A Front Row Seat at the End of History
c FreedomPut simply, A Front Row Seat at the End of History is a collection of essays by academics Michael (M.L.R) Smith and David Martin Jones, most written collaboratively, over the course of a quarter of a century. It spans topics from international relations, Brexit and the decline of the West, to the crisis in higher education, popular literature, and sitcoms from the 1970s. It offers a stimulating and insightful commentary on geopolitics, culture and - what must now be considered - recent history.
But life, and books, are rarely simple. Read between the lines and this is far more than just 25-years of scholarship and journalism. A Front Row Seat at the End of History tells the intellectual life-stories of two comrades. It is the story of friendship forged in response to both momentous world events and the petty bureaucratic indignities of the contemporary university inflicted upon those who dared challenge the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. Although the process of editing and compiling was started together, David's death meant it fell to Michael to complete the volume alone. The joint endeavour turned into a tribute.
The book's subtitle fittingly describes the collected essays as 'untimely'. Read them together, today, and the foresight is evident. With Trump introducing tariffs on world trade and withdrawing military support from Europe, the nation state has assumed a renewed significance. History, it seems, didn't end after all. Yet for Smith and Jones, it never went away. Back in 2015 they wrote that a 'lack of attention to history leads to the problems encountered in Syria and Iraq and a failure to appreciate, for example, either Russia's long-term strategic interest in Eastern Europe and Caucasus or China's in the South China Sea.'
Their 'untimely' intervention proclaimed this hard truth when liberals in universities wanted to imagine a borderless, transnational future. As Smith and Jones noted, 'Inter-state political diplomacy requires the abandonment of a failed utopian moral universalism and the return to a realist appreciation of history, past precedent and state interest.' Indeed, the reality - which many 'experts' on geopolitics hoped to wish away - is that, 'there will always be a world of enemies, competitors and adversaries. In that respect, the nation state has no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.'
They were ahead of the curve in considering the threat posed by terrorism at home and abroad. Most of the essays in this volume were written in the shadow of 9/11: 'We did not anticipate the timing or the scale of 9/11, but it was the culmination - the most graphic expression - of the clash between modernity and tradition which we had been writing about in the years before.' In moving easily between geopolitics and popular culture, Smith and Jones were quick to identify what is unique about Islamist terrorists. 'Through their use of English, the internet, satellite phones and, indeed as we also know now, sophisticated passenger aircraft, they are paradoxically an authentic product of the modern, globalised world and yet in fundamental conflict with it,' they wrote in 2001.
The problem of terrorism in the west, they quickly realised, was created within the west - not with the grievances stoked by a political and cultural elite in foreign lands but with domestic policies to promote a muti-cultural idyll. In 2009 they wrote, 'The avoidance of this term [terrorism] is a symptom of the reticence of much contemporary analysis to contemplate the underlying ideological struggle at work, and the necessary strategy with which to oppose jihadism , which all too often challenges the assumptions of Western multiculturalism.'
They give short shrift to the notion that young western Muslims are passive victims unwittingly radicalised. They 'are not radicals at all,' Smith and Jones note: 'Ideological radicalism, properly understood, requires a clear break from traditional religion of whatever form to achieve a pluralist secular modernity.' The continuing use of the 'radical' label, they worry, 'reinforces the idea of 'jihadi cool' for to be radical means in some sense to be 'street smart'.' The 'radicalised' tag locates the 'blame' for terrorism elsewhere when, 'We in the West have been only too successful in brainwashing ourselves' by decrying everything Western as worthless at best, evil at worst. Their 2021 claim that, 'Home-grown Islamists cleverly exploited liberal empathy and used the sanctimonious pursuit of social justice and condemnation of Islamophobia for its own illiberal, politically religious ends' is damning.
Again, they argued, it was the readiness of commentators and academics to reach for the end of history thesis that often strangled reasoned analysis at birth: 'The most important issue in any global counter-insurgency effort is to comprehend that there is no end of history, and certainly not a pre-ordained, liberal end of history. The condition of the global system is one that it has always been: one of conflict and struggle over interests and values. It may be peaceful or violent but it will always be a struggle. Not a long war, simply an endless one.'
Their critique returns repeatedly to the malign influence of a political and cultural elite, a professional class that dominates academia, teaching and every public institution. These people see the world through 'critical theory's ethicist, yet relativist, and deconstructive gaze' and it reveals to them, 'that we are all terrorists now and must empathise with those sub-state actors who have recourse to violence for whatever motive.' The conclusion is clear: 'Before assuming death cults will wither on the vine, or at some point adopt a more moderate and negotiable position where Islamic State's self-styled caliph Ibrahim mutates into a version of Gerry Adams but with a better beard, the elected representatives of any secular democracy should to do far more to defend a political way of life and target the promulgation and appeal of this potent and ultimately fascistic death cult.'
Recognising the importance of the nation state led Smith and Jones to support Britain's vote to leave the EU. 'The regulatory behemoth of the European Union… has inhibited growth and consigned a generation of youth in Southern Europe to unemployment … It has committed poorer member states to debt, austerity and destitution in its futile pursuit of a currency union leading to a federated European imperium,' they wrote in the year before the UK's referendum on EU membership. By 2022 they noted, 'Britain should recognise that Brussels is more of a threat than a partner and [...] promote bilateral relations with those states, most notably in Eastern Europe, with which it is most aligned and shares common values.'
They recognised, in 2022, that the decline of the nation state and the assumption that history had ended meant, 'the idea that the UK would send troops to Ukraine when it cannot police its own borders, prevent boatloads of illegal migrants from crossing the English Channel, or reverse a protocol dividing Northern Ireland from the mainland, would strike any nineteenth century practitioner of realpolitik from Lord Palmerston to Benjamin Disraeli as either idealist delusion or insanity.' They decry both the fantasy of the borderless world and the devastating impact of its bastard progeny, mass migration, on British culture and society. In 2022 they wrote 'The abstract equality of all is taken to mean that partiality for fellow nationals is racist.'
None of this made Michael or David popular with academics. As Michael now notes: 'Their superficial mantras of Leave voters as bad and bigoted, and everything about the EU as good and virtuous, provided an insight into the ideological fixations of this stratum that made up so much of the ruling class. In our view, the people who comprised this species of being deserved dissevering and analysing.'
Consistent in every essay, whether discussing 'Brexlit', the flurry of novels expressing contempt for the Leave-voting masses, or films made in the aftermath of 9/11, is a forensic puncturing of the elite consensus and the collective beliefs of 'the new clerisy'. 'Minorities have become the silent victims of a cynical, careerist, managerial class who thrive on keeping classes and minorities downtrodden, divided and dependent. It is daily exemplified in the bigotry of low expectations, or the violence and deprivation of Democrat run cities in the US and Labour run boroughs in the UK,' they wrote in 2022. A sad sign of the degradation of academia is the fact that not one of the essays published in this volume appears in a so-called scholarly, peer-reviewed journal.
Sadly, academia does not welcome dissident voices. Calls for intellectual freedom are viewed with suspicion. As Smith explains, 'Controversy is deemed bad for business - a reputational risk - and thus to be avoided. Risk aversion therefore looms large, making universities scared of anything that might result in negative publicity.' More chilling is the blunt fact that, 'a sizeable proportion of academics agree with restrictions on free speech.' They 'perceive of themselves not as facilitators of thought but as curators of "acceptable" opinion.' Smith and Jones describe universities as having: 'become infected by a secular religious intolerance of a kind that wouldn't look out of place in Mao's China,' full of, 'inflexible, dull-witted, risk-averse managers' and 'shallow careerists who would go along with any outlandish doctrine so long as they might prosper.'
Criticising academics from within the hallowed halls of the university attracts opprobium. At a time when the ethos of 'no debate' and cancel culture runs unchecked, criticism turns you into a target of the group they term the 'academafia'. As Michael wryly notes, 'Intellectual consistency and properly grounded scepticism is rewarded with predictive accuracy but not with career advancement'. Although they were not angry - 'we treated these people as they should be, like scientific specimens to be examined, probed and investigated' - working in a hostile environment, year after year, takes a personal toll. 'We were known disruptors who did not conform to a variety of "tick box" issues that put one at the "cutting edge" of fashionable thinking and, of course, on the front rank for academic grants and promotions.'
Cancelled by colleagues at King's College London for hosting a series of events seeking to explore the dimensions of civil dialogue in the age of culture wars, Michael now lives in Australia and is Professor and Director of the Centre for Future Defence and National Security at Deakin University. Sadly, David took his own life in April 2024. Michael is left to 'ponder whether the marginalisation, professional rejection and the rhetoric of silence that we had encountered over the decades, which was undoubtedly part of our reality, played a part in the choices that came to haunt him at the end.'
A Front Row Seat at the End of History is an untimely but fitting tribute to David Martin Jones. Although marking a premature death, it shows the possibilities of a life well lived. For David and Michael, intellectual struggle consolidated a friendship; as Michael alone now describes it: 'An unbreakable writing partnership flourished that endured for three decades'. But other characters feature too. I first met Michael as the petitioned-against guest speaker at King's College London. I was later delighted to work with both David and Michael as I established Cieo, a website that provided a home for many of the more recent essays in this volume. The last time I saw David was in Budapest when he invited me to speak at the Danube Institute. He was, as always, engaging, provocative and great company.
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The final mention goes to a person whose influence shapes much of this volume: David's wife, Jo Cohen Jones. Jo's strength of character in the face of tremendous grief is truly inspiring. Her enduring love for David and her own perceptive insight into social and cultural affairs will ensure David's intellectual legacy is preserved.
By Joanna Williams
