February Diary

Hello,

Obligatory shilling. This month I wrote at THE ZONE about public safety, Islamic tyranny, Jeffrey Epstein, men and hair, AI-generated articles, authenticity, AI and what makes art compelling, right-wing art, liberal pessimism, Will Stancil and the Christian stand-up comedian who claimed to have led a Satanic cult.

I wrote for The Critic about inclusivity against distinctiveness, Noam Chomsky, Starmerism, UK drill, “the Hungarian model”, Islam in the UK, Liz Truss and British institutional failure.

Four years on. It is grim to reflect that Ukraine and Russia have been fighting for four years. As the Russians invaded, I was in Warsaw. Visiting the Warsaw Uprising Museum — in a city that had once been ruined — it was awful to think about what could, and would, be facing Ukrainian cities.

I’ve written a lot about the war. I condemned the invasion, obviously, though I also lamented NATO’s opportunistic ambiguity over whether Ukraine would join. (I’m not sure it would have made a difference, but it didn’t help.) I wrote about the upsurge in Polish solidarity with Ukrainians. I sometimes ended up criticising Ukrainian conduct — not because that was anything close to being the main issue, of course, but because no one else seemed to be doing it. I wrote about the horrors of war — and the horrors of Russian militarism. I wrote about the war seen through the eyes of one of my favourite writers, Andrey Kurkov.

I argued for a negotiated peace that was acceptable to Ukraine — a naive thing to hope for, perhaps, but I didn’t see, and don’t see, a path to unqualified Ukrainian triumph. Still, I’m no military expert, so I hoped, and hope, to be surprised.

Epstein time. Have the Epstein Files uncovered an immense paedophile conspiracy? Or is it all a giant moral panic? I have seen no proof that Epstein was trafficking underage women to other men. The assumption that he did has fuelled a moral panic — and it is very wrong that people are being disgraced solely for being associated with him. That said — as I wrote this week — what theory of elite corruption would not fuel paranoid hyperbole? It’s like trying to have a bar where no one gets drunk. It is still very valid to ask questions about a sex criminal organising wild parties for some of the world’s richest and most powerful figures, and about him allegedly receiving government information from his friends, and about his collection of what looks very like attempted blackmail materials … I could go on. The point is that we cannot expect wild claims and genuine concerns to occupy completely different spheres. We just need a powerful nose for whose bullshit we’re smelling.

Houellebecq at 70. Happy birthday, Michel Houellebecq! 70, for him, must be like 100 for a non-smoker. He’s looked like he’s on the brink of death for 20 years. I wrote about one of my favourite novelists — though not uncritically — for The Critic in 2021.

The meaning of apostasy. I found it interesting to listen to an interview with the MAGA apostate Pedro Gonzalez on the podcast Know Your Enemy. I don’t struggle to empathise with someone rejecting their association with a network of political spheres that is so morbidly rich in liars, frauds, woman haters, vindictive lunatics et cetera. But one thought is that there is a difference between the people you align yourself with and the ideas you believe in. Granted, you can’t promote the ideas believe in if you don’t align yourself with people. But as someone who is very much committed to being a writer and not a political activist, I’m doing my best not to align myself with anyone.

England’s lost catastrophe. Cosmo Adair looks back, in a terrific piece, at the horrors of the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak:

As cruel as the killing was the time of year. “The hardest thing,” one farmer tells me, “was the sheep were lambin’ and they shot them as soon as they were born.” Peter Frost-Pennington, a vet, tells me that he remembers “standing at a farm, looking at all these dead sheep lined up and their lambs, and looking around at the countryside, completely devoid of animals, and I stood there, and just wept”.

More:

In 2020, that very same crack team from Imperial, presided over by Professor Neil Ferguson, reassembled to battle yet another public health crisis, offered the country yet another “totally unreliable” model that sent us into an ill-advised lockdown. And what did we learn? Only to move harder, faster in delegating control to unelected academics, statistics, models.

London’s bonfire of the vanities. Ed West considers the rise of the Green Party:

In the worldview of some, ‘inclusivity’ is anything which furthers the interests of favoured minorities, just as ‘equality’ is anything that raises their status relative to less favoured groups. Everything is about power imbalances, the thinking behind asymmetrical multiculturalism, in which the sectional interests of minority groups are to be promoted and patronised (in both senses), without consideration about what this entails. It has even led white secular progressives to encourage overtly sectarian Islamic politics, playing with fire and laughing at how edgy and provocative they are.

West goes east. Ed also visits Ukraine:

At around 4am guards in military uniform came on to collect all the passports, and after a while he returned to ask me what I was doing in Ukraine and whether I’m a ‘volunteer’, going through all my bags asking about military souvenirs. Not only are weapons smuggled west for criminal or terrorist purposes, but some people apparently think it’s a good idea to bring back grenades as momentos - with hilarious consequences.

Passion of the Monkey Christ. Aiden Harte reflects on “Monkey Christ”, the modern, and the sacred:

In 2012 the New Atheist movement was still on the front foot. As the hall of monkey mirrors grew ever more refracted, it became obvious that, for many, the object of ridicule was not that Mrs Giménez’s reverent gesture had gone horribly wrong. Reverence itself was the joke.

Subtly, ambiguously and curiously. Nick Cave reflects on art:

I do not imagine for a moment that Wim thinks art should ignore the great and persistent injustices of the world. He seems to believe, as I do, that using art to raise awareness of these injustices can be extremely effective, but perhaps he also believes that art is more than the sum of its utility; it is more than a tool or a weapon. Maybe he believes, as I do, that at its core, great art exists purely for its own sake — and that at its most transformative it reveals itself subtly, ambiguously, and curiously …

Against the electronic editor. Jude Russo also writes about editing and AI:

We are often little more than entertainers, yes. But our trade’s output does, at its best, help people be adults in a roughly free society of which, for now, the human beings are in charge.

Green unpleasant land. Rupert Hawksley writes on crime in the British countryside:

Hare coursing is linked to criminal gangs and can be big business. The chase is often livestreamed to illegal gambling sites, with tens of thousands of pounds wagered on which dog will catch the hare. ‘I am told that you can even watch hare coursing being live-streamed into China and people there bet huge amounts on it as it is happening,’ says Philip Wilkinson, Wiltshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner.

The recent spike in hare coursing across Wiltshire – up 21.8 per cent between September 2024 and August 2025 – forms part of a bleaker picture. Rural crime, from machinery and livestock theft to badger baiting and fly-tipping, is scarring the countryside. Any quaint ideas of England’s green and pleasant land are slowly being eroded.

Have a lovely month!

Ben