Punk Journalism

First of all, let me thank all of you for letting me join in your dialogue. I’m astonished and delighted by the quality of this communal arena you have here at the Centre. Blogs remind me of the punk explosion when I was a teenager. People are ignoring the established system and beating it at its own game. Obviously, there's a great deal of dross, but what is heartening is how much original and intelligent journalism is coming from people entirely outside the media class. And, it seems to me, you here are all rapidly becoming journalists—and even poets and novelists—of a very high calibre.

But, to the War. Well, it seems that many people who supported our highly successful restoration of women’s rights in Afghanistan and civilizing Iraq are concerned about the extension of our humane intervention into Jamaica, Iran, Germany, and the rest. Now I’m one who’s stood out against this government in the past, and I’ve attacked the liberal guilt and relativism it so often condones, so no-one could call me a friend of the establishment. In fact, I have been one of its fiercest critics. But in the war against fascism, there can be no equivocation. Let me clarify. The Rastafarianists, like the other extremists, are deeply misogynist, holding grotesquely offensive views about women, and they are profoundly homophobic. They therefore share their fascism with the same dictators that we’ve challenged, but that hapless liberals have given comfort to—Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Milosevic, and so on. The Germans, once our allies, have unfortunately adopted a policy of appeasement towards the fascists; given their history you would think they would be more careful. We had to intervene in Iran, of course, because of their illegal denial of a holocaust. We had a humanitarian duty to do so. The unfortunate situation now existing in that country can’t in any way be blamed on us.

I know something about fascism: I come from a family with generations of left-wingers, all of whom took part in the struggle against fascism. I remember as a child being deprived of citrus fruits from disreputable countries. Then, the left were often laughable but honest. But ‘What’s left’ (if you’ll excuse the pun) of today’s left have tragically sided against the Enlightenment and with the forces of darkness. And working on the premise that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, they espouse a crude anti-Americanism and even anti-Semitism. We have witnessed a sinister attempt by liberal opinion to deny legitimacy to the very liberals, feminists and socialists under oppressive regimes that need our support. Now, our common enemy is fascism, and the USA, whatever its errors in foreign policy, whatever its motives, is the enemy of fascism and therefore we on the left must befriend it. That is why we must support our government’s policies on military strategy, on asylum seekers, internment, surveillance, and so on if we believe at all in socialism or even in civilization.