Dominic Cummings praises Bismarckian dictatorship again
Just read that 1866-7 Bismarck considered putting the new Reichstag in a provincial town to discourage journalists from political careers… He also rejected pay for deputies. ‘Attendance fees mean paying the educated proletariat for the professional practice of demagogy’
Dominic Cummings Twitter 26th July 2021
It may come as a surprise to those who know Dominic Cummings from his Vote Leave and No.10 period but he took a first in history at Oxford, studying under the late Prof. Norman Stone.
Stone was a right-wing historian and fan of Mrs Thatcher and idiosyncratic in his views. Of historical actors in the modern era he favoured Churchill and Bismarck as significant historical figures.
Cummings picked up his interest for Bismarck from Stone and has blogged about the German Chancellor (1815-1898). Bismarck, the ‘Iron Chancellor’ was instrumental in creating a unified German State. His Wiki entry notes that he ‘distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong well-trained bureaucracy’.
Cummings returned to the Bismarck question in answers to questions to subscribers to his social media site. Not just Stone but Eric Hobsbawm supported the historical significance of Bismarck. Cummings may warrant a footnote in the history of post-Brexit Britain.
Studying Bismarck was the best help to understand what politics really is and how it’s possible to radically outperform – but also that you should never ever expect anybody to say ‘oh I was wrong you were right’. In politics you never really know if what you’ve done is a mistake! And even very smart people struggle to escape fashion and gang mentality
And in another answer he said:
If you want to study effective action in politics there is no better case study than Bismarck.
He was playing a completely different game to everybody else and you can trace a lot of how he did it and how he thought in the record.
Guardian report 21st June
Cummings latest Bismarckian comment essentially amounts to measures to stop journalists (Johnson & Gove) from being politicians and to restrict Labour by stopping people becoming MPs who don’t have significant private incomes.
Bismarck implemented anti-socialist laws between 1868 and 1878 to effectively constrain the organisation of German socialist politics. They didn’t quite have the impact he anticipated and they were scrapped when it became clear they were actually promoting the appeal of the left.
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