Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple (Author, journalist, physician, psychiatrist)
Born	Anthony Malcolm Daniels 11 October 1949 Kensington, London
Nationality	UK
British conservative writer and cultural critic

Anthony Malcolm Daniels, also known by the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, is an English cultural critic, prison physician and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the East End of London. Before his retirement in 2005, he worked in City Hospital, Birmingham and Winson Green Prison in inner-city Birmingham, England.

Daniels is a contributing editor to City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, where he is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow. In addition to City Journal, his work has appeared in: The British Medical Journal, The Times, New Statesman, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Salisbury Review, National Review, New English Review, The Wall Street Journal and Axess magasin. He is the author of a number of books, including: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass; Our Culture, What's Left of It and Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality.

In his writing, Daniels frequently argues that the socially liberal and progressive views prevalent within Western intellectual circles minimise the responsibility of individuals for their own actions and undermine traditional mores, contributing to the formation within prosperous countries of an underclass afflicted by endemic violence, criminality, sexually transmitted diseases, welfare dependency, and drug abuse. Much of Dalrymple's writing is based on his experience of working with criminals and the mentally ill.

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.””
Theodore Dalrymple

Life

Daniels was born in Kensington, London. His father was a Communist businessman of Russian ancestry, while his Jewish mother was born in Germany. She came to England as a refugee from the Nazi regime. His grandfather had been a major in the German Army during WW1.

His work as a physician took him to: Southern Rhodesia (now, Zimbabwe), Tanzania, South Africa and the Gilbert Islands (now, Kiribati). He returned to the United Kingdom in 1990, where he worked in London and Birmingham.

In 2005, he retired early as a consultant psychiatrist. He has a house in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and also a house in France.

Regarding his pseudonym "Theodore Dalrymple", he wrote that he "chose a name that sounded suitably dyspeptic, that of a gouty old man looking out of the window of his London club, port in hand, lamenting the degenerating state of the world".

Opinions

“The British government has managed to spend approximately $50 billion on a system for testing and tracing cases of COVID-19. So far, the average citizen has been tested five times. Yet mysteriously, the British mortality rate is either above, or very similar to, that of countries that have tested and traced much less often. A parliamentary commission reported that there was no evidence that the whole system had had any beneficial effect whatever.
This was a very hasty and naive conclusion. It assumed, for example, that the real object of the system was to prevent illness and save lives. But if one puts aside this facile prejudice, one may come to the conclusion that it was an enormous success, for—in now traditional fashion—it shoveled enormous quantities of public money into private pockets, no doubt seriously enriching large numbers of people. If one assumes that the purpose of the expenditure was to create or reward a clientele class, not only does everything become clear, but it changes one’s opinion as to whether or not the whole thing was a success—in its own terms, of course.”
Theodore Dalrymple

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
National Conservative Conference	15 May 2023	17 May 2023	London United Kingdom	A 2023 conference on Conservativism

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