Modern leftists
The following are best described as
opponents of the west.
They are some of the leading opponents in the west
of American and western power,
and opponents of American and western victory against
non-western enemies.
They appear regularly on my local radio and TV,
and in my local newspapers,
so I thought I would gather in one place refutations of them.
They have every right to speak of course, and it is one of the strengths of
the USA, the UK and other democracies that their harshest critics
- indeed practically their open enemies -
are not only free to speak, but can make a good living by doing so,
and even become immensely wealthy
doing so (like Michael Moore).
The people below claim
to be friends of oppressed people around the world,
but in fact they are enemies of the non-western world as well,
since they want to stop the spread of western ideas
to it, and hence prevent its liberation.
They are baffling people.
They talk about human rights, and yet ally with
sexist, racist, violent,
gay-murdering, human-rights-hating fascists.
They come from a long tradition of
western support for
foreign tyranny.
Their central belief seems only to be that
America, and Israel, and the white man, must be wrong.
All of their decisions are based on that false axiom.
As a result,
they are enemies of the free countries,
friends of third-world tyrants,
and enemies
of the suffering people all over the world
who are forced to live under tyrannies.
-
The left is worth nothing
- An angry column by Dennis Prager, February 1, 2005,
in the week when leftists scorn
the brave Iraqis as they turn out
in their millions to vote
despite the threats of fascists to kill them.
Truly, since 9/11, the left now stands for the opposite of what
it claims to stand for.
The left are the reactionaries.
The left are the fascist lovers.
- On apologists for evil:
"in my lifetime, these people have overwhelmingly congregated on the political Left.
Since the 1960s, with few exceptions, on the greatest questions of good and evil,
the Left has either been neutral toward or actively supported evil."
- "It is the Left
- in America, in Europe and around the world -
that should do all the apologizing"
Cartoon from Cox and Forkum
(see here).
See Cartoon Use Policy.
- Edward Said
(and here)
- hated the west, yet lived there.
- Edward Said, Imperialist
by Stanley Kurtz
- Edward W. Said, intellectual
by Bruce Bawer
-
Orientalism revisited
by Keith Windschuttle
(and search)
- Ivory Towers on Sand:
The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America
by Martin Kramer.
- Robert Irwin's book
For Lust of Knowing.
-
Said welcomed Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution.
- The tyranny-lover Edward Said
denied there is any women's rights problem
in the Arab world.
He also denied there is any democracy problem.
More here.
- blog-irish on Said
- Edward Said's ignorant statements on Iraq.
- Obituaries
- Debunking Edward Said,
by the brave
Ibn Warraq,
says that
Said's Orientalism
".. taught an entire generation of Arabs the art of self-pity - were
it not for the wicked imperialists,
racists and Zionists, we would be great once more - encouraged the
Islamic fundamentalist generation of the 1980s,
and bludgeoned into silence any criticism of Islam"
- Warraq points out that
"Intellectual inquisitiveness is one of the hall marks of Western civilisation"
- in contrast to most of the world,
who have little interest in anything
outside of their own narrow culture.
It was Westerners who discovered
the orbit of the planets,
the laws of gravity, the distance of the stars,
the size and age of earth and the universe,
the sub-atomic laws of physics,
biological evolution,
the nature of genetic inheritance,
human evolution,
the origin of human civilization,
and a million other things
- and told an ungrateful world about it all.
-
It was even Westerners who told the Orient about its own past:
"One should remind Said that it was thanks to this desire for knowledge on the part of Europeans
that led to the people of the Near East recovering and discovering their own past and their own identity.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia, Ancient
Syria, Ancient Palestine and Iran were carried out entirely by Europeans and later Americans - the
disciplines of Egyptology, Assyriology, Iranology which restored to mankind a large part of its heritage
were the exclusive creations of inquisitive Europeans and Americans. Whereas, for doctrinal reasons,
Islam deliberately refused to look at its pre-Islamic past, which was considered a period of ignorance."
-
Ibn Warraq's
book
Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism .
- Review:
"As common sense suggests and Ibn Warraq substantiates, the interest of Westerners in the East from classical antiquity onwards was motivated" [not by "imperialism" or "racism" but]
"by intellectual curiosity; they wanted to find out about the other human beings with whom they were sharing the world. To seek knowledge for its own sake is the special and wholly beneficial contribution the West has made to mankind. ... Rationalism, universalism, and self-inspection are Western traits which expand civilization. Said's cultural relativism leads only to a dead-end."
- In short, Said was yet another narrow-minded, reactionary,
tribal Easterner who failed to understand the West.
- The childish clown
Michael Moore
(and here).
The buffoon
who shows the intellectual bankruptcy of the left
in the Islamist War.
The vulgar, anti-American, mean-spirited, immensely wealthy
multi-millionaire.
The semi-educated author of cartoon-like books
and simple totalitarian propaganda
who makes Chomsky
look like a deep thinker.
-
Mother of brave US soldier calls Michael Moore
a "maggot that eats off the dead"
for using footage of her son's funeral.
- moorewatch.com
- moorelies.com
- mooreexposed.com
- Watching Michael Moore blog
- Stupid White Men
- a perfect description of the kind of people who bought this book.
- The book
Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man
-
Fahrenheit 9/11
(and here)
(2004)
- Replies:
-
Mosaic of Michael Moore made from images of Iraqi mass graves
- Moore opposed
the liberation of Kosovo (and Serbia),
the liberation of Afghanistan,
and the liberation of Iraq.
-
Michael Moore, Humbug
by Kay S. Hymowitz
-
Dude, Where's My Intellectual Honesty?
- review of his "book".
-
Muqtada al-Moore
-
Steven Den Beste
compares Moore to the failed Iraqi Islamofascist rebel,
Muqtada al-Sadr:
- "What I found myself wondering
.. was whether Michael Moore may, in the end, turn out to be the American Loonie Left's
Muqtada al-Sadr.
He's become the rallying point. He's raised the flag, and the most motivated LL's are flocking
to support him. He's become their poster boy, their public face. He provides a focal point;
he's a magnet around which they can gather and organize.
He has chosen the ground they will defend
- and it is dreadful ground indeed."
- "the LL's have rallied to his flag. They've moved to his holy city. They've adopted positions on the terrain he's chosen for the battle. And they're using the arguments and evidence he provides as ammunition.
In the short term, it may seem as if the LL's are mobilized and fighting hard. But it also leaves them concentrated and vulnerable. And they are fighting on just about the worst ground they could have chosen."
- Worst, that is, if they want to win the election.
- "Moore has planted his flag smacko in the middle of the Holy City of anti-Americanism. To defend that position, the LL's will now vocally proclaim something many have long believed but avoided admitting: they hate America and everything it stands for. That is not a message that will sell well to the broad electorate."
- "It is rare for a political faction to be blessed with an opponent who is so charismatic to his fanatical supporters, so repulsive to non-supporters, and so vulnerable to criticism and caricature. I can't think of a high-profile leftist I'd rather have "at the centre of things" than Michael Muqtada al-Moore."
- Hezbollah
- Al-Qaeda
- Cuba
-
"Fahrenheit" shown on TV in Cuba
- The communist tyranny of
Cuba
supports Moore.
No dissent (such as calls for democracy) is allowed to air in Cuba
- but the state promotes Fahrenheit 9/11.
Is Moore proud
that his film is so safe and acceptable to tyrannies all over the world?
- Iran
-
Fahrenheit 9/11 Debuts in Tehran
- The Islamofascist tyranny of
Iran
supports Moore.
No dissent (such as calls for democracy) is allowed to air in Iran
- but the state promotes Fahrenheit 9/11.
An Iranian Moore, poking fun at the Iranian government, would of course be executed.
-
Some quotes from the Iranians watching the film:
- "The authorities obviously gave the film the green light for political reasons, in that anything against the United States must be good"
- "They are showing this film to erase from our minds the idea that America is the great saviour"
- "out of all the films people would love to see, the authorities had to go for this one
- just because this film is in line with the view of the Islamic regime"
- "It [the USA] sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it
- and makes so much money!"
-
Poles call 9/11 film "propaganda"
- Film critics in Poland liken Fahrenheit 9/11
to the totalitarian propaganda they grew up with.
Again,
people who have lived under totalitarian regimes
recognise totalitarian propaganda
and a totalitarian apologist
(consider the happy scenes in the film of Saddam's Iraq
before the war)
when they see it.
- Anti-semitic, genocidal, Holocaust-denying
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
likes Michael Moore.
- The Iraqi resistance
I tend not to list actors and musicians
on my page on the modern left
and its long history of hostility to democracies
and praise for tyrants.
Certainly, one could make a long list of stupid things said by
actors and musicians from the 1960s to today.
But what is the point?
Few people over the age of 20 are that interested.
Anyway, here's a few bits and pieces, but no exhaustive list.
"Last year, I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place.
They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies and,
and rivers made of chocolate where the children danced and laughed
and played with gumdrop smiles."
- Sean Penn's character in
Team America: World Police
captures perfectly the ignorant world of the
"anti-war"
protester.
- Robert Fisk
- The man who is always wrong.
- The man after whom
LGF
named their "Idiotarian of the Year" award,
since otherwise he would win it every year.
- The man after whom the verb "fisking" was invented
- one of the true new words of the blog world.
- Afghanistan
-
Do you want the facts ... or Fisk's version?
by Eoghan Harris
- "Fisk has now been wrong about three wars in a row.
In the Gulf War he told us the Republican Guard would give the Americans a hard time: in fact, they folded.
In the Kosovo War he said American bombing would not work: today Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for war crimes.
And Fisk has been wrong about the Afghan War from first to last."
- For Fisk's predictions during the first Gulf War see
[From the Embassy, George Dempsey, 2004].
- Shall we laugh at Fisk? Oh yes, let's:
- Iraq
- It's 4 in a row now.
See Robert Fisk's ignorant statements on Iraq.
-
Anglo-American Lies Exposed
- whining wartime propaganda from
Robert Fisk, 24 March 2003.
He
laughs at the idea that the allies are winning the
Iraq war:
"So far, the Anglo-American armies are handing their propaganda to the Iraqis on a plate.
First, on Saturday, we were told ... that Umm Qasr, the tiny Iraqi seaport on the Gulf,
had "fallen".
...
Then we were told ... that Nassariyah had been captured.
Then its "embedded " correspondent informed us - and here my old journalistic suspicions were alerted - that it had been "secured".
...
All in all, then, this has not been a great weekend for Messers Bush and Blair.
...
One of our own Tornadoes is shot down by the Americans
...
and we haven't even totally captured the first town over the border from Kuwait.
...
this weekend, the quick and easy war, the conflict of "shock-and-awe"
...
doesn't seem so realistic. Things are going wrong. We are not telling the truth.
And the Iraqis are riding high on it all."
-
Fisk propaganda, 1 April 2003
laughs at the allied effort:
"Even the "siege of Baghdad" - a city that is 30 miles wide and might
need a quarter of a million men to surround it - is fading from the diary.
...
I have a suspicion that what's gone wrong has nothing to do with plans.
Indeed, I suspect there is no real overall plan."
-
Fisk propaganda, 2 April:
"Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi army is prepared to defend its capital should
take the highway south of Baghdad. How, I kept asking myself,
could the Americans batter their way through these defences?"
- On 9 April,
Baghdad fell.
-
And yet still this ignorant man appears constantly on my radio set.
Doesn't it matter
that he was wrong?
Surely it counts for
something??
- Blog Irish
-
The prose of Robert Fisk
by Norman Geras
- On Fisk's sympathy for Saddam at his trial.
- Lebanon and Syria
- Fisking
-
Eoghan Harris
coined the verb "to fisk" in 1999,
meaning to do what Fisk does
(sloppy, biased, one-sided argument;
hopelessly wrong predictions,
lack of embarrassment about said predictions, etc.).
-
The dangers of Fisking
by David Pryce-Jones,
uses this meaning of "fisking".
- Pryce-Jones talks of Fisk's
"hysteria and distortion"
in his reporting on the Middle East.
He describes Fisk as an enemy of the Iraqi people
posing as their champion:
"Perverting American purposes and
practices in Iraq, fisking helps to bring about the doom that it anticipates
with such glee and relish.
... The Iraqis are his real
victims."
- This definition of "fisking" has not caught on, though.
The verb "to fisk" has been popularised by the blogosphere
to mean "to clinically dissect someone's shoddy argument piece by piece".
Robert Fisk is not a practitioner of "fisking".
Fisking is what is done to Robert Fisk.
Also here.
-
Discussion of Fisking and Pilgerisms
-
Success Has A Thousand Fathers:
But who would have guessed that one of them was Robert
Fisk?
- Fisk says "We have captured Saddam".
Fisk!
One of the people who did more than almost anyone
to prevent the capture of Saddam!
Now he pretends he is part of the movement that liberated Iraq!
- Robert Fisk's apparent support
for the Iraqi fascist "resistance"
- The mass murderer
Osama Bin Laden praises Robert Fisk
- Al Qaeda praises Robert Fisk, Aug 2006
- Review
by Efraim Karsh
of Fisk's
The Great War for Civilisation.
- George Monbiot
- One of the major new words of the blogosphere,
"moonbat",
was supposedly named after Monbiot.
-
George Monbiot's ignorant statements on the War on Afghanistan
-
George Monbiot and other leftists' record on the Taliban
-
Moonbat Party Forming - World Saved
-
George Monbiot gets an inkling that everything he believes is wrong
- and then the darkness comes over once again
- "While I
was speaking, the words died in my mouth, as it
struck me with horrible clarity that as long as
incentives to cheat exist (and they always will)
none of our alternatives could be applied
universally without totalitarianism."
This may be news to Monbiot,
but some of us understood this before the age of 20.
But it's hopeful.
Maybe he'll get there some day.
-
What am I thinking!
Monbiot
doesn't even believe in prosperity.
"In this age of diamond saucepans, only a recession makes sense.
...
Economic growth is a political sedative, snuffing out protest as it drives inequality. It is time we gave it up.
...
If you are of a sensitive disposition, I advise you to turn the page now. I am about to break the last of the universal taboos. I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises."
Not really a taboo, George,
just a sign that someone is nuts.
And we are not shocked. We just conclude that you are a loony
who should not be listened to on economics (or anything, I guess).
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
-
"People have to know the horrors I've seen"
- An Iraqi refugee
attacks
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown provides a refreshing insight into the mind of the modern left.
She utters the thoughts that so many have but hide:
- Apr 2004
- "I've been against the war and part of you begins to... you know, it's horrible how your mind works. You think 'Good!', you wake up thinking 'Good, there's all this mess'. And then you have to question your own self, saying what kind of a human being are you, that you want this mess?"
- June 2004
- "I am ashamed to admit that there have been times when I wanted more chaos, more shocks, more disorder to teach our side a lesson. On Monday I found myself again hoping that this handover proves a failure because it has been orchestrated by the Americans."
- Bless her honesty, at least.
She does recognise her darker impulses, and struggles against them.
-
But whatever happened to the left?
What happened to the left that is supposed to stand for democracy and human rights everywhere?
Why has it degenerated into this bitter anti-American cul-de-sac?
Why am I becoming allergic to the word "left",
even though my belief in democracy and human rights is as strong as ever?
Other UK leftists
- John Pilger
- John Pilger on Israel and the media,
New Statesman, 1st July 2002,
provides a good example of the hatred of Israel of the modern left.
- The leftist
David McKnight
breaks with the left
to attack Pilger.
-
John Pilger - Moral Equivalence Personified
- Pilger's praise for Castro's Cuba
- John Pilger's ignorant statements on Iraq
- All you need to know about John Pilger:
-
The Iraqi "resistance" are fascists
who hate Jews, atheists and homosexuals,
and would exterminate them all if they could.
If asked, most of them would say they support Hitler and the Holocaust.
They are fighting for tyranny and to stop democracy.
They target civilians, including women and children.
- Anyone who has ever supported the Iraqi "resistance", even on realpolitik grounds
(e.g. because they are constraining America),
cannot ever again be taken seriously as a moral thinker.
- John Pilger openly supported the Iraqi "resistance"
- Learning Lies,
John Pilger, 19 February, 2005,
sums up Pilger's alternative universe:
- He
denies the basic fact that America protected the free world
from Soviet imperial expansionism during the Cold War.
He describes the long, hard,
American-led effort to save liberal civilization from communist tyranny
as
"modern history's imperial trail of blood of which Iraq is the latest".
What I don't understand is why he excludes the liberation of Europe in 1944 from this list.
Surely the
1944 invasion of Europe
is the defining example
of this modern American imperialism.
- He denies that the
Vietnam War
was a struggle against democidal communist tyranny,
and instead claims that America
- rather than democidal communism
- was the real enemy of the Vietnamese people.
Well he must be happy then, since the communists won,
and took over the country for decades.
1.7 million people killed by the communists in democide in Vietnam alone,
and
no human rights,
even today.
Nothing like a happy ending, is there.
- Pilger on Vietnam:
"The longest war this century was a war waged by America against Vietnam,
North and South. It was an attack on the people of Vietnam,
communist and non-communist, by American forces."
For oil, or rubber, or something, presumably.
- Pilger laughably claims that Ho Chi Minh was not like other communist butchers.
Well if so, then
why didn't he set up a democracy
after 1946?
For 23 years, until his death in 1969, he ruled like a typical communist dictator,
showing no interest in setting up a free democracy.
Why was this?
Can Pilger explain?
- Criticism of John Pilger
for not treating Islamists as
moral agents,
who are responsible for their actions.
"So naturally, the bombs of 7/7 are Blair's. The Islamist terrorists who actually built and deployed them
were acting in a blameless way, with the inevitability of falling rain and lions pursuing prey.
You don't blame the rain for falling. You don't blame lions for killing gazelle.
And you don't blame Islamist terrorists for bombing London.
In this view, the terrorists aren't "wrong" per se. They're just reacting. The only way to get them to stop
is for us to change."
And the writer really nails it:
"To the degree that getting us to change policies is a goal of the terrorists,
then John Pilger's way of thinking is necessary for terrorism to work."
-
Pilger's apparent support for the Islamist terrorist killers Hizbollah, 2006.
- He describes it as hopeful that Hizbollah are fighting Israel:
"But there is hope. After all these years of terrorising an occupied people,
eventually driving them to the despair of having to commit their own atrocities,
the rogue regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv may,
... just may, have met their match."
He claims that Palestinians were driven to suicide bombing Jewish women and children
by oppression,
rather than by Islamist Jew-hatred.
- His weasel words about Hizbollah deliberately targeting civilians,
as if this is some unfortunate collateral damage
rather than the intended target itself:
"The resistance to rapacious power, to epic crimes of invasion
... is humanity at its noblest; yet the paradox
warns us that no resistance is pretty;
that each adds its own form of violence in order to expel an invader
(such as the civilians killed by Hizbollah rockets)"
- Hizbollah are
Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying,
fanatical religious reactionaries.
Anyone who supports them has no moral compass.
- Definition of the phrase "to pilger"
- Indonesia
-
Now do you understand,
Jose Ramos Horta?
John Pilger only supported East Timor because Indonesia was
a western ally.
If Indonesia had been an enemy of the west,
he would never have supported you.
Now do you understand?
Return to The modern left.
