Hyperionides. A Conservative Review of Current Affairs: Current Affairs, #1

By Salt, Daniel, Newsom, Landon, Kozlowski, Andrzej and 2 more

Hyperionides. A Conservative Review of Current Affairs, is intended for people who have a high level of interest in current affairs, are generally well-informed, and choose to think independently. Hyperionides, meaning "son of Hyperion", is an epithet of Helios, the Greek Sun-god. The review appeals to opening rather than to closing the intellectual discussion. Therefore, despite a small-c "conservative" orientation, it eschews having any particular political line. Rather, it re-invigorates the old style of discourse, where the content of ideas mattered more than formulaic declarations intended to demonstrate one's moral superiority. The contents of No 1 exemplify the sort of thing that the review seeks to publish.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hyperionides
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393106548

Book preview

Hyperionides: A Conservative Review of Current Affairs ‹http://www.hypreview.com› Postal Address: The Wicket, 55 Bloor Street West, P.O. Box 19616, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A5, Canada

Hyperionides - Volume 1, Number 1 - October 2020

Publisher and Editor-in-chief: Terencio Soares

Managing Editor: Argyle Ellis

Consulting editor: Miletta Fallis

Poetry and literature editor: Cornelia van Opstadt

The entire contents of Hyperionides is copyright © 2020. All rights reserved.

Hyperionides is published three times a year. Submission of manuscripts to be considered for future publication is welcome. However, we accept no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, artwork, photographs, or any other materials. All submissions, letters to the editors, and other communications must be directed to: ‹[e-mail]›. The editors reserve the right to abridge letters for the purpose of publication. The editors will respond to inquiries about suitability of topics: please include a summary of 200-250 words, with an estimated length of the final manuscript. Articles in the present issue run from just over 3000 to nearly 6000 words. What is important is that the topic and its treatment demand whatever length or brevity they are given. Essay-reviews on books are also welcome, even if the books are not recently published. These may be as short as 2000 words, or longer. Cornelia van Opstadt will receive any submissions of poetry or fiction, as well as inquiries concerning manuscripts on psychology, philosophy, the arts, and other topics not strictly falling under current affairs.

Correspondence on these matters should go to: ‹[e-mail]›.

Hyperionides is an epithet of the Sun god Helios. It means ‘’son of Hyperion’’. Hyperion was one of the twelve Titans.

Editors’ Introduction

Hyperionides is intended for people who have a high level of interest in current affairs, are generally well-informed, and choose to think independently. Hyperionides, meaning son of Hyperion, is an epithet of Helios, the Greek Sun-god. The review appeals to opening rather than to closing the intellectual discussion. Therefore, despite a small-c conservative orientation, it eschews having any particular political line. Rather, it re-invigorates the old style of discourse, where the content of ideas mattered more than formulaic declarations intended to demonstrate one’s moral superiority. The contents of No 1 exemplify the sort of thing that the review seeks to publish.

Daniel Salt, born in Torquay in the UK, is a data technologist. A keen political observer, he first came to attention with an article explaining exactly how the May-Corbyn and later Bercow parliamentary antics, abetted by the EU’s negotiating behavior, turned Remainers into Leavers. His article here traces the long-term downward course of the British Labour Party from before-Corbyn to after-Corbyn, setting out the self-created context in which, and steps by which, the party abandoned its traditional constituency without ever really replacing it.

Landon Newsom was lead singer in a rising band in the music industry. Her unexpected pregnancy revealed hypocrisy within the feminist movement in Hollywood. Her article tells how that experience led her to question and leave behind the feminism that failed to defend either her or her child. Instinctively embracing motherhood and a strong femininity distinct from doctrinaire feminism, she tells how she became empowered as a strong, free-thinking conservative woman. She continues to make music, proceeds going to rescue and restoration initiatives to benefit victims of child trafficking.

Kurz is an Italian professional with a wide range of interests in the political and historical areas. He has chosen the pseudonym in tribute to the character of the old, disenchanted Israeli secret agent in John LeCarré’s novel The Little Drummer Girl. His article offers a distinctive Northern Italian take on President Trump’s Fourth of July speech at Mt Rushmore, reflecting on what his political career means for the future of Europe as much as for the future of the US.

Andrzej Kozlowski teaches at the University of Warsaw. After emigrating from Poland with his parents during the 1968 antisemitic campaign, he settled in the UK. He earned a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Oxford, where he met his Japanese wife, then was post-doctoral fellow in Japan while she taught at the University of Tokyo. Since 2010 they have been living in Poland. His article reflects on unanticipated similarities of political culture between Japan and Poland, and their relation to the changes today sweeping the developed market-economy democracies.

Douglas Bulloch earned the PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2009 with a thesis on Carl Schmitt and International Relations. He subsequently escaped the university awokening by moving to China, then Hong Kong, where he raises his children, teaches, and writes with increasing alarm about events he always anticipated but not so soon. His article explains why in his view the overriding task of politics should be one of preservation and maintenance rather than revolution in search of a more just world.

Bruce Pannier was mentored in Central Asian studies by Edward Allworth at Columbia University. In the early 1990s he studied Uzbek language at Tashkent State University and directed a Soros Foundation project in the Central Asian countryside. Three years at the Prague-based Open Media Research Institute then led him to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where he has written on Central Asian affairs since 1997. His article discusses changes he has seen, from the early 1990s until today, along Kyrgyzstan’s main north-south road over the mountains between Bishkek and Osh.

Cornelia van Opstadt is a gentlelady. We thank her for gracing this inaugural issue of the review with her poem To Helios Hyperionides.

How the British Labour Party Lost the Working Class by Daniel Salt

[Note: This review’s house style tends toward US English, but not monolithically. Here we use the spelling Labour, because that is the party’s official name. –Ed.]

How the British Labour Party found itself in its current predicament is a subject of regular discussion in the UK. A party created for the working class, a party that had been strongly represented across the whole country, now finds itself pushed back into the major cities and university towns, and with a minority of working-class support. The electoral map is blue, for Conservative, after the Tories stomped home at the last election in December 2019.

Where Labour’s Problems Began

Many point a finger at Brexit as the cause, saying that Labour had ignored the electorate and was punished for it. That is true, but as with anything the actual causes are far more complex. They really go back far further than the EU referendum. Labour, like most of the Left in the West, has been in electoral trouble for some years.

Labour as one of the Big Two parties was and is a broad-based coalition. As a melting-pot of the working-class and the middle-class intelligentsia (Hartlepool and Hampstead), it was held together by their common interests, such as the economy and social solidarity. Later on minority groups, attracted to the party over concerns about economic insecurity and personal rights, were added to the mix. This worked well enough to create a common coalition, a united front with no side too dominant.

The defining moment where the Labour Party’s future began to unravel was on the 8th September 1988, when the President of the European Commission Jacques Delors addressed the Trade Union Congress in the UK and called for them to support the European Union (EU).

After nearly 10 years of the Thatcher economic revolution, the Left was looking for allies. The EU looked like a reasonable shelter in a wild storm. Looking at what had happened over the preceding decade, one can hardly blame them. The Thatcher revolution was neither pleasant nor pain-free. Many traditional heavy industries were dismantled in the birth-pangs of a new economy. Looking at this, many on the Left must have wondered what would happen in the next 10 years. So they threw in the towel on the traditional economic argument of the State vs. free markets, and they embraced the EU.

Embracing the free market was a necessary prerequisite for supporting the EU, though many would have denied this then and would do so now. The EU is a capitalist club, and its Single Market was founded on the principle of free markets, limited state control, limited state aid, and the free movement of goods, services, people and capital. For Labour, this meant abandoning the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy. This policy, which they had once embraced, was illegal in