It must be miserable to be a citizen of the United Kingdom these days. To be an unwilling participant in a nation’s slide into tyranny must be an awful thing. I know that we are witnessing it in the States, but they’ve been at it for a while now in the United Kingdom, which is tumbling with near-terminal velocity toward the bottom of the slippery slope. The UK, let us not forget, mobilized its citizens to evacuate troops from Dunkirk during the Second World War and to stand firm against Nazi Germany during the Blitz. But it would seem that it is interested in crafting its own form of tyranny.
Writing in The Spectator, Douglas Murray talks about a plan by the government’s Prevent program to list certain works as having the potential to lead to radicalization. The list includes works by a number of commentators and authors including Murray, Peter Hitchens, and Melanie Phillips. Murray writes:
There is also a reading list of historical texts which produce red flags to RICU. These include Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, as well as works by Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. Elsewhere RICU warns that radicalisation could occur from books by authors including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley, and Joseph Conrad. I kid you not, though it seems that all satire is dead, but the list of suspect books also includes 1984 by George Orwell.
RICU refers to an arm of Prevent and is an acronym for “Research, Information, and Communications Unit.” Reading the works by the authors above could allegedly launch one on the road to right-wing extremism. As could watching Civilisation, The Thick of It, and Great British Railway Journeys. These programs are apparently enjoyed by subversive and dangerous right-wingers. Radicals, no doubt.
Murray’s question as to how the UK got where it is, is a legitimate one, although I suspect that he knows it is rhetorical. The UK arrived at its current state in the same way in which the U.S. is hurtling along its own trajectory toward doom. And one can see the twisted parody of logic that led RICU to warn against Hobbes, Locke, Burke, Carlyle, and Smith. And for that matter, RICU’s concerns about Orwell’s warning of the heavy hand of a totalitarian regime and even Huxley’s caution against the subversion of a populace through overindulgence are obvious. RICU clumsily tips its hand in those cases. But Tolkien? Lewis?
It is true that Tolkien was a Roman Catholic. And when The Lord of the Rings movies came out and gave a boost to the books, pastors everywhere scrambled to preach sermons on how the story was a Christian one. While it may be a stretch to say that The Lord of the Rings is a Christian work, Tolkien’s faith obviously influenced his writing, as did his time in the trenches during the First World War.
Not only do the characters act on faith against overwhelming evil, but the story’s climax is built on the backs of two ordinary people who sacrifice everything to defeat the darkness, and for that matter, one could argue that the One Ring is ultimately destroyed through an act of divine intervention. Woven throughout are themes of friendship, opposition to tyranny, reconciliation, and even redemption. These ideas perhaps may be heretical enough to land the books on RICU’s list.
Lewis also served in the First World War. During the Second World War, he often addressed the British people via the BBC. And he gave lectures about faith to British servicemen. Those talks formed the basis for Mere Christianity. And there can be no doubt that Lewis is a Christian writer. His Space Trilogy bears witness to that, and The Chronicles of Narnia is solidly and immutably Christian. Some people claim that Aslan represents Christ, while others say that Aslan is Christ and has come to redeem another world. Whatever your feelings on that, Aslan is meant to portray Christ.
Men Without Chests posits a moral law and refutes relativism. The Abolition of Man also wrestles with these subjects and goes so far as to foresee a future in which thought and values are controlled by a group of elitists. The Great Divorce in part forces the reader to examine the thoughts and choices that separate people from one another and from God. The Screwtape Letters is a collection of missives from a senior demon in Hell named Screwtape to his nephew on Earth called Wormwood who is trying to take a man’s soul. The letters instruct Wormwood on how to use and leverage the most ordinary things in life, along with the traumatic ones, to lead a person to damnation through his own desires, fears, and ambitions.
Of course, RICU’s overarching objection may well be that these books were written by white men and are often joyed by white people. Although they are enjoyed by people of other races and nationalities, so I doubt that those criteria were the only ones considered. Tolkien and Lewis may be far more dangerous to the statists than they appear at first blush.
Murray concludes:
So in general, I begin to feel in good company. If government agencies are going to compile lists of suspect books, then I am very happy to stand condemned alongside these fine people, both living and dead.
But what does it say about our country that we could ever have got here? Prevent was meant to protect people. It evolved, in time, into something committed to going against almost everything about our country, including its people. People may be angry about this. But anger is not enough. I want accountability. I want names, Home Secretary. And then I want to hear of sackings by the score.
Indeed, may the sackings be swift and sweeping because, you see, beyond exposing the reader to certain ideas that may be antithetical to those held by people flirting with tyranny, reading these works causes a person to think. And that may be the biggest threat of all. Far better that people stay focused on their pronouns and post silly vignettes on social media. By keeping people preoccupied, the population not only becomes ignorant of their world but also pliable. And those in power who seek to do that are more than would-be dictators. They are Sauron. They are Big Brother. They are Screwtape.
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