My first articles for CounterPunch

So I've submitted two articles to CounterPunch, one of the biggest English language newsletters and websites on the left. It's a great pleasure and honour to be published alongside such writers as Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn. I hope these two articles are the first of many contributions to CounterPunch.

My first contribution is entitled 'There is no regressive left' looks at the so-called 'regressive left' (as you might have guessed!) and what kind of people tend to deploy this term. I argue the phrase comes out of the Cold War divisions between the liberal left and the radical left, the latter took the side of the establishment against the former. Essentially, the term 'regressive left' is used to police radical thought and dress up the rightward surrender of liberals as something noble.

My second article takes a look at Jeremy Corbyn's speech on foreign policy at Chatham House. It takes apart the ideas of the Cook doctrine, the 'ethical foreign policy' of the first Blair term and how this quickly turned into a sloppy pretext for endless wars in the Middle East. I argue that Corbyn has emptied out the notion of an 'ethical foreign policy' and redrawn its limits to exclude the most hawkish elements of Blairism. He coopts and subverts the Cook doctrine for his own ends.

This is just a starting point for future writing. Watch this space.

Chasing Dirty Sexy Russian Money!

Unless you’ve been in a cave, you will have heard the good news: George Osborne has found work at long last! The former Chancellor will soon be the editor of The Evening Standard, the only free London newspaper, distributed at tube stations across the city. Plenty of people have raised the issue of a conflict of interests, losing track of who has gone through the spinning door. The full picture is far more absurd than one politician’s decision.

The Evening Standard is owned by Alexander Lebedev and watched over by his son Evgeny. Former editor Sarah Sands is going to take up a new role at BBC Radio’s Today Programme – the bane of many progressive listeners! Clearly, Sands is no longer content with just presiding over a conservative newspaper. But wait there is still more to the spinning door of the mainstream media. The BBC media editor Amol Rajan, who oversaw the coverage of this story, was the editor of The Independent (another Lebedev publication).

So we have the former Chancellor joining the Lebedev payroll, with former Lebedev employees moving to prominent roles at the BBC. It’s almost as if it were not farcical enough for the former Chancellor to take a top job in the media. The line between the independent media and the political establishment appears to be increasingly blurred. In fact, it’s almost as if the presumed independence of the media is up for debate, the wall between the media and the establishment turns out to be nonexistent. The two turn out to be on the same side of one coin.

Should anyone be surprised by this? No, the mainstream media is the establishment. What we might call the commentariat has always existed. It has different sections of capital behind it, and different political factions within it. The vast bulk of the mainstream media is broadly right-wing and generally supports the Conservative Party, the left-liberal media is in the minority: you have The Guardian and its sister The Observer, along with The Daily Mirror (the only pro-Labour daily newspaper).

If people think the Russian factor makes this story unique, think again. London is awash with Russian money, including lots of dirty money. So the factor itself is not unique, though the details do matter. Fortunes amassed in the Yeltsin era of market-based chaos would be consolidated under the stewardship of Vladimir Putin. Former KGB man Alexander Lebedev emerged a wealthy man and soon began building a media portfolio and working with Gorbachev and others on political projects.

It’s not the first time Osborne has fraternised with Russian oligarchs. He was caught on a yacht in Corfu with Oleg Deripaska in 2008. It was alleged Osborne was looking to secure a £50,000 donation from the aluminium magnate. Also present was Peter Mandelson. It’s a great image, New Labour and the Conservative Party coming together aboard the yacht of a Russian oligarch. This isn’t to suggest anything improper was going on. Not at all, though it is interesting what goes on perfectly within the confines of law.

This article was originally published at Spectre.

The Labour Party and anti-Semitism

There is no upsurge of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. There is a moral panic being instigated by the media due, to a handful of cases, almost all of which took place before Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader in the summer of 2015. In fact, the Corbyn leadership has demonstrated it is not afraid to investigate allegations of anti-Semitism against Labour figures, including allies like Ken Livingstone. But this is not all there is to say.

The perfect storm over anti-Semitism and Labour has been building for a long time. Every wing of the British media establishment has taken part – from the BBC and the Guardian to the Telegraph and the Spectator. The Naz Shah case, and Ken Livingstone’s intervention, is just the latest to be picked up. The British press has manufactured this scandal in a bid to create a crisis and, in turn, undermine Corbyn. But this hysteria also represents the high emotional stakes in Israel among the commentariat.

The Anglosphere is culturally and politically invested in Israel in a way which other world powers are not. Make no doubt about it, this is the result of settler colonialism. Israel fits into the imperial ambitions of Western powers. The American intellectual class fell in love with Israel after the 1967 war, which came as a welcome sign that the world was not in total disarray. So the conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a coincidental part of our political discourse – it is necessarily a part of the way the conflict is understood in the West.

For these reasons, we might say Ken Livingstone ran into the Shah scandal like a bull into a china shop. We still may not have heard the last vase smash as it hits the floor. Plenty of leftists have pointed out the Haavara agreement, the Nazi plans to deport European Jews to Madagascar and elsewhere. However, the facts of Nazi Germany are not really relevant or helpful here. The real controversy is over Livingstone’s use of the term ‘Zionism’ to describe Nazi policy. Laying out the historical record cannot dispel the outrage (much of it phony). The damage is done.

Sadly, honest voices like Jamie Stern-Weiner are lost in the storm. Vilification campaigns are successful because it is virtually impossible to resist mudslinging. If you explain yourself, deny the claims or even apologise, you’re screwed. It’s too late. It’s never enough. There is no way of adequately deflecting, let alone dodging, the mud. You’re always guilty in the eyes of some people. Even before this, Livingstone was rated as an anti-Semite by certain people thanks to the media.

Even if we presume innocence, it’s worth examining why Livingstone’s use of the term ‘Zionism’ was problematic. First off, Zionism is a broad church, much like feminism or conservatism, so it’s hardly a clearly defined target to begin with. For example, Noam Chomsky was a Zionist youth organiser and Alan Dershowitz was apart of the same Hebrew summer camp. But Chomsky’s childhood Zionism would not recognised by the devotees of the state of Israel. There is a big difference between the left-wing, anti-statist currents of the 1930s and present day right-wing Israeli nationalism.

That’s not to say that Zionism did not always suffer from major, and potentially unreconcilable contradictions. Left-wing nationalism, for example, as rarely, if ever given way to non-nationalism. This is what the left-wing problem with Zionism is at its root all about. Politically, the ideology has failed to be secular, becoming increasingly violent and ethnocratic. The British left’s version is compounded by the UK’s history as an imperial power, whose policies created the regional divisions, in the Middle East, at the root of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This is why term “Zionism” is so loaded, and why, in a British context it is especially toxic. It connotes support for a status quo that goes to the heart of a history of ruinous foreign policy, and, in its contemporary form, the chauvinism of settlers towards an indigenous people. This is why the Blairite goon John Mann was so furious with Ken Livingstone. The presuppositions are evident: Israeli policy is so morally immaculate, it can only be opposed by closet Nazis.

Of course, the obvious point cannot be made too often: not all Zionists are Jews, neither are all Jews Zionists. Yet this game is played by the Israeli right, and its reactionary Diaspora boosters. Never mind the fact that Christian Zionism, for example, is a huge movement with deep roots, while anti-Zionism has a long history among, err, Jews. Note the American Christian right tend to be fanatical supporters of Israeli colonialism, but they do so as they yearn for the Rapture and end for Jewish people worldwide. But this anti-Semitism is rarely called out, if ever.

As much as it is absurd to conflate Zionism with Jewishness, the Z-word can be dangerous for progressives to use carelessly. In many ways, it would be much better for leftists to talk about Israeli or Jewish nationalism today. Precision of language is vital here. Clear distinctions have to be maintained. Not only because the misuse of the term ‘Zionist’ can easily be painted as anti-Semitic, but because it can be received as such by actual racists. This means the Left should deepen its vocabulary about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Too often do we hear talk of the ‘Israel lobby’, or even the ‘Jewish lobby’, and this is not unproblematic. The only reason why lobbyists are welcomed in Washington and London is because there is an underlying interest in the first place. In other words, US policy favours Israel due to its own interests in the Middle East, not because of Israeli interference in American political life. The Left should not presuppose Western innocence in all of this, as if the US is being led astray by foreign interests. This is not inherently anti-Semitic, but it is seriously flawed.

As Didi Herman argues, the Left should probably stop using the word ‘Zionism’ and try to grasp the problems at hand in clear terms. By using ‘Zionism’, the Left opens itself up to right-wing offensives and infiltration by genuine anti-Semites. At the same time, there is little engagement with Jewish nationalism as a historic movement and the reasons for its appeal. It was once that the Left was avowedly pro-Zionist and many supported Israel up to the 1967 war, whereas today leftists are eager to pronounce themselves anti-Zionists. But posturing does not always translate into good politics.

Speaking of posturing, the self-described ‘anti-totalitarian Left’ is heavily involved in the smear machine. Many of these soi-disant leftists and liberals supported the invasion of Iraq on supposed progressive grounds.

They see Israel as a Western liberal democracy encircled by Arab dictatorships and Islamic fascist regimes. Therefore, all criticism of Israel is painted as anti-Jewish. The reality is much less convenient for this herd of independent minds.

Localising anti-Jewish prejudice on the Left is a form of externalisation. Much like child sexual abuse, we’re meant to believe it’s always someone else who is guilty of it. The terrible truth is sexual violence is far more common and banal. And the same can be said of Judeophobia. It’s not the preserve of student activists, intellectuals and conspiracists. The global financial crisis set the conditions in place for a resurgence of racism. Anti-Semitism is the handmade of Islamophobia. To assume that it would not reemerge now is to not take anti-immigrant politics seriously.

As for the Labour Party in particular, there is little to no anti-Semitism among its ranks. The last leader, Ed Miliband is of Belgian Jewish heritage – his father, a refugee from Nazism served in WW2 – yet the British press was comfortable mocking him for his inability to enjoy a bacon sandwich. His father Ralph Miliband was a refugee from the Nazi onslaught, and the right-wing press insinuated the man was ‘disloyal’ to Britain. There was no discussion of anti-Jewish undercurrents in the midst of this.

Jew-bashing is an old game for the Right. The times haven’t changed so much. As Sam Kriss argues, the contemporary Right is now philo-Semitic – it is fascinated by Israel and by Jews – but this supposed love is really its opposite. Jews who criticise Israel are deemed insufficiently Jewish. This is why Norwegian fascist Anders Breivik drew a line between ‘loyal’ and ‘disloyal’ Jews (Zionists in the one hand, left-liberals in the other). A Jewish state is one kind of solution for the anti-Semite, as Jews are taken, in this view, as essentially deracinated.

The Right is trying to destroy Jeremy Corbyn by any means necessary. The coalition includes the Blairites, the Conservatives and the media. Guido Fawkes started this scandal by digging up Naz Shah’s Facebook posts from August 2014, and the media quickly took it up. This was before she was selected to run against George Galloway in Bradford West. It was also long before Jeremy Corbyn triumphed over the attempts to renew the New Labour project. So it should be obvious why there is a moral panic now of all times.

Actually the media has been pushing this line for a long-term. The BBC’s John Ware, who writes for Standpoint magazine, produced a documentary attacking Corbyn as supporting anti-Semites and terrorists. The good news is Corbyn has overcome every attack on his character. This scandal may be harder to trounce thanks to Livingstone’s comments. It’s possible the local elections could be hit by this, but it’s also true Labour is facing the prospect of long-term decline anyway. Corbyn may not be able to save the party. But the Blairites lack anyone capable of filling the void.

At the same time, it’s less likely to sway Londoners away from Sadiq Khan and to the shameful, racist campaign mounted by Zac Goldsmith. The Khan campaign has kept to its ‘soft left’ script and made simple, uncontroversial pledges. It’s possible we’ll see the Corbyn vote turnout for the mayoral vote, while Labour takes serious losses in the local elections. Neither would necessarily be turned by the events of the past week. Not that this would ever be acknowledged by the BBC.

This article was originally written for Souciant Magazine.

Guido Fawkes helped start this shit-storm

As you may have heard, the Labour Party has a problem with anti-Semitism. Or at least that's what the right-wingers are yelling. It all started with Guido Fawkes, a.k.a. Paul Staines. Mr. P Staines dug up some Facebook posts by Naz Shah from August 2014. This is meant to tell us that the Labour Party is a front organisation for rabid anti-Jewish fanatics. Maybe, we ought to ask questions about Mr. P Staines and his motives for sliming Corbyn's Labour Party.

Putin versus the BBC

Last week, BBC Panorama shone a bright light on President Putin and allegations of corruption against the Russian leader. At first the programme focuses on Putin’s lifestyle - his expensive watches and tracksuits - and quickly moves on to hearing journalists, former allies and politicians dredge up old accusations: $40 billion in assets and the Cape Idokopas palace. It notes that the CIA and the FBI agree that Putin may be worth $40 billion in assets.

We’ve heard much of this before. However, Panorama does flesh out its coverage with new goodies for its viewers. The US Treasury’s Adam Szubin makes an appearance to call Putin ‘corrupt’ provoking outrage from Russia. There have been calls for evidence to be put forward. It’s obvious the truth isn’t really the point here. The US and Russia are at odds more so than ever. The crisis in Ukraine and the Syrian civil war have brought tensions to the surface.

Of course, this isn’t to say Vladimir Putin is beyond corruption. He’s often described as presiding over a ‘Mafia state’, and with good reason. The allegations against Putin are certainly plausible given the state of Russia’s body politic, yet the more interesting question may be why the BBC would take aim at Putin now. It’s not like corruption and authoritarianism are new to Russia. No immaculate figure could pass through the system and reach its heights. History tells us all we need to know.

Rule by excrement

Under the Yeltsin administration, the level of corruption was so rife there was an investigation into allegations of embezzlement of funds through the refurbishment of the Kremlin. The coterie of oligarchs around President Yeltsin - particularly Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Khodorkovsky - brought in Putin as a new weapon to be deployed against the investigators. Putin did a good job in quashing the investigation. He was soon on track to succeed Yeltsin and become the leader he is today.

This background story is removed from most reportage. It’s particularly inconvenient given the West’s love affair with Russian oligarchs. The British media romanticises figures like Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky. Both men are now portrayed as dissident critics of the Putin regime. Evidently, the West still harbours nostalgia for the Yeltsin era, when the Russian economy was prised wide open, and the state was stripped bare of its regulatory powers. Never mind corruption. Never mind the plight of Chechnya.

The Panorama documentary shows us that the system is based upon patronage throughout a state-embedded elite. This is far from the free-market utopia, which was meant to emerge under Boris Yeltsin. Instead the period of primitive accumulation created the basis, not for market democracy, but for Russian nationalism to be rejuvenated. As a consequence of Yeltsin’s rule, many Russians jokingly equate democracy with rule by excrement. Shitocracy might be the word for it in English.

The best parts of the documentary provided some details of Putin’s inner circle. It turns out Putin has maintained his team from St Petersburg. This includes his old lawyer Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as Russia’s Prime Minister alongside President Putin. Even neighbours and childhood friends have done very well for themselves. Putin’s former assistant Igor Sechin, who now chairs Rosneft, and economist Alexey Miller, now the head of Gazprom.

None of this is very surprising. It’s compatible with the kind of political system preferred by the former KGB agent. An admirer of the conservative French strongman Charles de Gaulle, Putin believes in the confluence of national and corporate interests. The idea being that this guarantees capital will comply with the body national and its needs. He thinks he can unite the powers of the state with the economy. This leaves room for state intervention, protectionism and a lot of corruption.

The key difference between Yeltsin and Putin has set out to block the US in its pursuits. While Yeltsin allowed the Soviet Union to be dismantled, Putin clearly mourns the loss of the Eastern bloc as a buffer region. NATO can no longer be kept away from Russia’s periphery. The crisis in Ukraine emerged out of the tension between NATO expansion and Russian nationalism. Now Putin has intervened in Syria to challenge US policy on a new front. The BBC has clearly taken sides, but this is nothing new.

The role of the BBC

Much like the New York Times, the BBC sets the contours of public debate and its coverage becomes history. Contrary to the popular misconception, the BBC does not have a left-wing bias and its coverage really straddles the centre of politics. This is also something the BBC has in common with the New York Times. It's standpoint really oscillates around the so-called ‘centre-ground’. Yet the corporation is as much constitutive of the centre, the left and the right, as it channels the flow of discourse.

Although the BBC hopes to stand as an impartial intersection, the truth is far more complex. If the BBC wants to get both perspectives on a political issue it usually asks a Conservative and a Labourite to comment. This excludes everything beyond these tribal affiliations. Programmes like Question Time and Newsnight become opportunities for the political class to assert itself. Discussions can only take place within the realm of certain assumptions.

Despite the right-wing accusations of rampant ‘political-correctness’, the BBC was the home of Jeremy Clarkson for many years and Nigel Farage is a regular guest on Question Time. Many BBC journalists were cheerleaders of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Famously, Andrew Marr was eager to herald the vindication of Blair over Iraq. The same was true over Syria. As David Cameron was pushing for bombing in 2013, the BBC aired discussions with hawks Bernard Kouchner, David Aaronovitch and Paul Wolfowitz. The only dissenting voice was Mehdi Hasan, a liberal Muslim journalist.

However, the pro-war bias is not consistent. With the rise of Islamic State, Newsnight allowed Patrick Cockburn to talk freely about the Syrian civil war, and he is far from an advocate of Western intervention. Meanwhile the BBC has, for the most part, supported a narrative around Ukraine favouring the US and the EU over Russia. You can either support the West and its ‘values’, or you’re secretly sympathetic to Russian aggression. Other positions are disregarded from the outside.

‘Objectivity’ is based on the exclusion of particular viewpoints. There is no space for inclusivity here. If you’re beyond the reach of conventional opinion, you will be policed and demonised. For example, you could only be for some kind of austerity and not against it outright. The contours of official truths can only be perceived once you’ve cleaved away everything else. This is only possible if the BBC is partial. In this way, the BBC sets the agenda for the British media. This is why it is both loved and loathed.

This article was first published at Souciant.

What does an honourable Tory look like?

I've always enjoyed the work of columnist and commentator Peter Oborne since first discovering his tirades against the oleaginous Tony Blair. So I was somewhat surprised to hear that he had resigned his position at the Telegraph, itself the flagship of media Toryism, where as its chief political commentator he had provided mild-mannered and sober reflections for many years.

Not so much a fulminating reactionary, Peter Oborne is an honourable conservative fellow and embodies the best of moralism. You know he means it when he's indignant with rage at political corruption, cronyism and opportunism, the three characteristics of our trilateral consensus, precisely because he's polite by nature. Compare this to Peter Hitchens, the chief fulminator, who does adhere to difficult principles and abhors the party system as it is. What's the difference? The little Hitch is a drama queen, who smells rot everywhere, whereas Oborne assumes the best of people (which isn't always an advantage).

Unlike the Daily Mail herd of scabrous journos, Oborne has kept his distance from the racist narratives around Muslims, their faith and terrorism. Instead of partaking in slanders against the Muslim community, Oborne embraces multiculturalism and tolerance, while at the same time, he condemns homophobia and other forms of bigotry. He's been willing to share platforms with Leftists on these very issues standing with the prickly George Galloway, whom he defended against a ghastly assault, as well as Charlie Brooker and Mehdi Hasan. He was one of the few commentators to argue that the London riots were a sign of a society increasingly polarised by a wealth gap. But this isn't the only instance.

On more than one occasion, Peter Oborne has eloquently raised the question of Palestinian statehood and the rights of its dispossessed people. He has not been afraid to criticise Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories, and he has done so at the leading conservative newspaper. He's even dared to slam the pro-Israel lobby and its dealings with British politicians, particularly the Conservatives. Oborne may assume the best, but he's not going to pretend he doesn't see wrongdoing by his side. This is a great public service on his part.

Not enough liberals, let alone conservatives, have the brains or the guts to take a stand on the issue of Palestine. So the decision to resign can only be seen as another instance of this integrity. It only reaffirms and consolidates his record.

The Politics of Lee Atwater.

It took some time, but I finally got around to watching Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (2008) by Stefan Forbes. It's well worth a watch if you're fascinated by the drama of American politics. In its focus on Lee Atwater the film individualises a serious problem, which is actually systematic, within the US political scene. This is both its weakness and strength.

It shouldn't be a surprise. After all, individualism has long been the dominant character of American politics. Personalities carry more significance than parties. Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan and Sarah Palin coexist in the same party, but represent very different ideas, constituencies and interests. But this can obscure ideological and economic problems.

Undoubtedly, Lee Atwater is a significant figure in American political history. He arose just as the civil rights struggle had defeated Jim Crow in the Southern States and the anti-war movement was challenging US hegemony. Out of this period the gay liberation and feminist movements emerged in the 1970s. The executive power of the presidency was put under strain with the fall of Nixon in the wake of Watergate. It looked as if the establishment was seriously threatened.

What came next has to be understood as a period of reconsolidation for the American ruling-class. Jimmy Carter came into office as a candidate to win over the counterculture and bring them back into mainstream liberal politics. Once in office, President Carter installed Paul Volcker in the Federal Reserve, where Volcker hiked interest rates to soak the poor, and in foreign affairs pledged CIA support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua.

Once in office, Reagan inherited and expanded the Contras and the Mujahideen deepening the American commitment to devastating Nicaragua and Afghanistan. The Reaganites went as far as to sanction CIA drug trafficking to fund the illegal and immoral campaign of terrorism against the Sandinistas. This was the surrounding context of Atwater's rise.

The Reagan campaign recycled the planks of Goldwater conservatism: small government, individual freedom, and anti-communism. This is where Atwater entered. As one of Strom Thurmond's storm troopers he had mastered the Southern strategy, which had allowed the Republicans to seize the South after the Democrats conceded to civil rights reform. He was adept at tapping into the copious reservoirs of Southern anger, not just at the civil rights movement, but at the outcome of the American civil war.

Traditionally, the Democratic Party had been the representatives of white supremacy, as well as big business, and later the labour movement. The balance of this was first disrupted by the New Deal and then finally collapsed under the Great Society. This is the side of history that the documentary could have engaged. Instead, the film does little to critically engage with the Democrats, a flaw endemic to American liberals, which given their failures and complicity is pretty lax. The focus on Atwater allows the film to skip over the complicity of Democrats.

The film rightly focuses on the Bush campaign of '88 and highlighted the use of race as a mobilising force. Atwater engineered the notorious Willie Horton adverts, which sparked controversy, in a blatant appeal to white racial-consciousness. Atwater transformed George Bush, the wimp wasp, into the defender of the white race. However, the documentary omits that it was Al Gore who raised the case of Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in the competition for the Democratic nomination.

In other words, the liberals played the race card first only for Atwater to wield it against them. Much like how Harry Truman initiated the red scare which would mutate into McCarthyism. The capacity of establishment liberalism to undermine itself should not be underestimated. I'm not sure if the omission of this convicts Stefan Forbes of anything particularly egregious. It could be down to ignorance, or a choice to keep the focus on Atwater. In any case, this omission folds into another problematic assumption.

Forbes attributes a diabolical brilliance to the likes of Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and, by extension, Roger Ailes. Out of these figures Atwater may have been the most effective, but it's hard to judge as his rise and fall was so rapid. It shouldn't be forgotten that Bush I was flushed out of the White House thanks to a tax pledge he made on Atwater's watch. It's clear Karl Rove offered George W Bush highly damaging advice on more than one occasion. Alexander Cockburn pointed this out a long time ago:

Since 9/11 where has been the good news for the Administration? It’s been a sequence of catastrophe of unexampled protraction. Under Rove’s deft hand George Bush has been maneuvered into one catastrophe after another. Count the tombstones: “Bring it on”, “Mission Accomplished”, the sale of US port management to Arabs. It was Rove who single-handedly rescued the antiwar movement last July by advising Bush not to give Cindy Sheehan fifteen minutes of face time at his ranch in Crawford.

As for Roger Ailes, the emergence of Fox News has largely allowed the mainstream media to pretend it is really objective - at least with Fox News there is little such pretense - when in many ways the US press (even without Fox) is awful. The New York Times, a regular feature in the Fox demonology, has long been a custodian of the establishment and its consensus. The soi disant objective media has always been far from inclusive.

So the picture is incomplete for it lacks the ineffectuality and complicity of the Democrats. It's no coincidence that the culture wars were launched after the economic losses under Reagan were accepted as conventional wisdom. It's not all down to the Machiavellian ingenuity of a boy from South Carolina. The bicoastal elites were always vulnerable to cultural populism as class has long been a taboo subject in American politics. The assumed primacy of individuals leaves little room for systemic analysis, except for sectional interests.

Can right-wing people read?

It's been nice to see my articles on Peter Hitchens being read. So much of the time we spend on the internet seems fruitless. One of the unfortunate side-effects of attracting the attention of a Mail columnist is that the comment section on your blog is soon a refuge for a new breed. Namely the people, who are unspeakably ignorant, but think they are more intelligent than you because they are right-wing. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't turn up four by four. The kind of comments made on the Hitchens blog about my writing have been no more pithy, as you can see below.

Mike Barnes: Well I read his response. Might as well have been in Arabic or some lost tongue. These lefty are so comfortable. Unaware their grasp on power, can and will be wrenched from their wretched hands in a moment. All they have is a backward nature. The future would and does confound them. Egalitarianism didn't work in the French terror. And today its used against the mob, a kind of reversal of the French revolution. All they really want is to sit atop the pile. They care not if its a pile of corpses.

My response: It's funny how often the people of the Anglosphere seem to take pride in ignorance. Mr. Barnes says I might as well be writing in Arabic, as if that's some kind of put-down, it could just as well mean Mr. Barnes is a bit of a dullard. I'm writing in English and I do my best to articulate my ideas. As for the rest of the comment, I have no idea what he thinks constitutes a "comfortable lefty" and a "backward nature". After all, he's the one who can't read my writing.

Andrew Pitt: On conscience, Mr White says that moral values have "a necessary role". This sounds a bit relativist to me, as though other things have a role as well. He says, "I do not know of any leftist who embraces moral relativism". I find this statement inexplicable: no doubt we all claim to be moral, but in practice do the policies we advocate lead to the upholding of moral values, or do they undermine them? There is then a reference to personal circumstances and he says, "I don't expect the Mail to portray this side of so called 'dependency culture'....." Lumping Mr Hitchens in with "The Mail" is contrary to the point of Mr White's original article. Mr White says that he doesn't "romanticise" marriage, which implies that Mr Hitchens does. He then moves on to addiction: it's obviously a totemic issue for those on Left, with "addiction" having the status of a scientific fact.
I think it is the case that Mr White has rowed back a little from his original article.
  
My response: It would seem Mr. Pitt can't read either. The necessity of moral values in human life is a statement of realism. Moral relativism does not refer to 'other things', which may have a role, nor does it suggest moral values aren't important. In descriptive terms relativism is only the acknowledgement of differences of moral opinion, nothing outrageous there; but it's in the normative sense that it is really problematic. If you hold that the beliefs we have stand in relative terms to other beliefs then you can't make judgements in the first place. As everyone is right in context, then it's the context to which we must keep, and we can't infringe upon one another.

If Mr. Hitchens doesn't want to be lumped in with the Mail then he should write for another newspaper. He writes for the Mail because he does have an affinity with the paper's content, editorial policies and its offer of payment. So the criticism still stands of the prognosis taken by the Mail journalist.

Addiction is not a 'totemic issue' for those on the Left. As I said, the case for illegalisation/recriminalisation of drugs can be made without such a bafflingly stupid attempt to disprove the 'existence' of addiction. It's a clever maneouvre. Addicts certainly exist, but addiction is hardly tangible though it has physical symptoms.

As for the charge of 'rowing', it's just that the two articles have different purposes. The original piece made the case for a qualified respect for an opponent of the Left. The follow up articles (see here and here) were primarily written in response to the points made by Peter Hitchens.

John Vernau: "... he yearns for a return to halcyon days, and of course these days never existed. To be fair, I was referring more so to the reactionary press in general ..." ---J.T. White, 'accordingly' responding to PH.
Odd that Mr White should say that halcyon days never existed and say so on the 29th of December, which is in fact within the 14 day period of the traditional 'halcyon days'. I'm also much impressed by his use of "more so" in the above quote. It seems so much more literary than the common 'more' that most of us would use. I suppose he is one of those people so educated that they always say 'epicentre' when they mean 'centre'. Reading Mr White is diverting, in the way that crossword puzzles are, except that with those it becomes clear when the meaning has been deciphered.

My response: Turn of phrase, Mr. Vernau. Not everything is to be taken literally, I used 'halcyon days' in reference to the "golden age" nostalgia often misattributed to Peter Hitchens. It's nice of Mr. Vernau to say my writing style is 'much more literary'. I wouldn't consider myself 'so educated' in spite of the fact that I've been to university. Education is mostly about the numbing and stifling of independent thought. It seems Vernau makes two points: 1) I'm literary and therefore 'uncommon', 2) he can't understand my writing. I fail to see the threat of such dim observations.

A response to Peter Hitchens.

Well, it was a pleasant surprise to find my short piece on Peter Hitchens has drawn a response from the man himself. You can read his article below, and I’ll now proceed to respond accordingly.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2014/12/left-wing-person-nearly-says-something-interesting.html

 

The main problem, as he sees it, with my observations is the implication that he yearns for a return to halcyon days, and of course these days never existed. To be fair, I was referring more so to the reactionary press in general when I wrote: ‘Fortunately, it is too late to turn back the clock on the progress achieved in our attitudes to sexuality, gender and race. The malaise of the reactionary press is really down to this harsh reality.’ In retrospect, I should’ve been sharper on this distinction and avoided the conflation.

On an ironic note, it was the socialist movement which emerged out of the despair of the loss of the non-industrial pre-capitalist world, and in that regard it was backward-looking, while at the same time pushing forwards to a better world. It’s perfectly clear to my side that it’s the future we’re fighting over, and that it requires historical perspective to see this era as transient.

I should make clear that the purpose of my article was to convey the reasons why Peter Hitchens stands out from the commentariat - a herd of independent minds if there ever was one. It wasn’t intending to rehash the standard critique of the Hitchens brand of traditionalist conservatism. He’s right on several key issues: the interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria; civil liberties and free-speech. But it’s also the case that he’s wrong in much of his prognosis.

As Mr. Hitchens emphasises, in my article I observe: ‘the way he frames left-wing politics really comes from the position he takes on cultural and socio-moral issues. “It is because the left's ideas – by their nature – undermine conscience, self-restraint, deferred gratification, lifelong marriage and strong, indivisible families headed by authoritative fathers.”

Mr. Hitchens writes: ‘But he doesn’t say whether he accepts or rejects this, or even what he actually thinks about conscience (can he be against it?) or the other things I list as virtues undermined by the strong modern state.’

On conscience, I think moral values have a necessary role in any human community, as I’m a moral realist; but I wouldn’t say this is inherently ‘conservative’. We can still debate what constitutes right and wrong, though I will say that I do not know of any leftist who embraces moral relativism. It would be completely inconsistent as moral relativism cannot be expected to uphold any values, and certainly not egalitarian values.

As for deferred gratification, it was the liberalisation of credit which inverted this ‘deferral’ and left many people to spend first and work off the debt later. Of course, this wouldn’t be the case if the wage share of GDP for the working-class hadn’t been squeezed for the last 40 years. So this is not a monopoly of the middle-classes, but it has been turned on its head in recent decades. The picture is much more complex.

A great many people living on benefits, particularly those trying to raise children on benefits, practice forms of deferred gratification by effectively fasting. I know this because I come from a single-parent household, and I knew many others in similar circumstances, very often the lone parent will eat less and less to save up for Christmas. I don’t expect the Mail to portray this side of so-called ‘dependency culture’, but it’s revealing that they are so blind to it.

When it comes to monogamy, my own view is that it will outlast its competitors (particularly the fad of polyamory) due to its simplicity and mutuality. I don’t romanticise the institution of marriage, its clear strong relationships and families will be formed whether it exists or not.  I was somewhat sceptical of marriage equality because it was clearly a highly conservative proposal. Civil partnerships were the progressive innovation and offered a secular alternative free of a morally bankrupt and increasingly repressive state.

Understandably, Mr. Hitchens found fault with my dismissive remark: ‘He’s wrong on almost all cultural and social issues’. As I hadn’t set out to critique every one of the positions he’s ever taken I didn’t feel the need to go into specifics. But I’ll be forthright and specific here.

A perfect example of where Hitchens goes wrong: addiction. The claim that there is no objective basis for addiction is simply untrue. As medical professionals will tell you, the liver physically changes in the course of prolonged alcohol consumption and this can run alongside a psychological dependency on the drug’s effects. The answer is abstinence and therapy, but there is a very high recidivism rate. The denial of addiction is not only wrong, it is an unnecessary point to make.

The cases for/against the legalisation of drugs can be made without such a point. Likewise, it is possible to question the prevailing culture of hedonism without the presupposition that it is all a matter of ‘free-choice’ (a manifestly liberal point in itself). The only sensible hedonism was advocated and practiced by Epicurus. As long as it remains almost taboo to turn down a drink it will be likely for functioning alcoholics, let alone non-functioning ones, to emerge. But I doubt this will be put right by silly bans and regressive taxes.

To conclude, it’s only possible to rail against conventional wisdom once it has become convention. Mr. Hitchens is sincere in his wish to reorder society, but if he were to succeed he would not only make his work defunct, he would also provide the basis for it to be torn down all over again. That being said, I don’t see anything ‘radical’ in extolling fashionable hedonism.

Should anyone want to ask me a direct question, you can email me at: cainmosni@hotmail.co.uk

Mr. Hitchens in 1969.

I just found this picture of a young Trot firebrand. Here's the relevant details from the blog of the hated Peter Hitchens:

"At some point in my teens a large part of the population of Britain went mad, me included. It was as if they had put something in the water which affected everyone between the age of about 15 and 29. Of course, it wasn’t really everyone, just a privileged layer of which I was a part. I can remember a lot of it all too clearly. I have done what I can to track down and destroy any photographic proof –but my clever colleague Nikki Sutherland has managed to find a picture of me from 1969 which I didn’t even know existed, and which has a story behind it that I’ll tell some other time. 


Funnily enough it seemed to me to be a pleasant time, if not a happy one. I enjoyed a lot of it, from the point of view of pure self-indulgence. I did pretty much what I wanted, though the great pity is that most of what I wanted wasn’t really worth having and many of the things I did led to actual harm, for me and others."

SOURCE: Nikki Sutherland/MailOnline

James O'Brien kicking Farage's ass.

People like to say Nigel Farage is a hypocrite as leader of UKIP, calling for limits to immigration, all the while he has a German wife, and bilingual German-British children. Well, if you want to maintain advantages for Western European economies over their Eastern European counterparts (at the expense of the working-class everywhere) then it's perfectly consistent. Romania was practically destroyed by Ceausescu's austerity (which has continued to this day) and now people like Farage want to put up a wall to stop them from settling here in search of work. Farage supports the conditions which destroyed the life chances of those workers in Romania, just as he supports Thatcherite policies in this country.

Best Today Programme Ever.

The Today programme gave the floor to PJ Harvey to edit her own show to be aired for millions of regular listeners and anyone curious enough to twiddle with the cogs of their radio to tune in. The English commentariat in his infinite capacity for noise of a pompous and uppity quality soon started grizzling at the presence of John Pilger and Julian Assange on the same programme. It was a breathe of fresh air for those of who often find the BBC to be playing its role as agenda-setter to the lower gradients of Pravda and Izvestia. Here's just a slice of the incessant grizzling from the censorious and self-righteous primates of Media Britannia:

"But just look at who Peej has gone and chosen to feature on her special edition: Julian Assange will be preaching; Welsh wizard Rowan Williams will do Thought for the Day and the Australian journalist John Pilger. So, the line-up so far: the weird blond-haired rat known as Wikileaks; an abstruse, bearded lefty; and a tendentious, perma-whingeing bleeding-heart hack. And we're supposed to think, what, exactly?" 

- James Delingpole, The Daily Telegraph, January 1st 2014

"The Today programme guest edited by singer PJ Harvey featured journalist John Pilger attacking David Cameron and Barack Obama, a diatribe against the Olympics as a 'neo-liberal trojan horse' used to roll back civil liberties and Julian Assange, wanted on sex charges in Sweden, was hailed for his 'great courage'." 

- Matt Chorley and Martin Robinson, The Daily Mail, January 2nd 2014

"Pilger always thought-provoking but was he really suggesting that BBC ignore Obama's Mandela grief as he is a hypocrite? Or Sunni Shia massacres in Syria as Blair & Bush's fault? Surely, John those are what we call opinions not facts?"

- Nick Robinson, BBC political editor, via Twitter, January 2nd 2014 

The Today programme gave John Pilger a slot of little more than 7 minutes to deliver what must've been a pre-submitted, heavily assessed, and, ultimately, pre-recorded speech. Pilger is a renowned journalist and documentary filmmaker who has just presented his latest project Utopia (2013) on ITV. Yet the chattering classes of middle-class provenance behave as though he is some lone nutter on the margins of civilised debate. Of course we can't expect more of them than that. After all the BBC is the agenda-setting news power of the British soundbite system, it has to retain strict limits for the good of the Big Lie and the Big Liars. The 'unusual' episode stands out from the rest of the discussions broadcast and for good reason. Notice that the statement 'worst Today programme ever' uttered by a Labourite prat - and regurgitated from mouth-to-mouth by journalists across the land - therefore implies the rest of the Today programmes have been much better and fairer.

In letting PJ Harvey give a platform to leftists and a libertarian the BBC allowed an event to pass in order to reaffirm the rest of its coverage in its normative claims to 'impartiality' and 'objectivity'. Of course, neither is even possible - and yet both encapsulate the liberal tendencies of the media elite. It's the same as when the newspapers, and the BBC, admit a mistake in a broadcast, it is done in order to presuppose that everything else is in fine upstanding order. The fact that the BBC gave John Pilger less than 10 minutes when they regularly give Nigel Farage a platform on a full episode of Question Time should be enough to disperse such nonsense. Unfortunately not, and even Farage's own party run on the claim that the BBC is a part of an establishment to which it is a marginalised voice for the little guy. If we are not to trust the pretensions of the BBC then we are not to trust those of their immediate and most vociferous detractors.

The reactionary gutter-press can sound off about the 'left-wing bias' of the Corporation in the usual way to reinforce the strict lines already laid out. If the BBC is on the outer-reaches of leftist mania then why would you ever go any further than turning onto BBC1? That's already completely insane! This strategy boxes out alternative and independent-minded journalists who might actually dare to challenge the pretensions of the government, corporations, and, god forbid, the media itself. In its capacity as agenda-setter the BBC allows for oscillations between and around the centre-posts of left and right. The few deviations are about boosting the ratings with a spectacle and about reinstating the establishmentarian claims it is dedicated to asserting. It is an inner-realm populated by Oxbridge liberals (side-note: the term 'liberal' is not synonymous with left-wing or even progressive) who see themselves, simultaneously, as crusaders and insiders.

Strange Bedfellows on Syria.

The opposition to another war has its usual crowd of seasoned anti-war activists, from Lindsey German and John Rees to George Galloway and Tariq Ali. Yet the push for intervention has attracted a considerably broad range of opposition voices. Somewhat surprisingly Glenn Beck, Nick Griffin and Nigel Farage have all come out in opposition to any intervention in Syria albeit for reasons we can only describe as nutty. Nick Griffin claims we must take the side of the Assadian abattoir because a war with Syria is only a stone’s throw away from a war with Russia – a country he designates as the “last great bastion of the white race” - though I’m sure Putin will be glad to hear Mr Griffin is on his side. As for Farage it is, no doubt, more about the huge sacrifices of ‘our boys’ out in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as an extension of his calls for serious austerity. Of course, if it weren’t so damn costly (to us) it would be fine to rush in and drench ourselves in the blood of the Syrian people. It looks like another way for the UKIP to soak up the puddles of Tory disenchantment. And naturally Glenn Beck frames the events in terms of a coming apocalypse because there are to be ”no winners in the West” from sending guns to Syria’s Islamists.

At the leading newspapers of reaction we can find major columnists who have all come out in stern opposition and criticism of David Cameron and his hawkish posturing. Only weeks ago Con Coughlin was scathing about the naïveté of Peter Oborne in his latest book on Iran’s right to enrich uranium (a case refreshing in its incongruity to the hysteria around its subject) and yet Coughlin and Oborne were unified against the prospect of another war in the Middle East. At The Daily Mail, the reactionary Peter Hitchens was quick to express gratitude to Parliament for the outcome and had nothing but ferocious contempt for Cameron’s adventurism and went as far as to call for the PM’s resignation. Even the interminable Lord Tebbit came out to damn Cameron for this and suggested it would Cameron’s fault if he was ousted over this. This isn’t the first time the Right has turned out to oppose a war, Iraq had right-wing opponents such as Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan. It shouldn’t be a surprise in a sense, solidarity is not a value of the Right given that the system they represent already exists and has far from any serious competitors or enemies on the horizon poised to supersede it.

Meanwhile it is the self-appointed guardians of social democracy who have taken a more vocal line of support. Paddy Ashdown and Shirley Williams turned out to pen a war-hungry article with Simon Hughes and Nick Clegg in The Evening Standard. Though I am never disappointed in Simon Hughes and the lows to which he will stoop. It was sad to see Shirley Williams on board for war as she had taken a noble stand over Iraq, then one may recall that she voted for the Health & Social Care act (so it’s hardly the first betrayal). The opposing article was written by Tory MP Douglas Carswell, it was a modestly sceptical piece of writing which stood in stark contrast to the delusions of the Liberal chickenhawks. Paddy Ashdown seems to honestly believe that the only way to strengthen international law is to take the side of the Obama administration, which has been blunt that the intervention will be made outside of the UN and thereby violating international law. As if this wasn’t cretinous enough Lord Ashdown had a hissy fit as soon as the government couldn’t get its way. The list of reasons to torment these people to the end of the earth gets longer by the day it would seem.

This article was written for The Third Estate on September 2nd 2013.

A note on the Woolwich murder.

 

On Facebook I posted the following points as a status after the hours of coverage of the attack in Woolwich and I stand by them today:
1. Your sympathy belongs with the victim and their family. It should go without saying that this is a horrible crime.
2. The perpetrators are not representatives of Islam, or immigration, they are murderous thugs and will go down for this. That's a good thing. We shouldn't let a pair of murderers change our society. No death penalty. No deportation. To be a civilised country means treating the worst people in a way which doesn't lower ourselves to their level.
3. Don't concede any ground to racists and/or neo-Nazis who are clambering over one another to exploit the death of another human being. The EDL have been quick to get down to Woolwich, they deserve no attention nor should we pretend they have any serious claim to comment on this crime.
4. This looks like a political act, if so then we have to talk about the real reasons for anger against Western governments from the Muslim world. A question that is much bigger . That means we have to address the wars that have waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the dictatorships that have been supported by Western governments for decades.

 

In the discussion that followed this post I was told that point 4 is in contradiction with the first points and that it constitutes a 'mitigation'. That's simply not the case as I was making a more subtle point than some can appreciate. The fourth point is the last of the points because I consider it to be the last of priorities under such extreme circumstances. It's a sorry fact about the world that there is no time for criticism of American and British foreign policy after the war in Iraq and the on-going occupation of Afghanistan. There isn't a causal link between the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the murder of Lee Rigby. It's plausible that there are people who could've killed even if these events hadn't taken place. But there is a sense in which certain foreign policy decisions fed the narrative of radical Islamism. That is the narrative and set of ideas the media describe as 'ideology'.