> That people may have intellectual or cultural commitments hardly seems worthy of denigration as "performative".

Indeed, and it seems highly unlikely that Hobsbawm would wait fifty-plus years in order to stage some kind of self-servingly virtuous performance. That kind of dubious honor must surely go to politicians, who recycle the tropes of their adolescence into public policy that affects us all, at a distance of maybe only 30 years from their lived experience.

Side note: contra Hobsbawm, I assert that the 20th century didn't end in 1990, but on 9/11/2001.