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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

The Australian's op ed trash « Previous | |Next »
August 9, 2006

Poor commentary is one reason why some newspapers in Australia are in decline in terms of both operating income and influence. Murdoch's Australian is a good example of this. It gets worse in terms of quality as the 'cultural war' mentality bites ever deeper as it broadens the campaign against the left-wing bias in our universities and Australia's high school teachers peddling anti-American sentiment. The quality declines as the op ed's become polemics not debate in a liberal democracy. The Australian is part of the machinery the Right has built in the last decade, a machinery that supports a cadre of politically steeped and tactically honed operatives.

Today we have an op.ed. by Brian Wimborne on the Australian left and Israel, and more specifically on understanding why the Left has done a U-turn on Israel. After World War II, the political Left lent support to the Jewish people and favoured the creation of a homeland for them in Israel. Today the left is critical of Israel. So why the change? Wimborne has an answer--hatred:

Hatred has always been an essential characteristic of leftist ideology, providing the motivating force for its theory of dialectical materialism...Through its support of those it deems less fortunate, the Left assumes a moral high ground from which it feels self-righteously justified in attacking those it designates as oppressors ... Paradoxically, the [Israeli] state's success has been the reason the Left turned against Israel. Within a few years of its foundation, Israel had broken the first commandment of the Left's ideology: "Thou shalt not succeed." Success is anathema to the Left because it puts an end to victimhood; without victims the Left has no reason to exist. In the eyes of the Left's supporters, Israel's great accomplishments meant that the country no longer qualified as a victim. Israel, through being successful, effectively turned its back on the role chosen for it by the Left. From the Left's rigidly dialectical viewpoint, the world is made up solely of victims and oppressors, and if Israel is no longer a victim it has to be an oppressor. The consequence is that the mantle of victimhood once thrust on Israel now cloaks the Palestinians ....

'Hatred ' implies raw passion not reason. I would have thought that the actions of the Israeli state in Lebanon and the occupied territory's would have something to do with the change from supporting Israel to being critical of the Israeli state. Winborne denies this when he says that:
The deep-rooted problems of the Palestinians are not attributable to Israel but to their own corrupt leadership, culture of mendacity, lack of foresight and duplicity of their supporters (originally Egypt, Jordan and Iraq; more recently Syria and Iran). However, Realpolitik cuts no ice with the Left, whose preference for ideology over reality means Israel is judged to be the cause of all the Middle East's problems...the historical evidence [is] that the real subjugation of the Palestinians has occurred in Arab countries and in Gaza and the West Bank, under the tyranny of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Nothing is said about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. So we are left with hatred as an explanation for Left's about-face in respect of Israel.

Winborne then develops the content of this hatred in terms of racism:

there is another reason for the The Left has long been permeated with anti-Semitism. It should not be forgotten that the Nazis (an acronym for National Socialist German Workers Party) had strong left-wing antecedents. The Nazis' doppelganger, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, not only supported traditional Russian anti-Jewish movements but organised pogroms for its own political purposes. Socialist parties in Britain, France, Australia and many other countries, despite having Jewish adherents, had a strong anti-Semitic thread running through them. It is not surprising that as the Left's support for Israel faded, a latent anti-Semitic ideology replaced it, with the result that the centre of world anti-Semitism is now firmly rooted in the Left.

It's drawing a long bow to connect the racism of German fascism with the political left in Australia. Secondly, I would have thought the left-wing politics is framed in terms of morality and the Australian left has often had a firm hold on the moral high ground.

Winborne rejects this account. He ends this:

...where morality is concerned, the Left is value free. It draws no distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. Hence, in the minds of leftists, the terrorist becomes a freedom fighter and murderers are transformed into heroes. This should surprise no one. In the past century the Left gave rise to national socialism and international socialism; today it continues to function without a semblance of moral rectitude, offering support of any group it designates as victims.

This fails to take account of the view that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is deemed to be wrong.

The op.ed is pretty poor stuff isn't it? We can only infer that this is the noise machine in action.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:34 PM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

Claiming the oppponent is irrational or has irrational views seems popular. A commentary appearing in the US is that bloggers are "angry", implying they are irrational, so any influence they do have is not from sound principles.

Cam,
its part of the conservative claim that the left has said farewell to the Enlightenment, has become reactionary, and has embraced obscurantism and bigotry.

Reason versus unreason is not a very helpful way of looking at what is going on.