Friday 4 January 2008

Motes and Beams

Some people in Kenya are like the SS, says Michael Gove. Well, perhaps they are. But that same SS is, of course, the linear, celebrated forebear of you neocons' allies in Bosnia, Kosovo, Denmark and Flanders.
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous5 January 2008 at 23:32

    Some day you might like to explain this. Neoconservatism is a Marxist doctrine (or group of doctrines). It has nothing to do with the SS.

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  2. David Lindsay6 January 2008 at 00:03

    The Soviet Army initially fought alongside that of Nazi Germany, notably staging a joint victory parade through the streets of Brest-Litovsk.

    But I merely observe the fact that in Bosnia, Kosovo, Denmark and Flanders, movements ideologically (and sometimes biologically) descended from the SS, and publicly very proud of being so, are favoured by the neocons. As to why the neocons do it, you'd have to ask them.

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  3. Anonymous6 January 2008 at 19:11

    No, the Soviets did not fight alongside the Nazis. There was an initial coincidence of interests at the beginning of the War, and there was a non-aggression pact. But to say that they "fought alongside" each other would be like saying that Saddam's Ba'athists fought alongside al-Qa'eda. (I presume you do not accept that.)

    Can you name a single neoconservative who supports the Far Right in Flanders on Denmark? I can't.

    As for Kosovo, if you're thinking of the Kosovo Liberation Army how on earth do you trace ANY connexion with the SS? Are you thinking of the Handschar Division in Bosnia? It would be like saying that Gerhard Schroeder is a Nazi because he's a German. It's absurd.

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  4. David Lindsay7 January 2008 at 01:13

    It went rather beyond "an initial coincidence of interests".

    The neocons are right behind the dismemberment of Belgium so that "free"-market Flanders no longer has to support Wallonia, and are indifferent to the SS roots of the Vlaams Belang, certainly not that party's own attitude to those roots. In Denmark, a party in the same tradition was a key part of the government that joined "the coalition of the willing".

    Still, these are at least relatively discreet compared to the Kosovars' black-shirted parades and wreath-layings. Hitler greatly admired Islam, and both Kosovar and Bosniak Muslims returned the compliment with interest; their sons and grandsons proudly keep this up.

    Oh, and it is of course perfectly possible to be both a "Ba'athist" and a member of "al-Qaeda", since the terms themselves are practically meaningless. If it suits one's purposes, any Sunni Muslim (at least) can be the latter, and any Iraqi Sunni Arab or member of certain other (not least Christian) Iraqi minorities can be the former.

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  5. Anonymous7 January 2008 at 19:46

    But the neocons absolutely hate Vlaams Belang. See just this post on LGF (one amongst many), for example.

    There are also plenty of anti-war conservatives who are in favour of Flemish independence. See John Laughland's article here for example.

    Trying to make out that Hitler was a "neocon" because he liked Islam is really stretching the meanings of words. There are plenty of leftists such as David Aaronovitch, Christopher Hitchens and Melanie Phillips, who are labelled "neocons" almost purely because of their support for the state of Israel. It's possible that you also have the goose-stepping little weirdo down as a secret lefty and Jew-lover. But for most people there is a distinction to be made.

    The "coalition of the willing" was not some sort of neocon conspiracy. The overwhelming majority of the governments that supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein were straightforward, centre-right conservatives - and indeed in some cases, notably Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, they were the exact same men who had supported keeping the old monster in power only tweleve years before. Or was Saddam Hussein yet another "neocon"?

    Ba'athism is a sort of secular Arab nationalism. Al-Qa'eda is a (very) loosely knit international terrorist network whose ideology is descended from that of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Neoconservatives are simply people who support freedom and democracy but reject social liberalism and the counter-culture of the 1960s. Given that you don't seem to know who any of these people are, perhaps you could explain what it is about their philosophy that you so disagree with.

    There seems to be a certain cavalier attitude to the meanings of terms here. If you don't know what a word means then google or Wikipedia it. Don't just assume that words are meaningless, or that somehow they all mean the same thing.

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