S1: From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan,
S1: where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught,
S1: nurtured and honored. This is the radio free Hillsdale Hour,
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S1: across the country.
S2: Think globally. Act locally. This was very popular in the
S2: 90s with the environmental movement, and it sounds kind of
S2: intriguing at first. I propose that people think locally and
S2: act locally.
S3: This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio
S3: Free Hillsdale Hour. Part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network.
S3: That was Seth Barron, author of the recent book Weaponized
S3: The Left's Capture and Destruction of America's Sacred Institutions. We
S3: talk in depth with Seth about his book today and
S3: later on, Elizabeth Fredericks from Hillsdale's English department joins us.
S3: She'll begin a brief series on British literature of World
S3: War One. First, we're joined by Seth Barron. He is
S3: an editorial board member at the New York Post reporter
S3: and editor. And he's also the author of the recent
S3: book Weaponized The Left's Capture and Destruction of America's Sacred Institutions. Seth,
S3: thanks so much for joining us.
S2: Oh, thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.
S3: So the title of the book is weaponized, and we've
S3: heard the term weaponization a lot more recently than, say, 15,
S3: 20 years ago. What do you mean by weaponization, as
S3: you use the phrase throughout the book?
S2: Well, I'm looking at the ways in which certain key
S2: institutions in America, and I'm talking about civics. I'm talking
S2: about education, policing, and housing, these key institutions that really
S2: define the way Americans live. They've been infiltrated, subverted, and
S2: turned against the people through a weaponization of, I guess,
S2: you know, sort of our good nature and our sense
S2: of of what's right. Okay. For instance, take the term
S2: the American Dream. Uh, this used to refer to how
S2: Americans saw their lives in regard to how their children
S2: would would grow up. You know, Americans sought to provide
S2: for their kids, get a house, take vacations, and maybe
S2: their kids would do better than they did. But at
S2: some point, a dream came to mean not something that
S2: Americans aspired to, but something that foreigners had. Americans no
S2: longer were participants in the American dream. The American dream
S2: was something that we were that we owed to non non-Americans,
S2: to people abroad, all of whom had a right to it.
S2: So by twisting this phrase, they were able to, you know,
S2: in my thesis is to change the way we view
S2: citizenship and make it that we no longer really have
S2: the right to determine who comes here, and that it's
S2: essentially a global, a global right.
S3: And immigration citizenship is one of the four main topics
S3: in the book weaponized. We're concerned about the meaning of
S3: citizenship and especially about assimilation to when a country stops
S3: expecting newcomers to assimilate into a common national culture. What
S3: do we lose?
S2: I mean, we lose any sense of of unity. We
S2: lose the sense of the nation as a nation. It
S2: just becomes a place for people to come and hang
S2: their hat like a clearinghouse. It becomes a place where
S2: foreigners come in and they say, well, we don't really
S2: like the nation, but we like what you've done with
S2: the place. We think we'll turn it into something else.
S2: So you wind up with society of disconnected people, people
S2: who are very low trust in one another. You basically
S2: wind up with something that's not really quite a nation anymore,
S2: so much as it is just like an like a,
S2: like an entrepot, like a, like a collection of people
S2: who are in a place for commercial reasons and, and
S2: nothing else.
S3: Seth Barron the book is weaponized left the left's capture
S3: and destruction of America's sacred institutions citizenship, policing, housing, education.
S3: Those are the four quadrants you write about and weaponized,
S3: and you argue early. If you control the operation of
S3: those institutions, you're in a pretty good spot to control
S3: the country. How why did you identify those four places
S3: as being the centralized place to turn our focus?
S2: Well, when I started thinking about the country in general,
S2: and I wanted to write a book about, you know,
S2: what I saw the problems that were happening mainly from
S2: the left. It occurred to me that, okay, the way
S2: America was, was founded is the idea that the people
S2: are sovereign and all power stems from the people, not
S2: from a king, not from the top, but from the
S2: people whom God has invested self-evidently with liberty and, you know,
S2: natural rights of self-government, basically. And so in the American system,
S2: power derives from the bottom and through the communities and
S2: then up to the states and then to the country. Well,
S2: this drives the left crazy because they have a universal
S2: vision that they want to impose everywhere all at once.
S2: So it's annoying to them to have to consult every
S2: different district, every different community, and gain consensus that way.
S2: They would prefer just to, you know, they have their
S2: diktats and they'd like to just impose them from the top.
S2: So it seemed that what was happening was that power
S2: was being lifted from the bottom and away from the
S2: people and, and raised up to these unaccountable levels like
S2: people who have no accountability to, to the, to, to
S2: the base. Essentially, an expert class should rule everything. And
S2: just to go back to citizenship for a second, like
S2: it occurred to me the same way that people are not,
S2: you don't really have a say over who comes to America. Well,
S2: I was looking at housing and zoning and the way
S2: in which how decisions about what communities should look like
S2: are being taken away from zoning boards and the community
S2: and lifted up into like the state level where some
S2: expert could say, yes, you have to build affordable housing here.
S2: You have to allow quadruplexes here, you have to build a,
S2: you know, an apartment building near the transit line. And
S2: so basically what I saw was the same thing happening,
S2: which is that the people who live in a place
S2: no longer get to decide what happens there. So I
S2: saw it happening at the top at such a broad level,
S2: like the borders and citizenship. And then at this micro level,
S2: like what happens in neighborhoods. And it occurred to me, yeah,
S2: this is the problem. The left wants to capture all
S2: the power and they do it by, um, you know, essentially,
S2: you know, here's the thing, I don't know if you've
S2: heard this phrase before, think globally, act locally. This was
S2: very popular in the 90s with the environmental movement. And
S2: it sounds kind of intriguing at first. It's like, oh yeah,
S2: we should think globally, you know, have like a general
S2: vision of things and then act locally. But what this
S2: really means is don't trust the evidence of your own
S2: senses and your own capacity to think. We have experts
S2: over here who've done the thinking for you. They've got
S2: the big picture. So they're going to impose their thought.
S2: And you just think globally, meaning you, you, you adopt
S2: whatever construct they have. So. Oh, well, we can't use
S2: plastic straws because those destroy the environment. We have to,
S2: you know, get rid of our gas stoves because, uh,
S2: that releases carbon and eventually seeds will drown Florida. This
S2: doesn't necessarily with the reality, you see, but they've duped
S2: everybody in a sense to, to take on this, this vision.
S2: So I propose that people like think locally and act locally.
S2: And I think that's the real American. That's the American
S2: spirit that we've kind of lost.
S3: Seth Barron is with us. The book weaponized the left's
S3: capture and destruction of America's sacred institutions. On policing, you
S3: point out that those who advocate for defunding the police
S3: always have this picture of some harmonious society that emerges afterwards,
S3: not not one of lawlessness. And there's this discussion of
S3: root causes of crime. And the root causes for our
S3: friends on the left. Never are are. going back to
S3: the actual person committing the crime. When they talk about
S3: defunding and the society that emerges without police, are they,
S3: in a sense, saying that police are the root cause
S3: of crime in our cities?
S2: Well, that is I think that's a thesis that goes
S2: back to like the the 19th century with certain radical
S2: thinkers who said, yes, the, the cause of laws or
S2: the idea being that laws are put in place in
S2: order to protect capital and to protect the elite. And
S2: that's the and then the police are there to essentially
S2: just carry that out. And the idea being like, like,
S2: as Zoran Mamdani has said, violence is just a construct.
S2: The idea of. So he would say that having landlords
S2: is a form of violence. Having prisons is a form
S2: of violence. Having, you know, punishment as we know it
S2: is violence. These are all means of of using state
S2: power to control people. So what they would like to
S2: do is, well, they say what they'd like to do
S2: is to undo these, these strictures and these, these modes
S2: of state power and institutional control and come up with a,
S2: I don't know, a more humane society. I think what
S2: they really are mad about is the idea that that
S2: the police are a they are a recipient of public taxes,
S2: public revenue that they don't. The left actually cannot control.
S2: So I think they basically would like to sort of
S2: nationalize the police, basically bring the police under their umbrella
S2: the same way they did for the teachers and for,
S2: you know, certain other public sector groups. But yeah, I mean,
S2: they do they do make a very radical argument that that,
S2: that policing is, you know, essentially, they say it developed
S2: evolved out of slave catching practice in the 1850s or so,
S2: where they would deputize people to go out and find
S2: slaves and catch them. They see the modern police department
S2: as directly, directly connected to to the to the old
S2: slave catchers. That's what police are. They're just people out
S2: to enforce modern day slavery.
S3: That's Seth Barron. His new book, weaponized the left's Capture
S3: and destruction of America's sacred institutions will continue with Seth
S3: in just a moment. First. You might have seen. And
S3: judging by the box office, many have seen the new
S3: Odyssey feature film. Well, here at Hillsdale College, we can
S3: fill in the blanks. We can tell you what you
S3: might have missed. We can give you the joy and
S3: satisfaction of reading The Odyssey, and we do that through
S3: our Hillsdale College online course, The Odyssey, with Doctor Ben Whalen.
S3: He's your teacher. Join him for 12 lectures on the Odyssey.
S3: Find it at hillsdale.edu/course. You'll explore themes of love, marriage, kingship, duty, piety, encounter,
S3: Homer's epic, which displays the full human experience. If you've
S3: seen the movie, you've got to take the online course,
S3: The Odyssey with Doctor Ben Whalen. hillsdale.edu/course. hillsdale.edu/ewcourse. For the Odyssey,
S3: we continue with Seth Barron. His recent book weaponized the
S3: left's capture and destruction of America's sacred institutions. Seth, we
S3: see this time and again when we have some of
S3: these far progressive, far left progressive candidates, socialist candidates, DSA
S3: candidates who are are talking about defunding the police, that
S3: their support does not come largely from the communities that
S3: these policies affect. How does the argument and ideology survive
S3: when the consequences are hurting the intended beneficiaries? When the beneficiaries,
S3: quote unquote, don't even support the policies?
S2: You know, that's a great question. And, you know, for instance,
S2: you know, you you see that the, the first victims
S2: of like defunding the police or, or lessening policing are
S2: people in like black communities because they're, they have the
S2: highest rates of crime and thus the highest rates of
S2: crime victimization. You know, there's this great trick on the
S2: left where they can just say, well, we haven't done
S2: it right. We didn't implement it correctly. There wasn't enough funding.
S2: There was too much resistance from the other side. So
S2: we just have to keep trying. I mean, it's the
S2: same thing you hear when they say when they explain
S2: why socialism is a failure everywhere it's tried. Well, it
S2: hasn't really been tried. It's always been it's always been
S2: hurt by American intervention, by sanctions. So sabotage. So we
S2: just have to keep going. Um, it's a wonderful trick
S2: they have built into it that they can never be
S2: seen to fail. It's always just a question of doubling down. So,
S2: you know, and then you can just convince your followers
S2: that that's the problem. Well, you know, we just have
S2: to keep going, comrades. Uh, so yeah, this has been
S2: going on for a long time, but it seems to
S2: keep working, which is remarkable.
S3: Weaponized is the book The Left's Capture and Destruction of
S3: America's Sacred institution. Seth Barron is the author. On housing,
S3: you argue that fair housing or affordable housing is a
S3: sneaky way for the left to wage war on the suburbs.
S3: Why do they hate the suburbs and what do they
S3: want to do about it?
S2: The left hates the suburbs, has hated the suburbs for
S2: a long time. They see the suburbs well, they formulate.
S2: They see the suburbs as a source of conformity. Uh,
S2: Of conservativism and essentially racism. Thesis of the left goes that.
S2: Cities are where people like where real human life and
S2: real human interaction takes place. And the idea being that
S2: the people in control hated this. So they decided to
S2: build the highway system in order to sell cars and
S2: funnel white people out into segregated suburbs where they could
S2: all be regimented and routinized and, you know, essentially factory
S2: produced into these idealized robots. Now, of course, this is
S2: a nonsensical point of view. I'm just explaining what they believe.
S2: And according to this thesis, the cities remain the source
S2: of all value and wealth creation. And the suburbs just
S2: exploit the cities and extract all the wealth. And this
S2: is something that the Brookings Institution even recently said, that
S2: suburbs extract wealth from the cities, even though, you know,
S2: the mechanism by which that happens is never made clear.
S2: So and then, you know, what we've wound up with
S2: are cities that are largely Democrat many times that's, you know,
S2: very there's a lot of crime, there's a lot of poverty.
S2: And this drives the left crazy because they would like to.
S2: Ideally they would they basically want to annex the suburbs.
S2: This was Obama's vision, a regionalization of urban areas to
S2: connect the cities and the suburbs around them, to make
S2: the suburbs take on the burden of providing for the
S2: poor people who live in the city, namely through affordable housing.
S2: And this is the affirmatively, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which
S2: was part of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and
S2: extending that to mean economic equality to to to achieve
S2: economic Integration. So the idea being that you have to
S2: force suburbs to take on the burden of building affordable
S2: housing and affordable in this in this instance, just means subsidized.
S2: That's a tricky word switch they've used to. I mean,
S2: of course, everybody wants to have an affordable house, but
S2: technically speaking, any house that someone lives in is affordable
S2: to them. What they what they mean by affordable is subsidized.
S2: So this is kind of why they hate the suburbs. Suburbs.
S2: Suburbs are inhabited by people who have an investment in
S2: the community they own. There's more home ownership, right. And
S2: home owners are very conservative. They're very attuned to home
S2: to the value of their homes. This is their major asset.
S2: And the left hates this. They call it the home voter.
S2: People whose voting patterns are closely tied to how they
S2: perceive policies will affect the value of their homes. So
S2: undoing this power is, is key to the left's vision,
S2: and that's why they've changed zoning laws to make it
S2: that the state can determine what happens in your community.
S2: Why Obama and Biden would sue communities if they didn't
S2: have enough subsidized housing for poor people. It's a very
S2: long campaign they've been waging, and it's somewhat effective. Yeah.
S2: And so even though suburbs are where most of the
S2: economic growth is happening in America today, that's what they
S2: don't want to admit. It's not really happening in the cities.
S2: And more than that, this idea that the suburbs are
S2: where the white people live and the cities are where
S2: the black and brown people live, is also false. More,
S2: I think a majority of the minority population lives in suburbs.
S2: That's where all of the population growth is happening. So
S2: it's an outdated model that they're they're addicted to. And
S2: then you wind up with leftists flocking to, to cities
S2: like in New York, voting for people like Mamdani. And
S2: they have this vision of the world where everyone should
S2: live in tightly dense like conurbations. Suburbs should be essentially
S2: made illegal. And, you know, there's a social control element
S2: to it. People in the cities tend to be, you know,
S2: it's hard to raise a family in a city, so
S2: there's less family formation, etc., etc.. So this is the vision.
S3: On education set that might be, uh, one of the
S3: four that has most buy in or most acceptance that
S3: there has been a capture and a change, but it's
S3: also different because there are alternative charter schools and private
S3: schools and even home schooling. Does that mean that education
S3: is the area, perhaps where institutional capture can be reversed
S3: most quickly?
S2: You know, that's a great question, and I do see
S2: it that way a little bit. I don't necessarily see
S2: that it can be reversed most quickly, but I see
S2: it as a model action because this is one place
S2: where the teachers unions are the most powerful unions in
S2: the country. They're the largest unions, and they put more
S2: money into politics than any other entity, I believe billions,
S2: billions of dollars. This is all taxpayer money. Of course,
S2: taxpayer money that goes into the schools goes to the
S2: teachers unions, who have the power to negotiate their contract
S2: and have the power to, you know, affect the political
S2: system by putting money into it. So, yes, and they've
S2: taken it over. But like you said, people have pushed back.
S2: And so there are these movements like the charter school movement,
S2: which is incredibly popular at, you know, at, at the roots, homeschooling,
S2: private education. They, the left wants to destroy all of these,
S2: these alternatives, but they've been unable to. Mhm. And all
S2: of this happens at just with people operating locally. Um,
S2: and that I again, like this whole think globally act locally.
S2: I really see this as the vision. That's how charter
S2: schools got going. That's how homeschool homeschooling networks evolved. So
S2: I see I see education and the pushback against the
S2: relentless institutional capture by the left as one, you know,
S2: as a model for how how the people can start
S2: to take back America.
S3: Seth Barron with us. The book is weaponized. Seth, if
S3: this is institutional, the problems are institutional in these areas
S3: rather than electoral. What difference does winning elections make? How
S3: much can winning elections even begin to fix or address
S3: the problem?
S2: Winning elections is great. Okay. We need to win elections.
S2: But we also have to recognize the way the left operates.
S2: The left sees politics as something that happens every day.
S2: The right sees politics, like you said, as like the midterms.
S2: And then every four years, the elections. The right has
S2: a lot of things going on in their day. They
S2: have jobs, they have families, they have religion. They have hobbies.
S2: For the left, politics is their religion. Politics is their
S2: love life. Politics is their circle of social circle. Politics,
S2: in many cases is their job because they work in
S2: the nonprofit or the government sector. So we have to
S2: take on their model, which is relentlessly being involved in politics.
S2: I mean, it's unfortunate that that's what it comes to
S2: because nobody really wants to do that. People want to
S2: hang out with their friends at church and with their
S2: family and, you know, do projects on the weekends and
S2: so forth. But we have to we have to recognize
S2: that for the left, they're always engaged in politics. And
S2: then elections are kind of like, you know, one of
S2: the fruits winning elections is one of the fruits of
S2: their hard work. Um, So elections, we definitely need to
S2: win elections. Absolutely. But we have to recognize that politics
S2: is a much larger process, and it really requires a
S2: certain awakening that the left is ahead of us on this.
S2: They're they're very, they're, they're, they're, they're always working. Like
S2: when we get up, they've been doing, you know, they're,
S2: they're sitting at the edge of the bed waiting for
S2: us to, um, they've already, you know, done, done push
S2: ups all night while we've been sleeping, basically.
S3: Seth Barron is on the editorial board at the New
S3: York Post. You can find him writing elsewhere and editing places, too.
S3: The new book weaponized the left's capture and destruction of
S3: America's sacred institutions. Seth, thanks so much for joining us
S3: here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
S2: It's been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
S3: Up next, Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks, associate professor of English here
S3: at Hillsdale College, returns to begin a brief series on
S3: British literature of World War One. I'm Scott Bertram. This
S3: is the radio free Hillsdale Hour. Welcome back to the
S3: radio free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to
S3: follow us on X at Hillsdale Radio and Hillsdale College
S3: Podcast Network at h c. We're joined by Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks,
S3: associate professor of English here at Hillsdale College. Doctor Fredericks,
S3: thanks for returning.
S4: Thanks for having me.
S3: Starting a brief series here about a very interesting course
S3: that you just completed, teaching British literature of World War One.
S3: And it's great because we have a little bit of
S3: of cross-pollination here, both little literature, a little bit of
S3: history coming through that literature as well. And we start
S3: with something that I call the war. They thought they
S3: were fighting as World War One begins in 1914. What's
S3: the emotional tone that's dominating British writing and what's driving it?
S4: Yeah. So the tone is, is a time of change.
S4: The poets overall are sometimes resisting the lingering traces of
S4: the Victorian era. Modernism is still in its very early
S4: stages and is mostly a fringe avant garde movement. And
S4: so the poets who are trying to innovate away from
S4: the Victorian period are actually still very formal poets. A
S4: lot of their work is very pastoral, bucolic, sometimes a
S4: kind of rehashed romanticism. They're sometimes called the Georgian poets.
S4: After some anthologies that a number of them appeared in.
S4: And the tone of some of the poetry, including by
S4: other poets who are sort of lingering major figures that
S4: carry over from the romantic period, like Rudyard Kipling. There's
S4: a real desire for some kind of new test of
S4: courage or national identity. There's a real hunger to prove themselves.
S4: The last war that Britain had really been in was
S4: the Boer War, which of course had very mixed results
S4: and was very far away from home. So you see,
S4: you see this desire to kind of push and re-establish
S4: and establish masculinity and patriotism. And alongside it, then you
S4: also have this, like I said, pastoral, bucolic, romantic sort
S4: of tone of the English countryside. It's very idyllic in
S4: a lot of ways. So those are sort of kind
S4: of some of the dominant strains or modes that you
S4: see in that poetry in 1914, even before the war.
S4: And then especially once the war begins, you have major
S4: poets like Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon and D H.
S4: Lawrence are all kind of very significant younger poets at
S4: this particular point in time. And they are, as I mentioned,
S4: also very formal poets, too. They're writing in very traditional
S4: meters and forms. Modernism hasn't made its inroads yet. Imagism
S4: and futurism are these very avant garde movements that are
S4: read only by very small groups, and are also seen
S4: as having too much connection to either Europe or America
S4: to really be English enough to sort of satisfy the
S4: desire at this point in time.
S3: World War One has been called the most literary war.
S3: Do you think that's right? And maybe a little bit here, too,
S3: as to how you conceive the course while you're interested
S3: in teaching this?
S4: Yeah. So one way I conceived the course was that
S4: I was always teaching around this period in other courses
S4: that I taught. So I regularly teach a course on
S4: Victorian and modern British literature. We always do a day
S4: on the World War One poets. We always do THETS
S4: Eliot's The Wasteland as well. And I always do Virginia
S4: Woolf's To the Lighthouse. And all of these works have
S4: their either very explicit connection to the wars. In the
S4: case of the World War One poets, we focus primarily
S4: on Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. There especially. But to.
S4: The Lighthouse also has in that famous time passes sequence
S4: in the middle. Some very direct references to the war
S4: and war poetry. And of course, one way to look
S4: at T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland is that it's this poet
S4: of post-war England and post-war London in particular. So those
S4: were things that I just I really loved them. I
S4: really enjoyed them. I also taught a course on the
S4: Bloomsbury Group. These are all writers who lived through the war.
S4: They mostly don't fight in it, but they do engage
S4: in it in different ways. E.M. Forster, for instance, works
S4: in the National Gallery during the time period in which
S4: London is actually on the receiving end of some air
S4: raids and is putting like the best masterpieces in storage
S4: and putting the third rate masterpieces on the walls, which
S4: he said felt very appropriate. That's the correct company for
S4: him is the third rate masterpieces. And he also then
S4: worked in the Mediterranean identifying, uh, soldiers who were missing
S4: in action among the wounded. So you have all these connections.
S4: And I also really love some of the more recent
S4: literature that's come out about World War One by Pat
S4: Barker and Itchy and Hutchinson and some other writers. And
S4: so I was just going, I really just want to
S4: pull this all together into one class and see what
S4: it's like to go through it. The big challenge of
S4: producing the class actually became how to order it, because
S4: the works are not published in the same order as
S4: the time periods they deal with. And so if we
S4: read by chronological order, we would read, for instance, the Wasteland,
S4: which is about post-war London, before we read something like
S4: David Jones's in Parenthesis, which is about his actual time
S4: fighting in the war. And so he'd be constantly bouncing
S4: around time wise. And so I actually, and this went
S4: very much against my instincts in some ways organized the
S4: course according to the time period in which the works
S4: were set, rather than the time in which they were published,
S4: in order to give us a more coherent reading experience.
S4: But I've never had a course where that was such
S4: a problem to kind of grapple with. So yeah, so
S4: going back to World War One as the most literary war,
S4: I think in a lot of ways it is right. One,
S4: and it's part of this is some sociological things that
S4: are going on. You have the educational changes of the
S4: Victorian era that have caused this explosion in popular literacy,
S4: as well as the rapid increase from the same time
S4: period in print and periodical culture, which just means people
S4: are accustomed to reading. And also more and more people
S4: are accustomed to writing. So you have more and more
S4: working class writers or lower middle class writers, as opposed
S4: to the production of literary material being the work of
S4: the literary elite or the cultural elite. And so you
S4: have this army where people are just so accustomed to
S4: reading and writing, and that makes it very easy for
S4: them to produce work and also to consume work, whether
S4: that's about the war or other things. A lot of
S4: what they're reading in the trenches is actually not war
S4: material as well, which is really fascinating. Another interesting effect
S4: of this being a literary war is that because the
S4: Western Front is so close to home, it is incredibly
S4: easy for soldiers to quickly receive books and newspapers from England.
S4: And so you have soldiers who will write back to
S4: their family in the UK and say, I would really
S4: like a copy of this book that came out last month.
S4: Can you send it to me? And sometimes within a
S4: week they would have a copy of it, if not
S4: even less. And so there was just this very quick
S4: delivery time back and forth. So books were shipped to
S4: the trenches quickly and easily and then circulated among soldiers
S4: in the trenches. Newspapers also came very rapidly. Also, one
S4: of my favorite details is that you had the production
S4: of trench newspapers themselves. Soldiers on the front lines were
S4: producing material, newspapers and magazines for themselves in a variety
S4: of ways. Sometimes these were handwritten. They would just take
S4: paper they had and produce a handful of copies, writing
S4: them by hand, and then circulate them. Sometimes they would
S4: make use of military printing materials and supplies in order
S4: to produce them on actual printing materials. And then sometimes
S4: they found printing equipment in towns that had been evacuated
S4: and then just made use of those as well behind
S4: the front lines, and then circulated those newspapers or magazines
S4: up to the front lines. And so the just the
S4: sheer quantity of printed material that's produced is incredible. Even
S4: away from the front lines. You have conscientious objectors in
S4: prison who are also producing newspapers in prison, sometimes on
S4: squares of toilet paper, which they would then post in
S4: toilet stalls for the other prisoners to read because they
S4: were forbidden to actually speak to each other. And so
S4: just the impetus to write everywhere is, is remarkable. And
S4: they produce a tremendous amount of material as a result.
S3: Talking with Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks about the British literature of
S3: World War One these early days here, what do some
S3: of the early war poems reveal about how that conflict
S3: was imagined before people really understood what was happening?
S4: Yes, there's this real notion, especially in the early days
S4: of 1914, of defending both small nations like Belgium and
S4: also defending Englishness itself. There's a lot of pastoralism in
S4: these early poems, a very idealised picture of rural England
S4: that poets like John Masefield and John Freeman invoke in
S4: their particular work. And so they give this sort of
S4: very idealized rural place. And how people think this. Imagine this.
S4: This is what you're fighting for. This sort of heart
S4: of Englishness, which is also such a fascinating move because
S4: most of the soldiers on the front lines don't actually
S4: come from there. Most of them come from industrial environments.
S4: And so it's a very imagined world that they're kind
S4: of being encouraged to fight for. Thomas Hardy, interestingly, is
S4: one of the few who sees this war from very
S4: early stages as a real rupture between the two nations,
S4: who were linked in many ways, reflecting on the fact
S4: that their monarchs are cousins, for instance, by intellectual and
S4: artistic traditions that become very entwined in the 19th century.
S4: Like other English writers, he does blame the Germans for
S4: the war primarily as the aggressors who have started it,
S4: but he finds it appalling. He finds it a real
S4: shift from what he sees as this 19th century culture
S4: of exchange and mutual improvement that is just suddenly warped
S4: and defaced into violence and horror.
S3: Poems by Rupert Brooke are covered in the class two.
S3: Why are his poems so powerful and so persuasive at
S3: the time?
S4: Yes. So there's I mean, one is that he is
S4: a poet on the rise, so he's already a pretty
S4: well respected and admired young poetic figure, very talented by
S4: all accounts, also very beautiful. So he has this kind
S4: of public persona that's built on both his appearance as
S4: well as his work. And so there's there's that name
S4: recognition that comes. It's also impossible to avoid the fact
S4: that he dies very, very early in the war and tragically,
S4: not even in conflict. He dies of septicaemia from an
S4: infected mosquito bite that he actually retains in 1914. So
S4: he doesn't he barely even makes it to combat in
S4: a meaningful way. Nonetheless, he does a lot of the
S4: things that we sort of talk about. He presents this
S4: very beautiful, again, rural, idealised England that he imagines he's
S4: fighting for. He also gives there's this very interesting, very
S4: beautiful religious tone, famously in his five part sonnet sequence,
S4: The Soldier. He gives us that line about, Thank God
S4: who has matched us with this hour, and the sense
S4: that this is going to be something that makes people
S4: better versions of themselves. There's this image of idealized masculinity
S4: that he offers, this idea of like soldiers into clean water.
S4: Slipping is one of the images that he gives. And
S4: then in the fifth poem of that sequence, he gives
S4: this idea of, if I should fall in battle. Think
S4: of that as there's some corner of England that is
S4: forever there. Now, like if I die abroad, Englishness is
S4: there too. And so we sort of spread it in
S4: this way our ideals, our virtues, our beauty, our kind
S4: of everywhere. And it's a sort of romantic death that
S4: he offers one that's very in line with all these
S4: young public school men raised upon classical literature, and this
S4: ideal of dying in battle gloriously and beautifully. These poems,
S4: I think, kind of feed upon that and offer that
S4: as well. And so it's, it's a just this intensely idealized,
S4: gorgeous picture that he offers of what it means to
S4: go and fight, and then also what it may mean
S4: to go and die. That downplays the terror and elevates
S4: the nobility of what he thinks that he is doing.
S3: Idealized masculinity is a phrase you use. Do. Do we
S3: see that? Do we see duty? Do we see sacrifice
S3: that become integral parts of this early writing?
S4: There's a lot. And Kipling is one of the most
S4: interesting writers to turn to to see some of this.
S4: One thing you do see is a lot of, um,
S4: Christ like imagery that appears particularly in his work. If
S4: you look at his poem The Children, for instance, where
S4: he's talking about because Kipling, of course, is too old
S4: to go and fight himself and has incredibly poor eyesight,
S4: so they wouldn't take him even if he wasn't over
S4: 40 years old. But so he's reflecting on the children
S4: of people like himself who are going off to fight,
S4: and he has the remarkable line, he says, where they
S4: bought us anew with their blood. And you're like, that's
S4: just this inevitable Christ like image that he's offering of
S4: the sacrifice that the soldiers are giving. And this is,
S4: of course, his poetry in the early days there as well.
S4: His very famous poem from very early in the war,
S4: from almost the literal beginning for all we have in
S4: our lives, this very borderline religious as well as patriotic duty,
S4: that you must go fight because it's not just what
S4: your country asks of you, but in some way it
S4: must be what God is asking of you too. And
S4: so both the the duty and sacrifice elements there have
S4: this very strong religious pull that's, that's very hard to
S4: resist there. And the masculinity piece is definitely part of
S4: it as well. Like this is also just what you
S4: would do if you're really a man, you will go
S4: and defend England, and you'll also go and defend the
S4: little countries like Belgium, who are small and don't have
S4: big armies and need, like the brave Tommy, to come
S4: and stand up for them. Jessie Pope, a very famous
S4: propaganda writer for this time writes, for instance, poems that
S4: cast the British Tommy as the David who stands up
S4: to the Goliath who fights, and so again cast in
S4: the strongly religious as well as patriotic mode.
S3: Talking with Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks about the British literature of
S3: World War One in the early days. Right now, the
S3: 39 steps. It's not about trench warfare, but it is
S3: in this World War One conversation. Why does it belong?
S4: Yeah. So the 39 steps is by the novelist and
S4: politician John Buchan. And it's not explicitly about trench warfare.
S4: It was also the very first thing we read in
S4: this class. And my students, the day they came in
S4: to talk about the first day, they just looked slightly puzzled.
S4: And I was going, I bet you guys didn't think
S4: you were allowed to have this much fun in a
S4: class about World War One literature. And they went, no, no,
S4: we did not expect that because it is a tremendously
S4: fun novel. Now, Buchan doesn't fight in the war, but
S4: he has this history in British government and military. He
S4: was stationed in South Africa after the Boer War in
S4: Lord Kitchener's kindergarten, as it was called, which is a
S4: number of young, sort of upwardly mobile people who become
S4: political and economic figures in Britain later. And so he's
S4: one of those. When he returns to England, he remains
S4: involved in the civil service and in 1915, 1914, 1915,
S4: we actually don't have a very good handle on what
S4: he was doing, which has led some to suspect he
S4: was doing intelligence work, but he also, at one point
S4: is ill. Or maybe he says he's ill and he's
S4: actually doing intelligence work again. It's a little fuzzy for
S4: people who've actually dug into it, but that's the time
S4: period in which he writes the 39 steps is in
S4: early 1915. And so the war has begun, and Buchan
S4: has this eye towards morale on the home front from
S4: the very beginning. Significantly, he does become the director of
S4: information in 1917, which makes him a propaganda, essentially the
S4: head of propaganda for the British government, and he later
S4: becomes the head of intelligence. So very interested in morale,
S4: in what people are thinking and in controlling the image
S4: of the war. And so the 39 steps, while it's
S4: not explicitly about the war, if we think of it
S4: as propaganda, writing about that indirectly about the war, it
S4: fits very well. It's not about trench warfare, but it
S4: is about a conspiracy to start an international war in
S4: Europe by assassinating a head of state suggestively headed by
S4: German conspirators. So it's barely subtext that it's about World
S4: War One. And so it's written very early in the war.
S4: It's serialised in Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine in summer 1915 and
S4: then published in full in the fall. And it's it's
S4: a thriller. It's essentially just a domestic espionage thriller with
S4: this main character, Richard Hannay, who's just an ordinary guy. No,
S4: no one particularly special, as he goes to great pains
S4: to point out. He just stumbles into this conspiracy rather
S4: by accident, and then has to do something about it
S4: because he's just a good, straightforward, honest British man. Made
S4: his pile in South Africa has this connection to Scotland.
S4: And so this is this is sort of the figure
S4: that you have. He's very ordinary, like your soldiers who
S4: were fighting in the war, not particularly prominent, not particularly
S4: skilled in special things, but he just has this decency
S4: of character and this determination to do what's right and
S4: to do what must be done. And because he has
S4: spent this time in South Africa, he also has a
S4: remarkable number of practical skills as well. So that's very helpful.
S4: And it's immensely popular in the trenches. There's a soldier
S4: who writes to Buchan saying that he ripped through the
S4: whole thing in a single night when he was posted
S4: on the front lines. So it gets passed around. It's
S4: immensely popular, and it does give you this character of like,
S4: oh yes, here are what ordinary British citizens are capable of,
S4: which is foiling tremendous evil just through their sort of
S4: practical intelligence, common sense, and basic decency, and he goes
S4: on to write multiple. He writes multiple novels throughout World
S4: War One that continue to be very popular and then continues,
S4: of course, to write them after World War One as well.
S4: But it's this immensely popular trench novel, and like I said,
S4: immensely popular work of propaganda fiction as well, when you
S4: look at it that way.
S3: The description of 39 steps makes it all the all
S3: too clear why it became a Hitchcock film later on.
S4: Yes, Hitchcock film has been a miniseries, and now it's
S4: also an extremely successful comedic play as well. It's just
S4: its afterlives are extraordinary.
S3: So if literature was providing a some, some a morale
S3: boost or providing some reassurance to the home front during
S3: the beginning days and years. Well, beginning months of the war,
S3: let's say, where do we first begin to see some
S3: cracks forming in that confidence story of the war?
S4: You see, the cracks begin to form throughout 1915 as
S4: it becomes clear that this war is not going to
S4: be one of a consistently moving front or these interesting
S4: and and quick offenses that create rapid changes in the
S4: conditions of the war. But they really expand significantly in
S4: 1916 with the particularly devastating battles of that year that
S4: continue into 1917 as well. The long battle of the
S4: Somme in the summer in particular, is just especially horrifying
S4: for the soldiers who were fighting. Uh, and numerous soldiers
S4: serve in that battle. The novelist David Jones, for instance,
S4: himself points to 1916 as a year where it really
S4: felt like things changed. Famously. You have like the Christmas
S4: truce of 1914, where the soldiers came out of their
S4: trenches and played soccer in no man's land and exchanged gifts.
S4: And and so that happened in 1914. More sporadic, smaller
S4: versions of it happened in 1915. But after 1916, nothing
S4: like it ever happens again. Things harden. There's just more disillusionment.
S4: There's far more suffering and, and things just aren't changing.
S4: And you just have such heavy casualties in these battles
S4: where you have, for instance, a million casualties in a
S4: single day of particularly terrible offenses. And just it's really
S4: impossible to maintain that sort of bright and lively picture
S4: of the war you get from something like the 39 steps.
S4: It's hard to maintain that sense of sort of clean,
S4: idealized beauty that you get from Rupert Brooke. The soldiers
S4: are suffering from things like trench foot, which is what
S4: happens when you're wearing all these wet shoes and wet
S4: socks for days upon days. And and so, yes, the
S4: struggle of all of that just becomes more miserable when
S4: your reality is rats and lice. It's hard to be
S4: rosy about the situation that's happening and go, yes, indeed,
S4: this is the this is the idealized picture of the
S4: world that we came here to fight for.
S3: In part two, we'll talk about telling the truth about
S3: what's happening in those trenches during World War One. Doctor
S3: Elizabeth Fredericks with us, associate professor of English at Hillsdale College,
S3: talking about her course on the British literature of World
S3: War One. Doctor Fredericks, thanks for joining us on the
S3: Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. That will wrap up this edition
S3: of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Seth Barron.
S3: His book weaponized the left's capture and destruction of America's
S3: sacred institutions. And Doctor Elizabeth Fredericks from Hillsdale English Department. Remember,
S3: you can hear new episodes every week on this station.
S3: You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews,
S3: or listen any time to the podcast. Find it@podcast.hillsdale.edu or
S3: wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram,
S3: and this has been the radio free Hillsdale Hour.