Harry’s Place

Was there anything the previous generation on the liberal-left could have done 30 years ago to prevent Aida Parker’s doomsday predictions from becoming The Guardian’s news today?

By holding to objective, unchanging, positions based upon an objective sense of moral right and wrong, rather than allowing itself to be foolishly swayed into modernistic relativistic positions that make excuses for and grant special favours to those it deems to be “oppressed” and as such, apparently deserving of special treatment or regard.

Needless to say, expecting the left (or at any rate, those parts that reject any notion of objective morality or truth) to do such a thing - seems like a ridiculously over-optimistic stance, and one that history suggests, time and time again, will not be borne out.

James D. Watson: “There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

Left and right…unhelpful taxonomy.

What you’re talking about here, Brett, are the great big popular mobilising issues of progressive/left activism. There are the ‘blockbuster’ issues.

However, after there are always, within the left and progresive traditions, people who do worry about these issues. Their concerns may be drowned out at times, or missed, or sometimes defamed and attacked… but they’re always there.

I think that what explains the situation you’ve described, in part, is a combination of the following factors:

1. Not-in-our-namism

“We don’t want OUR governent to have any dealing with this shabby dictatorship that is torturing people. It claims to be pushing for incremental change, but actually, it is just propping it up”

“Oh, they’re trading with China now, instead. Well, at least WE’RE not morally tainted anymore. People still being tortured? Nothing to do with us.”

2. Revolutionary Socialism

“Hasta la victoria siempre!!!!!”

… oh everybody is living in poverty in a nightmarish police state. But hey, at least it is a socialist nightmarish police state!

3. Cultural relativism

“This is african/south asian etc. democracy. Different from our own, perhaps - in that nobody gets to actually vote - but still jolly good”

4. BushDog TonyDog

“We hate liberal democracy and our own governments so much, that we’re interested in anything that allows us to ramble on about how awful it all is.

However, if what we say can’t be used as an indictment of B.LIAR!!!!! then we don’t actually care about it at all.”

Great post Brett!

Got me stumped!

??????

I sat around a dinner table and mentioned in passing some Zimbawean refugees to my impeccably left friends.

They deserved what they got was the reponse.

A discussion ensued but there was no moving them (or, principaly, her). Then I mentioned these ones were black. A strange silence ensued.

Larger than any ex-pat group (many of whom for all their historic roles and contemporary beliefs, love Africa more than they do Europe) are the Africans who have suffered under western educated and deeply flawed Marxist ideologues. They make one re-call the joke that Brecht is supposed to have made: “Perhaps the government should elect a new people?”

Simple - remove the intellectual influence of liberal hand wringers and thoughtless cultural relativists from the media and replace it with an strong defence of Western values against the “anti-imperialist” blame-Whitey world view.

Even now you will find Guardianistas and other such scum who blame all that is happening in Zimbabwe on the UK’s historical influence. And Mugabe is always bringing up such nonsense against any critics. Why is he allowed to get away with it ?

Simple - remove the intellectual influence of liberal hand wringers and thoughtless cultural relativists from the media and replace it with an strong defence of Western values against the “anti-imperialist” blame-Whitey world view.

And indeed from universities.

There’s plenty of clever, sensible well-educated people in Africa who could do a good job running their countries. You’re practically tripping over them in some places, especially UK Universities.

The problem is that they have great difficulty getting into those positions. The problem is of course cultural, but never forget the negative racism of some Westerners, the patronising soft racism of others and, of course, the ugly reality of many African leaders themselves, always willing to hide behind the post-Colonial Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.

Was there anything the previous generation on the liberal-left could have done 30 years ago to prevent Aida Parker’s doomsday predictions from becoming The Guardian’s news today?

Yes.

Even now you will find Guardianistas and other such scum who blame all that is happening in Zimbabwe on the UK’s historical influence. And Mugabe is always bringing up such nonsense against any critics. Why is he allowed to get away with it ?

They could have shut the hell up, for a change. Leftist revolutionaries, I am convinced, are middle-upper-class romantics who join with the thug with the gun because it helps them rebel against their “parents” (biological or statist).

This same condition can be seen in the prevalence of black street culture being found in predominantly white suburban areas in the US. They have a gun, they are tough, they are muscular, they are MANLY. Forget the fact that they beat their women or treat them like trash, it’s a rush to want to be -like- them.

Rather than the wimpy post-feminist metrosexual that the rest of the left wants men to be. You can be “tough” by hanging around with tough people, whether they are obvious illiberal cretins like Mugabe, religious nutcases like Abu , or totalitarian dictators like Chavez or Putin.

I heartily doubt that most Liberals actually -believe- that those people are perfect and good (TheIrie notwithstanding) they hook up with the revolution to be ‘manly’ and ‘get the chicks’.

I heartily doubt that most Liberals actually -believe- that those people are perfect and good (TheIrie notwithstanding) they hook up with the revolution to be ‘manly’ and ‘get the chicks’.

Sorry, I have real problems with your argument. I cannot simply imagine TheIrie ever getting laid. Reading Chomsky over the shoulder of your partner whilst pumping away to check if heterosexual sex was actually a culturally imperialist hegemonic act would be quite a turnoff I imagine.

Lol! Your killin’ me, Morgoth. :D

I’d imagine that the Irie thought “Chomsky” was the act itself.

… this book should be the ‘1984′ of this generation.

If you were too stupid not to get the message of the original 1984 I doubt even a comic book is going to persuade you.

Was there anything the previous generation on the liberal-left could have done 30 years ago to prevent Aida Parker’s doomsday predictions from becoming The Guardian’s news today?

Yes.

They could have called Blacks on the carpet more often and demanded clear explanations for the underacheivement.

And Blacks living in western countries should engage in more Afro-criticism, rather than in whitey-bashing.

One doesn’t responsabilise a community or a group by side-stepping sensitive issues, issues such as WHY Africa is the champ when it comes to failed states.

Like Brett, I believe that this has nothing to do with blackness, but at the same time it wouldn’t hurt if someone came up with some irrefutable cultural reasons for these failures.

Does anyone know why post apartheid S. Africa and Rhodesia are such spectacular failures?

And is it true that polls were taken a couple years back showing that many ( the majority, actually ) of South African blacks preferred life under apartheid?

Is that possible?

Ethan’s posting should be printed out on tee-shirts and spread around the country.

I’ll keep semi-anonymous because this will inevitably be misconstrued.

I think there *is* an argument that can be contructed, that *isn’t* from a “white racist” viewpoint, but nevertheless agrees with the “Black Africans are incapable of self-government” argument. It would run like this:
1. The black voters themselves are racist, and will vote for a racist black leader, simply because they rightly have a lot to be angry about during white dominated rule.
2. As a result, any government conventions rightly or wrongly associated with that white rule (e.g. of a classic British civil service) are considered unwanted, un-African, and rejected.
3. In addition, black rulers are allowed a certain leeway in corruption because that leader is “our man”, and a white opposition politician’s complaints about degenerative changes are rejected for the opposite reason.

I can see by the very nature of my terms that it’s a racist statement because it just grouped people by their skin colour, but if their own grouping by colour is of their own choice, is the above statement still a racist statement?

What do you think?

I’m surprised that none of the right wing commenters have complained that this article seems to suggest that the right wing position is racist. I would have thought the right wing position would have been more related to Zimbabwe/Rhodesia’s political and economic relations to the west as compared to the Soviets.

Although seeing as both the Nixon administration and the South African prime minister seemed to support the end of white rule, when both the parties capable of winning the election were left wing, I’m not sure how well that analysis stands up.

Mugabe is obviously no dummy. The guy has more degrees than a thermometer, and he would probably slaughter me in a debate. So why the fuck can’t he get his country’s economy sorted? Ok, so he’s a Communist. So are the Chinese but they aren’t doing too bad.

I’m surprised that none of the right wing commenters have complained that this article seems to suggest that the right wing position is racist.

We’ll know Brett is serious about overcoming the analytical deficiencies he points to when he stops caricaturing the Right.

South Africa, anyone?

Penny Holt, an advertising executive, loves her native South Africa, but power cuts, a murky political climate and widespread violent crime made her think about leaving the country she once viewed as a beacon of hope. A robbery at her office was the last straw.

“There’s a brutality, an anger that worries me,”

For many, the main worry is high levels of crime. An average of 50 people are murdered every day among a population of 48.8 million, according to the 2008 government crime report, with robberies, break-ins and holdups at businesses up almost 50 percent.

“In most instances I think the fundamental reason for leaving is violent crime,”

Analysts say power cuts in January and a wave of xenophobic attacks in May further clouded the mood.

Remind anyone of somewhere?

’social justice’

‘exclusion’

‘institutionalised racism’

‘poverty’

‘community cohesion’

Martin A, I think you are correct.

And you are not being racist.

I completely agree with this post. You could have added another example, one that makes me uncomfortable. Remember when demonstrators used to chant “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh”? Of course, you are probably too young for that, too. I was against the war in Vietnam when it was going on (even though I was just a kid), and have been so ever since. That position has always been a basic part of my political identity.

Have I changed that position now? Of course not. The war was still wrong, in my view. But I’m uncomfortable saying that, in effect, the Vietnamese should have been left to live under Ho Chi Minh, now that I know what his rule entailed. The US supported a crook and the Left supported a tyrant. What a choice for the Vietnamese!

It seems to me that the left, especially the Baby Boom generation, was shaped for life by the politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They see the world in almost Manichean terms, i.e.:

Pro-West, imperialist, and capitalist = BAD.

Third-World, “socialist” (however vaguely meant), anti-West, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist = GOOD.

Then they apply this template to every place on Earth. So, Hugo Chavez is ok, as are Castro, Che, and Arafat. Never mind that many conflicts around the world do not conform to this imperialist vs. revolutionary paradigm. Never mind that the paradigm is often too simplistic and often does violence to the truth. Never mind. If a leader or a political organization is on the “right side of history,” then said leader or organization is innocent until proven otherwise. Mugabe may be regarded poorly now, but it took an awfully long time. Even Arafat’s corruption has barely tarnished his image among many.

Cheer up Lefties! You had all the good songs.

We get fixated on the idea of change because we know change is necessary. But too often we pay too little attention to the agents of change - the actors, if you will, we hope will bring that change about.

George Bush’s changing of Iraq is another example.

George Bush’s changing of Iraq is another example.

Example of what? It looks fairly successful at the moment. Now say thanks to George Bush and the neocons. Better yet, consider becoming a neocon yourself, they are about the only folks who really care about these things. The left doesn’t, by and large. Not because they fail to consider the actors, but because they are totally clueless about tribalism and human nature, not to mention the historical prevalence of murder, poverty, and pillage. They seem to think mere opposition to traditional Western notions will cure all, as if the rest of the world lives in some primordial Eden and only the West has spoiled it by eating of the fruit of knowledge and tempting the innocent.

As to Mugabe, Carter and Andrew Young were early supporters who worked to bring him into the government; Young still makes excuses for him.

A good rule of thumb is: don’t support Communists, Marxists, Fascists, Baathists, Islamists, or anyone else who claims that they can perfect society through government power and the creation of unblemished men.

Cheer up Lefties! You had all the good songs.

I think there’s a post which addresses lefty pop songs somewhere on HP.

Joanne, I think you have got it right. The old anti-Vietnam War protestor part of the baby boomers have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and sympathy for whoever is America’s enemy even if they are religious reactionaries like the Iranian Mullahs who are against most of what liberals and radicals supposedly are for.

The Iranian Communists, like the one in Persepolis who thought they could control the Iranian Revolution instead of the Mullahs, were not alone in this belief. Some American conservatives thought so as well. In their viewpoint, the Shah’s overthrow had to be the result of a communist plot since the revolutionary govt. was anti-American. In the Manchian children of light versus children of darkness view of the world, it was one or the other, if you were against America, you had to be pro-Soviet. It did not occur to them that there were movements & peoples in the world that were against both Western democracy/capitalism and Communism.

Similar mistakes are made by many people of different viewpoints who tend to see events in foreign lands in their own & their country’s history. We Yanks in particular, are always seeing events through our own War of Independence and subsequent formation of the United States. We and others forget that other countries’ history is the most important factor in determining what that country’s future will be. And yes, Larry Teabag is correct that Bush’s naivette that Iraq would become a western style democracy like the US is certainly a good example of this foolishness.

I’m surprised that none of the right wing commenters have complained that this article seems to suggest that the right wing position is racist. I would have thought the right wing position would have been more related to Zimbabwe/Rhodesia’s political and economic relations to the west as compared to the Soviets.

I would have thought that it would have been stark-ravingly obvious that racism has nothing to do with having an allergic reaction to the term “social justice” (a useful litmus test for right-edness). Its Brett being Brett again.

Iraq as a sucess. Well, if you do not mind 2 million Iraqi refugees in other countries, 2 million Iraqis internally displaced and more than a trillion US dollars spent on the occupation of Iraq, I suppose it counts as a sucess. Another such success would bankrupt the United States. (See Pyrhic victories)

I was going to comment about Iraq, as well as post-Soviet Russia as being complete failures for right wing policy but decided not to as it was off topic. If the right wingers here want to talk about that kind of thing then go ahead. Lack of foresight is pretty much universal among humans. Even hindsight is quite sketchy.

Brett’s battling those doughty straw men again.

With respect to Mugabe, hindsight is always 20/20, and thus its easy to blame everyone after the event for not standing up to him, and to claim, somewhat spuriously, that this catastrophe was obviously predictable.

Mugabe committed crimes before this fiasco. However, for some considerable time the country was doing okay, with a stable economy, and reasonable health and education systems by the standards of the continent. One has to account using the full ledger; if one does so the lack of perfect foresight and political heroism that Brett wrings his hands over is more easily explainable.

There is always this mythical alternative reality, where men of gentle centre left political persuasion, with perfect foresight and impeccable morals, bestride the political landscape; the Decent Tardis is at work again.

This whole discussion looks like a search for a retrospective choice that the west did not have at the time. We demanded self determination and self government for the black population. So did they.

That meant hands-off and let them get on with it. They did, they voted, and this is the result. I remember those days, and the support for Mugabe that mattered was from the Zimbabwe electorate, who were not in any mood to ask white lefties who to vote for.

Any attempt in the interim, by us, to change their course would have been thrown back in our faces as colonial meddling.

If you are granting a nation their own sovereignty, you can’t dictate how they use it.

Bush’s naivette that Iraq would become a western style democracy like the US is certainly a good example of this foolishness.

Do you have a citation where Bush says any such thing? Because I don’t believe he did. Nor do I recall the establishment of a US style democracy as being among the reasons for invading Iraq. The whole naivete thingee is one of those left wing strawmen, one that also excuses the left for failing to support the toppling of Saddam or making any effort to improve the situation. Only naive folks would attempt such a thing whereas smart left wingers can just shake their head and walk away.

The “right wing” argument that Africans cannot govern themselves is not racist, it is culturalist. The vast majority of Africans still live in tribal societies - something that was beaten out of (most) Europeans by several centuries of wars and nation building.

I maintain that Western culture is objectively better than African culture by pretty much any objective standard. If that makes me “right wing” so be it.

I cannot shake the suspicion that there is something to the old argument that colonialism was the only chance that Africa ever had to progress. If tribal societies gain access to modern technology (weapons primarily) and modern states is it not possible that the end result will not be progress to enlightenment and human rights but instead a violent perpetuation of tribalism? The recent history of Africa does not give one much hope.

Interesting to see Larry’s very pertinent point about the Republican/Decent love-in, above, blown off so easily… Because even judging by Brett’s standards, this post is a new low in ill-considered, reactionary drivel. In fact, it displays so many basic logical errors and casual reverse-ferrets that it’s difficult to know which aspect to take aim at first.

Should it be the crackling narcissism of crediting a few white, British lefties with the end of whites-only rule in Africa? Should we point out how this assault on “the left” for the present situation in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe flies in the face of the standard Decent drone about how childish it is to blame all of the world’s problems on the West? And if that well-worn complaint can be dropped so easily if it gets in the way of beating up on liberals, how does this vacant rubbish tie into years of HP articles about “grievance mongering” bullshitters confecting scandals, injustices and controversies to stir up resentment for political purposes?

Or should we question exactly what relation this post bears to the pro-war left’s ostentatious stance on the promotion of popular democracy and self-determination, and its bellicose enthusiasm for the use of redemptive violence to further the cause? Because if we’re accusing anyone of misguided good intentions and unwise alliances, there are there are far more recent examples, and they’re a lot closer to hand…

For who could fail to be flabbergasted and dumbstruck at the sight of a Harry’s Place poster berating anyone for choosing to support dodgy characters as the instrument of their glorious ideological revolution? This while Iraq, which has seen its population plummet in recent years, is still an incredibly violent and lawless half-state teetering on the brink of theocracy and civil war!

Surely it’s obvious that the contention Some lefties’ historical belief in full democratic rights for all Africans means they are directly responsible for dictatorship and death in Zimbabwe sits very, very uncomfortably next to the regular HP posters’ cry of Iraq? We may have been cheerleaders, but all that chaos and carnage is nothing to do with us, guvnor, it was all them fascists what did it, not my responsibility, innit?

But I don’t think you even need to play Doctor Freud to work out what’s going on here. There’s Zimbabwe’s ongoing humanitarian disaster, with a nasty, corrupt third world dictator abusing his people and issuing blood-curdling condemnations of Britain – it’s tailor-made for all of those tried-and-tested HP narratives and bugbears about those bloody awful lefties I’ve mentioned above. There’s just one problem – none of these dreadful, white-guilt riddled liberals in Britain is actually speaking in favour of Mugabe.

Damn bad luck! Without so much as a daft CiF writer to hang a nasty, smear-laden post on, Brett’s left with no way to mould an honest-to-goodness tyrannical dictator into a heavy, condemnatory argumentative stick with which to beat his political enemies. Boy, that must rankle.

Must… Blame… Liberals For… Mugabe… But wait! Salvation is at hand! What if Brett just pulled a series of illogical, Have-Cake/Eat-Cake/Retain-Cake arguments right out of his arse?

What this says about the pro-war left generally, I’ve no idea, but it certainly tells me that Brett is by far the slowest, most sluggish fish in the toe-deep shallows of the Harry’s Place pool.

Really, I don’t know what’s more embarrassing – that this website publishes this pitiful, risible guff or that its readership responds to it with enthusiasm* and craven, Littlejohnian mumbles of I’m not racist, but… rather than the laughter, pointing and waved wanker-hands it so richly deserves.

*In fact, not enthusiasm - outright priapism, I’d say. I’m unsure in what universe blaming the liberals of yesteryear for present-day crime in South Africa counts as striking a blow against the hegemony of political correctness, but one thing’s for sure - it’s a universe filled with people I wouldn’t want to be stuck next to on a long bus journey.

Don’t use one word when a couple of dozen should suffice will you Rodent.

Benjamin and Monty have it right about the limited range of choices the West had in dealing with the end of white minority rule in Zimbabawe. The same goes for South Africa and Nambia as well.

I think one of the most important aspects of democracy, and one that is normally overlooked, is that it behoves the voter to enter the polling station with a modicum of apprehension. It is rarely wise to hand too much power to any single party, for too long.

In the west, we grow up with this. We absorb it. We like our hung parliaments and our compromise politics, because it puts the dampers on ideological extremism of all stripes. That is why we instinctively ensure that all political careers, (even that of Churchill), end in failure and rejection. Most of all, we like them to know that we do not love them, and we can turn on them in an instant. We like to keep them scared.

But it took us centuries to get here. And we had to learn the hard way. That’s exactly what Zimbabwe is doing now, learning the hard way.

Finally today Tutu has called not only for Mugabe to leave or be taken before the ICC in the Hague but also called for military intervention. It had to come to this before anyone dared to break the taboo about military intervention, let alone actually implement it. And then Nick Clegg saying that the new UN principle of responsibility to protect was fully applicable now, including military action, except he felt impotent as he had no idea who could implement it.

ami:

“Finally today Tutu has called not only for Mugabe to leave or be taken before the ICC in the Hague but also called for military intervention. ”

Who the hell does Tutu think he is? Does he imagine he holds a starting pistol over the armed forces of the world? That we are all armed and ready to go diving in as soon as he gives us the nod?

Well he can go and pound sand.

Well, Tutu’s comment is late, but a refreshing change from either silence or support for Mugabe that has come from most of the South African leadership. Just maybe, the South African govt will now say publicily that Mugabe must go. That might be what is needed to get rid of Mugabe while there is still a Zimbabwe left. And there is an ironic preccedent for such action in Vorster in 1976 withdrawing support for Smith’s white minority regime in what was then Rhodesia which forced Smith to start serious negotiations for Majority rule. It would take three more years of guerilla warfare though before Smith finally capitulated at Lancaster House in late 1979.