The NPC might not think in any real sense, but he fights for his own side. The conservative thinks, and then fights for his enemy. He feels but he mistrusts his feelings. He thinks but only in principles, and his enemy can easily use those principles against him.

He is detached from reality by his attachment to principles, while being convinced that the leftist is detached from reality by ideals. But no, the leftist is actually very rooted in reality, because he understands power. In fact, even the NPC understands power. The conservative is probably unique in having absolutely no idea about power.

Therefore we should not take him seriously as a player in the game. We should not try to persuade him of anything, except that we are correct and that he doesn’t understand (which is the truth). We should no more “negotiate” our beliefs with the conservative than a parent should negotiate his beliefs with a child. Rather, we should drag him along with us in order to protect him from our mutual enemies and his bovine desire to appease them.

What I am saying sounds ruthless but in fact I am being kind. It might well be that the conservative proves to be mere dead weight, useless for our cause because it would always be easier for him to resume acquiescing to the status quo. In that case, we should cut him loose and not involve him in the future at all.

And I say that as someone who himself loves tranquillity, familiarity and stability. I just recognise, unlike the conservative, that we are absolutely at war, and that our enemy wants nothing less than our total extinction.