Hemingway's guide to being a war hero -

He was in Spain, but it seems he left when the war started. It would've been interesting to see which side he chose, if he decided to stay. Maybe that is why he left - because he found all positions equally untenable. Maybe he just didn't want to get shot. He was very active in Europe and Africa during WWII, however.

Maybe the most honest account of the Spanish war was left by Eric Arthur Blair, George Orwell, who was in fact an active, effective and committed participant. He was also almost ostracized by the manufacturers of public opinion at the time for reporting honestly on the atrocities committed by the communists. The 'intellectual' world then (which would include the Hemingway crowd) would tolerate no criticism of communism, and suppressed any such in true totalitarian style. TS Eliot also found himself in a position where he had to defend himself against the fashionable point of view.

Orwell was a convinced socialist, of course, and remained so until he died. Although Socialism probably meant something somewhat different from what it does today, or even from what he thought it was supposed to mean.

O yes, I forgot about that. Still, being anti-Fascist doesn't mean that you are pro-Communist.

Maybe that was Orwell's dilemma as well, that, at the time, for him the only visible alternative to authoritarianism (which he probably associated with classism) was socialism. I think people's perceptions about these things weren't all that well-developed at the time, and Orwell was no academic anyway.

It was only after WWII that people such as Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper systemized the ideas and investigated the connection between idealist politics and totalitarianism. Before then, people such as Orwell were liable to be quite naive about it.

I'm of course hugely delighted at the massive embarrassment Malema is for the ANC. I think it is also extremely beneficial to the country that he does cause this embarrassment. I reckon it contributes substantially to undermining the ANC's powerbase, in many different ways, and could contribute substantially to its fragmentation, which appears to be more and more possible.

It also highlights some procedural flaws in the way parliament is conducted, and that must be addressed. It must not be possible for Malema (anyone) to disrupt parliament in the way he has, but it must also not be possible to conduct parliament in a way were such disruption becomes justifiable and indeed necessary.

So I am looking for measures to make this impossible, which would include measures that prohibit the majority party from manipulating the agenda and the nature of the debate.

(The speaker must not be able to say in effect: "Shut up! I don't want to hear what you are saying!" How on earth did it happen that this is even possible?)

The idea of voting for Malema would not in my wildest dreams occur to me as a possibility. The easy pointer is that the man is a fundamental lier. He is also fundamentally stupid. These are essential characteristics which he shares with Hitler, Stalin, Zedong and Pol Pot.

In terms of support for Germany: There was substantial support for Germany in the USA as well. And a not insignificant pro-Nazi faction even in the UK. (In fact, Churchill himself was not too pleased with Rooseveldt’s chumminess with Stalin – he anticipated the threat the USSR would eventually pose to Europe and he was of the opinion that the Germans should be allowed to finish them off.)

I am delightfully ignorant about Popper and Arendt (there must be something good ("delightfully"!) to be said for ignorance). Is Popper the guy who prescribed the recipe for proving scientific theories?

I wonder then whether Milton Friedman had read Popper since he postulated a link between economic welfare and democracy.