[Cough] Classic sentence. [Cough]

Terry Eagleton has been one of the great minds of the European left seemingly since Cromwell.

This addition to our ongoing series comes from the author and Nation columnist Dave Zirin. It’s his opening line. The second line, however, notes Eagleton’s “absence of understanding” and subsequent sentences explain why the professor’s most recent article, discussed here, is a dusty old trope and “elitist hogwash” – a polemic that’s “more about Eagleton’s alienation than our own.”

I’m sure Professor Eagleton would have some achingly clever reply, given his ability to compare suicide bombing with “avant-garde theatre.” And bearing in mind our recent discussion, it’s perhaps worth noting the professor’s belief that, “being a champagne socialist is better than being no socialist at all.” This was said while gushing over the “great communist poet Hugh MacDiarmid,” a man who wrote a series of Hymns To Lenin, who renewed his party membership in 1956, and whose death, according to Eagleton, spared him from the “dark night of Thatcherism.” An elected Conservative government being so much worse than, say, Soviet tanks in Budapest and hundreds of thousands of fleeing dissidents.

Those who’ve followed Eagleton’s pronouncements will have spotted that the professor is often hostile to dissent, in particular to those whose thinking and experiences take them away from the boneyards of the left. According to the professor, the knighting of Salman Rushdie was “the establishment’s reward for a man who moved from being a remorseless satirist of the west to cheering on its criminal adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.” No evidence for this dastardly conspiracy was deemed necessary and Rushdie’s supposed “fondness for the Pentagon’s politics” is apparently all that needs to be said, signalling as it must the man’s innate wickedness.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Eagleton’s umbrage on the subject was shared by Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini, who told the world that the decision to praise “the apostate” had “insulted Islamic sanctities” and was “a blatant example of anti-Islamism.” While the Guardian’s Priyamvada Gopal railed against Rushdie’s apostasy as only a lecturer in postcolonial studies can. Rushdie’s divergence from Ms Gopal’s own cartoon worldview – including his dislike of tyranny and his defence of such heresies as intellectual freedom – had apparently reduced the author to “a giggling hack corralled into attacking his ruler’s enemies.” 

Eagleton also hissed at Christopher Hitchens, denouncing him as an “establishment groupie” who has “made his peace… with capitalism” and “learned how to stop worrying about imperialism and love Paul Wolfowitz.” Like his Guardian colleague Bidisha, our esteemed literary theorist imagines he has some proprietary claim on proper, radical thought. Such that radical thought must entail “questioning the foundations of the western way of life,” which in turn must entail having opinions almost exactly like his own. Norm Geras, a lefty in an altogether different league, took apart Eagleton’s assumptions with admirable patience. A venture for which Norm will no doubt be condemned and cast out in due course. 

Here’s a thing.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused the United States of causing the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, which killed possibly 200,000 people. Chavez believes the U.S. was testing a tectonic weapon to produce eco-type devastations.

Blimey. One wonders how this revelation will go down among the Great Man’s admirers here in the UK.

But I’m confused. I thought only “The Jews” had such diabolical technology. As revealed in December 2007 when Hamas MP Ahmad Abu Halabiya informed Al-Aqsa TV that,

It is not impossible for the Jews to generate an artificial earthquake… in order to accomplish their goal of destroying the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Needless to say, The Guild of Evil™ has been conducting research of its own with this mobile apparatus.

Update: Not what it seems, it seems.

Stuart Taylor takes another look at Duke University, where its infamous far left faculty has dug in even deeper.

Duke’s rules define sexual misconduct so broadly and vaguely as to include any sexual activity without explicit “verbal or nonverbal” consent, which must be so “clear” as to dispel “real or perceived power differentials between individuals [that] may create an unintentional atmosphere of coercion.” The disciplinary rules deny the accused any right to have an attorney at the hearing panel or to confront his accuser. The rules also give her – but not him – the right to be treated with “sensitivity”; to make opening and closing statements; and to receive copies of investigative documents.

Jeff Goldstein notes why Duke’s infestation will persist. 

The fact is, the people who make up these activist identity groups need their “isms.” And because fighting a particular “ism” is what gives them their identity to begin with, they cannot allow the “ism” ever to be stamped out without, in effect, obviating their own identities.

As Jeff, myself and others have pointed out, the relevance and power of identity politics advocates requires a cultivation of grievance among those ostensibly being championed. The grievance narrative must never be allowed to go away, whatever the actual situation, since grievance (or professed grievance) is the principal source of leverage, influence and funding. Even if this entails exaggerating minor slights or distorting statistics, or framing the issue so tendentiously that almost any kind of dissent can be deemed oppressive and malign. See, for instance, the ludicrous campus rape claims of Barbara Barnett, formerly of Duke, or the reactions of many feminists to factual correction by Christina Hoff Sommers, or the outrageous treatment of Keith John Sampson and Thomas Thibeault.

And Ophelia Benson notes some routine moral flummery at the BBC.

It had to report on this al-Shabab guy trying to kill Kurt Westergaard so therefore it had to make sure you didn’t get the wrong idea and think it, the BBC, didn’t think Kurt Westergaard deserved it, at least a little bit.

Indeed. Yesterday morning, the BBC’s Today programme performed much the same manoeuvre, suggesting the attempt to murder the 75-year-old cartoonist with an axe showed the strength of “feeling” on the issue and the “anger that still exists over what he did.” A more realistic response might stress instead a psychotic sense of vanity and barbarous presumption – one that validates the point of Westergaard’s cartoon.

Feel free to share your own items of interest.

Since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association “has documented 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area. In only 2 percent of those cases was anyone convicted.”

When terrorism is personal.

A word of caution. The images are graphic and possibly distressing. Note how often the captions read “familial dispute” or “rejected him for marriage.”

Via Brain Terminal.

From the Telegraph:

Faith groups are to be given a central role in shaping government policies, a senior minister has vowed. John Denham, the communities secretary revealed that a new panel of religious experts has been set up to advise the Government on making public policy decisions. Mr Denham argued that Christians and Muslims can contribute significant insights on key issues, such as the economy, parenting and tackling climate change.

Oh happy day. Islam and Gaia, together at last.

The minister said that the Government needed to be educated by faith groups on “how to inform the rest of society about these issues.”

Perhaps someone could explain why it is we even have a “communities secretary,” and why this one is so eager to defer to “experts” whose, um, expertise lies not in parenting, economics or climatology, but in affairs of an altogether more elevated nature. Sadly, Mr Denham doesn’t reveal which particular “significant insights” will be brought to bear by the aforementioned “faith groups”. Nor is it terribly obvious how being Muslim or Christian might bestow a parental or economic wisdom unavailable to less pious human beings.

Which leads us to another item featuring one of those “experts” – Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury – self-described “hairy lefty,” palace-dweller, figure of ridicule, apologist for terrorism and chief executive of a failing religious enterprise. Dr Williams’ latest musings on mortal affairs are also aired in the Telegraph, where we learn “higher taxes would be good for society”:

Dr Rowan Williams said that taxation should not be seen as a way of stifling business or redistributing wealth but helping to make the world a better place in which to live.

You may want those sunglasses. It’s dazzling stuff.

He called for new levies to be introduced on financial transactions and carbon emissions, and an end to the idea that unlimited economic growth is desirable… “Taxation builds a habitat – already, quite properly, through state welfare provision, but potentially in other less familiar ways.”

Whatever Dr Williams chooses to believe, higher taxation and “new levies” are a very good way of stifling business, and base commerce is ultimately how we pay for all of those good deeds the Most Revered One likes to bang on about. And if the implied individual belt-tightening is so “good for society” – that’s you, dear reader – why isn’t it good for government too? Or should the state become larger and more righteously engorged, “making the world a better place” with publicly funded diversity policy officers, tobacco control officers, undercover waste bin spies and other consciousness-raising efforts? As, for instance, when the Arts Council saw fit to spend £150,000 of your taxes on sending Jarvis Cocker to the Arctic for “inspiration,” along with Marcus Brigstocke, Kathy Barber, Julian Stair and Beatboxer Shlomo:

The ambition of the expedition was to inspire the creative team to respond to climate change… It was an amazing journey; 10 days of artistic inspiration, debate, discussion and exploration.

I’m sure it was a hoot. And when it comes to “artistic responses to climate change” you just need to include a third-rate leftwing comedian, a “billboard hijacker” and a maker of ceramics.