Facts Are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name

by Timothy Garton Ash

One of Britain's most influential and admired commentators presents his latest volume of dispatches from a troubled world. This fascinating collection includes essays from the last ten years on Islam and freedom, Orwell as an informer, the Lives of Others and Gunter Grass in the Waffen-SS. Timothy Garton Ash witnessed the fall of Milosevic in Serbia, visited Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, watched the Orange revolution in Ukraine and talked to militant mullahs in Iran, and all these are recorded here, alongside critical reflections on the future of Europe, multiculturalism and terroris, all in these last ten years. The literature of fact is a theme that runs through the whole volume. When is it legitimate to cross that heavily mined frontier between fact and fiction? How do we know when a writer (Ryszard Kapuscinski, for example, or Paul Theroux) has strayed across the line? How do we ever know what we can know, given the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses? We all have a novelist in our heads called Memory, and (s)he starts rewriting the script the minute after something happens. Yet Tim Garton Ash maintains against every post-modernist in the world that there are facts, and that establishing them is both a political and a moral imperative. And an aesthetic one, too. 'I will bring you,' the poet Craig Raine has written, 'the beauty of facts'.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History, Essays, Political Science, 21st Century, British Literature

441 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2009

About the author

Timothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of Timothy Garton Ash's pieces published from 2000 to 2009. However, they concern modern world history - with a slight emphasis on Europe and the United States, roughly from the end of the second World War to today. Consequently, the subtitle is literally true, but ever so slightly misleading. As a journalist whose pieces I frequently read and have consistently enjoyed in the New York Review of Books, I saw this collection and had to give it a chance. Many of his pieces for the NYRB are available here.

I would recommend reading them in whatever order is interesting for you, and skipping sections which don't interest you. The sections near the end on George Orwell and Gunter Grass were most interesting for me. Next, the sections on the US and Europe. And while Ash admires Orwell, neither his own journalistic style or moral stances are anywhere near as interesting as Orwell. The phrase "bien pensant" comes to mind - thinking exactly what a liberal, western, educated, cosmopolitan "should think" on basically every social issue, i.e., totally bland reportage with opinions and explanations which barely take a stance on many of the most complex moral and political issues of the day. Reading it felt like reading a year's worth of the New York Times.

While some people might resist engaging in the type of "Big Think" that Ash and many of his better-known colleagues practice (e.g., Paul Krugman, Nicholas D. Kristof, or Thomas L. Friedman etc.,) I find these broad and far-ranging discussions at least have the possibility of being engaging. Despite the interesting and timely pieces in the NYRB (interesting BECAUSE they ARE timely), when his writings are lumped together as a collection at the end of a decade, it becomes clear that Ash does not engage in the type of writing which will stand up for longer than the relevance of his subject matter. At best, it is very well-researched and informed journalism, though it is neither very engaging, nor will it be read in decades to come - as Orwell's best reportage is (e.g., The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia).

To get a sense of whether you would like this book, I recommend watching Ash on Charlie Rose. If you are not a bit bored by the end, then maybe this book is for you. Another collection of pieces by a regular author of the NYRB which is in the same vein, I feel that Mark Lilla's The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics is a better exemplar of the great pieces the NYRB contains.

[Nightkid · Rating 2 out of 5]

這本書與其說是歷史書，更像是一本專欄作家的政治觀察文章合集——明明是局外人，卻一副專家口脗在報章指點江山，請恕我無法閱讀下去，只能放棄。

[Jose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una especie de Pérez Reverte liberal que a diferencia de Arturo en los conflictos acude al lugar en vez de ponerse una croma o una foto de Croacia en un estudio fotográfico de Alcorcón para que la gente crea de verdad anduvo por allí y no en casa con un bol de escurrir espaghettis en la cabeza.

Tiene un artículo de opinión muy bonito sobre aquello que cantaban los rojazos de McCarthy de estar dispuestos a morir para defender el derecho del interlocutor a expresar algo totalmente contrario a lo que piensa el mártir en potencia. Viene a decir, muy resumido, que las Leyes tangenciales a cualquier hecho histórico (tipo las que penalizan expresar opiniones negacionistas, por ejemplo) son una aberración en la medida que marcan un cauce que no es ámbito de la jurisprudencia sino de diversas intersecciones (historiadores, cuestión de indicios y hechos, diálogos presentes, etc etc), y que a lo sumo haya judicialización entre particulares por calumnias, nunca de oficio por parte de la fiscalia. Un Mundo Mejor, como en la canción del Aladino de Disney.

Luego, por otra parte, Timothy es un fanboy de George Orwell bastante cegarruto, pues no pocos artículos se los pasa poniendo de vuelta y media a los países comunistas, la stasi y todas esas movidas y cuando le toca hablar de la famosa lista del escritor con anotaciones sobre figuras públicas y sus posibles afiliaciones a células izquierdistas el hijo de la gran puta no dice mu. Y ahí Orwell es lo mismo que Stalin y tú en un ascensor cagándose un pedo y señalándote a ti cuando se abren las puertas para que entre un tercero.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Foreign Affairs

hese 48 short essays are highly recommended for those who cannot wait for the proverbial owl of Minerva to spread its wings.

[gag me with a spoon]

...........

Significantly Different

Timothy Garton Ash has travelled among truth tellers and political charlatans…’ and I was unsure which he would turn out to be; a truth teller or a charlatan! He is, of course, neither

..........

The Nation

Timothy Garton Ash is a fine writer of "analytic reportage," but his work has lately displayed symptoms of columnitis.

Contemporary "serious" newspapers carry a lot of columnists, and perhaps, as breaking news becomes easily available in other forms, the columns will be more and more the Unique Selling Point of the individual paper (perhaps they are already). The column is a handy pulpit, but the requirement to preach when the appointed day comes round, whether or not the columnist has anything new or important to say, can be damaging to one’s intellectual and literary judgment. The condition diagnosed as Compulsive Columnist Disorder may set in: the writer can’t help expressing confident and authoritative-sounding views upon almost any subject. Garton Ash often has something important to say, and he strikes me as one of the best exponents of this peculiar craft currently writing in the British press (I speak here as a regular reader of the Guardian). But even he cannot escape the déformation professionelle of the trade.

Even Garton Ash occasionally displays some of the secondary symptoms of columnitis: trite phrases, tired clichés and egregious puns (when his piece on Isaiah Berlin’s letters appeared in the NYRB, it was certainly not titled, as it is here, "Ich bin ein Berliner"). At the end of his admirable discussion of the need for European citizens of non-Muslim background to forestall the slide into disaffection and extremism by everyday acts of welcome and respect, he asks whether it is still possible that they will rise to this challenge, and answers, "Yes, but it’s already five minutes to midnight—and we are drinking in the last chance saloon." In this case, the double cliché is doubly disturbing: the jacked-up alarmism of the columnist is bad enough, but in addition the slackness of the clichés undermine the moral strenuousness he is attempting to encourage. Or again, when reflecting on the changes that have come over Europe in the past half century, he writes, "Most Europeans now live in liberal democracies. That has never before been the case; not in 2,500 years. It’s worth celebrating." Well, perhaps, but what could the emphatic gloss "not in 2,500 years" actually mean? There weren’t exactly a lot of "liberal democracies" around for the first 2,300 years of that period; indeed the concepts of "liberal" and "democracy" were scarcely current except in peculiar and now archaic senses of the words. Not only does this seem triumphalist whiggism of an uncharacteristically simple-minded kind, but it echoes the cadence of stump oratory.

It is hard not to feel, in reading the shorter pieces gathered here, that a certain forced punchiness is the stylistic correlative of his confidence that there is a right course of action in world politics and that we (whoever "we" are) are the ones to undertake it. To his credit, he reproduces the piece he wrote for the Guardian on the eve of the decision to invade Iraq, in which he summarized the arguments for and against, concluding inconclusively that "I remain unconvinced of the case for—and doubtful of the case against." With hindsight, he concedes that the arguments against invasion have stood up to analysis, and to events, a hell of a lot better than the arguments for, and that many Iraqis believe that things in their country were worse subsequently than under Saddam. Nonetheless, he reflects—and I respect his honesty as well as his principles here—"I still defend the right of the commentator not always to take sides, but in this case I got it wrong. Next time, I shall need a great deal more convincing. I’m not alone in that."

So far, so admirable. But the brevity of the form leaves us wondering whether Garton Ash endorses what appears to be the implicit premise, namely that the United States, or any other powerful country acting unilaterally, has the right to play the role of the world’s disciplinarian. In his original article he took Tony Blair to be acting as "a Gladstonian Christian liberal interventionist." That’s a pretty fancy gloss on what looked to many people even at the time to be unjustified, overconfident disregard for the lives of citizens of another sovereign state with whom Britain was not at war. The issue was, needless to say, very complex, but perhaps the quoted phrase obscures rather than illuminates the real issues. Insofar as one can draw parallels, one can perhaps imagine Gladstone authorizing a military expedition to protect British subjects or to help rescue persecuted Christians, but that’s a long way from the desolation visited upon contemporary Iraq largely because Britain’s more powerful ally felt it needed to do something in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

* * *

Garton Ash, I should make clear, is very far from being one of the intellectual cheerleaders for Pentagon hawkishness. He is not to be counted among those liberals who were Bush’s "useful idiots," and since 2003 he has been clear and emphatic in his negative verdict on that administration’s foreign policy. He recognizes what is so misleading and so dangerous about the idea of a "war on terror" (at most, "it’s a war to prevent such people wanting to become terrorists in the first place"), just as he will have no truck with those calling for a secular jihad against "Islamofascism." His views are measured and thoughtful, even if they do not always command agreement. What I am pointing to is not a ground for disagreement, especially in this particular case, which involved a difficult decision about which opinion was very divided at the time. What I’m pointing to, rather, is the brisk confidence with which he draws up the moral balance sheet on very complex issues and the taken-for-grantedness of the assumption that there exists a power with the agency, and the right, to try to arrange the pieces on the global chessboard to produce the "correct" answer. He emphasizes that he favors the "promotion" of democracy and does not think we should "sit on the sidelines and jeer" at the United States when its attempts turn out badly. But if we restate this sentiment in less pejorative language, do we not think it is one of the tasks of the independent commentator to remind governments of the limits of their knowledge and the frailty of their designs? This is not the same as head-in-the-sand irresponsibility or purer-than-thou moralism; it is, rather, a matter of being true to one’s intellectual vocation. There may be times when it might be better to decline the invitation to pronounce or to advise the powerful, not just because a region or a problem may be beyond one’s competence but also because briskly identifying the lesser evil tends to be habit-forming, working at the expense of that more extended brooding on a subject that not only probes beneath the surface of the evidence but also puts pressure on one’s own intellectual categories.

This is not about the seductions of power; it is about the seductions of the pulpit. In an ideal world (perhaps that same world in which Canada could become a member of the EU), one might imagine Garton Ash taking a sabbatical from opinion for a while, a vow of journalistic silence. Perhaps he could withdraw to a (well-appointed) cave in North Oxford and brood on questions of agency and causality, on issues of language and description, on the relations between the roar of the world and the whisper of thought. Perhaps a different form of that "stubborn grain of alienation" would help. After all, the slow food movement needs its slow thought counterpart. There are few better practitioners of the genre of "analytical reportage," as he calls it, than Timothy Garton Ash, and I admire the boldness and energy with which he has cultivated this particular métier. I would admire him still more if, when assembling his essays in book form, he concluded that even his best columns should not be subjected to the rigors of a curtain call.

[ouch!]

[Frank Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garton Ash, the great observer and chronicler of Germany and Eastern Europe pre- and post collapse of the Iron Curtain, has compiled some of his best essay from the last ten years in this excellent new book.

Beyond being an extraordinarily gifted historian and writer, Ash covers a panoply of issues ranging from the significance (and occasional banality) of national anthems to the rise of China to the role of religion (and lack thereof) in modern Europe.

But I was particularly struck by Ash's commentary in a number of essays on Islam in Europe and while I did not completely agree with some of his assessments his essay "Are There Moral Foundations of European Power?" is particularly good. And within this essay, there was one extended passage that really struck me. Writing on just how aggressively secular (read: pagan) Europe has become and how Muslims in Europe deal with it, Ash ponders whether it is actually helping to breed terrorism:
"Does this offensive secularism augment European power? Probably not. On the one hand, young Muslims clearly are attracted to Europe in many ways. On the other hand, when they come to live here they are actively repelled by some of what they find in European society: by its aggressive secularism, atheism, moral relativism and hedonism. It is documented fact that some of those young Muslims were so repelled by the kind of offensive secularism that they encountered precisely in Europe - not in their home countries, not in the United States -- that it was here that they became terrorists. That is the case of the Hamburg cell of al-Qaeda, which was instrumental in the 9/11 attacks on New York, of the Moroccan bombers who bombed Madrid on 11 March 2003; and the man who murdered Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands. So one could even argue that they offensive secularism of European society is not an asset but rather a liability for Europe's soft power."

Thoughtful and never really talked about stuff. And that is why Timothy Garton Ash is always worth the read.

[Linny · Rating 1 out of 5]

couldn't get into, essays from his writings. Conservative.

[Charles H Berlemann Jr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting reading on various pol-philosophy topics

This is an interesting read on various political-philosophy and review of the history of the collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe. However, the history and deep thoughts on the issues of democracy in Eastern Europe is only a 3rd of the book. The other two thirds is made up of book reviews in long form essay and then some random short form essays on random topics. These other parts are week in my mind compared to the strong opening. At the same time, the title of this book makes no sense with, at least to me, compared to what the actual topic of the essays are about. They aren't about facts, rather they are philosophy on political events at the time such as the Orange Revolution in the Ukrainian government and will it go sideways, as written in the early 2000s. Maybe I am just missing it, but the highlights seem less facts and rather "historical trends lines...." philosophy.
Still these are interesting, even more so when you compare/contrast his essays on the painful lack of integration of the Islamic immigrants into European society. Now comparing some of his laments with the last decade of events, it's some interesting reading on what hopes there were and some standard questions on whether folks on either side could integrate with each other.

I would say this is a book to recommend as a travel read, or maybe to get a different view of the opening of the 21st century in politics and theory as viewed by a PhD British philosophy type.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Facts are subversive is the volume of TGA's essays that sit between The History of the Present (1990s) and Homelands (2010s). If it doesn't quite reach the heights of interest that the other two volumes do that is no reflection on Garton Ash's writing - always enjoyable, always acute, and more that the period he focuses on, 2000-2008, was in fact a relatively uneventful one, at least as far as Europe was concerned.

It is a brave, and, I suggest, humble man who puts his essays out after the events described knowing full well that the analysis may prove very wide of the mark. And in fairness to TGA, much of his crystal ball gazing is indeed faulty. This is most obviously the case in his belief that Cameron would not put the Europe question to the British people, and indeed it would remain off the table for a very long time. He underestimates the rise of China and disruption to the global order that would cause. And the essays finish just as the Global crash is about to happen - something that he does foresee in a 2005 essay.

The essays end on a deep note of gloom, suggesting that 2000 may indeed prove the high point of human history, an age that future generations may look back on with nostalgia. 24 years later, post 9/11, post global crash, post pandemic and post Ukrainian war, it is very hard to disagree with analysis.

[Jim Bogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays about politics in the early 2000s. The focus is on Europe, with a side look at the US (spoiler alert - the author is no fan of
George W Bush). The writing is incisive, the analysis critical but detached. Reading the articles recalls the period; unfortunately the pessimistic views hold better than the optimistic.
Prof. Garton Ash is always a fun read.

[Anonymous Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

While maybe not quite a 5 star book, this is such a great collection of essays from who was to me, an unknown writer.
I would highly recommend this as an easy & enjoyable read that doesn't drone on with boring prose. The reader is engaged throughout and gains some new perspectives that may challenge their own.

[Frumenty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Timothy Garton Ash is the best essayist writing in English today. Name a better one, if you can.

[Lorenzo Berardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

What we have here is a very good collection of articles, political essays, book and movie reviews along with public speeches turned into ink on paper by Timothy Garton Ash, one of those people teaching at Oxford University and being rather proud of it.

"Facts Are Subversive" could have easily ended up as a messy pot-pourri of intellectual exhibitionism, but luckily it stands far from it thanks to a very clever editing. The idea of putting a world map at the beginning of the book with the titles of Garton Ash's writings matching up with the places they spoke about is simple and brilliant at the same time, just like the way this book is subdivided into sections and chapters.

That said, I found more convincing Garton Ash as an historian and a political writer than as a cultural reviewer, but I think it's good he shows up some interest in contemporary culture and not only in an often dry world of first-class academics.

Moreover, Mr Garton Ash is clearly more at ease and on his favourite ground when writing about Britain and Europe than the times in which he delivers articles on Burma, Brasil or the US. What I liked the most here are the essays on whether Britons and - more specifically - Englishmen consider themselves Europeans or not. Less interesting, by my point of view, is the article dedicated to a meeting Garton Ash had with Aung San Suu Kyi, mainly because it dates back to 2000 and is way too old considering how many things happen in the meantime for Mrs Suu.

The review of Orwell's opera omnia is entertaining to read although Garton Ash cannot simply say - as he does - that apart from "Animal Farm" and "Shooting an Elephant" nothing else that Eric Arthur Blair wrote is masterful. I found puzzling how after self-declaring himself "a fan of Orwell", Mr Garton Ash never mentions "Down and Out in Paris and London" or "Coming Up for Air" or "The Road to Wigan Pier" among the author's literary production that could be worth to get and read.

And the idea that, say, Evelyn Waugh or Joseph Conrad "were consistently better writers than Orwell" is absolutely a moot point, I think.
Still, Timothy Garton Ash is a pretty good and engaging writer and not as much conservative as I would have thought.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only read a few chapters but so far Mr. Ash has hit upon a number of things that I've long believed. He doesn't recognize the "American Revolution" as a revolution at all. It was really secession. Violent revolutions never succeed. Europeans are much more aware of their history. Americans share much of that but we have forgotten it. Reagan was only a bit player in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most of the credit goes to Gorbachev. The most important year in 20th century European history was 1989.

Now that I'm done I recommend it. It comes at recent political events from a new and different slant. First essay was my least favorite but once you are beyond that you will find it gets better and better.

[Andy Oram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collections or anthologies face two common problems, both of which I
found in this book. First, each article was written to make a
particular point at a particular moment, and the interests of the reader
at the current moment may be different, even if only a year or so
separates the two. Second, one expects a different level of insight
and research from short articles from what one expects in a book, so the
collection is not likely to make a satisfying book. That said, I
learned some interesting things from Ash about the societies he covers
in this book--things that don't come through from typical journalistic
and historical ventures.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a good read. I was hoping for more of a Euro centric collection of writing but was happy with the contents nonetheless as I read the only book by TGA at my local library.

Looking back at the contents however, I'm struck by how little of the book is actually about Europe or European issues. Here are the main section titles for anyone that's interested:

1) "Velvet Revolutions, continued...
2) Europe and Other Headaches
3) Islam, Terror and Freedom
4) USA! USA!
5) Beyond the West
6) Writers and Facts
7) Envoi"

[Roberto Macias · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a fascinating collection of journalistic essays, including a few explorations on the subject of literature and the literary value of journalism.

Perhaps the most salient and interesting feature is the retrospective reading on the implications of some events in world politics, how they were perceived at the time of the event, and how the finally developed.

Certainly a worthy book to be read and a lesson in modern history.

[Thiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aprendi muito sobre esta década, que deveria ser a dos fatos que mais lembro. Ler o livro me fez pensar que não sei nada. No bom sentido, de te dar desejo de ler, buscar e estudar mais, para talvez um dia chegar a saber muito.

[severyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather good, especially on Europe, which is nice given the dearth of balance, sensible writing on the subject.

[Miguel Ángel Moreno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Numerosa colección de artículos y ensayos de TGA. Los hay más interesantes, los hay menos interesantes pero entretenidos y los hay que he leído en diagonal.

[Andrew]

I'd seen Timothy Garton Ash on TV, and he seemed poised. I read Timothy Garton Ash, and found him to be a perfectly acceptable writer, and when it comes to writing about literature, a good writer, but ultimately a completely banal one. He's one of these very civil, very mild-mannered centrist liberals who is rightly horrified by the looming specter of violent, authoritarian populism while at the same time having radically failed to note rising economic inequality, both more generally and between geographic regions, and who wonders how it could be that (for example) a man who resembles the warlord in Fury Road took power in the United States when mass racism remained, albeit in cloaked form, and when whole regions of the country had been hollowed out. Simply put, if he was a Yank, he would be one of the useless belly-scratchers on the editorial board of the New York Times or the Atlantic, sitting there on the shelf along with Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Jeffrey Goldberg, and all of the other producers of decidedly thoughtless think-pieces.