It is no accident that the post-Protestant English in the van of the scientific and industrial revolution for two centuries, were also the discoverers and masters of characteristic reentry modes, esepcially travel (geographical and sexual) and disguises.
It is no coincidence that the English are not only the best actors in the world but the best spies. The modern Englishman can become anyone else...
Do you think it is an accident that all the best writers of spy novels are English?
From Lost in the Cosmos, by Walker Percy, 1983.
Comment:
Well, I am not one to judge how Englishmen appear to others or comparatively. But I agree that the native English (or, more accurately, British Isles - to include Ireland) seem to be the best stage and classical actors; although I would say that obviously Americans are better at TV and movie acting.
As for spies? Well, espionage is an upper class (Norman) activity; and most of the spies I have come across in my reading are either incompetent, corrupt or both - mainly because they are anti-English and anti-Good in their motivation.
The Cambridge Communist traitors (Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt etc) were the norm, not the exception - as George Orwell was aware (being upper class himself).
But the upper class English are the ex-senior, now junior, dominant partners in the global conspiracy of Ahrimanic evil (long established although only recently mainstream with the Great Reset's coming-out) - and the lying-secretive-worldwide-apparatus of 'intelligence', mis/dis-information, subversion, murder and cover-ups is very much a British project.
Spies and the intelligence agencies cause far more harm than they (pretend to) prevent; are thus very strongly net-hostile and net-harmful to Christian Albion. Christians and English patriots would be much better-off if spies did not exist at all.
But the world as a whole is now in service to purposive evil and adhere to inverted values - therefore all social institutions, including the media, now regard spies, with all their lies and destructiveness, as A Good Thing - indeed jealously admired as able to get-away-with (and indeed be lionized and rewarded for) many of the kind of activities which most people apparently desire to do.
In that sense Walker Percy was probably right about this too - some Englishmen (albeit 'Them' not 'us') are probably among 'the best' at this particular strand of Satanism.
It's interesting to note that most crime fighters/spys in fiction pre World War 2 were freelance amateurs working on their own motivations such as Sherlock Holmes, Bulldog Drummond, The Saint etc all running rings around the state employed professionals, post world War 2 they tend to be civil servants like James Bond generally doing what they're told.
ReplyDeleteTo your point, MB, all the Daniel Craig Bond films feature him operating like those freelance amateurs. He's constantly disobeying his boss, making his own decisions, and going off like a maverick to do his own thing, often at risk to his own life. I appreciated that about those films.
ReplyDeleteI would distinguish detectives from spies - they seem to be different archetypes.
ReplyDelete