Johann Hari: "the David Irving of the Left"? posted by Richard Seymour

I've tried being nice. I've gone to the extremes of the encomiastic, larding Johann with compliments like a simpering groupie. And where is the love? Where is the honey-honey, cheep-cheep, sugar-sugar, baby-love? Why do you build me up, buttercup, only to let me down? Etc. Well, I've had enough. Like a rejected rabbit-boiler, I am now on a mission of revenge. The preceding is a way of indicating in advance that you are in no way supposed to take the following entirely seriously, or at least that I intend to backtrack considerably at the end.

Johann Hari once stupidly referred to Eric Hobsbawm as "the David Irvine [sic] of the Left" . Now, reading his material, one gets a sense that he is at least familiar with David Irving's methods, because he - well - he uses some of them. Hey, if he can dish it out, he can take it.

Here's a few examples, then to the meat of the matter.

Reviewing George Galloway's slender polemic, I'm Not The Only One, Johann Hari issued several falsehoods , which he then repeated when Galloway won his court case. Here is a typical example, where Hari states:

How about the passage where Galloway defends Saddam's claim to Kuwait, describing the province as "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion"?

What Galloway actually said was:

"For Iraqis of all political persuasions, Kuwait had been stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion - Great Britain, the former colonial power." (Page 42).

By removing the first six words, and replacing the words 'Kuwait had been stolen from' with 'clearly a part of the iraqi whole', Johann made it seem as if Galloway had indeed defended Saddam's claim to Kuwait. In David Irving's trial, it emerged that he had falsified evidence relating to Himmler's phone log on December 1st, 1941, to make it seem as if Hitler was doing his best to prevent his subordinates from enacting the Final Solution, reading the words "Verwaltungsfuher der SS haben zu bleiben" as "Juden zu bleiben". What had actually read "administrative leaders of the SS to stay" was interpreted as "Jews have to stay where they are".

Another example. Johann, in an interview with Antonio Negri, appears to have lifted samples of another writer's work and imported directly into his own without bothering to credit the original , a technique known as plagiarism.
David Irving, in his biography of Goebbels, drew on the work of the Nazi apologist Ingrid Weckert without bothering to credit her when he wanted to slip a statistic or two past the inattentive reader, (this was in order to minimise the violence against Jews on Reichkristallnacht).

The most obvious example of where Hari apes these methods is in his attack on Hobsbawm itself, whom he describes as "an unapologetic defender of Stalinism" (elsewhere stating that "Hobsbawm is not a Stalinist" ). On what basis does he make this charge? Thus:

He would gladly have spied for Stalin, he explained recently and without regret, if only he had been asked. In his autobiography, he explains that he "treats the memory and tradition of the USSR with an indulgence and tenderness". In his 600-page account of a lifetime of supporting the Soviet Union, there are three regrets or caveats I could count. The last is typical. He notes briefly: "I am prepared to concede, with regret, that Lenin's Comintern was not such a good idea." That will be a comfort to the tens of millions Lenin and his acolytes slaughtered.

Even the material Hari cites leaves it very questionable whether Hobsbawm is actually an "unapologetic defender" of Stalinism. Indeed, in the book, Hobsbawm is constantly explaining, if not explaining away his former support for the regime. Hari ignores counter-factual evidence from the same autobiography, in which Hobsbawm denounces Stalinism, or indeed in Hobsbawm's much lauded history of the 'short twentieth century', Age of Extremes, (from the latter, see the chapter on 'Real Socialism'). It is one of Irving's hallmarks to adduce implausible evidence to support this or that thesis and ignore more solid evidence that belies it. Where he cannot do this, he explains the countervailing evidence away with a few glib gestures, or misrepresents it.

Etc. I could do this all day.

Of course, Johann Hari is not the David Irving of the Left. Neither is Eric Hobsbawm. While Irving attempted to silence free speech by serving a writ with the aim of having a book by Deborah Lipstadt pulped, was shown up in court as precisely the falsifying, Holocaust-denying, far right sympathising creep that he claimed he wasn't, Hobsbawm is a reputed historian with a series of magisterial histories behind him. Irving systematically lied in the service of Fascism, while Hobsbawm fought fascism.

But Johann Hari is a polemicist, and sometimes a terrific vulgariser. This is bad news when you're paid to do it by a national newspaper. Usually, however, the worst of Hari emerges when he is writing for a website - either his own or, formerly, Harry's Place. Item: in the second installment of Hari's scintillating Pilger Watch series, Hari performs a classic bit of cut n paste logic. He says:

In his latest New Statesman piece – which, in a move onto bold new territory for the Pilge, is an attack on the liberal media – rants about “a certain PC-ism, such as the sound and fury over dropping the gay age of consent, adds to the illusion of a Labour government that, had it not fallen in with the awful Bush, would be celebrated as "progressive".”

Note the choice of language. “Political correctness” is a term used by conservatives to attack the left’s Gramscian attempts to change the terms of political discourse to steer it away from racism, sexism and homophobia. It is a phrase whose use has extremely reactionary connotations, as Pilger must know.

As he is more interested in what Pilger's words connote than what they denote, let's just remind ourselves of who was complaing about multiculturalism not so long ago. Sure, one can disapprove of multiculturalism as a discourse without necessarily being a reactionary. I do myself. But Hari "must know" that doing so can have "extremely reactionary connotations".

Anyway, let's just get Pilger's statement out of the way:

A certain PC-ism, such as the sound and fury over dropping the gay age of consent, adds to the illusion of a Labour government that, had it not fallen in with the awful Bush, would be celebrated as "progressive". Tell that to the people of a faraway country, more than half of whom are children, whose lives have been devastated by the fanatical Blair and his court of apologists. Read the robotic Hoon's statement on the use of cluster bombs - how Iraqi mothers would one day be "grateful" for the use of weapons that killed their children - and Ministry of Defence letters to the public that lie about depleted uranium and its Hiroshima effect.

Hari says, more in anger than sorrow:

Pilger often denigrates the fruits of progressive struggles on issues like gay rights. He mocks them as either irrelevant or, worse, baubles hanging on an imperialist tank ... Pilger acts as though by celebrating the heroic fight for an equal age of consent, gay people are legitimising arms sales to tyrannies.

Why is this? Why does Pilger sneer so about the achievements of gay rights struggles?

Oh, darling, give it a fucking rest! If it isn't obvious to you, come sit on my knee and I'll explain it: Pilger does not 'sneer' at the achievements of gay rights struggles. He sneers at those who use New Labour's concessions to those struggles a poor fig leaf to cover for what is essentially a reactionary government. He sneers at those who imagine that, say, the repeal of Clause 28 - necessary and right though that was - outweighs the deaths of 100,000 people, government-sponsored mass murder, social injustice, growing inequality, the privatisation of essential services, cuts in benefits for those who need them, the slanders against asylum seekers and the sucking up to the rich. He sneers at the Tonier Than Thou bunch, who can always find 'progressive' reasons to defend this weak and nasty government. He sneers, in short, at dudes like you.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for what morons may say about this post.