Why Bother? posted by Richard Seymour

I couldn't resist pinching this from my new hang-out, Media Lies .

Harry's Compulsive anti-Stopperism Loses Readers' Interest

Harry the Hatchet has apparently been under attack from readers over the particularly strident attacks on the antiwar Left. On the one hand, some who do not share the political outlook of John Pilger and George Galloway feel resentful about being tarred with any brush applied to them. On the other, many are just bored by the spacky hands whacking out the same old tunes on the old salmon-background sic 'em site. I feel the former are probably missing the point - it isn't that they are being tarred with some rather grubby brushes, but precisely that the warniks want desperately to split the enormous coalition against the war, to turn it in on itself and force a split. The latter are closer to where I'm at.

But wait! Harry has some answers for those who think strident tones should be the preserve of our increasingly whacky Prime Minister and his spooked family. He cites Norman Geras, (whom I took to task just the other day at Lenin's Tomb ) in his answer:

"This is why bother. John Pilger, just to start with him, is not in fact some lonely nut-case, even if there are signs that his judgement is now rather disturbed. He is a journalist of world renown, who has a reputation for good work in the past, and also access to prominent media outlets. In these respects he is far from alone."

On what grounds Pilger is supposed to be disturbed we are not allowed to know. John Sweeney has attempted a sad little smear against his foe which rebounded in terrible fashion on him. But the point is that we don't need to be told. It's obvious enough, isn't it? Someone who condemns US power and lauds the anti-occupation forces working inside Iraq must be disturbed. Isn't this the reason why they say what they say, and argue how they argue? Isn't it irrationalism, fundamentalism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, fascism?

Norm continues:

"It needs to be answered. It needs to be characterized for what it is: at worst pro-tyrant, at best deluded, leftism. For the rest, it doesn't implicate anyone on the anti-war left who doesn't want to be implicated. They are capable of stating their own viewpoints, and - within that - their better positions on these issues."

Noone on the Left is pro-tyrant. Any fool who runs around telling you that the antiwar movement was teeming with people desperate to be placed under the tutelage of a mass murderer and merchant of torture is a pure sap, or worse. Similarly, not every single person in Iraq who has a negative word to say about the occupation is necessarily a crypto-fascist, or nostalgic for the hey-day of Ba'athism. I have yet to see a single word from Nick Cohen, Christopher Hitchens, Norman Geras, David Aaronovitch, or indeed Harry Hatchet to demonstrate their vacant thesis - the perfectly excellent reason for this is that they cannot begin to justify it.

Harry ponders the Stop the War Coalition's success:

"Although led by a sectarian grouping, the Socialist Workers Party, it has successfully attracted support from all shades of opinion from Liberal Democrats, Labour Party members, Greens, pacifists and communists and leftists of varying outlooks. And of course it has won the backing of a number of religious groupings."

Harry has no business suggesting that the STWC is led by the SWP, but if it was it would be a perfectly excellent example of just how non-sectarian a "grouping" they are that they alone are capable of uniting such a splendid array of forces:

"Yet what is also unprecedented is the easy ride that Stop the War has had from the media ... apart from a few exceptions, Stop the War has not been put under scrutiny by the media. There has been very little focus in the press on the real politics of STWC or of the groups and individuals that make up its leadership. They have simply been described as 'peace activists' - a phrase that, as we have discussed, is itself open to some discussion.

On the few occassions when a journalist did point out that, for example, STWC Chairman Andrew Murray was a member of the Communist Party of Britain, there were howls of 'witchunt' from the STWC and from those strange relics of British communism who objected viruently to one of their members being described as a communist."

Noone has criticised the STWC?:

STWC marchers are either the "blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist" who ""do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all". (Christopher Hitchens)

The "the shameless Stop the War coalition". (Nick Cohen)

Well, let's not dwell on the details. The point about Andrew Murray having been a Communist is presumably irrelevant unless one wants to imply guilt by association - a remarkably McCarthyite, nay, Stalinist debating strategy. Ditto the following:

"Whenever the highly relevant links between the Muslim Association of Britain and the SWP came under discussion, again the reaction was close to hysterical..."

So, presumably, when Nick Cohen complains that the Muslim Association of Britain "thinks Israel should be abolished" (fair enough, I do too), this has something do with condemning the position of the antiwar movement? Evidently not. If the MAB were nowhere in the antiwar movement, Nick Cohen would still be denouncing it as a collective sigh of support for tyranny.

Harry and Norman claim they have nothing against what Geras patronisingly refers to as the "sane" antiwar Left, that which is "antiwar and anti-Saddam", the sort Harry claims is represented by The Guardian and The Independent. If only the Pilgerites, Trots and Chomskyists could be this sane! Well, he could do a bit more reading up:

"Saddam Hussein is obviously an evil man." (Socialist Worker)

Saddam is "a vicious dictator who brutalised, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of Iraqis." (Socialist Party website).

"Marxists have no sympathy with the man who ruled Iraq with a mailed fist, who murdered Communists and trade unionists, who gassed Iranians and Kurds, who massacred Shias and killed political prisoners with excruciating torture." (Socialist Appeal)

Saddam Hussein is a "ruthless megalomaniac" (Tariq Ali on Counterpunch)

"I felt no pity for Saddam. He had killed some dear comrades of mine and imprisoned too many others" (Tariq Ali again)

Saddam Hussein is "murderous", a "fiendish tyrant" (John Pilger)

"All people who have any concern for human rights, justice and integrity should be overjoyed by the capture of Saddam Hussein ... An indictment of Saddam's atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 but also, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991." (Noam Chomsky)

Naturally, Harry and Norman are perfectly well aware that the antiwar Left is not the mythical Saddamite beast they make it out to be. The truth is, they would rather have a debate with Saddam Hussein than with the antiwar movement. They would rather talk as if being pro-war was objectively anti-fascist, and no concerns about geopolitics, about the dismissal of viable alternatives, about the suitability of the agent of 'liberation', about the parlous state Iraq is in because of the occupation - in fact, no discussion of the issues central to the antiwar case need ever come under discussion, so long as the antiwar movement is "at worst pro-tyrant, at best deluded leftist".