tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313889192026-04-10T18:18:13.945+01:00an OXFORD FORUM blogFabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comBlogger550125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-56408094316713061582026-03-13T10:04:00.010+00:002026-03-17T15:28:59.311+00:00

When Donald Trump first appeared on the horizon I was all for him, though no one else seemed to be. Here is a breath of fresh air, I thought: a politician belonging to a supposedly right-wing party who isn't actually a leftist. That is to say, someone with genuinely individualist rather than collectivist sympathies, and who is willing to fight for non-leftist values – a rarity, it seemed,

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-33133945380860615642026-02-26T12:03:00.020+00:002026-02-27T08:53:16.728+00:00

• Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Every day the newspapers are talking about him.    Jeffrey Epstein seems to have been the kind of person who, one way or another, was going to make his way in life by doing something dodgy. The fact that he did so by creating what amounted to an illegal prostitution empire for the glitterati, however, probably says more about his time than about

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-52912423493804663852026-02-19T13:47:00.005+00:002026-02-20T07:46:35.190+00:00

• I've been making use of a free trial of the British Film Institute's Player. Some sophisticated movies of the kind you're unlikely to find on Netflix, though occasionally there are one or two on Prime.    Many of the BFI's selection are obviously intended to showcase the talents of female directors – some of them obscure ones who seem to have made one very good film, then

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-50633977236051111102026-01-18T16:32:00.019+00:002026-01-20T16:57:31.932+00:00

I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But Britain will never be ruled by a non-leftist government again. Nor will any other major Western state. The Trump thing is a blip.     Or, if such rule does happen, it will involve a bunch of people who're so nutty that once they're in power they morph from bullied to bullies, and start to destabilise the geopolitical world order e.g. by

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-38154951687965468932025-11-27T16:30:00.050+00:002025-11-30T11:00:08.767+00:00

Britain's COVID Inquiry hasn't so far produced any very profound insights. - Mistakes were made. - Had we been better prepared, the crisis would have been handled better. - More planning ahead would be helpful for next time. All worthy assertions. Whether expanding them into over 700 pages is a worthwhile exercise is another matter. Still, this is the standard stuff of Inquiries: produce a

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-8067449105035607292025-10-15T10:54:00.005+01:002025-10-15T15:27:34.188+01:00

There's been a lot of talk about 'hate' in recent years. We've had a programme to eliminate hatred of particular ethnic groups, for example – those who form minorities in Western societies. While that's a laudable objective, the idea that this has resulted in an overall reduction in hatred is an oversimplification. For other social groups, hatred seems to have risen rather than fallen. I&

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-16594548334703438232025-10-08T20:28:00.057+01:002025-10-14T02:35:51.452+01:00

In the previous post I suggested that increased polarisation can be linked to the fact that – despite the West supposedly having become more secularised and more science-based – there has been a rise in fervent belief. Belief in the absolute rightness of certain theories, or attitudes, chiefly in relation to political topics.    I suggested that the apparent decline

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-4540795093041146902025-10-01T13:30:00.021+01:002025-10-10T21:43:34.058+01:00

Why has political and ethical opinion in the West become so polarised? To the extent that many no longer seem to be able to tolerate living in the same country as others with different viewpoints?    The Left likes to blame the Right. Figures like Donald Trump are said to be 'divisive'. But the current resurgence of rightism, often denounced as 'extreme', is perhaps best

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-49766751982075922442025-09-18T14:52:00.028+01:002025-09-19T07:10:04.103+01:00

The Labour government currently appears to have two main objectives: (1) raise money by any means necessary (the coffers are empty); (2) penalise the middle class for having 'unfair' advantages.    As Arthur Laffer recently reminded us, objective (1) isn't necessarily going to be met, in net terms, by having a new tax. For example, if you slap a 20% tax on private schools

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-57219390284823959652025-09-11T11:35:00.011+01:002025-09-12T13:05:00.722+01:00

It seems France is paying the price for 50 years of cultural-Marxist ideology, which started to become hegemonic over there in the 1970s. The French structuralist and post-structuralist movements – variants of the intellectual collectivism that Marx's disciples pioneered, and hugely influential – no doubt made the French intellectual establishment feel they were masters of the (mental

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comOxford, UK51.7520209 -1.257726323.441787063821153 -36.4139763 80.062254736178843 33.8985237tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-21613264724266189502025-09-03T10:19:00.013+01:002025-09-07T18:26:40.259+01:00

The tides are changing for higher education. In 2020, Joe Biden was elected on a platform of free college education for all Americans. Five years later, few politicians in the West talk about expanding the bloated university system. The penny seems to have dropped that bumping up participation rates has achieved little, except satisfy egalitarian ideology and generate massive debt.   &

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-87218305956506818112025-08-20T17:43:00.006+01:002025-08-20T19:23:06.852+01:00

My advice to middle‑class parents: Keep your offspring away from institutions that promote toxic ideology, and that encourage massive personal debt. My advice to working‑class parents: Ditto. READ MORE.  

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-91056531138311379532025-08-12T17:14:00.032+01:002025-08-16T13:47:18.005+01:00

... I mean the second stage of it has begun. Or is it Stage 3, or Stage 4 by now? It's hard to keep track.    British private schools have started to crack, under the onslaught of a >20 percent increase in costs, VAT now being applied to fees, combined with a recent rise in employers' National Insurance.    As I predicted, it's the smaller private schools at the

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-6465147071115294932025-08-06T11:35:00.038+01:002025-08-06T16:46:37.524+01:00

More about the decline of literature from Quora.com. Commentator 'Jack' points out that the majority of modern novels are tedious: "meaningless characters with meaningless lives in meaningless universes".    Jack lists egalitarianism among the factors which have contributed to decline: The third cause of literary decline is our democratic age. This is an age of anti-hierarchy

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-56115722281898488092025-07-30T12:04:00.029+01:002025-07-30T17:44:37.488+01:00

In the two months since Power-mad and Hypocritical was published, there have been two guest columns from former academics in the Telegraph, both moaning very mildly about the loss of free speech and academic neutrality from British campuses. The defence of free speech was feeble in each case. It speaks volumes that both writers are retired, so presumably not at any significant risk from blowback.

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-28640307843538374892025-07-23T10:04:00.004+01:002025-07-30T15:31:55.044+01:00

Disturbing reports of a man at a pro-Palestine protest last weekend being arrested, handcuffed, and interviewed by police for 6 hours, apparently for nothing worse than carrying a placard showing a Private Eye cartoon. I know that Private Eye has gone downmarket in recent years, but even so.    The protest itself wasn't illegal, but the cartoon apparently was. At least,

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-88676747895455044932025-07-18T10:36:00.018+01:002025-07-30T15:31:44.873+01:00

American universities are having to cope with the wind of hostility from the Trump administration. According to US Vice President J D Vance, universities are the enemy. From the position of a conservative politician, Vance's assessment is quite correct. Academia is opposed to conservatism generally, and completely intolerant of Trump's version – which, bombastics aside, isn't

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-7193854758580264082025-07-15T12:42:00.012+01:002025-07-30T15:31:34.391+01:00

Finally, a commentator who doesn't think inequality is morally wrong, or oppressive, or otherwise harmful: Sherelle Jacobs, writing in Thursday's Telegraph. The thesis that inequality is bad, and only justifiable (if at all) for the sake of incentives, has become so standard in intellectual circles that it's usually taken for granted these days, at least by the kind of people who read the

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-47330093152028197992025-07-11T10:32:00.010+01:002025-07-30T15:31:23.674+01:00

What if you own/edit a magazine, and you happen to believe that women are inappropriately under-represented in culture, and that this is because of negative attitudes towards them? You might feel that you should never give space to any opinions or data that might reinforce those negative attitudes.    For example, someone might want to draw attention to possible statistical

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-55715531334329451572025-07-09T10:08:00.013+01:002025-07-30T15:31:11.822+01:00

Why are conservatives suspicious of the man-made global-warming hypothesis? Because they suspect that, mixed up with the science, there's a leftist political agenda. Why do leftists like the hypothesis? Partly because they care about the planet, but no doubt also because there's a leftist political agenda.    The Guardian's report on today's mass lobby in Westminster links to a

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-82374147997222769542025-07-07T11:43:00.047+01:002025-07-30T15:30:50.968+01:00

Watched a Netflix fairy-story movie at the weekend (Damsel) which was fun except that, as so often nowadays, it was misandristic.    All the good characters were female, even the dragon. The men were all useless or worse: a greedy king; a father who sold his daughter for gold. Prince Charming? Treacherous little bustard.    You see the same thing in current fiction,

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-83874854866025150572025-07-04T11:04:00.009+01:002025-07-30T12:00:20.280+01:00

Glastonbury and the BBC are basically like academia. Unashamedly biased, and having little time but much contempt for non-leftists.    Every now and then something egregious hits the headlines. (The latest: pop group calls for "death to IDF", and BBC@Glastonbury broadcasts it without censoring.) The Right's response these days? Fight fire with fire. If the Left already

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-73028368306726181362025-07-02T10:48:00.028+01:002025-07-30T11:59:57.796+01:00

Pointless rebranding of the dot in 'gov.uk', costing half a million quid. In my view it's a manifestation of a theme of mediocracy (a.k.a. cultural Marxism) which I highlighted in the Mediocracy book: giving primacy to appearance rather than substance. It's part of the whole denial-of-objectivity, denial-of-reality thing. In a mediocracy ... social consensus is the only criterion of reality.

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-13434122193224229692025-06-30T10:32:00.003+01:002025-07-30T11:59:45.269+01:00

The Guardian has an article arguing that babies should have the vote. Well, all children. In other words, no age restriction. As soon as you leave the womb, you're allowed to help choose which party should rule the country for the next four years.    It's easy to mock, but I don't object to the principle. The problem comes in practice: the most popular version of the scheme

Fabe Tassanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03279119414821928574noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31388919.post-48199799242478380122025-06-27T12:56:00.004+01:002025-07-30T11:59:33.587+01:00

Crazy like a fox. Donald Trump is certainly shaking things up, more than any Western politician in recent history. His ultimate objectives aren't always apparent from the theatrics. But perhaps a degree of camouflage is necessary for a political leader who is deeply counter-cultural (in the new sense of that word; that is to say, who's in opposition to the il-liberal hegemony).    

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