Straw man of the week

Islamists should appeal to non-religious sources as a basis for blowing up themselves and, more particularly, others.

… a mindset brought to almost parodical levels by the collective mindset of some of the Biased BBC bloggers and almost all of their commentators.

Mostly, it relies on a siege mentality drawn on the successful model of US-based right wing bloggers and the following inalienable truths:

– There is a vast left wing conspiracy, chiefly among the media, but with innumerable treasonous footsoldiers.
– Left wing = out of touch/elitist/self-serving. Where right wing, logically = clearsighted/common man/for the good of man.
– Bias for the left wing includes (in the UK) includes merely commenting, without mentioning they are the son of Satan, on any Liberal Democrat, Labour, or Europhilic/Centrist Conservative, any environmentalist, critic of the US, any muslim etc etc.
– Except where any of the above says something which posters/commentators agree with, in which case the bias is merely against pro-War Labour or all Conservatives.
– The BBC website can be parsed ad nauseam. Except where it proves B-BBC wrong, in which case one has to examine radio and TV broadcasts to get a proper understanding of bias.
– There is no ugly undertone of LGF style extremism from some commenters, or flat-packed reactionary wishful thinking for a past era when everything was done right. Honest guv, just telling it like it is.
– Of course, if the BBC/Guardian were to cover this story it would be, like, *so* biased.
– Why has the BBC/Guardian not covered my pet story/talking point of the day? BIAS!
– Blogging is self-correcting and therefore a paragon of truth, compared to journalism. Except those left wing blogs, who are all dirty liars.
– Mark Steyn is the epitome of all that is truthful, insightful and intellectually honest about journalism.
– All Guardian and BBC journos are part of a fifth column whose secret aim is to bring about muslim domination of Western society. And they live in ivory towers. In Islington. Sponging off the honest working man.
– There is a direct parallel between the US political landscape and that of the UK. Therefore all right wing talking points can be applied unequivocally.
– The so-called “Decent Left” are actually left wing, even if they spend a large portion of their time agreeing with Glenn Reynolds et al.
– One left wing idiot represents the left wing. One right wing idiot = a bad apple.
– Anyone disagreeing with the above has a vested interest in progressing the left wing conspiracy. They’re probably a BBC journo sent in undercover. Or a muslim. Or a tax sponger grown fat of others’ hard labour. Or all of the above.
– Being left wing is a religion, based on dogma and misdirection.

I think Norm’s post is interesting, because when you penetrate the huge amount of self-righteous rhetoric it’s actually a defence of Bush’s Christianity. It seems that by a process of Hegelian dialectic (which an old Marxist like Norm might appreciate), the ‘pro-war left’ who started off being so liberal and secular are now prepared to defend Bush at his weakest: his bizarre religious belief system. After all everyone (except them) knows that religion played a large part in the invasion and that both Bush and Blair’s political beliefs are deeply entwined with their religion. It is only a matter of time before they start defending his religious beliefs as well as his politics, and this process has now started.

It’s noticeable that people like Norm never actually quote from the ‘leftists’ they allegedly discuss. As you say, this ‘leftist’ does not actually exist except as an image in their heads. In the same way that the Communist in (say) McCarthy’s head did not actually correspond to any actual Communist, but was instead a creation of his own fears and fantasies.

In any case, apart from the loonbats like Hitchens and the weirdos at what used to be Harry’s Place (whose place is it now?) it’s all over for the pro-invasion Left. As Juan Cole reported recently almost all of the sane pro-war liberals have now recanted and are appalled at the havoc that has been wreaked in their names.

‘Three years ago Kanan Makiya and Rend Rahim were among the most persuasive advocates of a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Both liberal Iraqi intellectuals and eloquent English speakers, they made the case that Saddam Hussein’s removal was a cause to be embraced on moral and human rights grounds, and that its result could be the replacement of the Arab world’s most brutal dictatorship by its first genuine democracy.

They were widely heard in Washington. Once, over dinner, I watched as they argued passionately to a senior administration official — one of the architects of the then-approaching war — that the Bush administration should stop focusing on Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction and openly justify intervention on grounds of democracy and human rights. The official was clearly moved, but demurred. Iraq’s WMD, he replied, was the single motivating factor that united the administration’s own factions and constituencies….That’s why it was so sobering to encounter Makiya and Rahim again last week — and to hear them speak with brutal honesty about their “dashed hopes and broken dreams,” as Makiya put it….Makiya began with a stark conclusion: “Instead of the fledgling democracy that back then we said was possible, instead of that dream, we have the reality of a virulent insurgency whose efficiency is only rivaled by the barbarous tactics it uses.” The violence, he said, “is destroying the very idea or the very possibility of Iraq.”‘

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/09/AR2005100900496.html

As Glenn “never been to Iraq, no intention of going to Iraq” Reynolds might say, read the whole thing.

who must surely exemplify the Guardian-columnist-in-Norman’s-head

‘must surely’?

Is that not rather putting words into someone else’s mouth without permission, the very thing you accuse him of?

It seems an incontrovertible matter of fact, literal black and white, that there are people in the Guardian and (worse) the Independent who do write the articles that HP and Norm refer to. Finding one sensible paragraph in one article not mentioned by either would seem a rather inadequate attempt to contradict that.

soru

1. My counterexample suffices to defeat his generalization.

Nope. I read his point as:

1. _all_ secular liberals and leftists would mock Bush for saying what he was reported as saying.

2. _some_ people who consider themselves secular liberals and leftists would say that a comparable Islamist saying the comparable thing is an understandable perspective worthy of respect.

The all applies to the first group, you produced an example of someone not in the second.

The real question is why the difference, the almost universal double standard, in the treatment of the president of the USA and, say, the President of Iran?

Remember, we are not americans. Why should we treat the president of the US as if he was our leader, a safe target for cheap mockery and derision?

He is the leader of a foreign country, a priori no better, no worse, than any other.

I do think the basic source of a lot of the political distortion in the UK is this: brits read, in English, writers like Chomsky, who (at his best) writes what he would admit is a critique of the USA. But, they forget they are not american, so they read it as a description of the world.

soru

Soru, what gives you the idea that, say, the President of Iran gets treated with deferential respect here (since you describe this as an “almost universal double standard” I assume you claim this applies at CT). I don’t recall many posts here referring to the President of Iran (no I can’t remember his name either) but do a search on, say, Chirac and see what you come up with – mockery and derision is the least of it.

Or try Hu Jintao – not discussed as much but certainly treated just like Bush. Regardless of our nationality, these people have a big influence on our world, and we have the right to judge them accordingly.

Chomsky-style critiques argue, rightly as far as it goes, that in virtually any piece of recent world history, america could have acted (or not acted) differently in a way that would have led to a different result. ‘America has had a lot of influence on 20C history’ is hardly a controversial point, combine that with the basic american optimism and belief in the possibility of self-improvement and you reach the conclusiomn that things could, and should, always have been done better.

Now, lots of people, including me, would have specific issues with Chomsky’s view of what ‘better’ means. But still, this is a useful perspective if you are american, as it concentrates on the things you are responsible for, can potentially influence.

But read as a non-american, it is easy to end up with the view that only america matters, only america controls the world, even that america is the sole source of all the poverty and misery in the world.

Which is part of how brits in particular, and I suspect other europeans, end up placing Bush into an entirely different category than, say, the president of Turkey, in a way that has little to do with the actual differences between the two countries. The impulses to self-criticism, self-improvement, and xenophobia, fear of the other, seem to reinforce, not oppose, each other.

soru

Does it really need to be pointed out that a term can be used very widely in a certain way without its being recorded in a dictionary? Are you suggesting that because the conception of ‘liberal’ that applies to Bunting doesn’t appear in the dictionary, Norm’s using ‘liberal’ in this sense is entirely baffling? Hasn’t Norm made it clear that he uses the word that way in countless posts?

The Monbiot-Dawkins-O Benson-Blackburn blanket anti-religion tendency is at most a sizable minority among Guardian Comment contributors. Milne invited and helped edit Dilpazier Aslam’s column; he would never dream of publishing anything by Pat Robertson (or name your favored Christian equaivalent here) except as a joke. This observation cannot possibly be news.

Here’s what the post boils down to: Norm said:

secular liberals and leftists

when he *should* have said

*many* secular liberals and leftists.

Boy, is there egg on Norm’s face. Actually, I’ve already conceded too much. ‘Secular liberals and leftists’ is ambiguous between ‘all…,’ ‘many…’ and even ‘some….’ Why pick the interpretation that makes least sense? I mean, it’s almost as if you just wanted to attack a…a…Oh. Hang on. Right. Never mind.

I suspect it is dishonest, in the sense that if you asked him for specific examples of the thinking he’s criticizing, he would not be able to produce any. But who knows?

This from soru is more interesting:

some people who consider themselves secular liberals and leftists would say that a comparable Islamist saying the comparable thing is an understandable perspective worthy of respect.

Leaving aside the “respect” — a bit of a loaded word — I do believe something like this: that a different kind of scrutiny is appropriate for the powerful as opposed to the (relatively) powerless. It’s not that the underlying beleifs are any less false or harmful in one case than the other, but the relative usefulness of denouncing versus understanding them is.

“1. Implicit-All SL&Ls mock Bush (I know I do).
2. Some, explicitly qualified by ‘not to apply so much, or at all’, SL&Ls, express respect for or patronise the equivalent views when held by Muslims.”

You’re putting the quantifier in the wrong place in point 2. ‘not to apply so much, or at all’ applies to the degree to which other beliefs are seen as laughable, not to the number of liberals which find those beliefs laughable. The key word is ‘It’, at the beginning of the last (quoted) sentence.

The line runs from ” invoking a line to, or about, God … are to be seen as laughable, grotesque, or worse” to “This seems to apply only sometimes” to “It seems not to apply so much”. If Geras was talking about the number of liberals, he would have used personal pronouns.

Of course its not a particularly well-written paragraph, so maybe he _meant_ to say something else.

Norman Geras –

The left denigrates Jews and Christians who base their public values on their Judaism and Christianity as idiots or fanatics, while embracing Muslims who base their public values on Islam.

Chris Bertram via Monbiot –

Nonsense. The left thinks that societies that base their public values on religion, whatever the religion, are morally inferior to societies made up of atheists.

Move along you intolerant and immoral ghost believing saps. Nothing to see here.

Youch. The defense was worse than the charge.

Doesn’t Norm Geras support a war in Iraq in which American troops are being used to prop up a regime headed by two Islamicist parties, Dawa and SCIRI? Eventually, the “decent” left is going to have to look at what they are actually doing. Instead of Marx or Trotsky, I suggest they read that bit in the Philosophical investigations where Wittgenstein considers if the right hand necessarily knows what the left hand is doing:

“Why can’t my right hand give my left hand money? — My right hand can put it into my left hand. My right hand can write a deed of gift and my left hand a receipt. — But the further practical consequences would not be those of a gift. When the left hand has taken the money from the right, etc., we shall ask: “Well, and what of it?” And the same could be asked if a person had given himself a private definition of a word; I mean, if he has said the word to himself and at the same time has directed his attention to a sensation.”

This is the total political strategy of the “decent” left — give a private definition to what is happening in, say, Iraq — call it liberation — and let your politics flow from the private definition. It has the wonderful effect of erecting a impermeable barrier between what really is happening in Iraq and the support for it. Similarly, they give a private definition to the tribute strategy the U.S. has adopted in Pakistan — paying a former associate of A.Q. to pretend, yearly, that they are just about to capture Osama bin Laden — and they call that fighting Islamo-fascism.

Soru, am I supposed to say, so’s your mother a straw man?
That’s pointless. There is a point to pointing out that, since the “liberation” of Iraq, the civil rights of women in Southern Iraq have been severely curtailed, and forms of shari’a law are quietly being installed all over — that the constitution allows regions to ‘decide” on what is appropriate in the law code, which is a cover for instituting law by clerics — and that, in point of fact, the first official visit paid by the elected prime minister of Iraq was to visit Iran and place a wreathe on Khomenei’s grave.
All, I am sure, radically secularist moves.
The decent left is such a joke.

are you really not familiar with any definition of ‘liberal’ that would apply to [Bunting]? How about this one: ‘virtually incapable of voicing any opinion that wouldn’t meet with the wholehearted assent of the typical unreflective Guardian-reader’? (Jimmy Doyle)

You appear to have cited the definition of “librul”, not “liberal”.

According to my dictionary, the second term has currency in political theory and has something to do with liberty whereas the first has currency in fevered right-wing rants, as a pejorative with uncertain referent, roughly coextensive with “anybody who disagrees with us“.

All, I am sure, radically secularist moves.

Can we maybe have a short moratorium on the use of sarcasm about the imaginary views that people are ‘sure’ their political opponents must hold?

soru

Eventually, the “decent” left is going to have to look at what they are actually doing.

Why is that, Roger? Their entire raison d’etre seems to consist of pointing out everything that’s wrong with the “indecent” left. And to paraphrase Barbara Bush, this seems to be working out pretty well for them.

The greater question for me is one that gets raised everytime NG and his ilk are discussed here on CT, but it never seems to get a convincing answer. To what extent does it even make sense to talk about people like Geras as being of the “left”? I don’t know his positions on other issues, but the notion that any “leftist” could still support the invasion of Iraq–not The War that Might Have Been, mind you, but The War that Is–strains credibility to the breaking point.

Anytime I see a self-described “libertarian” carrying water for the Bush Administration, I have no choice but to assume bad faith. There is absolutely nothing about this administration that could be described as remotely “libertarian,” unless one’s definition of that term begins and ends with “Cut my goddamn taxes.” (Which it does, for many self-described “libertarians” in the US–but that’s kind of my point.) Similarly, in what way does it make sense to describe a Geras as being of the left? He sounds more like an American neocon than anything.

I don’t think labels have ceased to have any meaning, but I myself have dropped describing myself as a leftist, since what does that mean anymore, and now prefer the more modest Library of Congress classification, Keynesian Liberal, to be put in the BL section.

But what does “liberal” mean anymore? Any glance at public discourse in the US shows that it’s been distorted beyond recognition, perhaps even more so than “leftist.”

I’m partial to “social democrat” myself, except that it tends to create confusion in the US where we already have a big-D Democratic Party….

As a non-secular leftist, I find myself more often speaking to God and hoping he/she/it’s listening. I never presume to say that God is telling me things and am, frankly, leery of those who would ever believe that God has a direct line to them.

Kind of seems like a deadly sin in any case.

The greater question for me is one that gets raised everytime NG and his ilk are discussed here on CT, but it never seems to get a convincing answer. To what extent does it even make sense to talk about people like Geras as being of the “left”?

A quick analogy:

Vietnam War is to some American leftists become neoconservatives, as Iraq War is to some British leftists become neoconservatives.

New issues arise, and new ways of thinking about the world arise in tandem. And they don’t change, or change in ways that are different than most others, who generally migrate to ideologically similar positions – i.e. most of the old right becomes the new right, most of the old left becomes the new left.

When I read Geras, HP, Hitchens, I see three things:
1) people whose thinking is profoundly shaped by the historical context of mid 20th century Europe, to a point where other historical contexts and situations are not properly considered
2) people who has not sufficiently absorbed or has outright rejected many social and intellectual currents that have arisen since the 1960s. In particular, I think of the post-modern cultural milieu (very broadly defined – I’m not talking about Derrida or Baudrilliard here, although they reject them too – but the general everyday manifestations): and the post-colonial intersection of the third and first world, via migration, globalization, etc.. In other words, they are trying to apply the lessons of 1944 Europe to a 2005 world.
3) people who has recognized the bankruptcy of Marxism intellectually, but to whom the psychological appeal of Marxism’s revolutionary impetus still strongly appeals.

My own view, in fact, and one vindicated by subsequent events.

Well, that’s an argument based on facts and outcomes, not on which decade a particular term was coined in, or who is serving the propaganda interests of the Bad People.

As a result, we can disagree, but there is some possibility of good-faith debate.

soru

Brendan, FWIW, I don’t think the word ‘imperialist’ (as related to ’empire’) fits here.

I think the guy has this very clear vision of person’s identity: there only one true identity – your economic position, your class; everything else, all other identities – religion, nationality, ethnicity, culture – are mere distractions, opium for the masses, Vonnegut’s false carass. For example, he tells the European Jews (in effect): forget it, snap out of it, this is not your identity, you’re not different than anyone else.

And that’s what it is, IMO, this India thing: he wants their culture destroyed and their economic identities to come out to the open.

But while Marx is totally sincere, as a part of the neocons’ program it would sound quite disingenuous, because most of them are very fond of their (mostly American) nationality and (mostly Jewish) culture. As a component of the neocons’ program it would indeed smack of imperialism and racism; but we already knew it.

I meant the intellectual strain, starting with Norman Podhoretz. I’ve read his interview where he describes his motivation and his evolution; IIRC, he labels himself as American nationalist and deeply Jewish culturaly, something like that.

… deeply Jewish

Oh, you mean “zionist”, right?

Was that a randomly generated comment without any connection to anything being discussed here?

I’m not keen on abb1’s use of “culturally Jewish” – there are many neocons who aren’t Jewish. Indeed, a majority.

As to soru’s point about the Bush administration. Of the people he lists, I think quite clearly Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and Powell are not neoconservatives. Rice and Bush are in part, and I think their thinking about the Islamic World is largely that of the neoconservatives. Cheney shares some neoconservative ideas, but to a lesser degree. He’s really more of a Hobbesian, like Rumsfeld and Ashcroft. Powell is bascially a kind of centrist/Christian Democrat.

Ben P

Fergal, no I don’t think any of the famous neocons are Zionists, not Podhoretzs (father and son), nor Kristols (father and son), nor Wolfowitz, nor Perle, nor Kagan. They are definitely American nationalists; I don’t think one can be both American and Jewish nationalist.

But they are proud of their Jewish heritage (not that anything’s wrong with that) and Karl Marx definitely wouldn’t have approve that.

I want the last 5 minutes of my life back.

But they are proud of their Jewish heritage (not that anything’s wrong with that)

Phew! Some of my best friends will certainly be relieved.

Can’t you (and other folks like you) find something more important and interesting to be passionate about?

Right. It’s already 60 years since Auschwitz was shut, so give it a break. And over 80 years since the “Protocols” was debunked. No one is peddling those sorts of conspiracies these days. Right? Oh…

Now see here.

It should be possible for reasonable persons to discuss neoconservatism and neoconservatives without everybody (or anybody) pulling their razors out of their shoes or going for their shillelagh .

There’s quite a battle going on at Wikipedia about what the “Neoconservatism in the United States” article should say. To those interested in this general subject (and those who aren’t, should be) I suggest reading the article (as it stands at the moment) and the debate transcript as well. I have to give those Wiki people credit, at least for this particular imbroglio. They argue about everything, even the most hot-button issues, without losing their senses. Again I recommend this material. It’s a mine of information and insight, as well as a good example for all of us.

Pardon the pontification. It’s not my habit to do so. No offense intended (and I hope none taken).

All the best,

If neo-conservatism were about the Jews (the way, say, Hasidism is) hardly anyone would care about it and it certainly wouldn’t have been discussed here.