Mick Hume, the leftist commentator with a sharp nose for humbug and an often refreshingly libertarian streak, hits a home run with an excellent column about how the anti-globalisation movement has gotten into bed with some very dubious characters indeed by adopting a “bash-Israel-first” stance related to the current violence in the region. The whole article is worth a read, but I particularly liked this paragraph:
“Western society is infected by a powerful sense of self-loathing and a rejection of its political, social and economic achievements. It was this spirit of self-loathing that led some, of the left and the right alike, to suggest that America got what it deserved on 11 September. Those sentiments are no more progressive when aimed against Israel as a symbol of the West than when they are directed in irrational campaigns against GM crops and the literature of Dead White Males.”
I could not agree more. What Hume is really saying is that the types who attack Starbuck coffee shops, bash Israel for trying to defend itself and who want the global free trade system to be closed down are in fact, reactionaries. They broadly reject the Enlightenment heritage of liberty, reason, celebration of Man’s mastery of nature, self-criticism, open markets and the spirit of enquiry. They are flat-earthers.
Hume’s article appeared in the left-wing weekly magazine, The New Statesman (can be found in Samizdata’s ‘havens of fluorescent idiocy’ links section on our links page). That publication has offered up some pretty vile views on September 11 and the aftermath, so Hume’s article is a welcome detour into sanity. On the other hand, maybe just a rare flash of gold amidst the dross.
