PAUL DACRE THE DAILY MAIL AND THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.


We all err at times ethically. We all make mistakes, do morally questionable things; however it takes blind hatred to bury all moral sensibility.

The Malodorous Mr Dacre
I loathe Paul Dacre and everything that he stands for; he is as they say a very nasty piece of work. As for his father I know little and what little I do know is less than impressive, but to attack Dacre because of the non-life of his father is ethically impermissible; besides there is so much of a target in the loathsome Mr Dacre himself, rightly called out by Alistair Campbell as “a bully, a liar and a coward.” Though it might be legitimate to ask what Dacre’s father’s precise contribution was in the creation of a monster; to go beyond that is bad manners and trespasses into the  illegitimacy of the ad hominem.

The Daily Mail’s attack on Ed Miliband’s father represented an example of blind hatred and it is a hatred that runs deep. Moral boundaries cannot contain this hatred, anything goes in the war against the Left in general and something Dacre identifies as ‘socialism’ in particular. The Mail has form, from the infamous ‘Zinoviev Letter’ and support for Mosley and the Blackshirts to its more recent vicious campaigns against eastern European migrants and poisonous attacks on welfare recipients.

There is however something that links all the targets of Dacre’s hatred,- all are vulnerable and peripheral; herein lies the source of the bad smell that emanates from Dacre’s rabid little organ.

From Mr Dacre’s perspective Ralph Miliband represented everything that he hates. Miliband was a foreigner, a refugee, a socialist intellectual and republican hostile to the British ruling elite. Of course there was another element to Ralph Miliband’s make up, the elephant in the room, Miliband was a Jew.

I think that it is no accident that a feature writer, a poor quality one at that, in the form of Geoffrey Levy – not a journalist noted for his political writing – was chosen for this particular hatchet job. This was surely a move to ward off any accusations of latent anti-Semitism.

 Reading the assault on Ed Miliband’s father as someone who has been a life long opponent of Stalinism[1] and a student of Russian history, it is startling how familiar the style of the writing is.  All that is required is to change some of the wording.

‘The Man Who Hates the Proletariat….derides Soviet values… of course, he could only embark on this ‘adventure’ because of the protection, the education and, crucially, the political freedom that this Soviet state gave him.” All that is required is to addition of the accusation ‘rootless cosmopolitan,’ (Soviet code for Jew), and you would have a perfect Stalinist hatchet job.

However the most perfidious aspect of Dacre’s tactic is his attempt to conflate Ed Miliband’s response to the Mail smearing his father with the issue of freedom of the press. Indeed the very idea that the censorious and autocratic Dacre is the champion of anything other than his own unpleasant little prejudices is risible. It was the Mail after all that was involved in the ludicrous campaign to stop the BBC from playing ‘Ding Dong the Witch is Dead,’ after Margaret Thatcher’s death. The only freedom of speech that The Mail supports is the freedom to spout narrow bourgeois prejudices; everything that questions the current order is suitable material for censorship.

A free press and free speech are too important an issue to allow the Mail to sully it with its grubby little hands; and yes freedom of the press has to include the freedom for the Mail to spout its poisonous propaganda. Free speech is for all, including the enemies of democracy and an open society, or it becomes meaningless. I oppose state involvement in the regulation of the press, though the disgusting and stupid Mr Dacre make making that case harder.

However the days when the likes of Mr Dacre, Mr Desmond and Mr Rupert Murdoch were the sole arbiters of the perimeters of legitimate political debate are gone, as the fight back against Paul Dacre is beginning to show. I am not sure that the malodorous Mr Dacre and his equally smelly acolytes are going to enjoy the process. 


[1] I have also attacked communist fellow travelling http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/eric-hobsbawm-apologist-for-mass-murder.html. It is of course legitimate to attack Ralph Miliband’s idea, his ambivalence on Pol Pot, for example, was appalling. Mr Levy however would not recognise a considered analysis of someones views if it bit him on backside. 



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