April 2017 | Issue 3 www.theconservative.online THEA QUARTERLY JOURNAL CONSERVATIVE BY THE ALLIANCE OF CONSERVATIVES AND REFORMISTS IN EUROPE ONE Garry Kasparov HUNDRED Roger Scruton Alexandr Vondra YEARS OF Daniel Johnson Hannes Gissurarson Nigel Biggar SERVITUDE Ayn Rand THE COMMUNIST LEGACY ISSN 2565-7062 9 772565 706000 IMPRESSUM TABLE OF CONTENTS THE CONSERVATIVE EDITORIAL BOARD The Conservative is a quarterly Journal in EDITOR-IN-CHIEF print and online, sponsored by the Alliance Daniel Hannan MEP of the Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE). ADVISORY BOARD Arthur Brooks Roger Kimball Read The Conservative online at www.theconservative.online Professor Ryszard Legutko MEP Rich Lowry Professor Madhav Das Nalapat 14 UNDER THE INTERROGATION Dr Andrew Roberts SPOTLIGHT by Roger Scruton Professor Pedro Schwartz Professor Sir Roger Scruton MANAGING EDITOR Themistoklis Asthenidis SUB-EDITOR Andrew McKie ILLUSTRATOR Michael Daley 18 TRANSITION: HOW TO CONTACT US 6 THE DEMOCRACIES ARE SLEEPING DO IT QUICKLY 97 MARXISM LIVES ON - IN THE WEST - An interview with Garry Kasparov by Marian L. Tupy by Alexandr Vondra ADDRESS: Alliance of Conservatives and 5 EDITORIAL: 35 COLUMN: CONSERVATIVE MUSIC Reformists in Europe (ACRE) A HUNDRED YEARS OF SERVITUDE by Jay Nordlinger Rue du Trône 4, B-1000 by Daniel Hannan Brussels, Belgium 38 STARTING IN MURDER, TEL: +32 2 280 60 39 6 THE DEMOCRACIES ARE SLEEPING ENDING IN INEFFICIENCY - An interview with Garry Kasparov by John O’Sullivan WEB: www.theconservative.online by Themistoklis Asthenidis EMAIL: [email protected] 42 MARX IN A COLD CLIMATE 14 UNDER THE by Hannes H. Gissurarson INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS INTERROGATION SPOTLIGHT by Roger Scruton 47 COLUMN: CONSERVATIVE BOOKS Please address submissions and by James Delingpole REPRODUCTION RIGHTS: All content and materials 18 TRANSITION: DO IT QUICKLY of The Conservative are copyrighted, unless otherwise letters to the editor to: stated. For permission to republish articles appearing in by Marian L. Tupy 50 OUTING YOURSELF AS The Conservative, please contact the Managing Editor at A RIGHTIST ISN’T EASY [email protected]. ADDRESS: 25 COLUMN: CONSERVATIVE ICONS by Nigel Biggar DISCLAIMER: ACRE is a Belgian ASBL/VZW No: Editor–in-Chief, The Conservative by Roger Kimball 0820.208.739, recognised and partially funded by the 54 WITHOUT THE RULE OF LAW, European Parliament. Its views are not reflected by the Alliance of Conservatives and European Parliament. Reformists in Europe (ACRE) 31 WHY YOUNG PEOPLE, STATES ARE DOOMED TO POVERTY The views and opinions expressed in the publication are LIKE THE YOUNGER ME, by Daniel J. Mitchell Rue du Trône 4, B-1000 solely those of individual authors and should not be regard- KEEP FALLING FOR TROTSKY ed as reflecting any official opinion or position of the Alliance Brussels, Belgium of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe, its leadership, by Janet Daley members or staff, or of the European Parliament. EMAIL: [email protected] 2 www.theconservative.online THE CONSERVATIVE | April 2017 | Issue 3 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS THE CONSERVATIVE EDITORIAL: A HUNDRED YEARS OF SERVITUDE oped a lifelong immunity, con- 57 TRUMP MIGHT NOT DRINK n 1917, a radical group known by Daniel Hannan - BUT HE’LL DRIVE UP SALES as the Bolsheviks seized power siders those who became infected by Iain Martin I in Petrograd. As revolutions go, it – infected to the extent that they was a pedestrian affair. The Pro- inhabited an alternative reality in visional Government that had order to cling to their beliefs. taken over from the Tsar was in Which brings us to the true no position to put up a fight. paradox of Communism. Karl Its leader, a democratic socialist Marx saw himself as a scientist called Alexander Kerensky, fled rather than an ideologue. His fol- Petrograd in a Renault borrowed lowers treated his turgid writings, from the American embassy. not as a series of opinions, but as Even the storming of the Win- a catalogue of empirical truths. ter Palace, later portrayed in Soviet Yet every prediction he made – 50 OUTING YOURSELF AS 66 LEFTIST TEACHERS, Daniel Hannan MEP A RIGHTIST ISN’T EASY SNOWFLAKE STUDENTS iconography as an epic battle, was every single one – turned out to is Secretary-General of the by Nigel Biggar by Dominic Green bathetic. As the British military be false. Alliance of Conservatives attaché, General Knox, recalled: Free markets, Marx wrote, and Reformists in Europe and The garrison of the Winter Pal- would destroy the middle class, Editor of The Conservative. ace had dwindled owing to deser- concentrating wealth in the hands @DanielJHannan tions, for there were no provisions of a tiny number of oligarchs. In and it had been practically starved fact, free markets have enlarged for two days. No one had any stom- The horrors abated after 1989; the middle class everywhere they ach for fighting; and some of the but the pain lingered. Roger Scru- have been allowed to exist. ensigns even borrowed great coats of ton describes the way in which The revolution, he wrote, soldier pattern from the women to Marxist regimes systematically would occur when the proletar- enable them to escape unobserved. demolished all civil institutions, iat became sufficiently self-aware, The Red Guards enteredfrom the Boy Scouts to the vil- something he expected to hap- through a back door that had been lage band, making it hard for pen first in Britain and then in left open and roamed, lost, in the post-Communist governments to Germany. In fact, as the working vast interior until they stumbled rebuild. The ones that have moved classes in those countries became 104 THE CRIMINALS HAVE ESCAPED JUSTICE upon the remnants of Kerensky’s on successfully, as Marian Tupy more educated, they shored up by David Pryce-Jones cabinet. Being illiterate, the rev- shows, are those which made a the established order. olutionaries ordered the hapless quick and brutal transition. Capitalism, he believed, ministers to write out their own Yet, incredibly, the radical was doomed: it would collapse 57 COLUMN: CONSERVATIVE WINE 87 COLUMN: FREE MARKET ADVANCES arrest warrants. It was, all in all, a chic lingers. It is still fashionable under the weight of its own by Iain Martin by Kristian Niemietz tawdry, if bloodless, affair. to wear a Che Guevara tee-shirt – contradictions. In fact, when he 61 RADICAL CHIC: HOW GENOCIDE 90 RIGGED ELECTIONS AND The blood came later – gush- something which, morally, ought wrote those words in 1848, mar- REMAINS FASHIONABLE PETTY CORRUPTION ing in such cataracts that we can to be in the same category as wear- kets were already working their by Daniel Johnson by Peter Oppenheimer barely take in what happened. ing an Adolf Hitler or Osama bin magic. During the malign old Communism killed a hundred Laden tee-shirt. A third of Amer- cadger’s lifetime, the real income 66 LEFTIST TEACHERS, 97 MARXISM LIVES ON - IN THE WEST million people: some shot into ican millennials, Marion Smith of the average British family in- SNOWFLAKE STUDENTS by Alexandr Vondra pits, some arrested at night and soberingly tells us, think that creased by 300 per cent. by Dominic Green tortured to death, some starved to George W Bush killed more peo- Yet his disciples, like members 101 COLUMN: CONSERVATIVE CULTURE enforce collectivization. As Dan- ple than Stalin did. Marxism may of some doomsday cult, continue 69 COLUMN: CONSERVATIVE INDIA by Damian Thompson iel Johnson notes in this issue, the be utterly discredited in the lands to fit the facts to their opinions. If by Madhav Das Nalapat where it was practiced, says Alex- anything, they became even more 104 THE CRIMINALS HAVE United States and Russia had sim- 75 THE OVERLOOKED COLONISATION ESCAPED JUSTICE ilar populations in 1917. Today, andr Vondra; but it remains intel- dogmatic after the fall of the Ber- by Edvins Snore by David Pryce-Jones following a century of asym- lectually fashionable in the West. lin Wall. How apt, a hundred years metric migration, abortion and What is its appeal? Janet Daley, on, that Marx should have become 81 PUTIN IS NO CONSERVATIVE 108 OUR ALLEGED COMPETITOR death, there are twice as many who was exposed to the Trotskyist the thing he most loathed: the by Marion Smith by Ayn Rand Americans as there are Russians. bacillus as a student, and devel- prophet of a false religion. 4 www.theconservative.online THE CONSERVATIVE | April 2017 | Issue 3 5 THE DEMOCRACIES ARE SLEEPING An interview with Garry Kasparov For the centenary of the Bolshevist Revolution, The Conservative’s Themistoklis Asthenidis interviews Garry Kasparov, former World Chess Champion and now a leading voice in Russian politics. THEMISTOKLIS ASTHENIDIS: Soviet Communism taught us that 2017 marks the centenary year of the Bol- if the system didn’t work, we had to follow it even more strictly, to shevist Revolution. Yet much of the evil be more obedient slaves. The free done in the name of Communism has been world – democracy and the free forgotten, and the true picture of this his- market – is the opposite. It says that toric failure is fading away. if you have successful individuals, a successful state will result. GARRY KASPAROV: We are getting far enough from the fall of them, whether it’s a Communism regime or the USSR to more accurately evaluate the a strongman dictator. Soviet Communism deeper impact of totalitarian Communism taught us that if the system didn’t work, we on a society. It’s like a virus that attacks the had to follow it even more strictly, to be more immune system, weakening it and making obedient slaves. The free world — democracy it vulnerable to more lethal infections, like and the free market — is the opposite. It says dictatorship and nationalism.