Thursday, July 14, 2005

Apologists for Fascism

Today's Grauniad, (Britain's oldest liberal newspaper as Norm describes it) contains a shocking piece of fascist apologia by Seumas Milne. Milne argues that
The London bombers were to blame for attacks on civilians that are neither morally nor politically defensible. But the prime minister - who was warned by British intelligence of the risks in the run-up to the war - is also responsible for knowingly putting his own people at risk in the service of a foreign power. The security crackdowns and campaign to uproot an "evil ideology" the government announced yesterday will not extinguish the threat. Only a British commitment to end its role in the bloody occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to do that.
So leaving democratic Iraqis to the hands of a murdering, theocratic, fascist "resistance" is a good thing? This is the politics of international isolationism beloved of the likes of Justin Raimondo and Nick Griffin alike.

As Norm says
there are apologists among us. They have to be fought - fought intellectually and politically and without let-up. What is it that moves them to their disgraceful litany of excuses? This is doubtless a complex matter, but here are a few suggestions. One thing seems to be the treatment of those who practise terror as though they were part of some natural environment we have to take as given - not themselves free and responsible agents, but like a vicious dog or a hive of bees. If we do anything that provokes them, that must make us morally responsible, for they can be expected to react as they do. If this isn't a form of covert racism, then it's a kind of diminishing culturalism and is equally insulting to the people transformed by it into amoral beings incapable of choice or judgement.
Read the whole piece.

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