LENIN'S TOMB

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The Johann Hari debacle posted by Richard Seymour

Why should I have anything to say about Johann Hari's disgrace? Splintered Sunrise has already dealt with this in two elegant posts, perfecting a more-in-sorrow-than-in-delicious-glee tone that makes me giggle. I can't possibly top this. And yet, I do have some claim to speak on this topic. Firstly, because my encounter with someone who, accompanying one Johann Hari esquire, identified himself as David Rose at a debate in 2005, has caused no end of confusion. You see, someone using the identity of 'David Rose' was editing entries on Wikipedia in ways that were malicious to some journalists but convivial to Johann Hari. It was suspected that this 'David Rose' might be a sock puppet used by Hari himself. 'David Rose' told readers to contact me, as I had met him and could confirm his existence. The vast majority of queries I received on this came during Hari's recent vow of silence, as Twitterers and email correspondents pursued answers that they couldn't get from the cherubic fibber himself. I dutifully explained that I had in fact met someone called David Rose and that he seemed to be friend of Hari's. Now it turns out the real David Rose is likely to be this guy, who doesn't resemble the person I met, and hasn't known Hari for ten years. So, the question I'm now asking is: who the hell did I meet? (The matter of who left those fiercely defensive comments on this blog using the 'Rose' identity, and who e-mailed me as recently as 2009 using the same identity to plug one of Hari's articles, is perhaps less of a mystery).

Secondly, while the right-wing pundits and papers are just now getting up to speed on this, I had noticed Hari's propensity for plagiarism and fabulation long ago. The arch-reactionary and Islamophobic ~~left-footer~~ Catholic writer, Damian Thompson, is leading the Torygraph's gloat-fest, but they are well behind the times as far as I'm concerned. Allow me to elaborate. Private Eye reported fabrications on his part regarding quotes from Iraqis pleading for invasion back in 2003. I pointed out some very serious fabrications regarding Galloway's memoir in 2004. Chris Brooke first drew attention to Hari's plagiarism in his Negri interview back in 2004. I pointed out several of his distortions, including a pretty nasty slur on Eric Hobsbawm, in 2005. So, you see, the problem has been noticed well before now, and largely not by the right. More recently, before this drama blew up, several of us pointed out Hari's falsehoods about Muslims in the East End - with the result of inducing a quite spectacular huff on his part, in which he blocked all of his critics on Twitter and unfriended several on Facebook (yes, including me). Granted, some of the accusations now current - for example, the fabrication of evidence regarding atrocities in the Central African Republic (which Hari still denies despite what seems to be compelling evidence) - are actually much more serious than the above. But that's saying something. The nadir of Hari's professional standards has been evident to many for a long time.

And this is not a case of a Jayson Blair, exactly, though fellow staff members are reputed to have considered Hari "our Jayson Blair". True, if the Blair comparison holds, it would mean that The Independent's managers and editors had ignored repeated warnings about Hari's behaviour, protecting him because his copy was good for advertising revenue. Still, Hari's untruths and distortions have been at times far more politically toxic than anything Blair invented. Alhough, as an opinion journalist, he has never had the status of a Judith Miller, he could nonetheless do some real damage - as his mea culpa over Iraq acknowledged. But what is at issue here is the media itself.

Hari has been defended robustly by The Independent, which has invested heavily in his reputation. It tried - lucklessly, in the end - to save his Orwell Prize, which must be a source of some of the paper's advertising revenues. Editor Simon Kelner was out there firefighting on Hari's behalf, insisting that he's really, really sorry (I bet he bloody is), and that the paper believes in him. I daresay even the lawyers, who have certainly been deployed on Hari's behalf before, were working overtime during this fiasco. Now, it's clear from Hari's mea culpa that the paper intends to keep him on staff, though he will use some of his accumulated earnings to take a few months holiday while he attends a journalism course. While constituting a tacit admission of the laxity of professional standards in the media, wherein a university graduate could go far and fast with minimal training, it also confirms the paper's commitment to their star writer. The fact is that the liberal media likes the sort of 'colour' journalism that Hari provides - the telling quote, the saucy detail, the heart-wrenching testimony. The Hari-Brockes school of falsification is a lucrative form of infotainment. Ideally it wouldn't be completely riddled with fabrications, but that style of writing does lend itself to embellishment, exaggeration and invention. And it's simply impossible that the editors and managers of The Independent don't know that. But then, as we learned from Richard Peppiatt, and above all from the profusion of explosive revelations known collectively as 'Hackgate', truth is at best a secondary value in the capitalist media.

As for Hari himself, any temptation I had to feel sorry for him evaporated when I read his self-serving apology. No one could feel more sorry for Hari than he does for himself, and he acknowledges none of the serious charges made against him, no matter how strong or irrefutable the evidence is. The people I feel sorry for are those talented journalists starting out on their careers, anxious to provide good copy, packing that colour in, maybe tempted to embellish, exaggerate, or be overly generous with the detail. Had Hari been hung out to dry, they would have had an example to be wary of. "There but for the grace of Simon Kelner...", they would think, and delete whatever nonsense was just tripping off their keyboard digits. By protecting him, as The Independent seems to have done, they have given notice that the consequences of falsification, of plagiarism, and of slander, aren't all that severe. And that... well, that isn't true, is it?

Labels: capitalism, ideology, independent, johann hari, liberals, media, propaganda

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

In which I become a diverting anecdote. posted by Richard Seymour

As you can see, I come not to praise Johann Hari but to demonise him. A few people have drawn my attention to this weird segment in Hari's latest for Dissent:

One of the most popular left-wing blogs in Britain, Lenin's Tomb, goes further, viciously scorning Muslims who fight back against Islamic fundamentalism. Even though it is written by an atheist writer who enjoys alcohol, female company and free speech, it has ridiculed Muslim women who attend freedom of speech rallies as "Uncle Toms", and condemned Muslims who have "comfortable upper-middle class" lives because they aren't "interested in subjecting [themselves] to the ascetic demands of religion." Cohen's thesis applies with laser-accuracy to these parts of the left, and it is here that his critique is most powerful: they have indeed become reflexive defenders of the far right. Against this, Cohen quotes the Iranian author Azar Nafisi: "I very much resent it when people - maybe with good intentions or from a progressive point of view - keep telling me, 'It's their culture'... It's like saying the culture of Massachucets is burning witches." Again, he exaggerates the extent to which these thoughts are part of the mainstream left. But this error is as nothing to the pro-war left's final and most disastrous reading of all.

The last time I was referenced in a mainstream US magazine, it was obliquely in Ian Parker's exceptional eulogy to Christopher Hitchens for The New Yorker. And the last time I was so misconstrued was when the unhinged son of the Hoares decided to paint me as a supporter of Slobodan Milosevic. It isn't all that worrying that I didn't say the things that Johann Hari thinks I said. Who doesn't sometimes get that treatment? Practically everyone else who is referenced in the article is dealt with in a similarly unfair fashion (and more generally, I can count Negri, Derrida and Hobsbawm among my companions). And it isn't as if that is the part of his article that I disagree with most. However, bloggery is narcissism or it is nothing, so I will take the trouble to direct readers of that infidel magazine to the small matters of fact in this small case.

I don't viciously scorn Muslims who fight back against "Islamic fundamentalism", because that can be a very good thing to do. I do viciously scorn all those who misrepresent and vilify Islam in the service of imperialism, because that is a bad and wicked thing to do. I don't condemn Muslims who live comfortable upper middle class lives and aren't interested in the ascetic demands of religion. I mentioned in this post about the neocon American Islamic Congress that one member of it was probably of that ilk, but I did not and do not think that being in that position merits special criticism. What I did think at the time, and what I still think now, is that "being determines consciousness", and that one's class perspective is likely to regulate one's political purview. I don't describe women who attend freedom of speech rallies as "Uncle Toms". This was probably passed on to Hari by his friend, 'Dave', who sometimes comments here. In the comments to the post about that so-called 'March for Free Expression', I was asked to comment about a speaker named 'Ali', who is in fact a man (the gender fabrication is symptomatic). He was well received because the rally was designed to appease racism. I retorted: "it's always good to have an Uncle Tom present, so I don't doubt he got good cheers". The worst thing about that sentence was the offense against the English language. The BNP Nazis and right-wing libertarians in the crowd would certainly have appreciated 'One Of Them' coming out and abetting the charge that Muslims are the principal threat to liberty and free speech. Such was the theme of the march, and such were its politics. At any rate, 'Dave' took this to mean that I consider all Muslims who demand free speech "Uncle Toms" (hence the pluralisation). Hari is quoting 'Dave' and not me. On such insignificant fluff was a paragraph of piffle built: the inference that I think 'It's their culture' is clearly nonsense. That essentialising, culturalist gesture is more likely to be found among Hari's friends on the 'pro-war left' than it is on this blog. Hari could do himself a favour and read what one of his favourite authors, Sam Harris, has to say on the topic. Or indeed, he could inspect Hitchens' latest.

Anyway, to be sullied in a magazine that has migrated from Cold War liberalism to Hot War liberalism is no particular dishonour. But you might ask, and you would justified in asking, as the Black Eyed Peas once did so gracefully, where is the love?

Labels: bomber 'left', johann hari