More Decent projection about "the left" etc.
"The programme seemed to attest to the view, popular among radical thinkers, that we must bear the guilt of centuries of oppression of darker-skinned races – and thus need repeated absolution by means of the worship of figures from Nelson Mandela to Barack Obama."
Also sprach John Lloyd in the Financial Times about a Nelson Mandela documentary. Hard to say how much of the view contained in the quoted sentence is supposed to be "popular among radical thinkers." Is it just the "we" (who?) must "bear the guilt" part, or is it the absolution by worship bit too? And who are the "radical thinkers" among whom such a view is popular? The present tense doesn't automatically imply that the thinkers are still amongst us .... so we could be even talking Fanon or Sartre here.
Also sprach John Lloyd in the Financial Times about a Nelson Mandela documentary. Hard to say how much of the view contained in the quoted sentence is supposed to be "popular among radical thinkers." Is it just the "we" (who?) must "bear the guilt" part, or is it the absolution by worship bit too? And who are the "radical thinkers" among whom such a view is popular? The present tense doesn't automatically imply that the thinkers are still amongst us .... so we could be even talking Fanon or Sartre here.
posted by Captain Cabernet at 2/07/2009 08:44:00 AM
12 Comments:
I can imagine the only people who worship John Lloyd and his writings are those who are looking for a guaranteed solution to chronic insomnia...
Would it be in totally bad taste to connect this to the goyishe "friends of Israel" who can often be much more belligerent than actual Jewish Zionists?
I tend to think that the projection involved in Decentism isn't just the kind normally referred to, i.e. people seeing in others vices that are more obvious in themselves (though of course, there's plenty of that). It's just as often the sort of projection referred to in Forbiden Planet, monsters created out of our own fears and imagination. This would probably make Professor Geras Dr Morbius or something.
Nick praising Jonah Goldberg http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/08/goldberg-liberal-fascism-review
- APS
Holy hell, I was just going to post that link. Just when you think he can't wade further into self-parody, he does something like that. There is now no ground between him and Melanie Phillips. None at all.
Isn't this the sort of article that he's meant to hide away in obscure right-wing journals for fear that somebody might, y'know, actually read it?
The fantastic bit of that piece is his rant against George Clooney. I mean, jesus christ, a Hollywood-know nothing-liberal-rent a quote. Come on Nick get some better targets. And then he hilariously sides with him at the end, to try and temper Goldberg's argument. Too funny.
But this is just more of Nick rummaging through his back-catalogue of ill-thought out, ahistorical gripes.
"Avant-garde Nazi philosophers - Heidegger, Paul de Man, Carl Schmitt - are venerated by nominal leftists in the postmodern universities, who love their contempt for traditional morality and standards of truth."
And that's just one of many dead horses flogged.
Get thee to the Daily Mail Nick.
"contempt for traditional morality" looks like a s-o-D that we've not seen before, doesn't it?
not sure that heidegger OR carl schmitt would be my go-to guys for Contempt for Traditional Morality -- the line-drawing trope of "Greatest Intellectual Struggle" is of course as Schmittian as it gets, as is Hitch's absolute cheerfully sanguinary belligerence once he's sniffed out a foe, and (come to think of it) the increasingly manichean deployment of the accusation of anti-semitism
then there's leo strauss - the guru of the more philosophically inclined neocons -- who is (i) not exactly conceptually distant from schmitt and (ii) not exactly full-throatedly committed to truthtelling at all costs...
paul de man is a sadder case, really -- the "avant-garde" criticism he was once venerated for (is he still?) was of course entirely a rejection of and (perhaps) also a too-private atonement for the opinions of his (shameful) period of collaboration, when belgium was nazi-occupied and he was a young newspaper reviewer... but because the story of collaboration all only emerged after his (sudden, early ) death before he could address this issue upfront himself (and because neither he nor his defenders were ever precisely heroes of easy-reading), it was simple enough for academic foes to pretend that there was far more continuity than there was, and for broadsheet journalists with a nose for bloody barneys in ivory towers to simplify the issues to the point of (these days) high dishonesty
Is George Clooney a know-nothing type? I don't know much about him but he seemed quite knowledgeable the few times I've read something he's done.
Matthew
Clooney's fairly clued up, but my point was that if NC is hitting liberal actors then his radar is all over the place.
Hollywood is hugely liberal at the moment as it's the trend but, you're right, Clooney is probably a pretty sincere one.
Avant-garde Nazi philosophers - [...] Paul de Man
No matter what the facts of De Man's early collaboration were, there's no way you can call him a 'Nazi philosopher'. There's nothing Nazi in his philosophy at all. And I'm certain Nick has never read him.
I'm not saying it's funny or original or anything, nor for that matter that predicting the rages of Nick is Rocket Science, but in November or so I was inspired by one of his columns to write an hilarious (etc) column in the school of Dave/Andrew/Nick etc and Clooney did seem a natural reference (second last line or so on right hand page):
http://issuu.com/manzine/docs/manzine_issue_no.1/23?mode=embed&documentId=081230234759-6c36e824d13145babff024009a2796cf&layout=grey
PS keep up the good work, it's always appreciated. Once in a while, there's still a grisly fascination in the latest workings of the Decents' brains.
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