First miscellaneous round-up post of 2012

Post of the week

Contentious Centrist on recognizing righteousness. (And while you’re there, read this interesting post on the Haredim, solidarity and tolerance in a multicultural society, and watch this interview with Irving Howe and this one with Roger Scruton.)

Fighters for freedom

Yoani Sanchez and her on-going struggle for freedom from Castro’s authoritarian regime (h/t Jogo).

The Arab spring’s Islamist winter

2011 was an extraordinary year. (Check out this funky interactive timeline at Wired: "Hyper-Networked Protests, Revolts, and Riots".) But what comes next? Hussein Ibish is cautiously optimistic about the role of Islamism in the post-Spring moment, focusing on Egypt. A more pessimistic reading can be taken from this report from libertarian socialists in Egypt, who describe Muslim Brotherhood collusion with, and even incitement of, SCAF repression of leftists. A very subtle analysis – in a long post, which I recommend you print and read fully – comes from Andrew Coates, less optimistic than Ibish, but more pessimistic than many. Meanwhile, on Syria, Carl at TCF cautiously acknowledges the benefits of military intervention to save the democratic uprising there, in a post which draws somewhat on a report by Michael Weiss.

Gilad Atzmon

Everybody Hates a Tourist relates on Atzmon and his relationship with the Nazi Alexander Baron. Also, this is from a while back, but I’m not sure if I posted it and I noticed while getting the link for the Islamism post linked to above, Hussein Ibish had this piece in October: Gilad Atzmon and John Mearsheimer: self-criticism, self-hate and hate.

Ron Paul

But I Am a Liberal remains the go-to site for dissecting Ron Paul. See, e.g. “What is it that Ron Paul fans fail to grasp?”, contra Andrew Sullivan. See also these fine posts by AJA on Ron Paul and cranky libertarianism and then the reactionary libertarian. On other candidates, Roland also writes on Rick Santorum as the trojan working class candidate, and on the Gringrich campaign's faux-populist demolition of capitalist Mitt Romney.

Press TV

I missed the  BBC Radio 4 report about Iranian “soft power” in the UK, apparently focusing on the Iranian regime-controlled English-language broadcaster Press TV. Gene at HP gives a flavour, focusing on Tory grandee Norman Lamont’s whitewashing of the regime. (Talking of this, I’m not sure if I already linked to Rosie’s fisking of George Galloway’s anti-obit of Christopher Hitchens. This is the relevant bit: GG: Hitchens was “the Englishman in New York who discovered there were large bundles of right-wing dollars available for apostates like him. If they were prepared to betray their friends, their principles and sell the soul he didn't believe he had in the first place.” Rosie: “And I'm sure your work for Iran's Press TV is done for a small pittance, barely enough to keep you in cigars.”)

Christopher Hitchens

While we’re on the subject, here is Salman Rushdie on Hitchens – getting it both right and wrong, as Mick H and Norman G note. Oh, and I’m not sure if I already linked to this 2009 Platypus article on Hitchens by Spencer Leonard, which I reached via this argument between Ross Wolfe, Corey Robin and Doug Henwood, in which Wolfe comes across as verbose but basically right, and Robin and Henwood (someone I generally respect a lot) come off quite badly.

Yiddish

Two posts by Rokhl – whose blog has returned to life after a too long leave of absence – on Yiddish today 1 and 2.

South Africa/North Korea

A while ago, I posted about my youthful inoculation against the ANC, which was partly down to Paul Trewhela, who has recently written a hard-hitting piece “Kim Jong-il, blood purity, and the ANCYL”, which I read via PIIE, which I got to via Mick, whose post you should also read.

Stephen Lawrence

Another plug for some of the better best pieces I’ve read on the Stephen Lawrence verdict, by people who knew Eltham a little better than many other commentators: Owen Jones, Darryl Chamberlain, Sunder Katwala, and for my own first and second thoughts. Sunder returned here, and kindly linked to my pieces, summarising some of the issues clearly. And Darryl returns with a really interesting post here.

Militant anti-fascism

Phil D’s critique of Hope Not Hate’s “Beyond the BNP” document, and his thoughts in the wake of Infidel and other attacks on Occupy camps.

Vermishtes

More miscellany from Entdinglichung.

On reading obituaries of Christopher Hitchens

Even in death he stands tall and apart from the parochial, bien-peasant, trilling, beard-stroking mediocrities – face-timers and time-servers of the writing life, men and women who have never written a good line of prose or provided a single insight into our universe or touched a human heart. Fuck them. – Max Dunbar

I’ve barely started going through the flood of obituaries and memories of Christopher Hitchens. I started writing my own, but it seems a little surplus to requirement. Kellie provides the definitive list of links (as well as Hitchens commenting on totalitarianism, in light of the departure of the North Korean dictator), and a good first point of call is Vanity Fair. Rosie sums up the rest: “The tributes are pouring in, the reminiscences, the summings ups, the paying off of old scores. The famous, the obscure, the mandarin and the meanest of spirits are all having their say. I've read a few of their pieces and liked David Frum's best of all for its warmth and this final paragraph from Jacob Weisberg.” Terry Glavin’s, of course, is especially lovely, as is George Szirtes’. And, although it feels strange to say it, given how little regard I’ve had for Peter Hitchens up to now, his lovely brotherly obituary in the Mail is probably the single thing most worth reading.

Francis Sedgemore comments on the throwaway nature of many of the obits, and in a highly recommended short post shows how journalism has changed for the worst since Hitchens entered the trade. Francis is right, and most of the ones I’ve read have irritated me more than anything else.



Some of the Hitchens posts are worth checking simply because they are illustrated with some wonderful photos of the man I’d not seen before, such as this one by Tigerloaf, which also has a great quotation. I especially like the photo that illustrate Max Dunbar’s fine post, with curl of cigarette smoke. More harrowing, of course, are some of the final pictures of him raging against the dying of the light, such as that by Michael Stravato which illustrates Hitchens’ last (and especially wonderful) Vanity Fair piece, which is about death. Some are illustrated with the wonderful Jamie James Medina portrait, with poppy and rumpled hat, that I particularly love. But only a few have anything interesting to say.

He was a friend of mine

I drafted this late last week. However, I read through lots of obituaries since then and before tidying it up. It now seems a little pointless to post, when so much has been written by much better writers with much more to say than me, but having written it it seems silly to leave it un-published.


I was thinking of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday morning as I passed through Oxford train station. Coachloads of soldiers in desert colours were being deposited at the station, having arrived back in the damp wintery greyness of Bryce Norton for Christmas, on leave from service in Afghanistan. Big men made bigger by the bulk of the kit they were carrying, they were quiet and looked tired and disoriented, but at the same time walked with a certain upright bearing that further amplified their incongruous presence among the students, tourists and Christmas shoppers. It made me think about courage and morality and manliness, and the ethics of this particular conflict our soldiers have been caught in for nearly a decade, now no longer so often in the news. And, that, of course, made me think of Hitchens. He is thought of by his detractors as a cheerleader for war, but that’s a grossly unfair reputation; still, the question of war, and of soldiers, has been one he has returned to again and again in his writing, a question he has worried away at from several angles, in a serious and often profound manner, most importantly in his moving essay on Mark Daily, a young American soldier killed in Mosul, but also in one of his final pieces of writing, an extraordinary essay on Armistice Day.

Mini-misc

Two very lovely posts honouring Christopher Hitchens, from two of my favourite bloggers: "Decline and fall" by Rosie Bell and Noga on Hitchens' "Vocabular Cornucopia".

Also: Alan A: Gilad Atzmon: Honorary Raelian Priest; Jim D: Morning Star’s “fellow feeling” with Cameron on EU; Ben Six: Multicultural muddles.

Last years at Abbottabad: A review of Christopher Hitchens’ ‘The Enemy’

This is a guest post by Carl Packman, cross-posted from Though Cowards Flinch.

Nearing the tenth year since the world was changed by 9/11, the mastermind behind the attack, Osama bin Laden, is traced to a fortress-like villa in Abbottabad and killed. As the media storm blew over, and initial questions about the legality were put to rest (though some still insist on raising them), there was still the opinions of one person for whom many were waiting – and indeed he has not disappointed.

Though there is nothing in Christopher Hitchens’ extended essay – 'The Enemy' (available as a Kindle download only) – that is particularly new; one or two unorthodox opinions concerning bin Laden needed clarifying, and there is no better than the Hitch to do so.

Notably, the polemic is peppered with understanding this personification of ‘evil’ (a word which Hitchens is happy to qualify) through political terminology. Hitchens is happy to call bin Laden a fascist, for example, explaining his unease with the vulgarised word ‘Islamofascist’ (preferring, instead, the more informed “fascism with an Islamic face”), while later insisting we remember the true conservative core of the former al-Qaeda front man.

There is an urge, so opines Hitch, to refer to bin Laden and his men, as radicals – a juxtaposition which sticks in the throat, particularly on consideration of the medieval tyranny which the wealthy ideologue wanted to wreak upon the world. Unlike any radical, in so far as the word is typically used, bin Laden fought on behalf of a totalitarian world view with an absolutist code of primitive laws. His fantasy world order necessitated the ceasing of personal autonomy, the deification of human control, the fetishisation of a single book, the glorification of violence and the celebration of death. Further still, a sanctioning of the death of whole groups of people, the repression of the sexual instinct and a paranoid anti-Semitism akin to that found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

There is no doubt that what bin Laden did on that terrible New York day in September, was a tragedy like only few others. Quite clearly bin Laden was waging war*. But it mustn’t be forgotten just how much his late life had been marred by errors and grave failure.

Bin Laden was laying down his plans for war at a time when  many “Arab Jihadists” – such as al-Qaeda, Gamaat al-Jihad, Gamaat Islamiyya, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) – were restructuring their position in Afghanistan, after the defeats they endured in the nineties throughout the Middle East. After preparing attacks on America in 2000, al-Qaeda knew America would have capabilities to destroy the Taliban’s governmental institutions – which were acting as host to Bin Laden’s motley crew. In advance, Mohammed Atef, the third highest ranking member of al-Qaeda, had sought after weapons of mass destruction to protect Afghanistan.

It was bin Laden’s pipe dream that acquiring WMDs would have deterred the US from retaliating, securing the start to a victory for the Saudi and his group. However the acquisition didn’t go to plan. Accepting defeat at this first hurdle, al-Qaeda tried to send a message, through a reporter in Afghanistan trying to make his “media break”, to the US saying they were in possession of WMDs. This, too, proved unsuccessful, the likelihood being that US intelligence simply didn’t believe bin Laden. Instead the American representatives in Afghanistan asked the Taliban to hand over bin Laden for trial, a favour they did not succumb to citing the illegality of handing over a Muslim to non-Muslims under Islamic law.

After experiencing setback after setback – the death of a leader in the Gamaat Islamiyya, Mohammed Khalil al-Hakaima, who fronted the “al-Qaeda in the land of Egypt” project; the collapse of the jihad against the Americans in Iraq – the former leader of the militant Jihadists Libyan Islamic Fighting Group Noman Benotman (now Senior Analyst of Strategic Communications at Quilliam) said that al-Qaeda did not want to establish a caliphate in Afghanistan, and was merely acting as a defense against the occupation – a clear back step on their more global plans.

Though bin Ladenism, as Hitchens puts it, is destined to fail, this doesn’t mean it is not dangerous, particularly in its teachings of young, mainly uneducated men. Its overall goal is to engage in a global war, which it hopes to do with coordination from a central command, possibly in Warziristan (NW Pakistan), branches at a regional level and with help from sympathisers around the world. And though they’ve experienced a major setback with the death of bin Laden, the aim of their project doesn’t look set to cease any time soon.

Hitchens’ sobering conclusion, quite in distinction to the reaction displayed on TV screens after news emerged of bin Laden’s death (which, however, Hitch admits to having “welcomed without reserve”), is that “[t]he war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war” and that "Temporary victories can be registered against this, but not permanent ones”.

Osama bin Laden died a failure, reduced to watching re-runs of himself delivering propaganda speeches exploiting young, angry men into thinking that fighting the jihad was the solution to all life’s ills. But it is a fool who thinks the efforts of a crafty (albeit damaged), multicellular entity as al-Qaeda have been suppressed yet.

* Much of the information from here on has been sought from this amazing collection of essays by Camille Tawil called The Other Face of Al-Qaeda (pdf file).

Old soldiers, broken promises, class prejudices

Mick Hall’s socialist blog, Organized Rage, regularly re-posts obituaries of the unsung heroes of radical struggle, often from the Guardian’s lovely “other lives” series. He published the obituary of John Watson, a British soldier, and a fascinating man:

“His battalion was posted to Palestine in 1948, as the British Mandate came to an end. Watson was appalled by the imminent destruction of the new state of Israel – attacked as it was on four fronts and wholly undefended by the British army. He thought it morally wrong that Jews, who had experienced so much already, should be slaughtered, again. Rifle in hand, he went over the wall to volunteer with Haganah and take part in front-line combat. In the siege of Jerusalem he was wounded. After the conflict he worked on a collective farm, where he met Ora, the woman he married. They went on to farm for four years.

In 1954 he and his wife resolved to return to Britain. He informed the authorities and on his arrival he was arrested and court-martialled for desertion, which he candidly admitted, and sentenced to a year in military prison, which he accepted as his due. The "glasshouse" was notoriously tougher than civilian prison. He was released, for good conduct after eight months and returned to the Suffolk Regiment.”

This was particularly interesting thinking about the recently screened Channel 4 drama series, The Promise, with its representations of British soldiers who served in Palestine, one falling in love with a Jewish girl and thus betraying his British comrades, another falling in love with an Arab people and thus honourably fighting alongside them against the Jews. I also learnt, talking to my father about it, a couple of facts about his father. Like John Watson, my granddad was a working class career armed forces man, in the Navy, who rose to petty officer (the equivalent rank, I think of Waton’s warrant officer, and often the highest rank that working class people could reach). Having an Irish mother, he was not sent to Ireland after WWI, but (and this was one of the things I hadn’t known) to Mandate Palestine instead.

Mick Hall introduces his post on Watson like this:

If anyone wishes to understand what a class prejudiced swamp the UK is, then they need look no further than the obituaries pages of what are laughing called the ‘quality dailies.’ They are full of middle class worthies who have played a role in making the United Kingdom the most unequal nation in western Europe, be they civil servants, judges, politicians. No matter what, your obituary is assured if you are a member of this elite, even if you have spent your life as a tax dodging business man, a judge who sentenced countless innocent people, a TV executive producing crap, politician who lie out of habit and self interest, or military officers whose campaign medals include such illustrious victories as the six counties of Ireland, Suez, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
True the odd middle class lefty may get a look in, along with luvies and musicians by the score, and just so we do not forget the empire where the sun never set, the occasional Gurkha squadie who during WW2, killed 81 Japanese solders in a single afternoon.
I once asked the editor of an obituaries page why he rarely published obits of ordinary people who have experienced or done interesting things in the lives. “Ah Mick,” he replied, you simply do not understand, I would love to, but you must remember we rarely have photos of such people in our libraries and an obit cannot go out without a picture alongside”
I nodded and turned away thinking, does he really believe such crap. Of course I am over egging the pudding here, but not by that much, the Guardian now has the excellent Other Lives, but even its title suggests a certain amount of class prejudice, it is as if there are those who deserve by right to be in the papers obituary page and those who lived other lives and do not.
Below is an example of what I mean, few people lived a more interesting life than [John] Watson, a man who fought tenaciously for sovereign and country, but also when a situation arose, turned away and fought for a people who he believed needed his help. His causes are not mine, but I defy any honest man not to raise his cap to this old solder.”

I agree with most of Mick’s sentiments here, but one thing slightly disturbed me: the implication that Mick’s leftist audience are likely to disagree with his assessment of John Watson, because he served in the military and because he was on the Israeli side in 1948.

Another resonance: it is Christopher Hitchens’ 61^st birthday on Wednesday this week, and I am glad that he will live to see it. I am reading the new paperback edition of Hitch-22. I found the first chapters, about his parents, incredibly moving, but then found the account of his privileged education rather tedious. The Hitch’s father had a number of similarities to my granddad. As well as some geographical coincidences, both were working class men who gave their lives to the British armed forces (my granddad lied about his age to join the Navy when war began in 1914; he was just 14). Both remained committed to their sovereign and country, and saw the empire and Commonwealth as Britain’s true friends, not the Atlantic alliance. Hitchens beautifully captures the tragedy of their working class Tory worldview (“so little to be Tory about”, as he notes). 

Hitchens, with poppy and rumpled hat

 

I was moved by the portrait by Jamie James Medina of Christopher Hitchens, at home in DC, with red poppy, no hair and rumpled hat, accompanying Andrew Anthony’s Observer interview with the great man. The sad likely possibility of the Hitch’s coming death pushes interviewers towards his so-called “New Athiesm” (a term he rejects in the interview). As a paid-up Old Agnostic, I find this topic the most boring imaginable: while Hitchens is interesting on absolutely everything else (apart, perhaps, from his sex life and his schoolboy japes with his literary pals), he is tedious when talking about God.

Far more interesting when talking about the 1991 Gulf War:

"I said that Bush [senior] may have used the rhetoric of anti-fascism but he didn't mean it. And then I said, yeah, but what if he had meant it? Would I therefore be obliged by my own argument to be in favour? The answer was 'yes'. And then I said, well what do you care how they argue? You should be arguing it yourself. And I found I couldn't get out of that."

And about not criticising Robert Mugabe early on:

"That makes me wince. More than wince. I'd met him a couple of times and I knew that he had in him a terrible capacity for fanaticism, absolutism, and I didn't say as much about that as I could have done. If I asked myself about why I didn't, I'm sure the answer is because I didn't want to give ammunition to the other side."

And about how Chinese capitalism and human rights:

"Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, anywhere that the concept of human rights doesn't exist, it's always the Chinese at backstop. And always for reasons that you could write down in three words: blood for oil."

And about Hezbollah:

"I was at a Hezbollah rally in Beirut about two and a half years ago," he says. "Very striking. Everyone should go. But of the many things that impressed me about it, having the mushroom cloud as the party flag in an election campaign was the main one. You wouldn't want to look back and think, I wish I'd noticed that being run up. Now I can give you all the reasons that it's bombast on their part. Still, I know which regret I'd rather have."

 ***

I read a copy of the Independent that I found on the train the other day, a day or two after the big HE demo in London. I was interested in the juxtaposition on the same page of two articles. The first, given prominent position, was by Hitchens’ good friend, the journalist Patrick Cockburn, "The United States is facing a decisive political defeat in Iraq over the formation of a new government, as its influence in the country sinks lower than at any time since the invasion of 2003". The second, also by Cockburn, tucked below it, was entitled: "Iraqi Christians living in fear as 11 bombs explode in Baghdad, killing five". Although Cockburn, who in some ways is a fine reporter, does not exactly gloat in the first article, it’s hard not to read it between the lines, as Cockburn has been predicting disaster, hoping for disaster, exaggerating the negatives, since the war began. He seems (as are, I imagine, both the editors and readers of the Indy) unable to see the relationship between the two articles: American failure, in this case, means the genocidal cleansing of Christians from a theocraticised Iraq.

Hitchens again, in the National Post, writes with savage clarity on this issue:

The continuing bloodbath is chiefly the result of an obscene alliance between the goons of the previous dictatorship and the goons of a would-be-future theocratic one. From the very first day after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, without ever issuing so much as a manifesto or a bill of grievances, this criminal gang awarded itself permission to use high explosives, assassination, torture, and rape against a population that was given no moment of breathing space after three decades of war and fascism.

Now, unless you can make yourself believe that the doomed, imploding Saddam regime would somehow have managed a peaceful transition from itself to something else in a society that it had already maimed and ruined and traumatized, you have to consider expressing a bit of gratitude to the coalition soldiers who were able to provide some elements of that breathing space and to prevent the next regime from being worse even than the preceding one. At a time when it seemed to many people that Baghdad had already become worse than Beirut and Rwanda combined, I tentatively wrote of the coalition forces as “the militia for those who have no militia,” a description that I claim the U.S. troop surge partially vindicated.

I am not 100% convinced by that, and welcome Hitchens’ qualifications: partially vindicated, some elements. But I was thinking something similar when reflecting on the higher education march on November 10. I was struck on the march by the number of students with banners condemning the Liberal Democrats for betraying them. “I want my vote back Clegg” was one example. I wished I had a banner saying, “You stupid students, why did you vote Liberal Democrat? What on earth made you think they were ‘progressive’? Thanks for giving us this mess.”  When I mentioned this at home to Babs from Brockley, she agreed, noting that all the people who didn't vote Labour because of The War had to take the blame for the new government’s cuts. She saw this as the reaction of people too comfortable in life, looking for distant victims to get agitated about. I hope those people, many of them of course Independent readers, feel some sense of guilt at cheerleading for American’s withdrawal when they read about the slaughter of Christians in Iraq, but I doubt they will. Martin had a similar response to William Dalrymple, in this superb post.

***

Finally, this National Post article by the Hitch is a superb read, on Barack Obama’s glacial elitism, ethnic pandering and political clumsiness, but mainly on slopping poll and lazy reporting. Here is a sample sentence: “Elitism and populism, as we have painfully learned this fall, are too often found in the same person. The simultaneous aggregating and dividing of people by race and ethnicity turns out to be the cheapest and easiest outcome of supposedly democratic measurement.”

Triangulating Bobism 1: Harryism and indecency

“Bob seems like a reasonable sort” - Andy Newman.

This post is the first of three planned oblique attempts to address the core contradictions at the heart of the Bob project, as well as to respond to some of the discussions at my more heated comment threads, such as this one, this one and this one. It starts with a report on a recent and not particularly important spat amongst the leftover remains of the British anti-racist movement carried out in the courts and in the blogosphere, amongst three of the heavier hitters of the UK-based but internationally read left bloggers, Harry’s Place, Andy Newman’s Socialist Unity and Richard Seymour’s Lenin’s Tomb. This spat is a good occasion to reflect on the meaning of “decency” and “indecency” in politics. In reflecting on this, the post touches on three areas: the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, the war on terror, and the etiquette of debate, with a kind of footnote on the anti-racist movement. All of these are illustrated with examples from British fringe politics of the 1990s and thus have a slightly autobiographical element, although I’ve done my best to keep self-indulgence to a minimum. I realise that the coherence of these elements might not be immediately apparent, but I would genuinely appreciate your responses, even if you only read part of it.

Hitch, Fitz and Harry

Let’s begin, though, with Christopher Hitchens, a key figure in the issues to be raised in what follows. The next two paragraphs are extracted from Poumista. [Carl P has] a piece on Christopher Hitchens and prayer and Andrew Coates has a long and very good review of Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch 22. This provokes quite a long comment thread, involving our comrades Mick Hall and Mike Ezra, who recounts the debate in a post at Harry’s Place entitled A Debate with the Indecent Left. The Coatesy comment thread, unlike more or less any at Harry’s Place, is well worth reading.

Meanwhile, as Carl informs me, a furore has raged in the pokier corners of the leftiesphere about said Place, specifically the association with it of one Terry FitzPatrick, street-fighting man, veteran anti-racist and, erm, bon viveur, recently arrested for racism in relation to statements made to Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote and Lee Jasper, black liberation tsar. (When I lived in Brixton, Jasper’s names featured prominently in local graffiti, which described him as a police informer, on which I will not pass comment). Here‘s Andrew again, but more relevant are posts by Richard Seymour, Lee Jasper and especially this series at Socialist Unity: 1, 2, 3, 4. Here are the charges against Fitz, to which he is pleading not guilty. I won’t weigh in on this debate... except to note that Woolley and Jasper’s faith in bourgeois law as a tool to punish alleged racists is rather in contradiction to their disregard for due process in making a big deal of this before the court rules – in contrast, say, to Paul Stott, an anarchist who prefers not to upset the legal proceedings.

I want to sleep with common people

We are all Seismic ShockWatch the movie.

The Hitch
I linked last week to Michael Totten's interview with Christopher Hitchens. But I somehow missed this excellent post by Kellie about what is wrong with some of the Hitch's formulations on Iran, drawing on Machiavelli. The key fault line, here, is regime change from above or regime change from below. Closely related, here's Carl on Hitchens and neoconservatism.

Liberal interventionism?
Ben Cohen points out the gap between Gerald Kaufman's robust interventionism when it comes to nice and simple war crimes committed by Israel, and his John Majoresque anti-intervention stance on "complicated" Bosnia. And this is the best thing you could possibly read of all the thousands of words written about Tony Blair's appearance at the Chilcott Inquiry (although you should read this too).

Vietnam
Another subject close to the Hitch's heart, the Vietnam war, as discussed at the end of this comment thread: at Poumista, Michael Ezra shares some Vietnam folk protest songs.

Totalitarianism
Another excellent post, which made me think differently, from Peter Ryley, riffing on Dovid Katz on the Tory alliance with the Euro-right and the Baltic campaign for Soviet-Nazi equivalence. At stake here is the meaning of totalitarianism, and the meaning of history. And Mazower's Dark Continent (as recently recommended at this blog by Graeme) is a reference point. On a related topic, something I have more to say about at some future date, Dan at Third Estate on Heidegger and fascism and Mick H on the same topic.

Who cares about the white working class?
Carl Packman, on another issue I have a post written in my head about. Further reading in the post and comments here. I'd like to read Michael Collins on white disaffection in England's deep South but it's subscription only.

Haiti footnotes
Ben C on Hugo Chavez and Haiti's debt. Noga on the Munchhausen Syndrome of some American liberals.

Also
Carl again, at the Third Estate, on France and the burqa. Julie Burchill on UCU antisemitism. Two from Sceptic Isle, one on the "VIP treatment" immigrants get and one, highly recommended, on the failure of the left.

Comment trail
Did Martin Luther King ever actually say that anti-Zionism is antisemitism? I left the same comment at Tony Greenstein's, CifWatch's and TNC's MLK posts.

Tories
This week's David Cameron: first, Olly's Old Etonions, and, second, Rory Bremner runing one of my favourite songs for me.

More miscellany

Chomsky watch
Jim Denham has a great post on Chomsky, Malcolm Caldwell and Cambodia, and Mike Ezra has another, which address some of the issues we raised here and here. Watch this space. Oh, and I see from Andy it's also covered at AaronovitchWatch, with another interesting comment thread.

Apologists, appeasers, revisionists
Louis P on Iran regime apologists: MRZine drunk on its own rotgut ideology.
Martin in the Margins on Iraq regime appeasers: The mental deformations of appeasement (riffing on Nick Cohen).
Aram Mattioli on Italy's Mussolini revisionists.

The Hitch
Michael J Totten interviews Christopher Hitchens - part I and II.

Anti-fascist histories and futures
Slack Andy commemorates the big strike of 1956. (Read this if you don't get it.)
Tony Greenstein remembers anti-fascist foot soldier Dave Hann.
Martin recovers his East End roots, and hopes that his ancestral lands do not fall to the extremist demagogues.

Bob's Beats
The Amazing Rhythm Aces - a blast from my past.
A new book about John Zorn. (H/t Jogo) And from Zorn's Tzadik label, here's Keiji Haino & Yoshida Tatsuya.

Zionism, anti-Zionism and anti-anti-Zionism
Tony Judt and the Velvet Genocide - on the ortho-Marxist roots of anti-Zionism (with my comments in the comment box). In an unexpected place, Alex Brummer applauds Judt for opening the debate.
Workers Liberty on Why Left Wing Students Should Not Support Boycotts of Israel.
Two from Engage: David Hirsh’s talk at UCU and David Hirsh’s response to the film ‘Defamation’

Comment trail
On the material basis for antisemitism today at Adam Holland's place.

David Cameron and Boris Johnson
A great series of Tory ads from Beau Bo D'Or:

There's lots more. Or try this one from Jacob:

Tuesday linktastica

Have I done one on Tuesday before? Not sure.

Deaths and a yortsayt:

• A great man, if flawed: obituaries for Conor Cruise O'Brien, from Kellie, Woolly Days, Sean Coleman, Michael Weiss, and the Kammster.
• Blitheness and stamping: George Szirtes on Adrian Mitchell
• He was on the front line: death of an anti-fascist.
• Kirsty MacColl: Rosie B on the eighth anniversary of the death of a genuinely clever and witty woman.

Americana:

• In Congo Square - colonial New Orleans: The Nation at its best.
• Cab Calloway, George Gershwin and the joys of Yiddish: Zalman Mlotek audio-slideshow from Radio 3.
• A modest bread: the short history of the bagel.

Totalitarianism, dictatorship and resistance:

• Stalinism lives: on the raid on Memorial and the re-writing of Russia's history.
• Born in prison: on the North Korean gulag.
• The immorality of pacifism, the necessity of intervention: Your Friend on Peter Tatchell on Robert Mugabe

Interculture:

• The Al Farabi Concerto: opening our eyes to music.
• The Deserted Village: Louis Proyect on two diaspora films.

Rethinking secular liberalism:

• I missed the 400th anniversary: Theo Hobson on John Milton.

Drinking:

• Don't Dinesh my Hitch!: 2HC on how to order a Hitchens

Other people's linktasticas:

• Variousness at Antigerman Translation: lots of links on the left-right convergence, Baader-Meinhof, etc (and a link to my last linktastica).
• Elsewhere at Roland's place: A list which overlaps with this one.

Oh, and Chag Urim Sameach and all that. (Especially to those to whom it matters, and especially to TNC, Noga, FiG, DZ, Keith, Snoopy and Matt. Thanks for the links, comments and khavershaft over the year.)

Fascism, Islamo-fascism and anti-fascism

1. Via Drink-Soaked Will:

Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens take on the WWII revisionists, centering on Patrick J. Buchanan who is a complete fucknut. Video here.

Chapter two now available here.

Chapter three now available here.

Tipping top hat to Doddyman

2. Champagne Charlie, one of the Shiraz Socialists, has forced the Gruan to accept that "Islamo-fascist" is not a hate term. Read the correspondence. (Incidentally, the Gary Younge article which sparked the debate, about the respectiable fascism of the BNP, was actually on the whole pretty good, marred by that one piece of liberal groupthink.)

3. Roland reports that anarchists have defaced a memorial in Stalinoid Frisco to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American Stalinist stooges who fought against Franco's totalitarianism but for another. Like Roland, I am against this sort of vandalism: the dead in general should be respected, and these men were noble, if deluded. But, like Roland, I agree with the sentiments of the graffiti: "Viva Durruti Y Orwell".

4. Ourfriendinthenorth: We are all neocons now - read it.


Image credits: ALBA, HistoriaSiglo20

Hitch's cojones

Jim on Hitchens on waterboarding

McCain Derangement Syndrome

Jeff Weintraub has been posting fascinating material on the various "derangement syndromes" that plague American politics, including Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Bush Derangement Syndrome and, more recently, McCain Derangement Syndrome. I sent this piece on Ann Coulter's symptoms of the latter to Jogo, and this is what came back:


Yes, it's true what that writer says. If you listen to American talk-radio you hear a milder (or less crazy) version of McCain Derangement Syndrome. MDS is all over the dial and it's passionate. One can understand it, in a way. Conservatives want a conservative, goddammit, and in so many ways McCain is offering such a soft version of it that he might as well be a Democrat. They want a principled conservative, like Reagan was. Someone who -- it is clear to see -- operates on conservative principles. That McCain has ascended so high in this race is, for many rightwing conservatives, a very dismal prospect.

I am a well-known Ann Coulter fan. I think she is an ironist, to the point where she seems nutty. As jogo seems nutty sometimes. But really, you have to filter so much of what she says through an ironic filter; for example, when she says that we should invade all the Moslem countries and convert them to Christianity. It's totally absurd and impossible, and I am amused when liberals ltake her as a serious Nazi (which she surely isn't; not in ANY way). Liberals did the same thing when she said that Jews needed to be "perfected" -- which is not ironic, of course, but is merely an unabashed statement of what almost all Christians actually do believe.

Plus -- if you think for five minutes about converting all the Moslems to Christianity, it's not really totally crazy, is it? I mean ... if we could actually DO THAT, wouldn't it be a good thing? It WOULD be a good thing, but no one except Ann Coulter has the balls to say it.

However, when Ann Coulter says "McCain has no honor," well, this is going much too far. It's not irony. It's insulting. Maybe she is actually a nut. Still, I like her. I think people should take the stick out of their asses.

******

Speaking of the "imperfection" of the Jews, Pope Benedict, in response to Jewish protests, just revised the Good Friday prayers of the Tritentine Mass, removing references to our people's "blindness" and "darkness." But don't all people, to an extent, walk in blindness and darkness?

******

Amazing how even an intelligent friend, if talkative enough, can become tedious, even unwelcome. I recently cruised Christopher Hitchens' site, looking at all the columns, interviews and debates I had missed in recent months. Many are about religion. Who cares? Bo-rrrr-ing. I feel sorry for Hitch -- over and over again he pounds his points home. Not long ago I read everything Hitch wrote. I was so interested to know: what he thinks about this, what he thinks about that.


All posts on: Ann Coulter, Pope Benedict, John McCain

Hitchens on Iraq and Vietnam

Christopher Hitchens on Iraq and Vietnam in The Observer: essential reading.

Previous: Hitchens and William Shawcross on Cambodia; Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard on Vietnam; Chomsky on My Lai and Pol Pot; Todd Gitlin on Iraq and Vietnam.

Against secular fundamentalism

I welcomed Shuggy's gentle critique of Hitchens (and the wider ravanchist atheist movement he - and many of my dearest blogfriends - are part of). At some point, I will get around to posting exactly what I think is wrong with Jacobin secularism.

Update here.

NB: Parallel to the Hitch meme, is this Johan Hari - Chris Dillow - Freemania - Norman Geras meme.

Oddly, while writing this, "The Rebel Jesus" by Jackson Browne came up on my mp3 shuffle.

Previous: Religion and the American right, God Is Not Great

Islamism and multiculture

Christopher Hitchens on Mark Steyn, Martin Amis, Jack Straw, and the Islamist threat (via Jogo)
This is good stuff. It shows how the right's fears of the Islamist danger is partly right, but it also shows where they are wrong.

Steyn makes the same mistake as did the late Oriana Fallaci: considering European Muslim populations as one. Islam is as fissile as any other religion (as Iraq reminds us). Little binds a Somali to a Turk or an Iranian or an Algerian, and considerable friction exists among immigrant Muslim groups in many European countries. Moreover, many Muslims actually have come to Europe for the advertised purposes—seeking asylum and to build a better life. A young Afghan man, murdered in the assault on the London subway system in July 2005, had fled to England from the Taliban, which had murdered most of his family. Muslim women often demand the protection of the authorities against forced marriage and other cruelties. These are all points of difference, and also of possible resistance to Euro-sharia.

The main problem in Europe in this context is that many deracinated young Muslim men, inflamed by Internet propaganda from Chechnya or Iraq and aware of their own distance from “the struggle,” now regard the jihadist version of their religion as the “authentic” one. Compounding the problem, Europe’s multicultural authorities, many of its welfare agencies, and many of its churches treat the most militant Muslims as the minority’s “real” spokesmen. As Kenan Malik and others have pointed out in the case of Britain, this mind-set cuts the ground from under the feet of secular Muslims, encouraging the sensation that many in the non-Muslim Establishment have a kind of death wish.

Little Richardjohn: British Identity Lessons...
This is also good stuff.

British identity is like the ever growing family quilt, where each generation makes their contribution, no matter how tedious or brilliant or immoral or saintly... [Britain] has never benefited from attempts to pickle its identity. And the attempts to do so are generally forgotten or ridiculed.

Added Tuesday:
Here's a few links on the Ken Livingstone/Daniel Pipes clash of civilisations debate: Jonathan Hoffman at Adloyada, David T at Harry's, Oliver Kamm, Ami at Harry's

Seymour Martin Lipset

Seymour Martin Lipset has passed away at 84. An important and interesting man, who went through that common migration of the anti-Stalinist left from Trotskyist to democratic socialist to... well, to something else. He has been called a neoconservative, but I think that is not exactly right. What he was above all was a humanist, a deeply humane man, a mentsh.

Like my grandfather, he was born in Harlem, sparking this nice anecdote from the NYT obit:

he wrote about meeting Gen. Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a cocktail party and telling the general that they had both been born in Harlem, grown up in the Bronx and graduated from City College.

“I did not add what was more relevant, that he joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps, while I joined the youth section of Young People’s Socialist League, Fourth International,” wrote Mr. Lipset, who remained a socialist through graduate school.

Here's an appreciation from Metta Spencer, who knew him from the 1960s, and comments on his "neocon" turn. Lots of interesting stories. And a nice appreciation from a former colleague, Jason, who also makes a case for the greatness of Union Democracy, as does Demosophist at Winds of Change. And, finally, a short appreciation from Rakesh Khurana.

UPDATE: Here's more from Metta Spencer.

***

On a related topic, I only just read Hitchens' sharp dissent from the general beatification of the late Gerald Ford. (Via Sisyphus, via Jeff W)

And, on another related topic, here's a lovely piece by Gus Tyler on his 75 years with The Forward, which also reads as a micro-history of the New York Jewish anti-Stalinist left. (Via Arieh)


Previous: Clifford Geertz, Hannah Arendt, Anti-Stalinist intellectuals, Leo Strauss, Irving Fields, Basketball in social democratic New York

Hitch the leftist

Shiraz Socialist: Hitch in "rediscovers soul" shocker!

Voltaire's Priest on Christopher Hitchens' article in The Liberal about Ann Coulter's Godless.

(I've written a comment you can read there, assuming it gets past the moderator.)

Christians, Muslims and other reprehensible people

Is Mel Gibson an anti-Semite? By Christopher Hitchens Mel is sick to his empty core with Jew-hatred, apparently. (But at least he apologised, unlike the Jew-haters in the Stop the War Coalition, as Jim notes.)

Jim again: Clerical fascists at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Bush the fundamentalist: Karen Armstrong talks rubbish, as Shuggy rightly points out.

Previously: Praising Hezbollah, Books burning, rockets falling