Defining terms
That unrepentant one has thought deeply and then pronounced. He has expanded on the elegant brevity of ‘How appropriate that a smug, shitty, rightwing publication like “Butterflies and Wheels” shares the name of a sentence in a book that is key to the plot of an idiotic movie like “Shattered”‘; he has explained what is shitty (smug and rightwing we can figure out for ourselves) about B&W.
[A] fountainhead of Islamophobia…There is the usual defense of the Danish Mohammad cartoons, etc. There are attacks on other religions as well…
So maybe ‘Islamophobia’ is a little inaccurate? Never mind.
In addition to religion, the website mounts attacks on multiculturalism…Kenan Malik, a Spiked Online regular, seems to be a designated hitter when it comes to such matters.
No. Kenan’s an occasional contributor, I’m pleased to say, but there are plenty of other contributors who are skeptical about multiculturalism, as well as plenty of other contributors who write about other things. There are no ‘designated hitters’ around here.
This clever phrase is just the sort of thing you can find on New Criterion, a magazine edited by the neoconservative Hilton Cramer or any other rightwing standard bearer in the “culture wars”.
Ah yes! And therefore they are all the same kind of thing, and no further thought or investigation is required.
It took about five years to figure out that things were not so simple.
Ah did it. Imagine my surprise.
The B&W website is not particularly concerned with such issues, preferring to bash religion rather than environmentalism. There is one exception, however. They do seem to get worked into a lather when it comes to the animal rights movement, which they obviously consider an impudent assault on the absolute rights of Scientific Research. They have taken up the cause of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a company that has been the target of the Animal Liberation Front.
Funny the way he makes a plural of everything, as if nothing were signed around here. Who’s this ‘they’? He’s obviously referring to my republished article on the ALF, which wasn’t written by ‘them,’ it was written by me. And it’s not about ‘taking up the cause’ of HLS, it’s about questioning the tactics and morals of the ALF. Different thing. I don’t think there is such a thing as the absolute rights of scientific research, and I certainly don’t think animal research should be beyond question and protest. But it doesn’t follow from that that the ALF is without flaw.
I would not be surprised to discover that B&W gets some funding from Huntington and other such animal torturers.
Oh, wouldn’t you? Well I would! I would be surprised to discover that B&W gets funding from anywhere at all. B&W gets zero funding of any kind, thank you.
I was just going to point this out, but (of course – I should have known) I got intrigued by the absurd claims. Lenny’s at it too but I can’t be bothered to tease that one.
I always think it’s fascinating how loonies like this move within a dense thicket of references to individuals, causes and events, some of which are many years in the past, and can, by reference to them, ‘position’ absolutely anyone instantly on the spectrum of their [or is it the people’s?] enemies. I suppose it is the sad lefty’s version of sports trivia.
So if I understand him correctly – the fact that there have been a handful of (negative) mentions of animal rights activists is evidence that B&W is in the pay of the evil animal research lobby?
Presumably that also makes you in the pay of Alan Sokal and Christopher Hitchens?
A fascinating insight into a particular kind of mentality.
He also shows his ignorance of conspiracy theories, because everyone know that spiked is the ideological home of techno-utopian contrarianism from the ex-RCP/living marxism crowd – they do not defend the status quo per se.
I also like the dismissal of Sokal by tenuous association – Sokal was inspired by some stuff Gross & Levitt said – hey, let’s ignore what Sokal was trying to say, indeed even what Gross & Levitt say – let’s talk about a conference they were involved in which received some funding from some people we don’t like who are right wing (and let’s ignore that Sokal himself is of the left). That’s Sokal dealt with – and he appeared at a meeting arranged by spiked and Reason Magazine – that pretty much proves he’s an industry shill, he shared a platform with the director of Friends of the Earth for Christ’s sake!
Proyect should have stuck with the elegant brevity of profanity. When he moved beyond unsupported invective and tried to justify the substance of his insults, it became very clear that evidence and reasoning are utterly foreign waters to him, and he quickly drowned.
Before, I at least thought he was colorful and somewhat unique. But then he had to keep babbling. Now I see he’s just another tedious moron who doesn’t know anything, doesn’t know he doesn’t know anything, and slaps pejorative labels on many things he doesn’t know anything about just because he doesn’t like them – and he can’t even make a coherent case why he doesn’t like them, or why anyone else should agree with him. He might as well be a creationist. How very boring.
“Smug, Shitty, Right-Wing”.
If I didn’t ‘know’ you better OB, I might imagine you wearing the t-shirt. But Jeremy might, as long as it was good cotton, properly ironed, and showed his biceps. By all accounts.
Keep up the good work! :)
NS
He’s a card that Louis. There’s a pompous, self-justifying, quote thing at the top of his About Page:
“a revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief.”
So one wonders where Louis’ revolutionary career has led him. The answer is happily supplied by his web site:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/
He works as a computer programmer at Columbia!
And it gets better. This revolutionary hero works on the “Financial Front End system, a client-server application used to enter purchases, orders, account information, etc.
Oh the delicious irony. Way to go, Louis!
Mind you, there is something disturbing about the fact that he seems to be me in the rest of his life: running, bike riding, chess, music, computer programming…
He’s your evil twin, Jerry! It will all end with a fight to the death on a rooftop somewhere, mark my words!
Excellent, a chance to use my famed biceps! (Though if he’s a big fella, I’ll take my chances with running away).
To be fair to Louis, there’s some pretty decent writing on his web site. Better than anything I can manage; especially about his mother, for example.
Holly crap OB – you’re ‘right-wing? When did that happen?
I’d say don’t waste your time with this oxygen thief, but I know how much fun a cooly delivered fisking can be.
Yeah don’t worry, I’m not going to waste any serious time; that minor tease was pure recreation.
What’s this about T shirts, I wear T shirts! Though not usually with writing on. But for ‘Smug, Shitty, Right-wing’ I would make an exception.
Well you ignored my tee-shirt slogan recomendation a few months ago:
“B&W: A Probable Enormity”
Unless I just dreamt it…
Did I? I don’t remember ignoring it (yes, it is possible to remember ignoring something). Perhaps the weather was too chilly to think about T shirts. When it’s cold I wear turtlenecks.
OB:”When it’s cold I wear turtlenecks.”
Here I was thinking you fileted rednecks, not turtles.
Well Ophelia, I’ve posted a response over there, let’s see if it stays. Should it disappear, here it is:
—————————————-
‘A working class in power will then have access to the dossiers that contain all this information about who paid the piper. God protect the souls of those who fed at the trough of the big corporations and the intelligence agencies since an aroused people will have properly earned the right to extract justice’.
I’m sure the idea of class revolution arouses you, but the key problem you fail to face is that it’s never going to happen. Marxism is a failed ideology. Oh, and by the way, having worked a number of jobs amongst people who are very much working class, please allow me to educate you on the fact that they aren’t interested in all this class war bullshit. In reality, the only people really pushing this outdated claptrap are middle class wannabe revolutionaries.
As for ‘Islamophobia’, a ridiculous term dreamed up by Islamists in an attempt to gain them victim status and place Islam beyond criticism, how sad that a so-called Marxist is joining the queue of airheaded dhimmis lining up on bended knee, waiting for the chance to abase themselves before the anti-human rights, anti-rationalist and fanatical strands of Islam that think publishing silly cartoons should be illegal, and who, incidentally, would have you and yours safely locked away in a prison if they ever gained any real power. You really think the same courtesy and pandering subservience you so-called Marxists show to Islamists would be reciprocated?
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Somewhere above, the phrase “serious far left politics” is used without any apparent ironic intent.
Just thought I’d mention it.
It is, at least, nice to know that LP has an honest job, and is not financing his hobby by sponging off the workers.
Yeah – wanna make something of it?
Except I don’t think Stalin saw it as his only hope of a comeback. Need to work on that analogy…
I did love the ‘Islamophobia… attacks on other religions as well…’ two-step. Cute.
Can I presume, if I make fun of Ken Ham, I’m ‘nutterophobic’?
Anyway, you can’t buy entertainment like this. Yet another failure of the capitalist system.
Can I play this game too? Inspired by this, I note that Proyect attacks those who “focus on restoring “enlightenment values””, which is also something Steve Fuller does, and Fuller defends intelligent design, which is something that rightwingers support and fund, making Proyect’s views at the very least of dubious provenance, and, I very much suspect, the consequence of extensive funding from the Discovery Institute.
Or am is there some logical flaw in this method of argument that I’m missing?
“Or am is there some logical flaw in this method of argument that I’m missing?”
You’re putting too much thought into it. Just settle for “This person disagrees with me, therefore they are part of the vast neo-con conspiracy” and fling as many innuendos as you possibly can. Volume and shrillness are to be preferred over substance.
I’m always puzzled at how somebody who calls himself a Marxist is ready to go to such extremes in order to defend things as Marxist as religion. I’m afraid Marx would be shaking in his grave if he could listen to this kind of crap being tagged with his name.
Enrique, you took the word right out of my mouth. I too was scratching my head and wondering – why in Lenin’s name, is a Marxist defending religion.
About those attacks on people who ‘focus on restoring “enlightenment values”‘ – I have an entertaining discussion of that with Dan Hind in the forthcoming issue of TPM. I think it’s entertaining anyway.
Well done, Edmund, it stayed, along with its companions.
Tingey – no no no no, and just saying ‘Sorry’ doesn’t cover it. This is exactly why I keep telling you to take a vacation – it’s the repetition – you’ve told us fourteen thousand times that Marxism is a religion. I don’t need you telling everyone who ever comments on the subject, one at a time. I don’t need you correcting everyone. I don’t need you beating your dead horse long after it’s nothing but a tiny smear of meat on the floor. Shut up; go away; resume your vacation. But now the six months starts from today, not last week.
“There are two motivations for setting up the web site. The first is the common one having to do with the thought that truth is important, and that to tell the truth about the world it is necessary to put aside whatever preconceptions (ideological, political, moral, etc.) one brings to the endeavour”.
Without these two motivations, being in place @ B&W – Goldenbridge, industrial school atrocities, would not have fully gone out to the wider American world.
Without the truths of what happened to defenceless children; {who, by a cruel system (which prevailed in Ireland in the past) were incarcerated in hellholes; and by the staff members called by numbers} being brought to the fore and aired in a safe place such as B&W. The testimonies of those who resided in these child prisons would have little meaning outside of the commission to inquire into child abuse.
OB, has been a tower of strength in getting the message across to the world and I thank her from the bottom of my heart.
B&W is not about “attacking religion” for the sake of it – it is about showing to the world the cracks and holes and eternal indentation marks that religion leaves on its members.
Hmmm… Dead horse! Hmmm…
(I have done that one already, didn’t I?)
Arnaud, I don’t remember, so feel free to do it again.
“Why is the left going for so many non-left causes”
The short-answer is that it is related to a pervasive anti-Americanism that is justified by:
a) Thoughts about anti-imperialism;
b) Thoughts about capitalist hegemony;
Big chunks of the Left see Islam, etc., as being as being the most promising site for building a mass movement in opposition to capitalism.
It also has to do with a more general sense that one must oppose Western cultural hegemony (so Ophelia will be able to cite you chapter and verse about feminists who self-identify as being on the Left rejecting what they see as a Western version of feminism, in favour of local, situated feminisms that are “sensitive” to cultural difference, etc).
“So, does anyone have a clever answer. Why is the left going for so many non-left causes – religious fanaticism, the oppression of women, et al.?”
I think they believe that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. Lots of people on the right are anti-muslim bigots therefore Islam must be good, and any criticism of it is right-wing. Then this got extended to other religions to avoid the charge of inconsistency.
“Big chunks of the Left see Islam, etc., as being as being the most promising site for building a mass movement in opposition to capitalism.”
I don’t think it’s as well-planned as that. They don’t really see it as a means to an end that they can dispense with later. If anything, it’s the Islamists who see the situation in those terms.
They developed a pervasive anti-western, anti-liberal prejudice during the cold war, and the Taliban have stepped in to fill the void left by the soviet union.
Yes, there’s a lot to that. I recognize that myself – I mean recognize it from the rather attenuated version I had. In my case the thinking (such as it was) went: they lied about Iran and Guatemala etc etc etc; it was always hard to tell how truthful they were being about the commies because they lied about Iran and Guatemala and because there was always a capitalist agenda; now it’s hard to tell how truthful they’re being about this Osama bin Laden fella because who the hell knows what the agenda is now.
It was lazy and crude and inattentive…I should pretend I was being held in a cell underground at the time, by way of excuse.
I always loathed the Taliban though – I managed that much sense.
“I don’t think it’s as well-planned as that.”
I think in the case of an organisation such as the SWP, it is – or certainly was – absolutely explicit.
I’m still not sure that most people put that level of thought into it.
I would guess that the SWP are in a very small minority, and that for most others it’s more of a gut reaction than a considered position.
Maybe I’m underestimating them.
“I’m still not sure that most people put that level of thought into it.”
No, I’m sure you’re right about that. I guess, though, that the people who are more pathological in their hatred of all things American are probably drawn from the margins, where there is this kind of hopeless political and moral calculus about this thing they called imperialism.
“And, in fact, the nuance – the bit about not keeping silent about the nature of the Iranian regime – doesn’t tend to be found in practice.”
Others justify their stance a bit differently by saying that all oppression is imperialistic and the fact of the US. This is Farfahinne:
in a post about the same Callinicos a couple of weeks ago.
Eric wrote:
>Besides, Hitler’s pact was pro-tem, in any case, and of course Stalin knew that. He just needed more time, as Hitler did. Stalin used his more wisely.< Sorry this is off-topic, but I really can’t let that one go! The Hitler-Stalin pact gave the green light for the Germans to occupy half of Poland, and the Soviets to occupy the other half, plus the Baltic states. When the Germans invaded in June 1941 the Soviet army was unprepared and the Wehrmacht advanced deep inside Soviet territory to the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow. And if Hitler hadn’t had to delay the launch of Operation Barbarossa to go to the rescue of his Italian allies who were faring badly in Greece, the German army might have achieved even more devastating victories before the Russian winter came down. The Hitler-Stalin pact led to there being no buffer state between the USSR and Germany, thereby facilitating the German attack. And let’s not forget the Soviet massacre of some 4000 Polish officers among the 20,000 plus Poles murdered at Katyn. Stalin used his time more wisely than Hitler? I don’t think so.
‘New Criterion’?
The same New Criterion in which regular commentator Reverend Peter Mullen, London Stock Exchange Chaplain and Freedom Association hanger-on, used to write hilarious drivel on themes like the death of religion bringing about the fall of respectable Britain?
Thought that collapsed when the guy behind the main tax avoidance scheme (sorry, US charitable foundation)which funded it died a year or two back.
True, Allen, but by that time Stalin had moved most of his heavy industry farther to the east, so that, by the time Hitler did invade, the Soviets were able to maintain and increase war production. So it’s not entirely a German sucess story. That doesn’t mean that Stalin became any less inhuman. Why should it mean that? (In fact, Marshall Zhukov felt that the had enough troops to waste a few clearing minefields! They had men (and women) to spend, and were not reluctant to do so. Germany did not, however spendthrift Hitler may have been with human life. The fact that Stalin executed the Polish officer class meant that, when the Germans did invade, there was a large leadership group that was not there to help them out.) That certainly was not my suggestion. The Russians had learned from Napoleon about the power of geography – they already knew of the power of eliminating opposition – and used it to their advantage, even though, technically, they were no match for the Germans at first. (This was wisdom, at least from the standpoint of winning a war. And it is perhaps worthwhile reminding you that the Eastern front sucked in more German soldiers than any other front in the war. And the Russians suffered more casualties than all the other allies put together. Whatever we may say of Stalin’s inhumanity, it was the great patriotic war, after all.)
The point of all this, though a digression, was simply to say that the ‘New Left’ and its support for Islamism, can scarcely be compared with the Nazi-Soviet pact. I didn’t mean it to go to this length, however.
I appreciate the points that people have made about the likely reasons for the Left supporting Islamism. To be quite frank, it still doesn’t make sense, and Louis Proyect is just as impenetrable to me as he was at the start. How can he look at B&W and see something right-wing?! Give me strength!
Eric: As you indicate, this is a side-show from the main point you were making, so I don’t want to make too much of it. However, though it’s a fair point that Stalin *did* make military preparations following the Hitler-Stalin pact, internet searches tend to confirm Michael Burleigh’s reporting that the mass evacuations of Soviet industry were desperate measures undertaken *after* the June 1941 invasion, and by no means entirely successful. (*The Third Reich: A New History*, pp. 498-499.)
Apparently from the early 1930s some industries were deliberately relocated east of the Urals, but I can find no evidence of any policy of evacuation of industry from the western USSR in the immediate aftermath of the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact.
Thank you Allen. Clearly, you know more about this than I do. My history on this particular aspect of the war is several decades old. It’s good to be brought up to date.
How can he look at B&W and see something right-wing?!
Because through his “unrepentant” specs, Islamists are seen not as theocratic thugs but rather as shock troops in the vanguard of anti-imperialism. Ergo, B&W in its opposition to Islamism, is objectively imperialist.
As a semi-regular reader of Lou Proyect, whom I usually consider to be well informed and intelligent, I must say that this is by far the stupidest thing I’ve ever read by him. Clearly, he didn’t give it much thought. (Typing under the influence?) He certainly did himself no favors with this piece of isprazhiyeniya.
He clearly is well informed and intelligent. But he is perhaps a little hasty in his judgments at times.