Sarah Helm, French Riots and the Left’s romantic myth of revolution

Nothing will change while the London Review of Books thinks it’s radical to publish apologia for communist terror and the great and good close ranks when one of their own is caught excusing terror

For a couple of years I indulged in a subscription to the London Review of Books. Partly this resulted from a very good introductory offer and partly from a genuine desire to broaden what I read. In that couple of years I read some fantastic writing - the special issue on the Grenfell Tower tragedy is, for all I disagree with some of its conclusions, a brilliant piece of journalism - and was pointed towards some genuinely interesting books that I might otherwise have missed. But the biggest thing I discovered was that the intellectual left is incredibly and vainly unselfaware. And the thing that the left doesn’t see in itself is its obsession with a romantic myth of revolution and socialist violence.

This led me to write this:

“I’ve just finished reading a review of Richard Evans book about Eric Hobsbawm in the London Review of Books. It’s fair to say I have a problem with it - not the review but the very fact of the review. I appreciate that the LRB is a sort of house journal for lefty London luvvy types but it really amazes me that such reverence is given to a man who, without irony, was an abject apologist for mass murder:

“Evans doesn’t sugarcoat the intellectual gymnastics Hobsbawn performed to defend the Stalinist show trials, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, or the Soviet invasion of Finland, but neither does he underplay the vibrant and intellectually heterodox spirit that animated the Communist Party Historians Group...”

It makes me want to throw up when a major journal allows for an essentially hagiographic book about a man who never retracted, let alone apologised for, supporting one of the biggest mass murders in human history - Stalin’s Soviet Communism. It’s as if the sake of the revolution exonerates Hobsbawm - and those who write about him as anything other than evil - from being treated with the same sort of contumely as we might treat an uncritical book about David Irving.”

I was reminded of this (and another apologia for communism published in the LRB) by two current events: the ongoing riots across France and the news that Sarah Helm, the partner of Britain’s National Security Advisor, Jonathan Powell, had liked, shared and commented on a series of social media posts that were, at best, unpleasantly (and ignorantly) anti-Israel and possibly antisemitic to boot. But despite expressing support for a proscribed terrorist organisation, Ms Helm’s comments didn’t meet the threshold for the police to take any action. We can be forgiven for arriving at the view that Ms Helm gets a pass for backing terrorists because of her connections to the political and media ‘great and good’.

It also struck me, however, that Ms Helm gets a pass for the same reason that apologia for communist oppression and violence gets a prominent place in trendy left wing journals like the LRB: the Left’s obsession with that romantic myth of revolution and the idea that, as Hobsbawm said, the death and destruction might be the price to pay for achieving communism. There is no equivalent of this romantic myth on the political right so we can’t comprehend what’s inside the minds of most left-wing people, even moderate ‘Centrist Dad’ lefties.

When the intellectual left sees what’s happened in France, their minds don’t turn to the need for order and control but rather to 1848 and the Paris Commune or the ‘student’ protests and riots of May 1968. These events are, like the International Brigades in 1930s Spain, the Cuban ‘revolution’ of 1959 and Nicaragua’s Sandinista’s from the 1980s, fixtures in the mythos that informs the Left’s understanding of the world. Even the most moderate leftist will experience a frisson of excitement at such uprisings and words like ¡No Pasarán! and Intifada trip unthinkingly to their lips. It is in this context that we can understand why someone as embedded in greatness and goodness as Sarah Helm will not be punished for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation (any more than will fêted left wing writer Sally Rooney). Those who control the processes that decide who is and isn’t brought to book for supporting Palestine Action are quite happy for over 500 silly old people to get arrested for supporting the proscribed organisation but cannot allow the same for someone so close to the heart of the government that proscribed the terror group.

On ex-twitter I wrote this:

“The decision not to throw the book at Sarah Helm is why we end up with violent thugs parading the streets untouchable by authorities. We need to stop being kind or understanding towards those, especially those on the left, who have spent decades simpering at those ‘radical’ kids smashing stuff up. Groups like Palestine Action, the SWP, PSC and Antifa exist because our authorities are too nice, too obsessed with rights, and too invested in their left wing and culturally right-on world view.

There are people like Jonathan Powell and Sarah Helm at dinner parties as I write talking about ‘48 and ‘68 in their nice safe Hampstead or Putney homes. Middle aged blokes who sit on the boards of opera houses and museums getting a semi while talking about French rioters while their female counterparts get wet fantasising about exciting revolutionary men (or women) leading the front line against les flics.

Already the editor of the London Review of Books - the centrepiece of elitist faux-revolutionary Marxist erections - is planning his special edition on the parallels between Paris ‘26, Paris ‘68 and Paris ‘48. Lots of fake revolutionaries with 3 million quid apartments in central London or New York are twitching at the profitable business of writing articles about Marxism and the French riots.

These people work at the BBC, have top jobs in the Civil Service, are celebrated lawyers or judges, they are writers, journalists and film-makers. They flit from posh restaurant to gallery opening to first night and pretend (because they are Marxists dontcha know) that they are the good people.

Meanwhile some immigrant bloke in the wrong arrondissement of Paris who opened his shop 30 years ago is crying because the thugs who those dinner party guests fantacise about fucking just smashed up his livelihood, stole all his stock and left him destitute.”

I don’t believe there’s an easy answer to the problem of the left because their intellectuals are almost all wedded to the romantic myth of revolution meaning that when ‘students’ go on a looting spree in Paris they see heroic young people rather than hyped up thugs using a protest to attack the police, set fire to (other people’s) cars and steal designer handbags and collectible Pokemon cards:

“Your name is Jean-Marc, you’re 46, and you run a video game and collectibles shop in Nice, wedged between an optician and a real estate agency selling 1-bed flats for €410,000 “with sea view” if you lean far enough off the balcony.

You know every GTA San Andreas cheat by heart. You tested all of them in 2005 on the PS2 in your bedroom at your mum’s place.

You opened in 2011 with a state-backed loan at 4.7%, and the naive belief that passion eventually pays.

It did pay, sort of. €1,900 a month in a good year, after the French tax office has eaten first, second and third. Your commercial rent is indexed on a formula nobody in the Republic actually understands.

You sell Funko Pops at €17.99, sealed Pokémon cards, refurbished controllers. You let little Enzo, 12, pay in installments because he’s saving for a Switch 2. You close at 7:30pm and walk home because the harbor parking is €3.40 an hour.

Saturday, there’s a protest “against the cost of living.”

You also think living costs too much. You almost went.

At 5:12pm, your metal shutter gets ripped open with a crowbar.

Forty teenagers in tracksuits and crossbody bags walk into your shop like it’s a bonus level. They take the PS5s, the Dragon Ball figures, the till with today’s €280 and even the box of paper bags that say “thank you for your visit.”

A guy in a floral shirt films it vertically for TikTok.”

People ask why these riots happened. And there are lots of reasons ranging from bad policing through drugs to genuine grievances about education policy or the cost of living. But nobody mentions that an important reason is that myth of revolution that lives rent free in the heads of half our politicians. Plus, of course that the rioters, thugs and criminals know they’ll get away with it, that they are untouchable We saw this with the Black Lives Matters riots,and, at least up until some ‘protestors’ beat up a police officer with a sledgehammer, with persistent vandalism, criminal damage and vile language from people purporting to support the people of Gaza.

We will watch as the blame is shifted away from the ‘student protesters’ and placed instead on the police, local authorities and national governments. Riot, the left believes, is never the fault of the rioter so long as the thugs and vandals can lay claim to ‘revolution’. That’s why those students mouth the popular slogans of resistance, whether from communist thugs in 1930s Spain or the Palestinian terrorists of today. The French rioters don’t carry the flags of Palestine because they give a toss about Gaza, they carry them because they are, in the Left’s romantic mythology, signs of revolution and uprising. The same is true of their adopted song, a rap that celebrates Islamist terrorists, which becomes a revolutionary anthem rather than a deliberately edgy celebration of killers.

Nothing will change so long as the London Review of Books thinks it’s radical to publish apologia for communist terror and the West’s great and good close ranks when one of their own is caught excusing violence and criminal damage. The reason we get these riots isn’t just economic conditions, policing or the lack of youth clubs, it is because rioters can, and do, appeal to the Left’s romanticised obsession with revolution. Until the left arrives at a place where balaclava clad thugs are just that, balaclava clad thugs then riot will still be allowed to get out of hand.