Those crazy kids over at Harry's Place can't help tying themselves up in logical knots over the Iraq war, but they are dead on the money on many aspects of the left's willingness to accept Islamist extremism. Here, they offer some insight on why journalists such as Natasha Walter are so forgiving of Islamists' blatantly regressive social policies.
As much as I am bothered by Harry's Place's blindly wilful conflation of Iraq with anti-terrorism (too many examples of embarrassing polemics over there to even cite), I give them full kudos for their investigation into and takedown of muslim organistaions that profess to be moderate but are in fact pretty damn reactionary.
Harry's Place played a central role in getting someone fired at the Guardian for "sassygate", and I'm going to guess that their work has been central to today's excellent Observer article detailing the right wing nature of the Labour feted and supposedly moderate Muslim Council of Britain.
If groups like Harry's keep pushing on this sort of issue, I really hope we'll see the major media orgs in the UK doing proper vettings of and disclosures on the Muslim organisations they give airtime or print space to. Wendy's told me that she's tried to get them to do this at 5, but to no avail.
After Monbiot decries patriotism - I think he manages to avoid use of the word scoundrel, though - he gets letters. He loves his country, he says, but asks: Why should he love it more than any other?
Hmm, George, that sure is a tough one, writes one woman sarcastically, unless you happen to be the 50% of the population that's female. In the UK, women can pretty much do, be and fuck who they want, without being thrown into jail, killed by relatives, or, more mundanely but very commonly, being consigned by social roles to a lifetime of at-home drudgery and general lack of support. By not noting this, Monbiot gives up his game as a middle class male who looks at the world and fundamentally sees opportunities for people like him in almost every country. He forgets how fucking lucky he is to be a bright guy, and what a handicap not being a guy is in so many nations in the world.
The problem with his analysis, argues someone else, si that he doesn't differentiate between patriotism, which is pride in your country, and chauvanism or nationalism, which is unquestioning faith in "our way, right or wrong". It's the same mistake so often made by the right, eg McCarthy in his show trials.
Supporting Monbiot, one woman argues that patriotism is abotu pride, and since her birth in the UK is an accident, why should she feel pride in the actions and creations of other Brits, even though she considers herself lucky to have been born here. I hope this woman doesn't go through all of her life so focused on herself to the exclusion of hte community she is a part of. If she were working in Africa on a water project and the local village women formed a successful collective, bringing a well and fresh water to the village for the first time, would she not feel proud of them? Can she not feel proud of the accomplishments of those around her in Britain, or is she one of those modern British lefties cursed by an overweenign sense of shame at all acts British? And does she not feel a sense of needing to live her life in such a way as to deserve the sacrifices made by those who have made the UK better than most other nations in the world? If not, perhaps a citizenship class is in order.
Guardian writers (and others) suggest their favourite political books.
Jonathan Freedland has a fairly sensible and thoughtful article on the differing ways in which Britain, the US, and, to a lesser extent, France, seek to instill national identity in ethnic communities. Arguing that Britain doesn't do nearly enough on this front, he says that the French model, of demanding that everyone see themselves as French, is far less potent than the American system, in which immigratns and ethnic groups are allowed or even encouraged to keep a sense of their ehtnic identity, yet also strongly encouraged - through ritual and the overall national mores - to also see themselves as American. Hence "Italian-American", "Mexican-American", etc.
As evidenced by his book on the subject, Freedland has a fairly rosey view of the US, and his quote from a Muslim-American seems very pie in the sky and cherry picked, but he may well have a pretty decent point here. Everyone's talking about an identity gap, and how these kids - privileged and unprivileged alike - are seeking to fill it through radicalism. It's quite likely that if Britain did have a stronger sense of its own identity right now, and a stronger idea of how to instill that into the disparate groups that make it up, there would be less of an identity issue. Who knows whether that would have meant that we wouldn't have been bombed or not?
Next day: They get letters. As one rightly points out, Freedland overlooks the fairly high number of terrorist acts perpetrated in the US by whiteys such as Timothy McVeigh. I suspect that Freedland is no better than most of us: at gut level, he reagards attacks by those who seem to be Other as more frightening and dangerous than those we can more easily identify with.
It's an easy thing to do. McVeigh I can see as a wingnut. We share similar heritages, so I have an idea where he's coming from and where he went horribly awry. I can say that he's subnormal, and point to reasons X, Y and Z why.
But I don't share a cultural heritage with second generation, very angry Muslims, nor does most of the UK. We don't really know the whys of their actions, and we don't honestly know what the norm is to compare them to. We think and hope we do, but there hasn't been enough time, and Muslims are not yet assimilated enough, for people to not habitually or instinctively still see them as Other. This doesn't mean they're hated or feared as a norm - give me an unknown brown person over a known white crazy anyday, but it does make them unknown commodities. With McVeigh, we can see that he is a huge anomaly within a hopefully generally sane group. But are Muslims going to assimilate? How anomalous are these kids? Certainly in their actions they're very anomalous, but in their beliefs are they? We don't really know yet, because it's too soon, and there's that seemingly huge religious divide.
It costs money to read yesterday's articles online today, so I won't link to it, but in Wednesday's Independent, young Johann Hari cited a very germane and surprisingly insightful John Lennon quote concerning elections: 'The gap between the parties is far too narrow - but a lot of people live in that gap. It's the people I grew up with who will pay the price if you pretend there is no difference at all.'
I know it's fashionable to bash dinner party lefties, and I know that people are doing that a bit too readily and with too little thought, but every single person is the UK and US who says that there's no real difference between the parties should be hit over the head with this statement 50 times a morning.
What is it with those people, anyway? Can people really believe that there's no significant difference between the Repubs and the Dems, or between the Tories and Labour? Are they so bewitched, bewildered and put off by the spinning veneers of the parties that they can't be bothered to look at the actual policies they implement?
It's particularly a crime when lefties allow themselves to be that lazy and consumerist in their approach to the substance of politics.
At Crooked Timber, a snarky look at Blunkett falling on his sword. As I say in comments (where I get damn confused - it was early! - about who the evil woman was), he seems to be doing the right thing by his kid. Those who hate him seem incapable of seeing that. As for Daniel D's argument that Blunkett should be sparing the legal attacks on Quinn in her final trimester, correct me if I'm wrong, but is Quinn not currently working at a very high level at the Spectator? Blunkett should avoid bullying or harassing her, but she's not exactly some Victorian wallflower to be treated with kid gloves.
Re the actual reason for his resignation, last night Wendy came out with a good analogy, citing Henry II (or was it a later version?) when, of Thomas More, he said something along the lines of "Will no one rid me of this damn cleric?"
