I've been doing some things, and one of the things I've been doing is reading a book that was lent to me for a browse. It's called Eve's Bite, by Christian and former journalist Ian Wishart.
It's pretty funny. According to the introduction, the gist is this: the West is at war with (Nazis) Islamofascism, which is (Nazis) going to win, because (Nazis) political correctness and Marxist (Nazis) ideologies have made us weak. This weakness is exemplified by the Labour Party (Nazis).
Eve's Bite is subtitled, "Seductive, Deceptive & Dangerous: the Trojan ideologies poisoning our country and destroying the West." I have a better subtitle: "Why critical thinking should be taught in high schools."
I do the following for two reasons. One, it's entertaining. Two, I'm bored..Chapter One: School Daze
This chapter begins a Goebbels quote about propaganda and education. Wishart is concerned about education in the West. He begins with a few statistics - how many students didn't know much about D-Day or the Holocaust, thought that Private Ryan led the charge at Normandy, etc. A survey of British adults found that one in 20 believe Conan the Barbarian to be a real figure from Nordic history.
In parentheses, he points out that this is roughly how many New Zealanders voted for the Greens in the last election. Now, I'm a big fan of Vonnegut, and at the start of Breakfast of Champions, he prepares the reader for the level of sophistication he will be using throughout the book. "This," he says, "is my drawing of an asshole."
I like to think of this parenthetical comparison of Greens voters with Conan-believing Britons as preparing the reader for the level of sophistication Wishart will be using throughout Eve's Bite. Perhaps he's hoping the reader will think of the Greens when they think about studies about how silly some people are. Perhaps you'll think of Vonnegut's asshole when you think of Ian Wishart. Who knows?
To explain how education has reached the depths of contemporary New Zealand, Wishart explains the three main historical forces at work in shaping the modern Western world: Darwinism, Marxism and eugenics.
The Wishartian Marx was a man on a mission: to destroy Christianity. He quotes Marx.When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes. Law, morality, religion are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality.
Goodness! And from Wikiquote. Let's look at where these quotes actually come from. Yes, that's right, quotes - plural. The first sentence is from a letter Marx wrote to Wilhelm Blos, recommending avoiding personality cults in socialist movements. The second sentence is from the Communist Manifesto, describing the condition of the proletarian under capitalism.
And the third quote. This is my favourite part. "Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality." Good God! How terrifying! Why would Marx say something like this? Unless... Yes, here is the full quote:“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
Yes, that's right. Wishart quoted Marx musing on what opponents of Marxism might mistakenly say about Communism. It was not Marx saying that Communism abolishes all morality, but Marx's hypothetical critics and name-callers.
Classic.
But so important! Wishart follows up the misquote with, "Let that message sink in, for a moment." Wow.
Blah, blah, blah. Marx hated Christianity. Blah, blah, blah. Here's another good one. "'Democracy is the road to socialism... The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.' Funnily enough, Islam has a similar definition of peace."
I think I'm just going to throw in that picture whenever these hilarious little associations are made. Marxism... equals... Islamic terrorism...
Then Darwin comes in. Wishart's right in associating the two, though not really in the way he means. Darwin sought a materialist explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth. Marx was applying Hegel's teleology to a material economic context, rather than Hegel's spiritual one. So they were both materialists.
Now, keep in mind what Marxists' actual problem with religion was: it made people lazy. It kept them quiet and accepting of social injustice by promising a blissful world after death. (JUST LIKE MUSLIMS OMG.) It didn't really occur to him that religion could be a force for positive social change, because his society had seen so much of it being used to maintain an unjust status quo. This is why Christian Marxists exist - because religion isn't always an opiate. Sometimes it's an amphetamine.
Wishart also talks about Darwin's "survival of the fittest" appealing to Marxists, which is just plain odd. Which part of "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs" sounds like survival of the fittest? If anything, it's under capitalism that the "fittest" are encouraged the flourish at the expense of those who, say, can't afford expensive healthcare.
The general gist of the chapter is this: Marx hated Christianity and saw Darwinism as a weapon against it. Marx also argued that controlling education is a first step to indoctrinating the people with Marxist ideals. Despite failing at everything else in life (including his marriage and personal finances), he succeeded in planting the Trojan Horse of Marxist ideology in Western education. That is why New Zealand children are taught about feminism and not about D-Day.
The assertion that someone who failed so spectacularly (Marx) got his revenge by planting the seeds of a culture's destruction is reminiscent of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, referring to Christian "slave morality" being the revenge of the Jews on the Rome that destroyed them.
Did I just associate Wishart with an anti-Semitic interpretation of Nietzsche?
Man.
This game's easy.
Farfur, the Palestinian Mickey Mouse-alike that recently began appearing on a children's TV show on al-Aqsa TV, has been killed off after only five episodes. A source of controversy from the start, Farfur ("Butterfly") has been accused of inciting anti-Semitism in Palestinian children. Of course, we're relying on translators to tell us what's being said.
I love that. This idea that, while Israel illegally annexes yet more land, bulldozing Palestinian farms and houses to do so, it's a TV show that's causing anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment in Palestinian children. Anyway, check out the clip above. It is pretty worrying. The kid hosting the show, Saraa, looks like she's on sedatives. In general, the show is almost as blatantly anti-Semitic as The Smurfs was.¹
¹ - I maintain that The Smurfs was very anti-Semitic, and am here making a joke, as it is very obvious how racist Farfur is.
know you forgot to put in your teeth.
The Financial Times tells us that Iraq and climate change have thrown the right into disarray. While those of us on the sane side of life would love to believe that, let's take a good look at the underlying assumptions inherent in every second sentence of this editorial piece.
His description of a monolithic cardigan-clad left can be forgiven, simply because he's parodying what he considers to be the mind of the average right-winger. Leftists are clearly a bunch of nuts, who were wrong about various things - from privatisation in the '80s to mad-cow disease. Then, suddenly, this same monolithic group were right about two things: Iraq and climate change.
Damn straight I was right about Iraq. But what exactly does he think that means? He doesn't give many clues. He refers to it as "the Iraq debacle", which has cut away at the Reagan-Thatcher belief in military strength and the moral superiority and "exportability" of Western democracy. If the failure in Iraq is the failure to have successfully taken over and occupied a country of 23 million people on the other side of the world, and that Western democracy wasn't successfully exported to it, then presumably what the left was saying in 2003 was, "It's too big a job to manage, and you can't export democracy."
Obviously, people were saying both of those things. But a bit simpler an objection coming from the left was: "There are no WMDs over there, idiots. And the invasion is illegal." We didn't need to wait until 2007 for some insightful editorial piece to tell us, "Hey, you guys were right." We have never been wrong about the illegality of the invasion, and it didn't take long to confirm what UNMOVIC were saying pre-invasion: no WMDs.
As for exporting democracy, that'd be great, except that a functioning democratic country wouldn't illegally invade another sovereign state. Functioning democracies respect the rule of law.
So what lesson has the right supposedly learned from the left regarding Iraq? Apparently, it's something like, "It's tough to take over countries and force them into a governmental system of your choosing." Which simply implies that, hey, if you'd tried a bit harder, it might have turned out okay. The author even suggests that Iraq might "work out in the end". This implies a fundamental ignorance of the worst effect of the invasion of Iraq.
Big words, really, to talk about worse effects than over 100,000 lives lost, many more ruined, depleted uranium setting up the cancer rates of future generations, etc. These things are terrible. So what's worse? The undermining of the rule of law. Why is that worse? Because only the rule of law is going to prevent these things from happening again and again in the future. The invasion was illegal. There were no WMDs. Disarmament was the reason Bush and Blair gave for invading. These things have been forgotten, or ignored.
Chomsky on Vietnam:
The Vietnam War is a classic example of America's propaganda system. In the mainstream media--the New York Times, CBS, and so on-- there was a lively debate about the war. It was between people called "doves" and people called "hawks." The hawks said, "If we keep at it we can win." The doves said, "Even if we keep at it, it would probably be too costly for use, and besides, maybe we're killing too many people." Both sides agreed on one thing. We had a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam. Doves and hawks alike refused to admit that aggression was taking place. They both called our military presence in Southeast Asia the defense of South Vietnam, substituting "defense" for "aggression" in the standard Orwellian manner. In reality, we were attacking South Vietnam just as surely as the Soviets later attacked Afghanistan.
Similarly for climate change. What have the right learned from the left? Only that concerns about the environment and future generations only become worth considering when enough people believe them that it affects spending and voting. Until "I care about climate change" becomes an effective way to garner votes, politicians will not care about it. But then we're told of the dual role of conservatives in this new, crazy, left-wing era:
The defensive role is to guard against over-reaction to the emerging consensus on global warming and Iraq. The right was not wrong to spot its old anti-capitalist, anti-western foes in the coalitions that first latched on to these issues. There are radical voices that will try to use global warming to create a world in which nobody takes a cheap flight again - and in which globalisation is put into reverse. It will be up to the right to show that growth and greenery can be reconciled. Similarly, the Iraq catastrophe is great news for anti-Americans in Europe and isolationists in the US. Conservatives need to hold the line against both.
But the right can do a lot more than mere damage control. Many of the most important ideas of the Reagan-Thatcher era - privatisation, trade union reform, the re-thinking of the welfare state - were developed in opposition to the intellectual consensus of the 1960s and 1970s. After a long period of intellectual hegemony, a period in ideological opposition might be just what the Anglo-American right needs.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are radical voices that will try to use global warming to create a world in which nobody takes a cheap flight again! And in which globalisation is put into reverse. Yes, there are anonymously evil people out there who just want nothing better than to ruin your good time. Who the hell are those people? Who exactly is using climate change to further their secret anti-flight agenda? And if there is the odd nut who actually wants this - you can usually find a nut here or there who believes anything - why is the Financial Times giving the impression they're an influential voice among the "hey, let's quit fucking the planet in the arse" crowd? And besides, if it turns out that "cheap flights" are directly responsible for consequences that kill people, then yeah, maybe you shouldn't have them. But if that's the case, there's a good reason for it, not just some nutters who lie at the extreme end of the "left" spectrum. Like, "If you go far enough left, you hit guys who just plain don't want you to be able to fly to Hawaii. So, you know, don't go too far left."
"It will be up to the right to show that growth and greenery can be reconciled"! Because apparently the left is out to destroy growth and the mighty right must defend it. And these "anti-Americans in Europe". People who just plain hate America, for no better reason than that they're disagreeable people. Never mind that the US keeps fucking with everyone else on the planet. Europeans are racist. And my favourite, "After a long period of intellectual hegemony, a period in ideological opposition might be just what the Anglo-American right needs."
Why is that my favourite? Because of the feel it gives. It gives you this feel that "the right" have been running the show for a while now, so it might do them some good to have some healthy competition from "the left". It gives you this feel that "the left" is opposed to "the right", and that there are no other options or forces at work. And so it helps you forget that "the right" and "the left" fundamentally agree on a bunch of fucked-up things that could do with a little ideological opposition of their own.
Thanks to Bomber for mentioning this. Information Clearing House has published an article debunking the popular myth that President Ahmadinejad of Iran said that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map". What he said was that Khomeini had said that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."
More interesting is the monumental fuck-up that gave birth to the anti-Iranian propaganda:
One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.
The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran's Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.
Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.
On a slightly related note - ie., American racism - thanks to Russell Brown for pointing out this hilarious interview between Stephen Colbert and Dinesh D'Souza. Speaking of His Truthiness, here's Stephen Colbert versus Bill O'Reilly, and Bill O'Reilly versus Stephen Colbert. What a bizarre experience.
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