Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm lamented, “To this day, I notice myself treating the memory and tradition of the USSR with indulgence and tenderness.”

I met up with a conservative former professor of mine, for a few rounds of drinks and some lively political conversation this past Thursday, as we do from time to time when he’s up north.

Although the good professor teaches Colonial History at a liberal British university and no doubt watches his P’s and Q’s around this particular former student, after several pints of ale and a few laughs, he’s typically quite forthright.

We touched on an array of topics over lunch, including Britain’s current immigration crisis, my ‘misguided decision’ to volunteer my services as spokesman for the British National Party, Nigel Farage’s being against maternity leave due to all the lasses he’s impregnated, and the All-Blacks incredible victory over the Aussies at last week’s Rugby World Cup Final.

As the third anniversary of Eric Hobsbawm’s death had just passed, I felt it befitting to introduce the man’s name into the conversation at some point.

After all, Marxist historian Hobsbawm had also read history at Cambridge, and in spite of his unrepentant Marxist views, is still widely regarded as Britain’s most influential historian.

“Were you aware that Eric Hobsbawm expired with almost two million quid to his name?” (1) I snickered, as I attempted to mop up wayward gravy with my third Yorkshire pudding.

My quintessentially Tory friend, attired in Harris Tweed from top to toe, who once after a few too many Pimm’s cocktails joked that Britain “should bomb the chorizo out of Buenos Aires if the Argies ever again invaded the Falklands”, was surprisingly indifferent.

“You’ll not find too many mainstream academics in this country with anything negative to say about Hobsbawm, Jack. The man’s generally regarded as the greatest British (2) historian of our time.”

I felt like reminding the good professor that the British Security Service had tracked and monitored the Egyptian-born Jewish academic (#211764 on MI5’s index of personal files) for decades due to their well-founded suspicion that he’d been collaborating with known Communists and Soviet spies against his host nation. (3)

To say I was astonished by my dining partner’s disregard would be an understatement of the grandest proportion. After all, Hobsbawm’s blatantly anti-British writing is responsible for the virulent left-wing bias infecting university history departments across the length and breadth of the country, as well as the fact that it has yielded an academic climate in which our best and brightest feel nought but shame for the role their ancestors played in building the planet. As Andrew Joyce noted, referring to Hobsbawm, Ralph Miliband, and Harold Laski,

they didn’t just “happen” to be Jewish. Both Hobsbawm and Laski were the intellectual leaders of the radical Left in Britain at that time. Miliband had other colleagues, many of whom were also Jewish, but the trifecta of Hobsbawm, Laski and Miliband was the engine-room of the anti-positivist, counter-cultural Left in Britain during the 1960s. All three played the public role of secular, atheist, unattached cosmopolitans while at the same time marrying and socializing exclusively within their race and pursuing Jewish interests with every written and spoken word.

Most notably, Hobsbawm claimed that “European nations were ‘ideological constructs’ created without a substantial grounding in immemorial lands, folkways, and ethnos” — an ideology that is ideally suited to the dispossession of the indigenous peoples of Europe. As Prof. Ricardo Duchesne notes,

Eric Hobsbawm, the highly regarded apologist of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, persuaded most of the academic world, in his book, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (1989), that the nation states of Europe were not created by a people sharing a common historical memory, a sense of territorial belonging and habitation, similar dialects and physical appearances; no, the nation-states of Europe were “socially constructed” entities, “invented traditions”, “imagined” by people perceiving themselves as part of a “mythological” group in an unknown past. Hobsbawm deliberately sought to discredit any sense of ethnic identity among Europeans by depicting their nation building practices as modern fairy-tales administered by capitalists and bureaucrats from above on a miscellaneous pre-modern population.

Hobsbawm’s work has undeniably tainted British historical legacy and has de-legitimized a sense of English or British identity. For how long this infection will last, I do not know.

Then there’s the fact that his words have glossed over a period of history so abjectly evil, an entire generation of students believe “Communism is viable, if done correctly.” This is something I was in fact told by pupils I lectured at an Ormskirk college during one of my parliamentary husting events.

After all, “only Marxists fight racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, white privilege and most importantly are fair to Gays.”

The scores of millions of corpses and devastation left in the Soviet Union’s wake, the hundreds of millions of lives ruined, the profoundly immoral and wicked deceptiveness of the ideology that massacred the peoples of Eastern Europe and Germany, have been omitted from the annals of history due entirely to academics like Hobsbawm, and as a result, a generation of our children have been lost in the rubble.

English author A N Wilson writes,

What is disgraceful about the life of Hobsbawm is not so much that he believed this poisonous codswallop, and propagated it in his lousy (poorly written) books, but that such a huge swathe of our country’s intelligentsia — the supposedly respectable media and chattering classes — bowed down before him and made him their guru and our ‘greatest historian’…..The truth is that, far from being a great historian who sometimes made mistakes, Hobsbawm deliberately falsified history. In his book The Age Of Extreme, published in 1994, he quite deliberately underplayed the Soviet Union’s attack on Finland in 1939–40, saying it was merely an attempt to push the Russian border a little further away from Leningrad. He also omits any mention of the massacre of 20,000 Polish soldiers by Russian Secret Police at Katyn. In his 1997 book On History, he wrote the following: ‘Fragile as the communist systems turned out to be, only a limited, even minimal, use of force was necessary to maintain them from 1957 until 1989.’ Ask the inhabitants of Prague, where Soviet tanks rolled into the streets in 1968, if they agreed with Hobsbawm that this was ‘minimal use of force’. Ask the millions of people who were taken from their homes by KGB thugs and forced to live, often for decades, in prison-camps throughout the Gulag, whether force had been ‘minimal’. These are not mistakes — they are wicked lies.”

Wicked lies that have conned a generation of our nation’s children, as well as apparently my former Cambridge-educated professor into believing the traitor’s legacy needs preserving.

Even though I didn’t exactly expect him to declare Hobsbawm a villain, I’d assumed he’d at least express some degree of indignation.

But, he exhibited no visible reaction. Although, the good professor could hardly be called a revisionist historian, he was ordinarily critical of blatant historical manipulation and academics guilty of it — except apparently on this occasion.

I sat wondering whether I should pursue the matter, or instead move onto another point of discussion. After all, we meet but once a semester and I certainly didn’t want to try his patience after he’d driven so far to see me.

Still, I couldn’t let it go in good conscience.

“Didn’t Hobsbawm publish a pamphlet extolling the virtues of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, as well as claim that Russia’s invasion of Finland was in the Finns’ best interests because … and I quote, ‘Finland needed protecting from British Imperialists’. … You’re about as close to a British Imperialist as I’ve ever met.” I prodded.

The professor looked at me with bemusement, before permanently changing the subject back to rugby.

Sadly, this is how the vast majority of historians and political commentators view Hobsbawm and his historiographical legacy.

From the leftist ideologues controlling 20th century orthodox historiography to so-called right leaning (4) Neocon darlings like Niall Ferguson, the mainstream consensus is, Eric Hobsbawm is the “greatest historian” to walk the face of the earth!

That Hobsbawm is one of the great historians of his generation is undeniable. With his extraordinary erudition and quick wit, Hobsbawm was one of the greatest historical conversationalists I have ever known. Hobsbawm’s quartet of books beginning with The Age of Revolution and ending with The Age of Extremes constitute the best starting point I know for anyone who wishes to begin studying modern history.

In Hobsbawm’s Guardian obituary (5), assistant editor and former Tony Blair advisor, Martin Kettle, wrote,

Had Eric Hobsbawm died 25 years ago, the obituaries would have described him as Britain’s most distinguished Marxist historian and would have left it more or less there. Yet by the time of his death at the age of 95, he had achieved a unique position in the country’s intellectual life. In his later years he became arguably Britain’s most respected historian of any kind, recognised if not endorsed on the right, as well as the left, and one of a tiny handful of historians of any era to enjoy genuine national and world renown. Unlike some others, Hobsbawm achieved this wider recognition without in any major way revolting against either Marxism or Marx.

And Hobsbawm is just as respected in the States.

In a 2003 article the New York Times referred to Hobsbawm as “one of the great British historians of his age, an unapologetic Communist and a polymath whose erudite, elegantly written histories are still widely read in schools here and abroad.”

Articles in several Murdoch publications also expressed admiration for the man.

And Hobsbawm is just as respected by the political elite as he is with the media and academia.

Tony Blair once referred to the Stalinist historian as ‘a giant of progressive politics history’ while former Labour leader, Ed Miliband opined,

Eric Hobsbawm was an extraordinary historian, a man passionate about his politics and a great friend of my family. His historical works brought hundreds of years of British history to hundreds of thousands of people. He brought history out of the ivory tower and into people’s lives. But he was not simply an academic; he cared deeply about the political direction of the country. Indeed, he was one of the first people to recognise the challenges to Labour in the late 1970s and 1980s from the changing nature of our society.

Only fellow Cambridge alumnus and indubitably the most honorable academic I’ve had the privilege of working with, the late Tony Judt — who is also in fact Jewish — has criticised Hobsbawm for his “nauseating bias in favour of the USSR, communist states and communism in general, and his tendency to disparage any nationalist movement as passing and irrational.” (6)

But what frustrates me most is not that deluded politicians like Ed Miliband and Tony Blair idolise subversives like Hobsbawm, or that mainstream pundits, journalists and commentators have all but canonised the man. It’s not even how he’s impacted how we view history and the appalling manner in which we indoctrinate our children.

It’s the blatant hypocrisy surrounding the man’s legacy.

If Hobsbawm had been an impenitent fascist instead of a lifelong supporter of the British Communist Party, would he be revered as he is?

Would former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, have bestowed the distinction of Companion of Honour upon him — one of the highest accolades it is possible to give a British academic — if he’d kept a shrine to Oswald Mosley in his Golders Green home? (Golders Green has a large Jewish population — another indication that he was a strongly identified Jew.)

Would the Left have lionised him as they’ve done for decades?

Certainly not. Hobsbawm would have been vilified as so many Fascist sympathisers have. One need only look at how the great Henry Ford is viewed by the American establishment, and the manner in which Edward VIII and Neville Chamberlain have been judged by orthodox British historians for their role in WWII.

I myself can hardly find a pub to hold my British Renaissance meetings in, due to the fact I had the audacity to question the allegiance of a local Friends of Israel leader turned MP, during my parliamentary election campaign.

“Unrepentant” Marxist to the Very End

Speaking in 1994 to author, Michael Ignatieff, (not to be confused with Noel Ignatiev, the Jewish-American Leftist academic who called for the death of all Whites) about the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of Communism, Hobsbawm was grilled about his earlier support for the Soviet state.

“If Communism had achieved its aims, but at the cost of, say, 15 to 20 million people — as opposed to the 100million it actually killed in Russia and China — would you have supported it?” Ignatieff asked.

Hobsbawm’s response — without an iota of reluctance in his frail 77-year-old voice — was a single emphatic syllable: ‘Yes’.” (See also the New York Times obituary.)

It mattered little he’d made millions huckstering in the capitalist system he supposedly loathed and left it to his family rather than the state or some other collectivist organisation. Nor did it matter that his daughter Julia — who doubtless benefited from inheriting her father’s money and has since been awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for Service to Business (yes, you can actually get knighted in Britain for helping rich people get richer) — is an enormously successful entrepreneur who via her public relations firm helped put New Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in power. (7) (Julia Hobsbawm founded Hobsbawm Macauley Communications with Gordon Brown’s wife, Sarah.)

In spite of all the evidence that Marxism is the single most destructive ideology ever spawned on this planet, Hobsbawm remained steadfast in his support of it.

And Hobsbawm’s not alone….

Thousands of miles from London, South African Marxist radical, Nadine Gordimer, was asked by BBC Hardtalk’s Stephen Sackur if majority rule was worth the rape, death and destruction her nation had seen since the rise of the African National Congress. (I will be covering Nobel Prize-winning Nadine Gordimer’s hypocrisy in a future article.)

She too, with little reservation in her frail, but vitriolic voice answered, “Yes, it most certainly was.”

Like Ralph and Ed Miliband, Nadine Gordimer, Yossel Slovo and a large percentage of academics espousing Marxist ideology, Hobsbawm was born into an Eastern bloc Ashkenazi immigrant family that fled continental Europe to the Anglosphere (rather than their beloved USSR) in the run up to WWII.

His destination of choice was Britain. His target — the values Britons held most dear ­— and weapon, his treacherous pen.

As with each of the aforementioned subversives, Hobsbawm showed an inclination towards Marxist radicalism early in life.

Prior to his arrival on British shores, Hobsbawm was an active subversive, first participating as a member of the German Sozialistischer Schülerbund (Society of Socialist Pupils) and Youth Communist League. Hobsbawm then joined the pro-Soviet German Communist Party, while regularly contributing to the infamous Frankfurt School of Critical Theory — an institution rightfully seen as influential in the demise of Western civilisation.

Upon his arrival in Britain, Hobsbawm immediately found himself involved with local Left-wing politics — an entirely mainstream activity for Jews during this period.

And like members many of the self-righteous Hampstead and Islington intelligentsia (8) sitting atop today’s Labour Party, Hobsbawm attended one of Britain’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, historic Cambridge University, from where he’d operate.

There he mingled with other Bollinger Bolsheviks and Soviet spies like Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, who’d also been recruited by Marxist academics with links to the former Soviet Union.

Hobsbawm would later chair the Communist Party Historians Group, and until his death in 2012, acted as president of Britain’s Marxist/Socialist Historical Society.

Most importantly, until his last breath, Eric Hobsbawm would remain an ardent supporter of the ideology that’s ruined the lives of so many, before securing his place as my nation’s “greatest historian.” In broad perspective, the lionisation of Hobsbawm and the coincident dispossession of the British people — submerged now in an orgy of guilt over their brilliant past fomented by Hobsbawm and his ilk — represent the supreme triumph of the Jewish left.

(1) John Stevens of the Daily Mail wrote that “Hobsbawm, who died aged 95 in October 2012, was one of Britain’s most eminent historians, but he was widely criticised for his defence of Communist regimes. A rich hypocritical idiot, it appears. According to records held at the Brighton probate office, Hobsbawm — who joined the Communist Party at the age of 14, and once described himself as an ‘unrepentant Communist’ — left an estate with assets totalling £1,835,341.”

(2) Although he is often referred to as a “British historian,”, Hobsbawm was born in Egypt to Austrian-Jewish parents. By swearing allegiance to Britain’s Cold War enemy Hobsbawm relinquished any right he may or may not have had to refer to himself as such. He is in fact as British as his ideological hero Antonio Gramsci is Italian, and equally as dangerous to Western values and host nation.

(3) The Guardian’s Richard Norton Taylor wrote that “Hobsbawm was subjected to persistent surveillance for decades as MI5 and police special branch officers tapped and recorded their telephone calls, intercepted their private correspondence and monitored their contacts, the files show. Some of the surveillance gave MI5 more details about their targets’ personal lives than any threat to national security.

The files, released at the National Archives on Friday, reveal the extent to which MI5, including its most senior officers, secretly kept tabs on the personal and professional activities of communists and suspected communists, a task it began before the Cold War.”

(4) Right leaning The Spectator (Atlanticist, pro-Israel, and Eurosceptic) magazine heavily influenced by American Neocon Irwin Stelzer, recently wrote that Hobsbawm was “arguably our greatest living historian—not only by Britain’s standards, but the world’s.”

(5) The Daily Mail reported that the Left wing Guardian filled a “front page and the whole of an inside page but also devoted almost its entire G2 Supplement to the news of his passing. The Times devoted a leading article to the death, and a two-page obituary.”

(6) According to Wikipedia, professor Tony Judt, who passed away in 2010 was a “British historian, essayist, and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University, and Director of NYU’s Erich Maria Remarque Institute. He was a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. In 1996 Judt was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.” Professor Judt was also a harsh critic of Israel, openly condemning the Jewish State’s exploitation of the Holocaust, and allegations of anti-Semitism to silence the Jewish State’s critics. He, in my opinion, is one of the world’s great European historians. However, due to his criticism of Zionist and American hegemony, he will never be seen as such.

(7) As per www.juliahobsbawm.com. “Julia is the world’s first professor of Networking, having been made Honorary Visiting Professor by London’s Cass Business School….She speaks to corporate and public sector audiences alike about her key topics of networks, networking and Social Health; Inclusion in the workplace; and entrepreneurialism. Recent keynotes, panel appearances and presentations include; Accenture (multinational management consulting); Barclays Plc (Bank); Quartz.com’s The Next Billion conference; EY; IKEA; SONY; INFORMA Plc (multinational publishing and events company); WPP’s Stream (advertising and public relations company); Foreign & Commonwealth Office….” Some Marxist!

(8) George Orwell once stated that “however silly or sentimental, English patriotism is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia.” George Orwell penned those powerful words three quarters of a century ago. However, I for one, think it is high time we pay heed to his wise words.

Taken from Orwell’s review of Malcolm Muggeridge‘s The Thirties, in New English Weekly (25 April 1940).