soru

Let’s put it in words of one syllable, shall we?

If your petit-bourgeois lifestyle is precarious and seems to be under attack, the temptation is to look for an external attacker rather than to consider the reasons why it is precarious. It’s a lot easier to swallow the idea that you’re being put out of business because of some conspiracy of evil international bankers than it is to swallow the possibility that you might just be screwed because the economic system is buggy—because the conspiracy theory holds out the promise of a quick fix (if you shoot the conspirators). When the economic or social pressure heats up, fools turn to conspiracy theories and prejudice instead of looking for underlying causes of the malaise.

Today we live in a globalized world. It costs about one month’s average earnings for a citizen of a developed country, and takes about 48 hours, to reach the antipodes. Back in 1806, that’s about what it would have cost (and taken) to travel halfway across England, or across one of the New England states, by stage coach. We are living cheek by jowl with people who we don’t know and don’t much care for, and in many cases they don’t care much for us, either. Meanwhile, actions taken at home reverberate around this shrunken world in much the same way that events happening in a town ten miles down the road would have reverberated back in regency England.

So we’re harvesting a bumper crop of conspiracies and racism, the liberalism of fools, as Ken put it. It’s easier to blame the strangers than to grapple with the possibility that the current world situation—for which we are partially responsible—puts their concerns square in our lap, or that big corporations working out of our capitals can upset them by tripling the price of drinking water or publishing offensive cartoons.

Finally, There’s the classic mistaken assumption that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. It’s an error that Hitchens and others, liberals who should have known better, fell into. Having decided that radical Islam was a direct threat (rather than the system that resulted in the production of a violent, radical Islamicist movement on our doorstep) they lent their support to the Strong Man who promised to hold the threat at bay—ignoring the evidence that his faction are largely responsible for the existence of the threat in the first place. It’s the same error as the 1930s liberals who backed Stalin unconditionally because he was opposed to fascism; or the 1930s conservatives who wanted to back off on that nice Mr Hitler because he was tough on communism.

“But still, there it was: a religion identified with reaction, and progressives with a blind spot about a powerful state that they saw as that religion’s most formidable foe.”

And there you have it. Nasty xenophobia being harnessed to support a strongly nationalistic, not to say racist, regime. Couldn’t happen here, could it?

It could be American progressives railing against Christian conservatives and, liberals opposing political Zionism, or Europeans fearing Muslim minorities.

Look to American religious conservatives who criticize the boogeyman of “secular humanism” or communists who speak of “capitalist pigs.”

There is an unsettling human instinct to define an enemy and hate with an unreasoning, righteous rage. Progressive intellectuals are no more immune than anyone else, no matter how rational they think they are.

Jimmy Doyle: “I only meant to imply that mainstream leftist opinion in the Europe and the UK at the time of 9/11 was antipathetic to the general culture of the Bush US.”

Oh, and why should any ‘mainstream leftist’ anywhere feel anything other than antipathy for the “Bush” US?
Is that similar to the “Thatcherite” UK?

And if you weren’t already aware, ‘mainstream leftist’ is entirely oxymoronic only in one country on this planet. I’d love to be a mainstream leftist, but we have no one but green-haired teenagers wearing T shirts that say “Noam Chomsky is God”
and then some people who call themselves ‘liberals.’ And they’re guilty enough about that.

I’d also try to change the subject from “The Muslims involved with the violent protests are protesting the cartoons” to “The Muslims involved with the violent protests have a huge list of grievances (which, co-incidentally, is similar to a list of my own) and this cartoon issue is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

In our favor? I’m not one of those who insult Muslims gratuitously and why would I want to make moral judgment in their favor? Our enemies? I don’t have any enemies, especially not in this situation.

The only true exceptionless generalisations beginning “The Muslims…” are those detailing Islamic religious practices.

I’d also try to change the subject from “The Muslims are protesting the cartoons” to “The Muslims have a huge list of grievances (which, co-incidentally, is similar to a list of my own) and this cartoon issue is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. Wait, I shouldn’t use that simile, I need to find one more inclusive…”

Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I only meant to imply that mainstream leftist opinion in the Europe and the UK at the time of 9/11 was antipathetic to the general culture of the Bush US. Far from being a caricature or a strawman, I don’t see how this can be denied. What’s more, for a substantial portion of leftists this amounted to straightforward bigotry, and still does. Decca Aitkenhead in the Guardian mentioned recently, in an entirely matter-of-fact way, that if she spent a holiday in New York City, everyone in her London circle would disapprove to the extent of demanding an explanation. Rick Moody, a couple of weeks ago, in a Guardian article on Brokeback Mountain, casually referred to the US as “arguably the most homophobic nation on earth.” This can only mean that, for him, and the many who read such sentiments without demur, any slur will do. The examples are somewhat scattered, but there are quite a few more, and they mean something.