JON SNOW'S 'NICE GUY': THE MORAL ROT OF THE LIBERAL LEFT
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| Jon Snow |
The following tweet was written by the Channel 4 News
presenter Jon Snow.
Jon Snow @jonsnowC4 Jun 5 Enfield, London
Former Iraqi
Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz has died in jail: Nice guy in a nasty situation -
made no better by Bush/BLair's Shock and Awe.
Nick Cohen re tweeted this as an example of all that is wrong
with the liberal left today. It is difficult to argue with Cohen. Snow, who
seeks these days to package himself as a left wing tribune of the people, has
given up all pretence of impartiality or being the sober disseminator of
information,[1]
and seems to believe he has outgrown the role of mere newsreader. He now wants
to kick ass. So let’s take a close look at the contents of this tweet. Let’s
start with Mr, ‘nice guy,’ Aziz.
Tariq Aziz was amongst the closest of associates of Saddam Hussein
throughout his long, bloody and genocidal[2]period
in power.
‘He began to rise through the ranks of Iraqi
politics after the Ba'ath party came to power in 1968. Aziz became close to
Saddam who heavily promoted him. He served as a member of the Regional Command,
the Ba'ath Party's highest governing organization from 1974 to 1977, and in
1977 became a member of Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council.[3]
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| Tariq Aziz with his Colleague and Comrade Though obviously caught up in a 'nasty situation.' |
Then in 1979, Aziz became Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, and
worked as a diplomat to explain Iraq's policies to the world. He stood shoulder
to shoulder with Saddam as his reign of violent terror produced a totalitarian
state ruled by terror.[4] Indeed
he boasted later, "Saddam is [was] my colleague and comrade for decades…” Though he later carefully sought to distance
himself from Saddam’s actions, Aziz’s was aware of these crimes, from the brutal murder of former
Baath party comrades, the war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait and the use of chemical weapons against Kurdish
villages. Whatever his direct complicity he supported and justified these
crimes always remaining loyal to Saddam.
This then is Mr Snow’s nice guy.
As to the ‘nasty situation,’ to what can Mr Snow be referring?
This surely cannot be a euphemism for being a ‘colleague and comrade’ to a genocidal mass murderer, can it? As to,
‘made no better by Bush/BLair's Shock and Awe,’ what are we make of this statement? It was the job of western
governments to ‘make things better’
for the Baath party dictatorship?
Whilst, ‘Bush/Blair’s
Shock and Awe,’ is such a cheap
crack, using the SWP/Stop The War UK, device of splitting Tony Blair’s name, that
it is not so much dirt cheap, as excrementally so.
All analogies are
inaccurate to a greater or lesser extent, particularly when it comes to the
Nazi’s. However sometimes the comparison just stares you in the face. Aziz was
Ribbentrop to Saddam’s Hitler.
Though there is
another, fresher analogy, closer to Saddam’s view of himself and to Mr Snow’s
position. That is to see Aziz as Molotov to Saddam’s Stalin. The analogy is
closer since Saddam modelled himself on Stalin, whom he both admired and
copied. So, for example, Stalin had Molotov’s wife imprisoned, in spite of
which Molotov remained loyal. Saddam had Aziz’s son imprisoned, in spite of
which Aziz remained loyal.
The latter analogy
also provides a journalistic equivalent to Jon Snow, in the shape of Walter
Duranty,[5]
one of Stalin’s greatest apologists, whom Malcolm Muggeridge described as, “the
greatest Liar of any journalist I have met in over fifty years of Journalism.” It
is easy indeed to imagine Duranty,[6]
penning the sickly and morally bankrupt lines that Snow penned about Aziz.
Though it is the final
words of the tweet that reveal Snow’s complete mind-set, his world view. For no
matter how terrible other regimes may be, and Snow is happy to concede that
they can be very bad, the real culprits are always to be found in ‘the West,’ particularly
the US and UK,- though always including Israel and ‘the Zionists.’ Africans and
Arabs, Pakistani’s or Afghans, are never ever fully culpable, they are either
mere puppets of western design or reacting to the evils of western domination.
Thus everything since 9/11 is presented in simplistic terms as chickens coming home
to roost.
It is tempting to
say that this refusal to concede agency to people of colour is a consequence of
‘subconscious’ racism. But this is misleading, there is little sub conscious
about it. It is exactly the same brand of racism I used to read in Daily Telegraph
editorials in the 1970’s, carefully explaining why one man one vote in South
Africa was a pipe dream. Africans were either not ready, or ‘unsuited,’ to
democracy and that moreover South African society was too riven by tribalism.
Now however it is spokespersons on the left who talk about the impossibility of
democracy in say Afghanistan, as the culture is
too tribal.
These attitudes, so
patronising to Arabs and other ‘non-Western’ cultures, which, for example,
dismisses those fighting for freedom and equality within Islamic societies as,‘western
stooges,’ are little more than the old imperialist outlook turned on its head, and
in its own revolting way, is just as arrogant. The attitude that produces such
sentiment is rotten to the core and Nick Cohen is right, Mr Snow, ‘unconsciously’
perhaps, reveals that very rottenness in just 140 characters.
[1]
Of course there is no such thing as real impartiality, of news values free of
bias, however the pretence of complete impartiality provides a useful point of
focus, you try to be dispassionate and objective in the knowledge that you will
always fall short of this ideal.
[2]
Certainly with respect to the Kurds and Marsh Arabs
[4]
See ‘Republic of Fear: The Politics of
Modern Iraq’’ By Kanan Makiya
[5]
Walter Duranty (1884 – October 3, 1957) was a Liverpool-born, Anglo-American
journalist who served as the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times
(1922–36).
[6]
See Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times's Man in Moscow By
S.J. Taylor
