Institutionalisation, Navalny and the nature of madness

Denbigh Asylum

I enjoyed a lively discussion last night with some friends over a few beers on the merits of committing the mad to asylums. I am broadly in favour – it seems clear to me that some people are not equipped or able to function independently because they are, to use the medical term, bonkers.

Such people often exist at the busy junction of mental illness and substance abuse, and plainly need low-intensity care and supervision that we lack the facilities to provide. They usually end up in prison (they are not criminals or dangerous to anyone but themselves), in hospital (they are not physically sick) or homeless (given Europe’s comprehensive welfare provisions, they are not destitute). It is likely that they shuffle between the three situations, losing teeth and getting steadily madder, before dying lonely little deaths as burdens on the parish. There is a clear need for a category of institution, neither a prison nor a hospital, to put them in. We used to have them – they were called lunatic asylums.

Lunatic asylums were mostly Victorian buildings, beautifully built and situated (due to the common belief among caring professionals that putting mad people in lovely places made them less mad. I am not a psychologist, but this seems logical). They housed a variety of people: Down’s patients, schizophrenics, the feeble-minded, non-functional alcoholics and drug addicts, the occasionally violent, depressives and melancholics, the intractably promiscuous, maniacs, would-be self-murderers, the authors of some moral but not criminal wickedness, and a whole host of otherwise unloved and unsupported oddities. Certainly, some interns would probably not be committed today – homosexuals or unmarried mothers, for instance – and the institutions were not without scandal, but most of the people who found themselves in lunatic asylums really did need to be there, because we had nowhere else to put them. Like many necessary but unfashionable ideas, asylums fell victim to our post-War fit of political pique, and most were closed by the mid-1980s. “Care in the Community” followed, but the necessary funding did not, and that Community was not quite the warm embrace that the word implies. Most of the West replaced an effective and necessary system with nothing at all.

My main interlocutors were prominent Estonians over certain age and of a broadly libertarian bent. One of them, Tõnis, was a fly in the Soviet ointment in his youth, and had gotten himself into dreadful trouble with the authorities for translating Orwell into his native language. A trained clinical psychologist, he was quick to point out a problem with my thesis – how are we to define madness?

Andrei Snezhnevsky, notable twat

The cautionary tale Tõnis told was that of Soviet doctor Andrei Snezhnevsky, the Lysenko of psychiatry, who created a revolting cottage industry in diagnosing political dissidents with an entirely fanciful mental illness called “sluggish schizophrenia”. The symptoms of this disease were so subtle that they were often unnoticeable except, conveniently, to Dr Snezhnevsky himself. More stupidly still, sluggish schizophrenia was said to be a progressive disease – those in whom even Dr Snezhnevsky could detect no symptoms might develop them in time, and thus preventative confinement was justified. The key symptom was, of course, an interest in unconventional politics. Rejecting Soviet political orthodoxy, regardless of how reasonable the grounds, thus became a mental illness whose absence could not be definitively proven. Thousands of conscientious opponents of socialism, including Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Esenin Volpin and Viktor Fainberg, spent years and decades in Soviet mental hospitals.

The parallels with Orwell are obvious. In 1984, O’Brien demanded not just Winston Smith’s acquiescence and submission during his lengthy torture, but his acceptance of the Party’s truth and the rejection of contrary ideas as obviously wrong. Winston was not required merely to agree that 2+2=5, but to believe it, wholeheartedly and without reservation. Winston’s belief in a self-evident truth was not a political dissidence to be stamped out, but an insanity to be cured. Winston was plainly not insane, and the Party was. This is the nature of dystopia.

It is clear, then, that madness and subsequent institutionalisation is open to political abuse, both in fact and fiction. People who do not function on the officially approved plain of reality can be branded insane and dealt with accordingly. However, outside of totalitarian regimes, is this feasible or likely?

Alexei Navalny, Russian dissident

One of my partners mentioned the case of Alexei Navalny, a political gadfly in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, recently the subject of one of the KGB’s elaborate poisoning plots. Following the release of a documentary revealing Putin’s unofficial wealth (in the form of an enormous private palace, in the Mid-90s Essex Shopping Centre Style, that cost an alleged $1.35 billion to construct), Mr Navalny is now in prison and precarious health. Like his Soviet dissident forebears, it seems that his only crime is to be conscientiously opposed to Putin’s revolting regime and politically active against it. However, the 1984 analogy does not survive contact with Mr Navalny’s situation.

The Lakewater Outlet Centre, Chelmsford

I am no friend of Russia under current management. Some conservatives view Putin as a kind of saviour, a last bastion of traditional European civilisation, but this puts them in the same category as those Western leftists that Lenin gleefully labelled “useful idiots” – uncritical supporters of a hostile foreign power in which they imagine some ideological synergy. If Putin wishes to defend European civilisation, I am sure he could do so without murdering policemen in sleepy English cathedral cities or annexing lumps of his neighbours’ territory. As I live and hold property only 150 miles away from the Red Army, I feel I have some skin in the game.

Putin’s power in Russia is a fact, as is his willingness and ability to do unpleasant things to maintain it. For an Englishman to support Putin from abroad may be stupid, but for a Russian to oppose Putin from within Russia is mad. Unlike Orwell’s Party, Putin does not require his subjects to believe anything irrational or untrue, however. Mr Navalny is not asked to believe that 2+2=5, but merely to accept that Putin is in charge and will not tolerate open opposition and criticism. There is no ideological angle. There is no need to have faith in some perpetually inevitable socialist utopia. Mr Navalny need only accept reality and keep quiet. One might admire him for his evident bravery and willingness to take a principled stand, but the insanity in this situation is not on Putin’s part, but on Mr Navalny’s.

But Russia is not a liberal democracy. We must look closer to home for examples. Fortunately for this discussion, we have a good case in the United Kingdom.

Philip Luty (1965-2011) was a British firearms enthusiast and amateur gunsmith, known for publishing Expedient Homemade Firearms, an instruction manual for making a sub-machine gun with minimal skill and readily available materials. This book was wildly popular, and Luty-type sub-machine guns have been discovered all over the world. Mr Luty was a political libertarian who strongly believed in the right of men to arm themselves for their defence. I have some sympathy for this view, but the laws of the United Kingdom beg to differ.

A Luty sub-machine gun

For non-British readers, though our islands originated the phrase “the right to bear arms”, this right does not exist in law. It is strictly prohibited to carry any kind of weapon (even a lockable folding knife) without reasonable excuse, which self-defence is not considered. Firearms are very tightly regulated. Pistols and repeating rifles are banned completely, and shotgun magazines may only hold 3 rounds. The British Olympic Pistol Team trains in France. Even non-lethal self-defence devices such as pepper spray and tasers are illegal (and indeed are legally considered “firearms”). This prohibition covers objects that, though not weapons, might be used as weapons (a professional footballer was once prosecuted for having a keyring in the style of a suntetsu, a short blunt piece of steel used in Japanese martial arts, in the glove compartment of his car). Certain types of firearm may be owned for hunting and sport but are subject to strict licensing and codes of use. There is a right to self-defence in law, but it is illegal to carry any implement to effect it.

Ridiculous though I find this, it is the law, and it is widely supported by the public. The UK does not have “gun politics” in the same way as the United States. Few people own firearms and most people have never seen one. This is very unlikely to change as nobody really wants it to.

Philip Luty

Philip Luty disagreed with this situation very strongly. He believed, erroneously, that the 1689 Bill of Rights, as well as some fanciful common-law liberty, guaranteed his legal right to own and carry whatever firearms he pleased. The Bill of Rights, like its American successor, is a significant legal and constitutional document that originated many commonly used phrases, including “cruel and unusual punishment”. It is still in force in some form in several British-influenced countries including the UK, but it is so heavily amended and contained so many caveats that it effectively guaranteed no rights at all. Further, it is the British political tradition that Parliament may legislate in any way it chooses, and is not bound by the Acts of its predecessors.

Mr Luty took his own quixotic interpretation of the English constitution and made a lifestyle out of it. He designed and made several illegal firearms and published instructions for others to do so. The authorities took a dim view of this and he spent most of his life in and out of prison. Not content with repeatedly prosecuting him for his flagrant disregard for firearms law, the Crown decided that his activities represented terrorism and he was tried accordingly. He died of cancer in 2011 and is remembered in chiefly American libertarian circles.

There is no evidence that Mr Luty ever harmed anyone personally. His saw his actions as a form of political protest against unjust law. We can agree or disagree with him, but it is hard to see him as a malicious actor. That said, he was completely and utterly bonkers. He went up against the power of the Crown over an issue of vanishing political significance in pursuit of rights that British people do not want. Like those of Mr Navalny, his crimes were political rather than harmful, but the consequences of them were obvious and severe, and he could not hope to win the battles he fought.

So how should we have dealt with him justly? He was not dangerous or evil, so gaol seems vaguely inappropriate, yet at the same time his determination to break the law in unacceptable ways means he could not have remained a free man. His sickness was not physical. He was mad, and we ought to have had facilities where his madness could have been managed.

After all, what else are we supposed to do with men like that?

Denbigh Asylum, in ruins

Screwing up Brexit - the stupid is a symptom, not a cause.

Barely a day goes by without someone intimately involved in the Brexit process saying something unutterably ignorant or stupid about Brexit. Highly educated, intelligent and experienced politicians come out with the most stupendous howlers that leave any reasonably well informed person (basically anyone who's ever bothered to Google the European Union) with their mouths open in surprise and disgust.

Before I'm accused of being a sore loser, Remoaner, gibbet-worthy traitor, etc., let me put my cards on the table - I am and have always been pro-Brexit. I wouldn't go so far as to say I've campaigned for it, unlike some excellent individuals, but I've always supported it. So, I couldn't have been happier when the Referendum was called, nor more ecstatic when it went our way.

For me, the last couple of years has been an educative experience. I've gone from being an instinctive but fairly ignorant Eurosceptic to being someone who understands a fair bit about how the EU works, and what the best way of leaving it might be. I can't claim to be an expert, but I have taken the opportunity to fill some gaps in my knowledge.

I am not a snob about this. It is a perfectly respectable and honourable thing to be anti-EU in an inchoate way. Most people are, and this is why we won the Referendum. EU membership is such a fundamental cultural, political and constitutional question that it is reasonable to say "I do not believe that the future of my country lies in that direction". It is much the same as saying "I am not a socialist because I think liberty is more important than equality". It needs no technical justification nor expertise. It is as much about emotion as reason. It is an opinion that anyone is entitled to hold, ignorantly.

I think this is also true when one looks through the other end of the telescope. It is entirely acceptable to say "I don't know much about the EU on a technical level, but I feel European and EU membership is fundamental to what Europeanness means to me. I think that Britain's future lies in the EU." Someone holding this opinion may not be able to justify it cogently, but I don't think they have to.

Ignorance, however, is not acceptable in politicians.

Of course, we elect our MPs to provide ideological guidance to a deeper state, not because of their expertise in cabbage marketing regulations. But it is not unreasonable to expect our politicians to have a certain amount of knowledge around the areas that they get involved in, nor to expect them to educate themselves where necessary. This is especially true of Cabinet Ministers, who have a small army of SPADs and civil servants to advise them. It is therefore highly objectionable that vast swathes of our political class, both on the back benches and in the Cabinet, are frankly pig-ignorant when it comes to the most important issue of our time - Brexit.

Take the ideologically sound Tory MP John Redwood.

Not only does he have the slightly unnerving polish of a villain in a spy film, Mr Redwood is an incredibly clever and accomplished man. The son of an accountant and company secretary, he won a full scholarship to Kent College, Canterbury, took an Oxford DPhil, and went on to a glittering entrepreneurial career in financial services and a string of executive and non-executive directorships. He was a local councillor in the 70s and a policy advisor to Lady Thatcher in the 80s, before being elected an MP in 1987. He climbed quickly up the governmental ladder to be Secretary of State for Wales under Prime Minister Sir John Major.

So, I'm sure we can agree Mr Redwood is not stupid and not politically inexperienced. So why does he come out with twaddle like this?

I'm not going to dissect this nonsense - finer minds have done so already - but it's truly shocking that there's not just one slip here, but onion-like layers of ignorance. Why doesn't Mr Redwood simply know more? It is his job to know what he's talking about, or at least steer clear of issues he lacks the knowledge to pronounce on.

But it gets worse.

Consider the phenomenon that is David Davis, our Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Of all the people in this United Kingdom who should know absolutely everything about the EU, about Brexit, about post-Brexit trade options, and about a whole host of other Brexit-related things, David Davis is number one. His job is Brexit.

Like John Redwood, Mr Davis is far from stupid. He is from a rather humbler background than Mr Redwood (having the crippling disadvantage of being both Northern and Welsh), but this makes his ascent all the more impressive. He served in the Artists Rifles (better known as 21 SAS) before taking Joint Honours in Computer Science and Molecular Science at Warwick. He then attended the London Business School for a Masters in Business, and later completed Harvard's Advanced Management Program. Whilst at Warwick, he established a student radio station and a men's choir. Returned to Parliament in 1987, he has served in a bewildering array of governmental and shadow ministerial positions, including as Minister of State for Europe under Sir John Major (this being the office that until recently dealt with all things EU) and as Shadow Home Secretary.

And now comes the stupid. In 2016, shortly before his appointment as Brexit minister, he uttered the words:

"Post Brexit a UK-German deal would include free access for their cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a deal on everything else.

Similar deals would be reached with other key EU nations. France would want to protect £3 billion of food and wine exports. Italy, its £1 billion fashion exports. Poland its £3 billion manufacturing exports."

The fractal wrongness of this does not need explaining. Mr Davis also appears not to understand the nature or purpose of courts with supranational jurisdiction and their importance when it comes to supranational issues. It doesn't stop there. His views on Brexit are a patchwork of error, misunderstanding and thoughtless, technical shallowness. This is a former Europe Minister! It's entirely possible that Mr Davis has become less ignorant in the last year, but given how Brexit appears to be going, I'd say that's unlikely.

Messers Redwood and Davis are just two examples. I could give dozens more, from various parties, but I'd be here all week.

So, how on earth have we reached a point where our national top team makes even Jean-Claude Juncker look dignified and statesmanlike?

It is tempting to blame our current crop of fools for the multi-car pileup that is Brexit, but I don't think that would be entirely fair. As the title suggests, I think the Redwoods and Davises of this world are symptoms of Brexit, rather than direct causes of the overall twatfuckery.

John F Kennedy once remarked that student politicians fight viciously because the stakes are tiny. I think this is a pretty astute observation. Give an organisation small amounts of responsibility and power, and it will attract idlers, power-hungry shysters and those with delusions of grandeur. The briefest examination of the state of local government in the UK bears this out - it's run by jokers because it is a joke.

We see this phenomenon at the national level, too. We have spent the last 40 years merrily outsourcing all the important functions of government to a supranational body - the EU. A trade policy is one of the fundamental levers of global political power, and as an EU member, we aren't entitled to have one. Any views we may have on trade must be filtered through 27 other nations, and through a central bureaucracy that has an agenda of its own (page 32). Our leaders cannot stand toe-to-toe with the leaders of China, the USA, Australia, and talk actual business, because we are unable to agree to anything substantial without checking with the real boss.

Supporters of the EU like to point out that its member states are sovereign. Strictly speaking, they are right - Parliament could repeal the European Communities Act and all the EU's formal power over us would dissolve. But everyone knows the consequences of doing so would be so ruinous as to make such action impossible, so the sovereignty is meaningless. One might argue that Texas is sovereign because the Texas State Guard answers to the governor, but try using the TXSG to invade Mexico and see how sovereign you are. The United Kingdom is not in cooperation with 27 other states - she is subordinate to the same body as them. At a global level, the British Government does not play in the big boys' playground.

Our politicians don't really have to do statecraft in the way they used to, as a higher body does all the important stuff. They don't know or care about trade policy because they've never had to do so. And when you don't do statecraft, you cannot expect your system to produce statesmen.

In my view, this has had an infantilising effect on British politics. The fact that the British Government isn't really a proper government means that the few bright and motivated people it attracts quickly become lazy and indifferent. This in turn makes the people resent their political class and creates an environment in which nothing ever changes. Our MPs treat Parliamentary debates as ways to get themselves on the telly, and our media outlets are only too happy to indulge them (witness their fawning over the Scottish Nationalist MP Mhairi Black, who is so incredibly bad that it's physically painful to watch her speak).

When was the last time you heard a truly great political speech? When was the last time you heard a politician express a great idea at all? The closest I can think of to a recentish great idea was David Cameron's Big Society, which his useless government lacked the balls to make anything of.

Brexit will be cathartic in this regard. It's already doing us a favour by showing up the uselessness of the current crop. Their idiocy, idleness and ignorance is plain for all to see. Once our governments are forced exercise the full powers of statecraft, our political system will begin to attract good people with good ideas.

In the meantime, sit back enjoy the ride.

The Odious Mr Theroux

We live in a world of platitudes. People think in regurgitated clickbate clichés and have given up on original thought so completely that they use words without really considering their meaning very much. It is, presumably, this phenomenon that has led the commenters on the Kremlin's pisspoor freesheet, The Evening Standard, to describe the unfathomably smug B-documentary maker Louis Theroux as "brave".

To be brave is to hold one's nerve in the face of real personal danger or risk. The soldier who puts his head above the parapet to lay down fire is brave. The speculator who holds his positions when they've taken a dip is brave. The journalist who risks his reputation, his livelihood and even his life to break a public interest story is brave. It is surprising that some people have not had their lights punched out yet, but that does not make them brave - it makes them arseholes.

Though perhaps this is an unfair line of criticism - Theroux does not claim to be brave himself. But he does revel in the dishonesty of his endeavours and he is, most definitely, an arsehole of the first rank.

Theroux's first notable appearance on our screens was in his documentary series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends. In this series, our intrepid host embeds himself with various off-beat American subcultures, including UFO hunters, pornographic performers, middle-aged swingers and evangelical Christians. The format of each episode is broadly the same. Theroux gains access to two or three different actors within each subculture and follows them around for a bit, feigning sincere interest, attempting to ingratiate himself, and pretending to absorb as much of their world as possible.

The episodes end with the presenter asking weak questions of his subjects, clearly with a view to making them as uncomfortable as possible. The nature of the participants in the documentaries means that he is questioning the tightly-held beliefs of people who don't quite function on our plain of reality. The end result is usually a thoroughly pissed off or insulted UFO hunter.

The fact that the views of his subjects are on the whole obviously bollocks means that his lines of questioning take on a sneering, hectoring tone. "Is it really?" is said a lot, to which the only possible answer from a true believer is a restatement of his beliefs. Yes, Louis, he really does believe he is fighting aliens and you will not change that by goading him.

The first thing that hits the viewer is the sheer nastiness of the exercise Theroux is undertaking. He is, of course, not making sincere human interest documentaries, but a series of freak-shows for him and his audience to laugh at. He walks around in front of the camera, with his sideways glances and knowing smiles, inviting us to sneer with him at the oddballs and outcasts. His documentaries are the modern equivalent of paying a shilling to laugh at the inmates of the local asylum - voyeuristic and snobbish.

Theroux described his aims in making Weird Weekends as:

"Setting out to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary setting. To me, it's almost a privilege to be welcomed into these communities and to shine a light on them and, maybe, through my enthusiasm, to get people to reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them. I don't have to play up that stuff."

Read that a few times and let its unpleasantness sink in. Key words and phrases stand out. "...almost a privilege" struck me as particularly horrid. Why not an actual privilege?

I once attended a dinner party at the house of a highly eccentric acquaintance of mine. He lived in an enormous nightmare-gothic house in North London and was, of course, tremendously rich. He treated us to a delightful evening of the very best food, wine and company, punctuated by the amusing antics of his three pugs. After dinner, our host invited the men to his study, where he shared with us what was clearly a very important part of his personality - he was a Doctor Who superfan. This private male room was festooned with authentic and presumably valuable Doctor Who memorabilia - lifesize alien soldiers, costumed manikins, exotic stage weaponry - which he lovingly described to us in great and fascinating detail. Even for someone who knows next to nothing about Doctor Who, nor about science fiction generally, it was a very interesting half hour. A fan of the programme would have been in heaven. I left my host's study after this impromptu curation feeling honoured that this man would lay bare his quirks for our entertainment. How many of us would be so brave, I wonder, as to show a group of dinner guests our innermost, dorkiest interests in such an enthusiastic way? It was quite literally a privilege to be welcomed into this man's head. 

Now, with my anecdote in mind, read the second sentence again and picture someone like Theroux being shown around that study. Imagine Theroux's wry, patronising smile and fake enthusiasm as he is taken through the ins and outs of Doctor Who's universe and history, with props. Imagine the lie on which such an encounter might have been built. I don't know how Theroux sets up his subjects, but we can be certain that he isn't honest about his intentions - nobody enjoys being the object of sincere ridicule and nobody would consent to appear on his camera if they knew they would be. Theroux further has the brass neck to claim that the audience might be laughing at him as much as his subjects, despite being girded about with the thick armour of irony. 

Satire and mockery are mighty political tools, and Weird Weekends is a cruel misuse of them. Satire ought to be used on the powerful and wicked (or even just the powerful) as a way to counteract their power and make them seem ridiculous. One of the reasons fascism never took off in the UK is that we found it silly - the goose-stepping, the outrageous uniforms, the sheer pomposity of it all. Lampooning fascism when it was a real force was noble thing indeed. When Louis Met Adolf (1929) would have been a worthy use of Theroux's cinematic efforts. But, of course, Theroux doesn't choose powerful victims - he chooses losers and weirdos. He satirises the powerless and outcast. He mocks those who are already ridiculous and weak. His work is the televisual equivalent of kicking a toddler in the face. 

One of his subjects, a group of UFO hunters, makes for particularly uncomfortable watching. Theroux heads to the desert of south west America (where UFOs always seem to land) and states his intention is:

"to meet the people who meet ETs, and maybe even have a close encounter of my own."

His voice rises in pitch as he says the second clause, to make it perfectly clear (lest there be any doubt) that he is obviously not so utterly mad and stupid as to believe in UFOs and aliens. Gracious, no. Only the idiots he interviews would believe such nonsense. Now that's clear, we all get to laugh at the lunatics. Hooray!

Theroux's first lunatic is the curiously named Thor Templar, who is head of an impressive-sounding organisation called The Earth Protectorate. Mr Templar introduces himself as the Lord Commander of the North American Sector. It is unclear whether Lord Commander constitutes a rank or an appointment within The Earth Protectorate, but Mr Templar and his female companion clearly take it seriously. Theroux shakes the Lord Commander's hand and says "I'm Louis Theroux from BBC2". Theroux smiles at this point, obviously amused at the contrast between Thor Templar's grand-sounding title, and his own relatively workaday one. "Ah, but my title is real and meaningful" are the unspoken words behind his irritating grin.

The presenter then states that he isn't sure aliens exist, the intention of which is quite plainly to make Mr Templar spout nonsense, and frame him very clearly as the fantasist he is. Throughout his interaction with our fearless alien hunter, Theroux feigns credulity in really cruel way and goads his subject into making more and more outrageous and fantastic claims about himself, his activities and his accomplishments. The viewer is left with no doubt as to the extent of Thor Templar's delusion. 

The kind viewer, of course, realises in less than 5 minutes that Theroux himself is the only one doing any harm, here. Lord Commander Templar may be a quixotic fantasist, tilting at extra-terrestrial windmills, but his imaginary purposes are clearly noble. He genuinely believes that he is protecting Earth and mankind from hostile aliens. He is doing it free of charge and his obsessions have in all likelihood cost him friends and relationships, and have caused the ray gun of the BBC's finest young satirist to be trained on him. Now, we can argue over whether what he's doing is healthy, but it is certainly not wicked. Thor's activities certainly don't deserve to be sniggered at by millions of people. The freak show thankfully died a century ago. 

Three years after Weird Weekends, Theroux returned to our screens with a seemingly never-ending series of documentaries on American themes, which attempted to strike a more serious tone. In BBC-land, "serious tone" means left-wing boilerplate, of course. Prostitutes are sympathised with and generally approved of, Zionists are exposed as borderline genocidal bigots, hunters are portrayed as bloodthirsty trophy-grabbers with no care for conservation, and drug addicts and criminals are held no more responsible for their own circumstances than the hunters' trophies are for theirs. 

Watching the episode about White Nationalists, it becomes clear just how far out of his depth Theroux is in serious journalism. He meets Thomas Metzger, a fairly uncomplicated neo-Nazi skinhead and former Ku Klux Klansman, whose views are easily gauged by the fact that he runs a group called White Aryan Resistance (snappily abbreviated to WAR). Yet Theroux finds himself fazed by Metzger and his ludicrous views in a way that exposes both the documentarian's lack of journalistic talent and his personal weakness. Theroux seems genuinely surprised that a white supremacist is actually racist. Theroux is unable to process the fact that Metzger openly uses the word "nigger" for fully offensive purposes. He's thrown off-guard by this, as if someone had used the word in Broadcasting House rather than in a neo-Nazi's drawing room. He pathetically asks Metzger to refrain from using the word around him, such is the fear it inspires in the intrepid journalist. Needless to say, Metzger incredulously rebuffs Theroux's attempts to police his language in his own home. 

Theroux continues with various silly lines of questioning, such as asking the neo-Nazi whether he'd be comfortable with his daughter dating a Jew. When he gets his answer, he mumbles "it speaks of...kinda...a hatred...really." You don't say! Metzger replies clumsily that "I hate the people who cause me to hate" before going off on a vague rant about "them" (presumably black people) killing, raping, torturing and imprisoning his friends. Theroux interjects weakly with "that is such bull!", which causes Metzger to demand if Theroux reads "what blacks do in England...I do!" A stronger personality than our documentarian would have pushed back, and demanded to know exactly what blacks were doing in England, and perhaps countered any response with some solid facts. But Theroux just sat quietly, beaten by the force of Metzger's personality. The stupider man won without even raising his voice. 

Theroux's attempts to cover other serious issues - namely drug addiction and criminality - fall similarly flat. Perhaps predictably for a middle class BBC journalist, he is pathologically unable to think outside the usual left-wing platitudes and offer fresh perspectives. In The City Addicted to Crystal Meth, he visits Fresno, California - a city with a serious problem with drug addicts. Surely enough, he doesn't see the problem as being one of human agency.

The introductory leader features an interview with a man whose drug use has ruined his teeth and turned him into a nervous wreck. "Crystal meth, what happens is, it deteriorates your teeth, right?" "Crystal meth is acting up in my body." Crystal meth, on its own, does nothing. It's just a small shiny rock. A person has to decide to smoke or snort it for it to do any harm. At no point does the interviewee say "I did", "I took", "I smoked". He talks of drugs in the third person, as if they were an independent, animate actor, harming him through no fault of his own. The drug does not even damage the teeth directly. "Meth Mouth" is caused by lifestyle factors surrounding drug use (collapse in dental hygiene, frequent consumption of sugary drinks, etc). 

Theroux, having internalised the standard liberal line of drug addicts as victims of something other than their own stupidity and selfishness, doesn't possess the faculties to challenge the addict's passive narrative in a meaningful way. Travelling in a police car, Theroux and his policemen encounter a car full of drug users, one of whom is a thirtysomething mother of three. Theroux comes close to the correct way of thinking as he speaks to her, but being incapable of moral judgement, he doesn't hammer home the obvious line of questioning. He asks why she smokes drugs, to which she replies with surprising honesty "Because I want to, because I feel like it." Then the interviewer brings up the fact that she has three children and asks whether they know she is a drug addict, she predictably turns to selfish excuses - "I left [my grandparents'] house...to just come out here and do whatever I wanna do." The policeman asks her why, and she says "because my baby's dad frigging left me." You'll note she doesn't say 'husband'. "I couldn't stay in that house no more because the fact that it brought too many fucking memories inside my head." 

The drug addict then breaks down in tears, perhaps because she had reasoned herself past her own excuses, and realised she had no-one to blame but herself. Unsurprisingly, it is the jaded policeman who pushes her on the most obvious and serious aspect of her immorality - the fact that she is a mother and has a duty of towards her children. Her epiphany is short-lived, of course, as she embarks on a circular course of self-pitying reason - she smokes drugs because she wants to block out the painful fact that she is a useless, selfish, evil drug addict and a general failure as a mother and as a human being. The policeman, not the journalist, got to the raw truth - that inanimate drugs are not to blame; those who take them are. On the cusp of arrest (presumably not her first brush with the law) she tearfully claims she is about to reform. Theroux nods sagely, with a sad, sympathetic expression on his face. 

Our documentarian's visit to a large gaol is a similarly irritating delve into the mind of a safe, left-wing journalist. In the UK, gaol and prison are synonymous, but over the pond gaol is where those suspected criminals considered too dangerous to bail are sent to await trial. Thus, gaol houses many of America's gentle giants, regular churchgoers, loving fathers and talented athletes. 

Much like during his time with Thomas Metzger, Theroux is clearly nervous in an environment of raw, chaotic masculinity. In his first encounter with inmates of the notoriously violent 5th Floor of Miami's gaolhouse, he quizzes them about an inmate who was injured in their cell recently. "Snitches get stitches" is the reply, to which he asks one of his trademark stupid questions (accompanied by an equally stupid grin): "am I to infer from that that this man was a snitch?" The question didn't reveal to us anything that we didn't already know - that criminals are discouraged by their fellow criminals from cooperating with the authorities - but it did set the tone of the documentary rather well. Theroux asks his question with characteristically florid words, as if to demonstrate his own superior intelligence, yet he shies away from asking tricky and pertinent questions. He might have explored the idea that perhaps some criminals had no choice but to snitch, or that the authorities were not necessarily the criminal's die-hard enemy. But this is not the purpose of his documentaries - they are but comedy vehicles for his self-satisfied, ironic sense of detachment. 

Theroux's interviews with inmates are interspersed with various liberal howls at the apparent injustice of it all. After he had finished talking to a man accused of First Degree Murder (American legalese for a pre-planned, deliberate killing, or a murder committed in the course of some other crime), his voiceover laments the fact that the inhabitants of Miami Gaol were "technically innocent, and deprived of many of their rights". Quelle domage. Footage of the guards going about their work is cut with faux-poignant shots of American flags waving thought the bars, as if to juxtapose the Land of the Free with the lack of freedom inherent in the gaol system. Such cliché is profound only to idiots - it's the cinematic equivalent of Stephen Fry. 

Theroux's hackneyed attempts to make us sympathise with the inmates of Miami Gaol might be more successful were it not for the obvious evil of the men he interviews. His discussions with these animals usually involve a dishonest bait-and-switch. Some of the inmates are quite funny and charismatic, and Theroux allows them to exhibit these traits for some time before asking the important question, "what are you accused of?" The answer is always revolting (murder, violent robbery, etc), but by this point the ideal viewer (somewhat left wing, weak minded, "anti-judgmental") quite likes the inmate, and therefore thinks he is probably innocent, a victim of prejudice, a hashtag waiting to happen. 

Oddly, Theroux declines to use this cynical, manipulative tactic when he interviews the inmate with whom we are clearly meant to sympathise most, the diminutive and vulnerable Nianthony. Nianthony has been moved to Miami Central Gaol from another, cushier facility, allegedly because someone falsely accused him of trying to escape. We have only an accused criminal's word that this is true - Theroux did not bother asking a guard.

Nianthony is physically small and weak and wears glasses, giving him a cute, dorky and nervous appearance. He's also clearly intelligent (the prisoner makes a point of mentioning that he's university educated, as if to place the idea of gaol somewhere beneath him). In short, Nianthony is exactly the type of person you would not want to be if you were in prison. "I'm being watched by a lot of people so I don't want to say anything", he says, and continues in a whisper "[but gaol] is fucking awful." Nianthony later pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of his ex girlfriend and her new boyfriend, and is now serving a twenty five year sentence. Diddums. 

Later, we are introduced to a vile practice known as Gunning, which involves inmates masturbating in front of (and presumably aiming their effusion at) their female guards. Theroux naturally reacts with disgust, but again he fails to ask the pertinent question that naturally flows (if you'll pardon the pun) - what in the name of Christ are women doing working in an all-male gaol? Prison guards are unarmed, so they rely on physical strength and sheer numbers to control troublesome inmates. Could even several women deal with one strong man? What would happen to these women in the event of a riot or general breakdown in compliance doesn't bear thinking about. It of course does not even occur to Theroux, looking through his impeccably modern lens, to consider the absurdity and danger of women doing this job. 

Despite Theroux's inability to interview in a meaningful and probing way, it is striking just how large his personality looms in his documentaries. Like Michael Moore, Theroux has a tendency to make his films as much about himself as his subjects. Compare and contrast this with genuinely talented human interest documentarians, like Nick Broomfield and Werner Herzog, who only need to point the camera and poke gently, and their subjects open up. Theroux seems to get results out of his interviewees by annoying and insulting them, rather than through perceptive journalistic talent. Needless to say, he loses his mojo when attempting to mock people who might fight back. He fills the gaping voids in his films with his own clownery, which to be fair is humorous. But humour is a tool - how you use it is important. Jimmy Carr and Johnny Knoxville are funny too. Theroux doesn't go toe-to-toe with the mighty and evil, but smacks down the puny still further when lampooning, or offers nothing but tired left-wing cliché when being serious. He is nasty to the weak, and weak when he needs to be nasty. His films are entertaining, often funny, and well put together, but such misdirected talent is an aggravating factor to his badness, not a mitigating one.



Edit: the first publication of this post included a paragraph in which I claimed Theroux would not make a documentary about transgenderism, due to the political sensitivity of the issue. It has since been pointed out to me that he made a film entitled "Transgender Kids", in which he interviews transexual child patients at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center (UCSF Hospital). I regret the oversight and have removed the paragraph.