Read and weep Sunny Hundal defend the indefensible in the name of liberalism. Here we see liberalism devour itself, in the name of liberalism! Sunny Hundal decides that certain Afghani deaths are 'worth it' and ok in the name of beloved liberalism.
They suspend sceptical enquiry in favour of an almost theological obsession with being 'justified'.
By that I mean 'being on the right side of History' and using that as proog of their righteousness.
That's precisely the point I was getting at. In order to persevere with their almost religious obsession about liberalism, they end up betraying their own ideology.
This has always been the problem liberalism and those who want to be on the 'right side of history', as you put it.
It all rests on an incredibly simplistic understanding of the world; a very simple division of good and bad without comprehending the complexities and interwovenness of past and present.
That's really my big problem with the self-righteous Hundals on this planet. They end up propping up ever bigger crimes in the name of liberalism, or liberation, or freedom.
It's pitiful, because it rests on ignorance, on a highly simplistic worldview.
At least the Cheneys and Rumsfelds are openly callous about the whole thing (and openly consider the geopolitics you mention). But Hundal and others really believe that killing Afghanis is helping them; it's the most self-righteous position to take.
Hundal, of course, isn't an intellectual, but he has the urge to spread his inanities all over the place...I suppose it's the liberal compulsion of 'spreading the good news/ideology' in action.
It should take something like a week...though you probably need to do some grovelling, apologise for whatever unconditionally, send them best wishes, and then get back in the pit.
I didn't read your drunk comments, sadly. But anyway, grovel and then come back.
Amongst all posters (including some ATL writers) about 95% of them are underfurnished - intellectually speaking -, and hackneyed phrases and cliches need to be challenged...particularly the simplistic worldviews, which are so incredibly destructive...
Well, I sent an apology. I told them that the best form of moderation wil have to happen with regards the booze.
All the comments were around 12.40am. None survived but i could have written anything, probably with swear words cursing the Guardian or the moderators.
I'm just going to stay off the computer if I drink or just not drink at home whilst using the Internet.
Unfortunatly, I then made things worse by sending an email from the KNaylor address and I was banned under the old system under that name for, again, ranting whilst half shot.
If I may be permitted a word on pre mod? I have heard that it is not so much timed as a question of building up harmless posts. The mods have to read all your stuff and may not care for the extra work. When I was told this I went round every thread posting innocent comments for a while and was off pre mod in 2 days.
I think they realised it was a blip but they did not respond to the apology. I didn't grovel that much. Just told them I was drunk, that's my fault, look at the rest of the posts etc.
BTW
EasternEuropewatch is going to feature something on Moldova and the reality behind the Twitter Revolution.
Written a lot on Milne's piece today. I actually thought the comments you made about the rise of the far right in the Baltics were correct.
However, I don't think that Milne's piece was good at all.
It was full of all kinds of nasty Stalinoid propaganda tropes.
Johnathan Steele makes his points about the rise of the far right and there mendacious revisionism better.
I think there are two kinds of odious revisionism.
The far right, eg Greater Romanian nationalists who laud the Iron Guard and Antonesecu.
The neo-Stalinists. Milne comes close to it but ultimately he is not important.
There are neo-Stalinists in Russia, those who have a nostalgia for the Soviet Union.
But Putin isn't one, though his propaganda makes references to it out of 'national pride'
But Milne keeps conflating the Soviet Union with 'Russia' because he seems to like any nationalism on the basis that it opposes the USA.
That's a very nihilistic position and leads to all kinds of absurdity.
Milne also seems to think the Soviet control, penetration and fight for dominance over the Spanish left was a good thing as well.
It's almost as though he's read 1984 and thought it was a good idea....
He certainly isn't a democratic socialist or social democrat in my view.
He also smears Orlando Figes ( I got deleted for suggesting that-but what other word is there for intentional misrepresentation ?)
Figes has never 'equated' Nazism and Communism and for Milne to insinuate that his 'revisionism' of Communism adds up revisionism' is the far right sense is a smear.
It's suggesting that Figes is somehow 'objectively pro-Fascist' and that is just as absurd as it is mendacious and wrong.
I read your comment about Figes and have followed up his original comments, I tend to agree with you; it did look like Milne took the quotation out of context.
I actually agree with you on Steele. The article I've read by him was very good. But the reason I welcomed Milne's article was - despite obvious populist overtones - I deem it necessary to sledgehammer the revisionist nonsense by the Baltic, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish right.
But Milne keeps conflating the Soviet Union with 'Russia' because he seems to like any nationalism on the basis that it opposes the USA.
I think most people do this, for example, American Republicans who - despite end of history scenarios - still need Russia/SU as their mirror image...
I’m leaving soon, but a few very quick points. Figes was quoted (approvingly of course) by Max Hastings as saying that Russians are consumed with jealousy for the West. I hardly think Figes is an objective commentator, but the BBC was not either: ‘The pact remains an embarrassment for those in Putin's Russia who take pride from the Soviet achievement in the war. Its commemoration is a constant thorn in Russia's relations with its neighbouring European states, which, not surprisingly, recall the pact from the perspective of Soviet oppression after 1945.’ ‘Putin’s Russia’? I thought the leader was a bloke called Medvedev? ‘He made no distinction between the liberal capitalist states and the fascist dictatorships - both were enemies.’ That is correct. The liberal capitalist states attacked the USSR and made it obvious that they did not see Stalin as an ally. There is no mention that Poland was a fascist state at the time, which nationalized the property of ethnic Germans and Jews and participated in the Nazi attack on Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, Poland produces self-pitying propaganda like ‘Katyn’ that gloss over their unglamorous actions at the time. Yes, they were treated horrifically by both sides, but to imply that Poland was a liberal nation at the time (or that communism was mostly an external force) is just nonsense.
But Milne keeps conflating the Soviet Union with 'Russia' because he seems to like any nationalism on the basis that it opposes the USA. I don’t follow Milne’s work, but I saw nothing offensive about his article. Russia was the main nation in the USSR and the greatest contributor to defeating Nazism. Furthermore, I think Russian nationalism is vastly overstated. I’m definitely not a communist, but do notice that this has been treated very unfairly and, as I see it, is used to stoke the anti-Russian hatred in Central Europe. I read once (I wish I could remember where) that Stalin was one of the few national leaders to have read Mein Kampff; if so he would have known what Hitler’s plans for the Slavs were. I thought this was an excellent article on the subject:
"Figes was quoted (approvingly of course) by Max Hastings as saying that Russians are consumed with jealousy for the West".
Where?
"‘Putin’s Russia’? I thought the leader was a bloke called Medvedev?"
But Putin is still a powerful figure and Medvedev shares many, if not most, of Putin's golas to revive Russia's power and influence.
"The liberal capitalist states attacked the USSR and made it obvious that they did not see Stalin as an ally"
When ?
'There is no mention that Poland was a fascist state at the time, which nationalized the property of ethnic Germans and Jews and participated in the Nazi attack on Czechoslovakia'
That's factually incorrect. Poland occupied it in 1938. Nazi Germany took it in 1939 when they invaded Poland.
Poland was not a fascist state: it was a right wing authoritarian regime of 'colonels' without the populist policies that tend to get the support of the masses.
Most of the nationalisation happened after WW2 under the Soviet Communist regime, when what remained of the Polish Jews were also driven out by anti-semitic hatred overlooked by both the Coatholic Church and the People's Republic
"I’m definitely not a communist, but do notice that this has been treated very unfairly and, as I see it, is used to stoke the anti-Russian hatred in Central Europe".
Yes, but the propaganda of current neoconservatives in Britain ( e.g MacShane )is no less mendacious than those like Milne, both ostensibly left wingers who don't much particularly like the idea of democratic social democracy.
I think the point is this ( and historians are partly responsible for just losing the plot and doing little to dissect the way history can be used as propaganda )
'Revivisionism' is being used cynically by the USA to stoke up nationalism against Russia just enough to get them definitively into NATO.
That's quite clear in states like Georgia and Ukraine.
In existing NATO states targeting hatred against Russia helps to divert attention away from the incompetence of the ruling Us trained elite and the results of neoliberal shock therapy.
In turn that can be used in Russia to ramp up myths about Stalin that Putin may not believe in either but which do serve his agenga now of consolidating power and bringing security.
Again that has to be looked at realistically in the context of the fall out from the shock therapy experiment and the need to assert control over oil and gas resources of Central Asia.
15 comments:
Thanks for the link on Poland.
I'm getting annoyed at the way the geopolitica of Afghanistan are being airbrushed out of history.
With windbag commentators opining on Obama's or Brown's dilemma, as if they don't know what's at stake.
They do, even if they do not know how to reconcile conflicting objectives.
How to develop Afghanistan via the pipeline and yet maintain stability where it & drugs are the only source of wealth.
Hundal's response was interesting. I do not think he has expected that.
The problem with these liberal interventionists is they want a creed to believe in.
They suspend sceptical enquiry in favour of an almost theological obsession with being 'justified'.
By that I mean 'being on the right side of History' and using that as proog of their righteousness.
And, as with Hitchens, proving their critics were all craven and morally stunted grotesques.
In short, when it comes down to it, it is all about them, about rationalisation.
It's curious that Hitchens wrote about the tendency of anti-war activists to rationalise terrorism.
Some of them, in my view do, and Hitchens had a point about them as did Wheen ( eg on Milne ).
However, using the rationalisation of terrorism by those who opposed war to prove a pro-war case is dumb.
It's no better than those Orwell criticised in Notes on Nationalism who refuse to look at facts first.
Instead they take as a starting point the defense of a creed and fit the facts to its precriptions.
It isn't that Hundal or Hitchens apologise for US or UK power unconditionally.
It is that US or Uk power is judged according to whether it advances causes they think worthy.
Which again is stupid because it means skipping the realities of energy security, geopolitics.
Hi Karl,
You say:
They suspend sceptical enquiry in favour of an almost theological obsession with being 'justified'.
By that I mean 'being on the right side of History' and using that as proog of their righteousness.
That's precisely the point I was getting at. In order to persevere with their almost religious obsession about liberalism, they end up betraying their own ideology.
This has always been the problem liberalism and those who want to be on the 'right side of history', as you put it.
It all rests on an incredibly simplistic understanding of the world; a very simple division of good and bad without comprehending the complexities and interwovenness of past and present.
That's really my big problem with the self-righteous Hundals on this planet. They end up propping up ever bigger crimes in the name of liberalism, or liberation, or freedom.
It's pitiful, because it rests on ignorance, on a highly simplistic worldview.
At least the Cheneys and Rumsfelds are openly callous about the whole thing (and openly consider the geopolitics you mention). But Hundal and others really believe that killing Afghanis is helping them; it's the most self-righteous position to take.
Hundal, of course, isn't an intellectual, but he has the urge to spread his inanities all over the place...I suppose it's the liberal compulsion of 'spreading the good news/ideology' in action.
Agreed.
I'm now on pre-comment moderation at CiF because I got totally hammered last night after two bottles of red wine drunk whilst on the computer.
This is deeply disappointing ( though maybe a blessing in disguise- I spend too much time on it ).
It's really just the thought that I wrote total crap which might be thought to reflect how and what I am.
How long does it take to get out of pre-moderation ?
Oh dear...
It should take something like a week...though you probably need to do some grovelling, apologise for whatever unconditionally, send them best wishes, and then get back in the pit.
I didn't read your drunk comments, sadly. But anyway, grovel and then come back.
Amongst all posters (including some ATL writers) about 95% of them are underfurnished - intellectually speaking -, and hackneyed phrases and cliches need to be challenged...particularly the simplistic worldviews, which are so incredibly destructive...
Keep me up-to-date on your the CiF front.
Well, I sent an apology. I told them that the best form of moderation wil have to happen with regards the booze.
All the comments were around 12.40am. None survived but i could have written anything, probably with swear words cursing the Guardian or the moderators.
I'm just going to stay off the computer if I drink or just not drink at home whilst using the Internet.
Unfortunatly, I then made things worse by sending an email from the KNaylor address and I was banned under the old system under that name for, again, ranting whilst half shot.
If I may be permitted a word on pre mod?
I have heard that it is not so much timed as a question of building up harmless posts.
The mods have to read all your stuff and may not care for the extra work.
When I was told this I went round every thread posting innocent comments for a while and was off pre mod in 2 days.
Good point, Colin, though begging does help (even if Karl managed to add a touch of spice to the issue of emailing...)...
Yes, Karl, send a whole load of inanities until premod is off, and then it's back to business as usual.
I'm already off pre-mod.
I think they realised it was a blip but they did not respond to the apology. I didn't grovel that much. Just told them I was drunk, that's my fault, look at the rest of the posts etc.
BTW
EasternEuropewatch is going to feature something on Moldova and the reality behind the Twitter Revolution.
I'll keep an eye out for your piece on it, Karl...
Glad the premod banishment has ended...
Written a lot on Milne's piece today. I actually thought the comments you made about the rise of the far right in the Baltics were correct.
However, I don't think that Milne's piece was good at all.
It was full of all kinds of nasty Stalinoid propaganda tropes.
Johnathan Steele makes his points about the rise of the far right and there mendacious revisionism better.
I think there are two kinds of odious revisionism.
The far right, eg Greater Romanian nationalists who laud the Iron Guard and Antonesecu.
The neo-Stalinists. Milne comes close to it but ultimately he is not important.
There are neo-Stalinists in Russia, those who have a nostalgia for the Soviet Union.
But Putin isn't one, though his propaganda makes references to it out of 'national pride'
But Milne keeps conflating the Soviet Union with 'Russia' because he seems to like any nationalism on the basis that it opposes the USA.
That's a very nihilistic position and leads to all kinds of absurdity.
Milne also seems to think the Soviet control, penetration and fight for dominance over the Spanish left was a good thing as well.
It's almost as though he's read 1984 and thought it was a good idea....
He certainly isn't a democratic socialist or social democrat in my view.
He also smears Orlando Figes ( I got deleted for suggesting that-but what other word is there for intentional misrepresentation ?)
Figes has never 'equated' Nazism and Communism and for Milne to insinuate that his 'revisionism' of Communism adds up revisionism' is the far right sense is a smear.
It's suggesting that Figes is somehow 'objectively pro-Fascist' and that is just as absurd as it is mendacious and wrong.
That should be,
Johnathan Steele makes his points about the rise of the far right and the mendacious revisionism there better.
Karl,
I read your comment about Figes and have followed up his original comments, I tend to agree with you; it did look like Milne took the quotation out of context.
I actually agree with you on Steele. The article I've read by him was very good. But the reason I welcomed Milne's article was - despite obvious populist overtones - I deem it necessary to sledgehammer the revisionist nonsense by the Baltic, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish right.
But Milne keeps conflating the Soviet Union with 'Russia' because he seems to like any nationalism on the basis that it opposes the USA.
I think most people do this, for example, American Republicans who - despite end of history scenarios - still need Russia/SU as their mirror image...
I’m leaving soon, but a few very quick points. Figes was quoted (approvingly of course) by Max Hastings as saying that Russians are consumed with jealousy for the West. I hardly think Figes is an objective commentator, but the BBC was not either:
‘The pact remains an embarrassment for those in Putin's Russia who take pride from the Soviet achievement in the war.
Its commemoration is a constant thorn in Russia's relations with its neighbouring European states, which, not surprisingly, recall the pact from the perspective of Soviet oppression after 1945.’
‘Putin’s Russia’? I thought the leader was a bloke called Medvedev?
‘He made no distinction between the liberal capitalist states and the fascist dictatorships - both were enemies.’
That is correct. The liberal capitalist states attacked the USSR and made it obvious that they did not see Stalin as an ally. There is no mention that Poland was a fascist state at the time, which nationalized the property of ethnic Germans and Jews and participated in the Nazi attack on Czechoslovakia.
Furthermore, Poland produces self-pitying propaganda like ‘Katyn’ that gloss over their unglamorous actions at the time. Yes, they were treated horrifically by both sides, but to imply that Poland was a liberal nation at the time (or that communism was mostly an external force) is just nonsense.
But Milne keeps conflating the Soviet Union with 'Russia' because he seems to like any nationalism on the basis that it opposes the USA.
I don’t follow Milne’s work, but I saw nothing offensive about his article. Russia was the main nation in the USSR and the greatest contributor to defeating Nazism. Furthermore, I think Russian nationalism is vastly overstated.
I’m definitely not a communist, but do notice that this has been treated very unfairly and, as I see it, is used to stoke the anti-Russian hatred in Central Europe. I read once (I wish I could remember where) that Stalin was one of the few national leaders to have read Mein Kampff; if so he would have known what Hitler’s plans for the Slavs were.
I thought this was an excellent article on the subject:
http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2009/08/24/nazi-soviet-pact-second-munich/
@Gregor
"Figes was quoted (approvingly of course) by Max Hastings as saying that Russians are consumed with jealousy for the West".
Where?
"‘Putin’s Russia’? I thought the leader was a bloke called Medvedev?"
But Putin is still a powerful figure and Medvedev shares many, if not most, of Putin's golas to revive Russia's power and influence.
"The liberal capitalist states attacked the USSR and made it obvious that they did not see Stalin as an ally"
When ?
'There is no mention that Poland was a fascist state at the time, which nationalized the property of ethnic Germans and Jews and participated in the Nazi attack on Czechoslovakia'
That's factually incorrect. Poland occupied it in 1938. Nazi Germany took it in 1939 when they invaded Poland.
Poland was not a fascist state: it was a right wing authoritarian regime of 'colonels' without the populist policies that tend to get the support of the masses.
Most of the nationalisation happened after WW2 under the Soviet Communist regime, when what remained of the Polish Jews were also driven out by anti-semitic hatred overlooked by both the Coatholic Church and the People's Republic
"I’m definitely not a communist, but do notice that this has been treated very unfairly and, as I see it, is used to stoke the anti-Russian hatred in Central Europe".
Yes, but the propaganda of current neoconservatives in Britain ( e.g MacShane )is no less mendacious than those like Milne, both ostensibly left wingers who don't much particularly like the idea of democratic social democracy.
I think the point is this ( and historians are partly responsible for just losing the plot and doing little to dissect the way history can be used as propaganda )
'Revivisionism' is being used cynically by the USA to stoke up nationalism against Russia just enough to get them definitively into NATO.
That's quite clear in states like Georgia and Ukraine.
In existing NATO states targeting hatred against Russia helps to divert attention away from the incompetence of the ruling Us trained elite and the results of neoliberal shock therapy.
In turn that can be used in Russia to ramp up myths about Stalin that Putin may not believe in either but which do serve his agenga now of consolidating power and bringing security.
Again that has to be looked at realistically in the context of the fall out from the shock therapy experiment and the need to assert control over oil and gas resources of Central Asia.
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