Facing the New Totalitarianism
So a bunch of left-wing writers have got together and knocked-up a Manifesto: Together facing the new totalitarianism to warn the world of the impending threat of Islamism, well thank you guys I never would have noticed there was any problem if it hadn’t been for you clever chaps. I use the phrase “knocked-up” because if you look at it carefully it has a distinct air of being knocked-up one evening over a few too many glasses of Chardonnay at Salman’s place and like his books it leaves you with a nagging sense of “is that all?”.
First of all I don’t think much of this bit :
“After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism.”
Why Stalinism and not Communism? The repression and murder carried out by Stalin was continued long after his death and is a permanent fixture in other Communist countries even today so why so mealy-mouthed on this one?
Then I thought this was slightly perverse :
“We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.”
So they want secular values for all but also want freedom but isn’t the right to have religious beliefs in the first place an expression of freedom? Besides the fact that secular values are not some panacea for peaceful and harmonious existence as Nazism and Communism (both based on secular humanism) have proven.
The most overwhelming feature of the whole statement is how little it actually says and how vague it is on what it does actually say.
If that’s the best our (ahem!) “writers, journalists, intellectuals” can come up with we are truly doomed. I will openly admit that I don’t actually know about the other signatories but Rushdie is a truly awful writer who cost the British taxpayer a packet in protection over his dull and poorly researched “The Satanic Verses” which I’m sure he only published in order to boost his notoriety. The only good thing I can say about Rushdie is he has an unfeasibly good-looking wife.
More critical analysis : The Brussels Journal - Anti-Jihad Manifesto Misses the Point
You’re bang-on with your comments about Rushdie! At last! Someone who isn’t afraid to say Rushdie can’t write, let alone think. Everywhere you go you meet people who say “Yes, well, Rushdie isn’t an easy read but the man’s a genius!”
They talk about this imposter as though he were someone of real stature, such as Nathanial West.
I think that the literary scene has been crippled by a creeping Emperor’s New Clothes zeitgeist over the last few decades. I find it quite amusing when a new yet controversial author hits the scene as you watch the big critical hitters eye each other nervously to see who will flinch first and give it a review. If the first one to take the plunge gives a positive review the rest are sure to pile in and heap praise an a sometimes mediocre work. This in some part explains why today we have a reasonable number of decent writers but almost no decent thinkers - oh for someone who could do both!
Wolfie,
This is a good post. The secularism those ‘intellectuals’ are defending is actually fanatism. Along with Rushdie, there was also Bernard-Henri levy (BHL), the french superstar whose wife is also an actress, not as pretty as Rushdie’s wife. I bet they wrote this over a chardonnay and may be in BHL’s moroccan palace !