MAIMON SCHWARZSCHILD ON scholars with anger-management problems. “Almost incoherent with hatred.”

Schama and Sachs are not isolated cases, of course. This sort of talk has become commonplace among people who used to be liberal but serious, sophisticated, and certainly not hysterical. You hear it from public figures like Schama and Sachs, and you hear it very commonly in private, from left-of-centre (or once left of centre, but now seethingly leftist) friends and acquaintances.

What is going on? I can’t claim to explain it. Surely part of the story is that you can get away with it, or you might reasonably feel you can: the (One-Party) media will never criticise such talk, or even cover it in a way that might expose it unfavourably. But this is surely not the whole story. If anything it’s a symptom as much as a cause. So why, in the early 21st century, do a great many people proud of their sophistication talk, and sometimes write, like Communist hacks in the 1930s? There seems to be a weird kind of political tribalism at work: this kind of talk marks you as “one of us”. Still: I don’t really get it.

From the comments: “Leftist intellectuals dislike capitalism because it has virtually no use for them, and they cannot stand to be ignored.” Yes, socialism places a much greater premium on sucking up to those in power and parroting the current party line, something that almost anyone who achieves a Ph.D. has necessarily acquired skill at.