Nutshell
A disgruntled Guardian reader attempts to summarise the politics of associate editor, Seumas Milne:
To recap: if we leave dictators in place in a Muslim country and do business with them, we are responsible for repression in those countries and this will encourage terrorism. If we do remove them forcefully, which means war, we are responsible for the subsequent sectarian carnage in the country and this will encourage terrorism. The only other solution is a system of sanctions as with between-wars Iraq, which I don’t remember Milne as being a particular supporter of. In summary, whatever happens we’ll get bombed and it’ll serve us right.
Pretty good, I thought. Certainly, it captures something of the knotted logic typical of Milne, and of countless resentful teenagers in sixth form common rooms. It isn’t just Milne, of course. Contorted self-abasement and pretentious agonising are practically default settings among Guardian regulars. Scanning the paper’s archives, it’s remarkable just how often one trips over headings such as Collective Complicity, How Could We Let This Happen? and – a personal favourite – Their Homophobia is Our Fault. And two weeks rarely pass without some claim that Islamic zealotry and efforts to blow up infidels are entirely our own doing – a result of “gross social inequality” and “Islamophobia” (but never the other way round). Or that alcoholism and overeating have nothing whatsoever to do with personal choices and everything to do with supermarkets, pornography and the crushing social force that is Heat magazine. Or that “hyper-frantic consumerism” and our wicked materialism must be punished, and quite severely, with rationing by the state.
It’s a strange moral landscape at the Guardian, and frequently disgusting. Yet it’s hard to look away.
Update:
Another reader weighs in with an imaginary classified ad:
Puerile spokesman for defeated revolutionary movement seeks violent theocratic reactionaries for a long term relationship based on shared interests of killing westerners (commuters or office workers will do fine) and subjugating the global masses to the dictatorship of a monopoly doctrine (any doctrine will now do) and to generally obtain revenge against liberal market democracies for failing to collapse under the weight of their own contradictions as predicted by the delusional ‘revolutionary’ mass murderers of an early era.
Again, not bad at all.
Jesus, that Milne column above the comments is seriously twisted.
Yes, it’s a piece of work, though not unusual. I’m no great fan of Ed Husain*, whom Milne berates at length, but you do have to marvel at some of Milne’s reasons for not liking him:
“Husain has, meanwhile, compared Hamas to the BNP…”
Poor Hamas. It’s positively libelous. Actually, the comparison is, if anything, slightly unfair to the BNP. (So far as I know, the BNP manifesto doesn’t yet stretch to explicitly genocidal ambitions.)
“…and defended the government’s decision to ban the leading Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi from Britain because he had defended Palestinian suicide attacks. Whatever else that amounts to, it’s scarcely a voice of moderation.”
Eek. Not wishing to play host for a second time to a deranged and sadistic bigot who endorses the killing of gay people and random mass murder, including the murder of children, is, in MilneWorld™, an immoderate position. Qaradawi’s own position is however perfectly acceptable. He is, after all, “a leading Muslim cleric.” Such is MilneLogic™.
*See here: https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2007/11/act-casual-say.html
David says “It’s a strange moral landscape at the Guardian, and frequently disgusting. Yet it’s hard to look away.” With Milne, not for me. I have to look away. What is the point in engaging with people who have no sense of reality. And I get very angry….which doesn’t do my blood pressure any good.
Andy,
“What is the point in engaging with people who have no sense of reality?”
I don’t think there is much point trying to engage someone like Milne in a realistic discussion. That’s not what he’s about. Refutation and correction have no discernible effect on his subsequent opinions, which remain eerily unchanged. He seems to be a propagandist and dissembler. I think the term is memebot. I suppose the one positive thing about Milne’s commentary – and the fact it’s endorsed by the mainstream organ of the British left – is that it shows how a political orientation can easily become a matter of pathology and a wilful, inexcusable, denial of reality. You can’t often change the nature of the beast, but you can let others know that a beast is there.