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Eddie Holt - The archetypal left-wing response to Sept 11th

Holt is the archetypal Irish leftie journalist, with a constant output of ill-informed anti-Americanism and trendy moral equivalence. Here's how this man responds to the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilian men, women and children by fascists:

"To some, it simply represents the barbarians' sacking of Rome; to others, it has detonated a 21st-century crusade against Islam. Yet others see it fundamentally as Arab revenge for centuries of Western imperialism, greed and arrogance."

The "others" is beautiful. - The author doesn't say he agrees with this sick point of view - that one can take "revenge" by killing innocent civilians. But he "understands" it.

"The New York skyline, arguably the most dominant icon of Western power and supremacy, was undeniably majestic and beautiful, at least in the sense of being awe-inspiring. But like, say, Versailles, which bespeaks a certain kind of beauty to a certain kind of aesthetic sensibility, such magnificence may be possible only through exploitation."

Again, the "may be" is beautiful. He implies that the innocent office workers of the WTC are somehow part of "exploitation". He tarnishes their deaths and their innocence. His instinct is not to condemn the fascist killers but to try to "understand" their point. (*) It is not quite an apologia for the fascists. But he is certainly trying to cast doubt on the innocence of the victims.

(*) Of course he doesn't understand them at all. He tries to shoehorn them into some stupid Marxist framework that makes sense to him. But of course they kill for religion, not for economics. The right understands them much better than the left. And the conclusion of understanding them is understanding that they must be destroyed.

[In the eyes of many of the poor of the world:] "The World Trade Centre was, in local Irish terms, the ultimate Big House, a font simultaneously of civilised living and oppression."

The office workers are "oppressors". Because they are involved in capitalism. Because they go to work in an office, or as cleaners, or restaurant workers, or firemen. Because they try to feed their families. Because of that, we can "understand" the spoilt, rich, idealistic young fascists that try to kill them. Working hard and trying to earn money means you can be killed. Lenin would agree. Holt doesn't say he agrees with this sick idea. But he "understands" it.

You know, Holt never really explains how people working hard are responsible for "exploitation" or "oppression". It is just tossed in. It is assumed that we are familiar with these crackpot ideas - that the rich world "exploits" Arabs (or the third world, or somebody) - that our wealth is built on the exploitation of others.

Perhaps Holt thinks these ideas are "proved", and can be taken as read. But of course they are pure nonsense. The reality is that the west has earned its wealth fairly, by inventing and refining the powerful ideas of science, democracy and capitalism. The simple reality is that the Arabs and the third world are poor and unfree not because of us but because of the lack of science, democracy and capitalism. The only person stopping them getting rich is themselves.

There is somebody to blame for most of the problems in the world - the famine, poverty, ignorance, racism, oppression, democide and war. There is actually somebody to blame for most of this. Almost all of the problems in the world - war, famine, poverty - are caused by non-western governments. Non-western governments restrict intellectual freedom, restrict economic freedom, abuse human rights, and threaten their neighbours with tribal wars and wars of aggression. These appalling governments are mainly communist, Islamic or African, with a few others.

The bleak reality is that Arabs are poor and unfree because of Arab governments. And the third world is poor because of third world governments.

"How could anybody fly themselves and planeloads of passengers into those buildings? Well, they did - believing, I suspect, that they represented one fundamentalism attacking another. Since the late 1970s, many Western governments have become imbued with a theological belief in the supremacy of "free" markets."

Oh how clever. There's a certain kind of leftie that thinks this sort of moral equivalence is marvellously clever. Free democracies with free economies are just another form of fundamentalism. No, Mr.Holt they're not. They are what they say. They are free societies and free economies, as opposed to societies and economies that are not free.

And it's not a "theological" belief. It's an empirical belief. Economic freedom and property rights lead to prosperity. Whether you like it or not, it's statistical, empirical fact. In fact, it is perhaps the clearest statistical finding in the entire field of economics.

Your beliefs are theological, Mr.Holt. Socialism and anti-capitalism in all its forms is fantasy unsupported by empirical fact. Even before the end of the 19th century, Marxism had been disproved as comprehensively as any theory in economics has ever been disproved. Even before it slaughtered 100 million people (after 1917) it had been disproved. Yet belief in Marxism continued.

"If fundamentalism is best defined as a reaction against everything which comes from the outside world - surely an illogical, even blasphemous, attempt to freeze time itself - then Bush's more inward-looking America caught a form of the virus."

Blah, blah, blah. The US is just like Afghanistan. Amn't I clever? Blah, blah, blah.

"The conflict we now face is unquestionably about the distribution of power and wealth in the world. Obviously, it became too top-heavy, and it has led to catastrophe."

It's our fault. Why do they hate us? We must change. No, Mr.Holt, you are wrong. This is not what this conflict is about. This conflict is about waging all-out war against the medieval killers of Islamofascism. It is about invading and changing the entire Middle East so that Islamofascism is humiliated and finished.

"A significantly less unequal world, with a vibrant US run by intelligent and fair-minded politicians and not by dementedly avaricious business executives - Talibanic in their zeal - would do me."

Businessmen are like the Taliban, in a way. Don't you know. Amn't I clever? Blah, blah, blah. I'm not saying it was right to kill all those capitalist pigs, but, you know ...

One could at this point note with a hollow laugh the irony that you have to pay money to see Holt's articles online, while almost all of the American, British and Israeli press have free archives online. Few people will link to Holt because of the demand for money. Which somewhat puts his venom about "dementedly avaricious" business people in perspective, I think.

And just look at his vision for the world: "A significantly less unequal world". What kind of pathetic vision is that? Stalin and Pol Pot could have agreed with that. How about: A world where everyone lives in a free society and tyrants no longer exist. A world where every country is a democracy, and communism and Islamic law are ended.

Sorry for devoting so much space to this writer. I see him as the archetypal annoying leftie. Smug. Sanctimonious. Full of sly innuendo against everything good in the world. Full of clever understanding of everything evil. Playing his smug games of moral superiority while real leaders have to make hard decisions in nightmarish situations, and real heroic soldiers die to protect our world.

Postscript

I keep finding quotes that are relevant to this debate. Here are a few:

1. An army veteran from Louisiana talks about people like Holt in October 2001, as the awesomely brave American troops prepare to go into Afghanistan:

   "Reservists and regulars, kids and old pros, doing the work that men must do to allow latte-laced discussions of moral equivalence. Somewhere on a filthy hill, hard men wait to do their duties, to locate and destroy those who would practice evil. While these men await that moment, anointed thinkers castigate them."

   
   

2. Republican U.S. President George W. Bush understands, as Eddie Holt doesn't.
   Bush's immediate reaction to 9/11 was quite different (speech, September 20, 2001), and history has proved him right:

   "We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions - by abandoning every value except the will to power - they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."

   
   

3. Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper understands, as Eddie Holt doesn't.
   Harper on the (surprising to some) Islamist terror plot against Canada, 2006:

   "Their target - their alleged target - was Canada. Canadian institutions. The Canadian economy. The Canadian people. As at other times in our history, we are a target because of who we are and how we live, our society, our diversity and our values — values such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law"

   It's not, as leftists naively believe, what we do that Islamists hate. It's who we are. Islamism will always war against free societies, no matter what we do. Like similar global ideologies before it, that is its nature. Leftists think it is naive to think that "they hate our freedom". But they do not understand the sick mind of the jihadi. In reality, it is hopelessly naive to think terror is about poverty, or oppression, or Israel, or foreign policy, or imperialism, or power, or oil. Islamism is far darker than that.

   
   

4. I like this explanation by Laurent Murawiec of the Hudson Institute: "Deterring those who are already dead?", May 2006.
   • "Contemporary jihad is not a matter of politics at all (of "occupation", of "grievances", of colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism and Zionism), but a matter of Gnostic faith. Consequently, attempts at dealing with the problem politically will not even touch it. Aspirin is good, and so is penicillin, but they are of little avail to counter maladies of the mind. I am emphatically not saying here that the jihadis are "crazy". I am saying that they are possessed of a disease of the mind, and the disease is the political religion of modern Gnosticism in its Islamic version."

   
   

5. Bin Laden, Oct 2001, explains why the Twin Towers were attacked: "The values of this Western civilization under the leadership of America have been destroyed. Those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have been destroyed. They have gone up in smoke." Nothing to do with capitalism, Mr.Holt.

   
   

6. Nick Cohen sums up Eddie Holt's world: "The Left's critics attacked it at the time for wanting to appease al-Qaida, but the charge was too kind. Giving Hitler territory in Czechoslovakia appeared a rational solution to German grievances. Even if it proved to be a disaster, you can understand why the appeasers thought their policy of accepting Hitler's demands would avert war. The difference in 2001 was that the Islamists couldn't have what they wanted because the Caliphate they wanted was impossible. Rather than listening to what bin Laden was saying, leftish intellectuals adopted a stance for which I find no precedent: they urged the appeasement of demands that hadn't been made. They used bin Laden as an ally to promote their own wish list and called for a limit to globalization, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank or a rerun of the disputed 2000 American Presidential election. The contrast with the Thirties isn't flattering. Say what you like about the appeasers of Munich, but they studied Hitler, even if they got him wrong. Their successors didn't know what the Islamists wanted and didn't want to find out."