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September 25, 2006
I am a subscriber to Crikey's daily email and it has been worthwhile over the last 15 months. However, of late, the conservative political commentary by Christian Kerr has declined with his embrace of the Bush narrative of the West v Islam. This narrative is deployed by Kerr to target lefties as bad. Rarely is this kind of issue mentioned, let alone considered. What we have is the rhetoric of 'Chamberlain-like appeasers' used against the 'limp left' who question Bush's strategy of a full-frontal, global assault on Islam.
This is Kerr's effort on Friday:
It’s Friday, it’s been a long week --- so let’s wrap this up quickly. There’s been a lot of shouting in Crikey of late over the West and Islam ---yet I suspect that many of the people involved don’t really give a hoot about the issues supposedly invovled. I suspect that they’re simply anti-American. Ironically, one of the best recent wraps of this tendency comes from an Arab newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat. It’s carried some particularly sharp thoughts on Gunter Grass’ confessions of his SS past to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
We are then treated to an account of Grass's well known Nazi sympathies and not noticing racism in Germany.
Kerr reaches this conclusion:
Living under Hitler for 13 years, and not having noticed racism? Grass must have been deaf and blind. Indeed. If America’s involved, it must be bad. That’s about the only remaining shred of ideology the tired old leftists have to cling to.
Huh? German fascists and Australian lefties are equivalent because they are anti-American? That's trash talk --there is no argument here about the Rumsfeld strategy in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the issues raised by the war on terrorism. It's just guilt by association. If we disagree with Kerr's conservative moverment, then we are by definition endangering the security of the country.
Kerr's trash talk indicates how he has become a shrill cultural warrrior who belongs on the dark pages of The Australian. He is travelling along with the other neo-cons banging the war drum. Presumably, the bizarre acts committed by the US in Guatanamo, Abu Ghraib and the CIA's secret prisons to bring more democracy in the Middle East can be written off as the crimes of a few bad apples. That's moral clarity for you.
Crikey's distinctive political voice has gone.
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Hi,
someone left a comment on the post.Alas it was accidently deleted because the post was duplicated and the deleted post had the comments on deleted duplicate. Whoever it was could they redo their comments.
They started 'I couldn't agree more Gary....