Daniel Finkelstein On Hitler, Stalin, And His Mum And Dad

His memoir is a defense of ordinary life against ideology.

Danny is a journalist, politician, and old friend. Formerly an adviser to Prime Minister John Major, he was appointed to the House of Lords in 2013. He’s a former executive editor of The Times of London and is still there as a weekly political columnist. He’s also a director of Chelsea Football Club. His latest book is Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family (the title in the UK is way, way better: Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad). It’s an astonishingly well-researched thriller of a story.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — comparing the horrors of the Soviets and the Nazis, and whether Anne Frank would have been a Justin Bieber fan — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up in Hendon (“my parents chose it because it wasn’t exciting”); his grandfather Alfred as “one of the great archivists of the 20th century”; his work contributed to the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the Hitler/Stalin pact; their carving up of Poland; the purging of the bourgeois; “If you spoke Esperanto or had stamp collection you were considered a spy”; the horrific cattle-trucks into the Soviet interior meant to cull the weak; the gulags; the state collective farms; working for your food; keeping captives on the bring of starvation; the Katyn Massacre; the devastation in Ukraine; Danny’s relatives who knew Anne Frank as a neighbor in Amsterdam; the dangerous extremes of group identity; “the liberating value of truth”; the main crime of the Jews was their success; the question of Zionism; the Jewish Labour tradition; Danny’s experience as a Jewish Tory; and his mum attending his induction into the House of Lords.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Neil J. Young on his history of the gay right, Eli Lake on Israel and foreign affairs, Adam Moss on the artistic process, Johann Hari on weight-loss drugs, Bill Maher on everything, George Will on Trump and conservatism, and Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Last week’s pod was a big hit:

Thank you for a terrific conversation with Richard Dawkins! You brought out the best in him (as you always do with your guests). And your gracious apology at the beginning of the interview was so generous. It set the table for a respectful and fascinating conversation.

Be sure to check out his substack. His latest post addresses a mutual friend of ours: “Is Ayaan a Christian? Am I a Christian?” The two of them, by the way, are headlining a conference called “Dissident Dialogues” in NYC the weekend of May 3 (along with many other faces that Dishcast fans will recognize), sponsored by the great peeps at UnHerd.

Here’s a small dissent:

I enjoy the podcasts and look forward to them weekly, and I’ve been anticipating this one with Dawkins for a while!

I had to laugh out loud at his assertion that in America “you can criticize Christianity but you can’t criticize Islam. You can’t criticize transsexualism,” etc. I invite you both to Christmas dinner with my extended family in Dallas! I know you’re talking about a liberal elite groupthink, and I know you know that American opinion is more varied than that, but thinking back to the countless gatherings where I’ve had to bite my tongue, lest I be run out of the county on pitchforks for a liberal thought, made me laugh at the portrayal on offer. Maybe I should stopped biting my tongue and embrace the boisterous Irish family approach instead, but it’s just not our way, sugar.

I think he meant in public. But point taken. Another fan of the Dawkins pod:

It’s interesting to listen to two people who have good intentions and mutual respect try to understand each other’s religious beliefs. It’s also rare, which is why I so appreciated this episode! I was especially intrigued by how you and Dawkins reacted differently to the idea of a universe without a divine plan and without the promise of an afterlife. You find the idea bleak and depressing, while Dawkins does not. As an atheist myself, I have a hypothesis about this. Because we atheists never had this promise of a heavenly father who would look after us and reward us when we die, we don’t feel a sense of loss about it. But I can imagine to a Christian, to have this promise and then to imagine it taken away, would be horrible.

The deeper point, I think, is whether it is possible to be a human being in a universe that is going nowhere and means nothing. I don’t think Richard even sees beyond the empirical.

Another listener has a question for me:

I’m not seeking to persuade you of anything, just curious, but why don’t you think Jesus accomplished the miracles he said he did? It seems to me that the people who wrote the Gospels believe He did, and given His status as God — the omnipotent pinnacle of the order of being and foundation of reality itself — it’s entirely plausible that Jesus did go around performing miracles. After all, if He wanted to demonstrate his divinity to His followers, as part of his teaching — they were clearly intended to persuade — he could probably do better than, say, boil a kettle. A miracle is out of the ordinary by definition.

Anyway, thanks for all the good work. The Dishcast is a beacon of hope in our disintegrating society and a source of interesting and entertaining conversations with people who add texture and vibrancy to my thoughts and beliefs.

Perhaps I’d better say: I don’t think the miracles are necessary to see the radicalism of Jesus’ message and conduct. And that it is hard to see the world as a person in first-century Palestine would. What I’m against is insisting that Christianity is an intellectual acceptance of empirical events. It’s so much more than that.

This next listener has a guest rec:

A few things arise from your talk with Dawkins. First, you mentioned transubstantiation and seemed to present it as a unique ritual, something new in the world. However, as I am sure you know, ritual cannibalism was not unknown at that time, before and since. As with a number of ideas and rituals in both the Hebrew and Christian traditions, many came from earlier civilizations and were adapted to fit particular stories. Is it possible that Jesus’ offering of his body and blood was a similar story?

Second, while I cannot fault Mr. Dawkins on his logic, or yours, perhaps the newer findings in archaeology and anthropology, as described in the new publication The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, suggest that the theory of cultural evolution as similar to biological evolution needs revising. Specifically, if I follow the book’s argument, the idea that human cultures evolved from primitive and simple, to less primitive and more complex structures, may not be supported by these findings. They suggest that early civilizations were much more diverse and complex than that older idea would have us believe.

While Mr. D and you based some of your arguments on that idea of evolution from primitive to modern, a look at Dawn of Everything is in order. (I do warn you that it’s a very long book: almost 530 pages and about 100 pages of notes.) Maybe a discussion with those authors on the Dishcast could be in the future.

Another rec:

I suspect that Dawkins’ reference to the “God hypothesis,” and his dismissal thereof, relates to his nemesis: Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, the former geophysicist and college professor. Meyer has written extensively about intelligent design and is author of the book Return of the God Hypothesis. I highly recommend the book, but caution that it dives deeply into biology, cosmology, physics and reasoning. I hope you’ll consider inviting Meyer on your podcast. He is engaging, highly intelligent and downright enjoyable.

Also, a thought about faith for your consideration. Faith is not about belief or trust. Faith is something else — the bridging of one’s consciousness with the supernatural natural. Can one define how consciousness works? No. Nor can one describe the fabric of the supernatural. Therefore, faith. And you and I are so blessed to have it!

Well, I have it from time to time, and I go through periods where it feels as if I don’t. Here’s a rec for a future topic:

I greatly enjoyed your discussion with Dawkins. I wonder why some people can change religious faith with apparent ease and others appear permanently rooted. Camus said in one of his notebooks from the late 1940s, “If, to outgrow nihilism, one must return to Christianity, one may well follow the impulse and outgrow Christianity in Hellenism.” Perhaps a future column or episode might talk about whether any other faiths have appealed to you, or seemed likely to meet your needs.

Many listeners keep asking to get Sam Harris on the pod again, so maybe we could talk about Buddhism. I’m gonna ask him to do your quadrennial election preview. Or maybe that would be too depressing.

One more topic rec:

Love the show! I have been a listener for years, and have heard you reference Michael Oakeshott many times to make many interesting points. I most enjoy the shows where you have philosophers on, and so I wonder if there’s a guest with whom you could explore Oakeshott’s ideas in depth?

There are several of course. I just don’t want to get too much in the weeds, but thanks for the nudge. A podcast would certainly help expose him more widely, and help people see that there is a conservative tradition well worth, er, conserving, which is larger, deeper and wider than the current manifestations.

Another listener is “catching up on the Abigail Shrier episode”:

Around the 47-minute mark, you spoke about how trauma you experienced as a child may have shaped you as an adult. I know that is what happened to me. My father is a covert narcissist. He was bullying, cruel, manipulative, erratic, alcoholic and pathologically dishonest. Laypeople often think that PTSD results from singular traumatic events, such as those that might occur in a war or sexual assault. But there is also something called CPTSD (the C is for “complex”), and it is analogous to death by a thousand cuts.

That’s what I have. When I was a teen and into college I had a serious anxiety disorder — trichotillomania. I would compulsively pull my thin little whiskers out of my face until it was red and raw. Oh how I wish an adult in my life had noticed what I was going through and gotten me to a therapist.

Trauma, as Gabor Mate remarked, is “not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside of you as a result of what happened to you.” Shrier may be onto something about a change in our culture, but she does not come across as particularly knowledgeable about the many varieties of childhood trauma and how harmful it can be.

I’m in the middle here. I do think childhood trauma can be central to adult dysfunction — and unpacking that, getting on top of it, is really helpful. But the trauma doesn’t define me; it doesn’t control me. It just affects me, and acknowledging that helps me avoid the worst aspects of self-sabotage.

The praise for Christian Wiman keeps coming:

That was one of the best Dishcasts I’ve listened to, and it left me with a tear in my eye at the end. I will buy his book, and his poetry. I had never heard of Christian Wiman before, so thank you for opening up a new chapter for me as I re-embrace being a Catholic.

This next reader kicks off an excellent thread over my latest column, “What Have I, What Have I Done To Deserve This?”:

Loving the PSB headline. Made my entire day. Thanks for another great read.

From a reader in NYC:

I’ve lived here since 1978, so I was here for the boombox years. Perhaps I was just younger and more tolerant, but I never got riled up about boomboxes. They weren’t nearly as ubiquitous as phones and Bluetooth speakers are now. And the music was better back then.

These days, if it weren’t for over-ear headphones and noise-cancelling AirPods, it would absolutely be WWIII in the NYC transit system. Between the high-pitched casino noise of video games, ear-splitting TV novellas, non-stop FaceTime blathering, and blasts of bass-heavy rap, every subway and bus ride now presents the real threat of a high-risk cardio event. Noise is the #1 quality of life complaint in NYC. And that’s sayin’ somethin’ these days! So thank you for this fantastic post. I’m sure you’ll get many responses.

Indeed we did. As one reader puts it, “YOU ARE NOT ALONE.” Another is reminded of a movie scene:

As I read your complaint about people pumping out their taste in the music into public spaces, I immediately thought of this scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (released in 1986; the problem has been around for a while):

Another reader wishes she could fight back:

You’re a man after my own heart where loud music in public is concerned! Thank you for expressing my views exactly. My husband suspects that my antipathy for the loud blasting in public is because I don’t like that particular kind of music. No, it would be just as rude for me to blast Bach or the Beatles (or how about John Philip Sousa) so that EVERYONE is forced to listen. How would they like that?? Maybe as a 66-year-old lady I could get away with pleasantly asking people to turn it way down (assuming I could feign composure), but I doubt it.

From a fellow beagle lover:

People look at me like I’m from another planet when I tell them I prefer to walk the dog while NOT listening to music, a podcast, audio book, etc. — I just like to walk, enjoy the familiar surroundings and yes, keep an eye on my Beagle Mistress to see what street delicacy I can keep from adding to my vet bill this month. (Dead things are her favorite.)

Things got really tense with this reader:

At the beach we’ve visited for almost 30 years, there are now often dueling, giant speakers, usually playing a mix of bad country and bad rap (which somehow makes sense; everything about the spectacle is tasteless). Last summer while I was concerned about the music, my short-tempered husband was going to say something regrettable to a nearby offender when my on-the-spectrum son wandered over and asked them to turn it down. The man, who was probably 35, lunged out of his beach chair toward my then 20 year old. I’m not sure what he intended to do, but he was so drunk he fell face first into the sand.

Then a woman who appeared to be his mother started screaming at her son and sent him back to their beach house. The next day she made him turn it off when she arrived. Which was great, but a 35-year-old father of three shouldn’t need a babysitter in public.

Another reader also conveys the violent stakes of confronting the loud and obnoxious:

When we first moved to Fresno a few years ago, ghetto blasters were (largely) unknown to me. They became a daily feature and nightly torture.

Never have I ever had my life threatened before.

Living in Fresno and asking neighbors to turn down their music has resulted in four separate instances of death threats, and twice as many instances of epithet-filled and tequila-fueled harangues (towards both me and my wife). At one point I raised the issue with our city councilman who lives one street over from us. I was informed both that I did not understand the cultural importance of the music, and also that the councilman did not share my priorities. When I pointed out that I was asking for enforcement of the local ordinance, I was informed that he would be very interested in scheduling another meeting … and oh, by the way, would I be interested in making a campaign donation before setting said meeting up?

Last November, after yet another instance of my house shaking from the edifying strains of (fill in the blank of a bass-boosted gentleman busting rhymes about how he fancies doing unspeakable things to his lady’s whatnot), and after asking — nay, yelling — from 10 feet away to please turn down the music, we were met with rocks thrown through our front windows every night over Thanksgiving weekend. Appeals to law enforcement were met with stern warnings, such as “be careful who you talk to” and “people have been killed in this town over far less” and “it’s only music; what’s your problem?”

Needless to say we moved.

I think more and more people will get out of these shit-hole cities. Another writes:

You somehow omitted mention of boom-box-level noise from neighboring CARS. I mean, please. There is no way to punish these people without wrecking your own car, so I wish for them the loss of hearing.

Another reader “thought of you when I saw this”:

This next reader’s health is at risk:

I share your frustration at the self-absorption of noisy people. I too worry about the inability to escape, and what it does to our souls when we can’t find quiet. For me, it’s also a health issue. I have had a pacemaker since I was 21 years old (now in my 50s). I’ve discovered that a really strong bass throws off my pacemaker. I’m not sure what the actual science is behind it. What I do know is that I have to leave that space because I experience major nausea when my heart rhythm is off. This has happened in coffee shops when the guy living above the shop is playing music so loudly that I can’t even order at the counter without getting sick, let alone stay to enjoy my java. I’ve had the same issue at beaches and even in my home, when someone is driving by with their bass pounding.

Yet another:

Your rant about public noise was great. You probably have it worse than I do with “public music” in a big metro area, but it’s bad enough in my smallish Florida beach town. Also, where I am, I find the propensity of Harley-Davidson to remove the mufflers very annoying.

So do Matt and Trey:

And another:

KUDOS for your Dish about sound pollution! Please do a similar rant about the “fast and furious” idiots with whale tails on their Nissans who take their mufflers off and make more noise than motorcycles, which are ALSO way too loud. When you set off car alarms in your wake — a second-order, exponential noise increase — that’s nature telling you that you’re doing something wrong. Nevermind the kids, moms, hardworking first responders, doctors, nurses, etc. who need to sleep.

Another: “Also have pity on us suburban Americans who are subjected to the noise of giant lawnmowers and other gas-powered landscaping tools from spring through fall!” Jim Fallows has been on a decades-long crusade against the dreaded leaf-blower. Another:

What I find most infuriating are people who have loud cell-phone conversations, particularly in enclosed spaces. This happened to me recently, in a small airport waiting room where everyone was quietly waiting to board. A woman was loudly conversing on her speakerphone; we were stuck listening not only to her shrill voice, but to the grating sound of the person on the other end of the conversation. This went on forever, and I started to lose my mind. What most outraged me was the woman’s complete and total obliviousness — no awareness that there were 20 people sitting just a few feet away. This is what eats away at my soul. It’s the pure selfishness of it all — which somehow, in my mind, ties in with everything else that’s wrong with the world right now.

Agreed. And this general sense of things falling apart is grist for rightwing populism. We need another Giuliani; but in this era, we may get a Mussolini if were not careful.

From an OG Dishhead:

I last wrote to you about 20 years ago on the Daily Dish, when I was awarded an Email of the Day (or similar) for a minor piece of comedy. Less amusingly, I read your piece on the noise blight, and I’m afraid to inform you that the quiet car on the Metro-North train disappeared during the pandemic. It was once a beacon of sanity and peace (especially if you sat near the Shushing Old Lady reading a Maeve Binchy novel who would always fearlessly police the car), but it’s gone and unlikely to come back. Nowadays, Metro-North is just assholes yammering away on cellphones the entire length of the train while their every text announces its arrival with a loud ping. Oh, and their kids playing freemium games without headphones.

There’s no way to win this battle. Public civility is dead, and asking people to be considerate simply does not work. I don’t bother anymore, because these are morons who genuinely do not comprehend what you’re complaining about. They’re terrified to be alone with their own thoughts — possibly because they don’t have any — or terrified to experience a minute of silence.

You must therefore regulate, as best you can, your surroundings. The obvious means are AirPods and similar tools (e.g. silicone ear plugs), but to my mind the optimal solution is to spend money to buy quiet — that is, to seal yourself off from your fellow man by erecting insurmountable financial, social, and personal barriers between you and them. As your shrink might say, it gives you a respite from being subjected to their desires.

I think the ironic pity of it all is that while we’re instructed that “technology brings us together,” all technology has done, at least for me, is to convince me to amputate myself from the community as often as I can.

I feel you. Another way to cope:

All I can say is thank you for highlighting this simultaneously trivial and all too important issue. There is now a clear divide in society between those who value having control of their attention vs those who nihilistically give it away. I don’t get mad at the zombies who scroll social media endlessly on public transportation. The price they pay for surrendering all agency to Zuck or the CCP is paid exclusively by them. But the music blasters are intentionally trying to fuck with my attention and ability to think. In that regard, they are the true zombies: braindead and trying to kill others.

I also try to avoid confrontation, but have often been tempted to ask if the DJ Nobody Asked For takes requests. In my fantasy, they respond with a confused look, to which I’d respond, “If you are going to force us to listen to your music, you should at least have good taste.”

Another tactic comes from this reader:

In terms of loud music, I was walking on a trail that is extremely popular and was full. No one had loud music — except for one jerk who dresses like the Joker and has a boom box playing ‘70s/’80s music, and you can hear him coming from several hundred feet away. How to fight back? Play this track at the loudest possible — Sutherland at her finest, la stupenda!

Yet another approach:

I have a friend who fights back against passengers on planes who blather on their cell phones before takeoff. When they start talking, he starts reading out loud whatever he happens to be reading. When they stop talking, he stops reading. He says they think he’s crazy, but it works every time.

Better than howling like a dog, I guess. A tactic for private spaces:

Condo living is heaven or hell depending on asshole neighbours. I had hives for seven months caused by the thumping base of a neighbour’s stereo (at any time of day or night), and no amount of requesting by us — or the condo lawyers — could make them desist. Finally, my husband I turned our stereo speakers right up to the adjoining wall and hit back with opera at full volume every time their thumping base was turned on.

They sold up within three months and were gone.

The new neighbour was blessedly quiet. And 18 years later, we were able to buy that condo and broke through to give us 2000 sq. feet of space — fabulous during the Covid lockdowns.

Another kind of noise complaint:

In rural Texas, a similar problem exists with gunfire. If your neighbor wants to blast away at all hours, there is nothing you can do about it. You sure as hell aren’t going to shout “You asshole!” at a fellow sharpening his AR-15 skills. Especially not these days!

I know that most people in these parts want freedom for guns. I would love some freedom from them.

Another writes, “For me, the final frontier was the golf course”:

It used to be a place of relative solitude and quiet pierced only by occasional sound of “Fore!” (required) and cries of dismay, cursing, or the all-too-infrequent cheer for a birdie or eagle. Those were all the golfer’s right. But now every other group has a speaker attached to their cart (I prefer to walk), blaring what seems to be uniformly bad music. I refuse to play with anyone blasting their music — good or bad, but even then you cannot escape the noise from adjacent holes. Alas, it seems we are lonely voices crying in the wilderness (or in my case, in the deep rough).

Another quotes Billy Joel from “Close to the Borderline”:

“I get attacked by a kid with stereo sound
I don’t want to hear it but he won’t turn it down”

Just a quick not of appreciation for your column on the ubiquitous scourge of public broadcasting of music, entertainment and conversations. Yours is the first op-ed I have read on this subject, and it’s a needed voice. I thought I was alone in my intense resentment of these idiots. I encounter an ever-increasing number of kids playing games and watching shows over their devices with volume turned up. With their oblivious parents nearby and offering no reproach, no wonder these kids grow up into self-absorbed adults with no regard for the feelings or experiences of others.

Another stays calm:

As I read your piece on my train home, by the end I was agreeing so emphatically that I wanted to get up and cheer. But of course, being a Brit, I wouldn’t dare make such a scene in public …

Another looks abroad:

I just returned from France and Italy, where the public spaces are noticeably quiet, absent of any music. People are much more courteous. But lo and behold, I am in the Delta terminal at LAX and they are blasting on the public sound system the most obnoxious blend of hyper-shrill, idiot pop/rock while I’m trying work on my laptop waiting for my flight. Impossible.

In the USA, we are mindlessly stuck in the teenage years. I think Americans want to be overstimulated and over caffeinated and listen to any sound, anytime, from anywhere. I complained and complained to Delta, “I thought you were a class act, the business airline. This music induces anxiety” — and they just shrug their shoulders: “Yeah, WE don’t like the music either, and WE have to listen to it all day long.”

Further reading from this reader:

The blight of public noise is a cross-generational loathing. I wrote about this ages ago. The guy who invented the loudspeaker ended up working for the mafia. Sadly, they didn’t clip him soon enough.

Speaking of the mob, “When you’re back at Herring Cove this summer, here’s hoping that you are spared such visitors”:

Dean Martin would be a serious improvement over a Kyle Minogue remix, but point taken. Another has a suggestion:

I go to Provincetown in the summer and I also notice the loud music from boats at Herring Cove. Why not go to Race Point Beach instead? I prefer going there; it’s cleaner and much quieter. Plus, it’s usually not overcrowded, even in the summer.

Hatches Harbor too. But that is a form of surrender.

Another reader sends a quote “from Socrates, who read your comments reminding him of Gen Ancient Greece”:

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

Not Socrates, I fear. But the description does sound very close to his understanding of what happens in a late-stage democracy. One more reader:

If, somehow, your piece catches on among influential opinion makers and thought leaders, and there is some shift of basic norms away from our current state of constant noise making, then that will be your greatest legacy — eclipsing all you have done for gay people and their dignity.

I’m not kidding. I would trade in my gay marriage rights for a society where people were not complete assholes in the way they have destroyed the livability of cities. (I’m in Philth-adelphia, which is quickly becoming a hellscape.)

So much for brotherly love. See you next Friday.

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