The selective moralists of liberal England
Nick sees in the New Year with the traditional cake having and eating:
Ooh, look, Cameron tolerates the European far right, the bastard, but I'm not going to condemn him, because people I don't like have. I'm never really sure what passive-aggressive means, but this seems to fit.
Anyway, here's an old piece in the liberal press, the Observer of 26 July 2009 to be precise and its intention is clear from the URL alone, the file or directory name is "david-cameron-eu-far-right". Someone, one suspects is going to have a go at David Cameron and the EU for tolerance of the far right.
And so on.
The editorialising bit:
I think Nick [2009] was right, and Nick [2011] is wrong. I think that criticising David Cameron for this sort of alliance made perfect sense, and was actually a persuasive reason not to trust him.
Via Ophelia Benson, I found this:
Some people just will go on praising these far right, gay and Jew hating types.
I think Sunday's Observer piece was a pretty good specimen of its kind, but that one passage, where Nick yet again slags off the "liberal press" for having opinions which he's ventilated in the pages of the Observer, stuck out. If you want to praise the rest of it, feel free.
Here, it is customary in the liberal press to attack the EU and, by extension, David Cameron for their toleration of the European far right. I won't follow precedent because I have no wish to join the selective moralists of liberal England, who beat their breasts and denounce Cameron for allying with unsavoury east European parties, but stay silent when leftwing British charlatans indulge an Islamist far right, whose hatreds of gays and Jews are as putrid as anything you can find behind the old Iron Curtain.
Ooh, look, Cameron tolerates the European far right, the bastard, but I'm not going to condemn him, because people I don't like have. I'm never really sure what passive-aggressive means, but this seems to fit.
Anyway, here's an old piece in the liberal press, the Observer of 26 July 2009 to be precise and its intention is clear from the URL alone, the file or directory name is "david-cameron-eu-far-right". Someone, one suspects is going to have a go at David Cameron and the EU for tolerance of the far right.
On this test, David Cameron emerges as a boy running for a man's job, a student politician so lost in his ideological obsessions he cannot produce a morally or intellectually coherent foreign policy.
If you think I am being unnecessarily harsh about an attractive man, consider his willingness as a party manager to allow Michal Kaminski to lead British Conservatives in Europe. It tells us that, once in power, our next prime minister will wander through the swamp of reactionary politics, embracing any reptile he meets on the way.
Cameron has pulled out of the European Parliament's moderate centre-right grouping, a fact that should be more notorious. It includes the followers of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel.
And so on.
The editorialising bit:
I think Nick [2009] was right, and Nick [2011] is wrong. I think that criticising David Cameron for this sort of alliance made perfect sense, and was actually a persuasive reason not to trust him.
Via Ophelia Benson, I found this:
The King of Saudi Arabia has also shown great leadership in this sphere. [As the speaker implies he himself has. Praise follows, implying we should be more like him.]
Some people just will go on praising these far right, gay and Jew hating types.
I think Sunday's Observer piece was a pretty good specimen of its kind, but that one passage, where Nick yet again slags off the "liberal press" for having opinions which he's ventilated in the pages of the Observer, stuck out. If you want to praise the rest of it, feel free.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 1/03/2011 10:00:00 PM
5 Comments:
I think in principle Cohen has a point - there should, in theory, be a better way of categorizing people politically other than using left-wing and right-wing.
The problem is that Nick is himself spectacularly guilty of this - he's clearly not got enough stamina to actually come up with (or even research) an alternative system, which makes the entire column more or less completely redundant.
Here, it is customary in the liberal press to attack the EU and, by extension, David Cameron for their toleration of the European far right.
well, it's customary to attack Cameron directly about this, rather than by extension, considering his European allies. Nick's being selectively forgetful her.
I won't follow precedent
as aforementione,d Nick has actually followed precendet several times in the past, but hey, some people:
beat their breasts and denounce Cameron for allying with unsavoury east European parties, but stay silent when leftwing British charlatans indulge an Islamist far right
i don't understand this 'silence' thing. Who's he saying is doing the 'allying'? It's certainly not the labour party, since Nick voted for them. who, then? Ken Livingstone, i guess? George Galloway?
In any case I'm deeply suspicious about Cohen on places in Eastern Europe, since he seems to only ever bother contacting a couple of sources who he already agrees with.
I think in principle Cohen has a point - there should, in theory, be a better way of categorizing people politically other than using left-wing and right-wing.
Ideally, yes - but Blair and his flying monkeys ruined that possibility with their disingenuous use of 'moderniser', then Cleggeron further destroyed any opportunity with their references to 'progressive'. Too often it's become a way of framing the author in the best possible light in relation to a model of their own devising.
[redpesto]
PS: I don't think Hizb ut-Tahir or Al-Mujahroun take part in elections, so it's difficult to compare that with Cameron's self-devised formal electoral bloc in the EU.
'I won't follow precedent'
...Nick has actually followed precedent several times in the past
exactly - and this time he's not following that precedent.
Well, true - but he does rather strongly imply that this is his first go at the topic. Not so much "I won't follow (my own and others') precedent (this time)", more "I (unlike them) won't follow (their) precedent".
a lot of boring writing - but all of its on topic, including a 2007 lecture our nick gave - can be found here:
http://www.politicsandculture.org/issue/2010-issues-3-4/
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