When I was about 17, I dearly wanted to be a communist. I read Marx's 'Capital', in translation, of course, and found it often heady and poetic.
Then I tuned into Radio Moscow, which was in English, and heard a Russian woman reading the news. Russian, like Polish, is a beautiful, very musical languge, but both Russians and Poles speak English without much intonation or emotion, so that to us they sound very cold.
The woman's words stick with me: "The imperialist fascist stooge, Macmillan, speaking yesterday in the so-called British Parliament, said that...."
That was enough. No more communism for me.
Why is it so tempting to insult the opposition or enemy? Labels like 'fascist', 'nazi', 'liberal', are bandied about, often with little regard for their historical significance, as though they were potent weapons for defeating opponents. As Kipling wrote over 100 years ago:
When you've shouted, "Rule Britannia!" when you've sung, "God Save the Queen",
When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth."
what have you achieved? Perhaps very little. As with swearing, so with verbal abuse, using the currency debases it. The lewd words or insults progressively fail to satisfy, and reveal their own impotence and the user's. If you spend much time on Twitter, and I spend less than I used to, you will soon become bored with displays of bad-mouthing.
As an art form, it soon palls.
St John the Baptist did it, and so did St Thomas More, but much more creatively, and therefore more tellingly. There was poetry and passion in their invective. They were wise and good men, Saints, and their language was chosen to tell the truth, inspire their supporters, denigrate the enemy, and demolish his arguments.
But it is hard to see what purpose is served by merely insulting opponents, whether they be 'Taliban' Catholics, liberal 'fascists', or any other hated group, without actually pointing out where they are wrong.
Does doing so advance the cause, whatever it may be?
Rather, it is off-putting to many who might otherwise be inclined to listen to us. See above.
Does it hurt or demoralise the enemy?
Only clever satire can do that, not name-calling..
Does it rally and motivate our supporters and make them feel better?
Probably yes, if they are people of not very subtle perceptions.
Does it make us feel better?
Yes, of course. Watch a little dog behind its garden gate, go into yappping frenzy when a big dog, on a lead, has safely gone past.
Does it betray the fact that we feel weak, impotent, and on the losing side of a battle?
I fear so.
Let us by, all means, trash, rout, demoralise, destroy the enemy and his credibility, but, like G. K. Chesterton (who never sank to insulting even his arch enemies) let us do so with meticulous reasoning, wit, and truth. It was the rather risible F. E. Smith who dismissed Chesterton as an 'obese mountebank', as though his bulk invalidated his polemic.
Do we go to F.E. Smith for wisdom? I rather think not.
