Arguments, fights and feuds have their own inner logic, and they lead to people taking up positions and attitudes that make little sense on a rationalistic model of what beliefs we ought to have. But sometimes, even in the middle of such a quarrel, we get a sense of where it’s going, how it is defining and entrenching us and the other person. David Aaronovich “captures something of this”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1254827,00.html in today’s Guardian:
bq. I wrote a year ago that other peoples’ assumptions were turning me into a Jew. And now I began to wonder whether being attacked as being anti-Muslim because of my views on Iraq and secularism, and despite my views on Palestine and racism, wasn’t beginning to make me the thing that I was being accused of. Bugger it then, you half-think, if that’s what you want.
bq. But if that’s how I feel, wonderfully rational bloke that I am, what in heaven’s name is the effect on people from the Muslim community who are being wrongly stopped in the name of counter-terrorism? Doesn’t that mean the warnings about alienation are essentially correct? Last Friday’s announcement of the police stop and search statistics were like a bucket of iced water in the face. A 300% increase in the number of Asians stopped, and you just know that most of these will be young men. And we also know from the sus laws and the experiences of black BMW drivers, what the reaction is. Fuck you.
{ 3 comments }
Conrad barwa 07.06.04 at 1:19 pm
I don’t know about the gist of Aaronovitch’s argument; there seems to be more than a whiff of self-justification linked to his positions in the war and I am unclear as to what exactly he means by “other people’s assumptions were turning me into a Jew†I didn’t read exhaustively his articles on the ME and regional politics but many of his supposed criticisms of anti-war arguments and some Left positions struck me as tilting against strawmen.
As for his arguments re: Asian youth; well perhaps, though I am not exactly convinced. I think he must have had a slightly rosy picture of what race relations were like even before recent events to think that alienation was already quite bad and while a 300% rise in S&S can’t help I wonder whether it will make all that much difference. My own experience is that it is an inconvenience and at worst an irritation but the police are fairly polite and efficient – of course I could just be setting low expectations to be fulfilled here. If repeated substantially it can get very burdensome but most people I know have a very pragmatic attitude towards this kind of thing and have accepted it as inevitable given the current climate.
Jack 07.06.04 at 2:55 pm
I thought this was a fine and perceptive article. I think Mr. Aaronovitch had a fair dose of the intoxication that affects radicals and subversives when they find themselves on the same side as the establishment. I read this article as honest reflection leading to an epiphany. It makes a point beyond the “i’m right so they must be wrong” ones that characterise comment on the police searches and might allow some people to talk without being at cross purposes. Best thing I’ve read by him since he took his kids to the British Museum.
flavour of lots of debate about these issues.
des von bladet 07.06.04 at 6:20 pm
Other people’s assumptions turned me into a penguin.
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