Saturday 25 February 2012

Sullied By That Creature's Name

Even I have to laugh.

Apparently, on Twitter, Vinnie McAviney, as he would probably not thank me for still calling him but that was how he first introduced himself to me, has been in touch with Kamm as if he (Vinnie) and I had never met.

He is in fact a former tutee of mine who, as undergraduates sometimes do, went off on a power trip on being given some little position, in his case when he scaled the dizzy heights of Editor of Palatinate, Durham's legendarily bad student newspaper.

In order to ingratiate himself with Kamm, not without success, he ran some piece of cock and bull about me, and he has never got over the fact that no one of the slightest importance paid the slightest attention, because, well, it was in Palatinate.

To this day, I have never read it. I never will. I doubt that a copy of it still exists anywhere. Everyone has long since forgotten about it. Except him. Several times per day, under multiple personalities, for two and half years so far.

It is side-splitting stuff that he mentions Palatinate in, for example, his many comments on the webpages selling my books, as if any grown-up person could possibly care less about that even within this university, never mind outside. Sad and mad rather than bad. Unlike Kamm.

Anyway, Kamm's - how shall I put this? - Straussian tactics do finally seem to be finding him out, after he appeared on Radio Three opposite John Milbank and tried to brand him a 9/11 truther, a favourite Kamm smear, which he has been putting about, including under the aegis of one the largest (if most disreputable) media corporations in the world, for quite some time.

He has made it up out of thin air, but he and his weird little cult dutifully scream "troofer, anti-Semite, Holocaust denier" at anyone who ever points out this or any other of his transparent fictions, such as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. Well, John is a tougher cookie than he looks...

I did ponder including both the John Milbank "troofer" line, and Kamm's long campaign of criminal harassment against Neil Clark, eventually causing the police to become involved, in Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory.

But one does not want one's text sullied by that creature's name (Damian Thompson is not mentioned by name, either, just as he was not in Essays Radical and Orthodox, although he is referred to in both of them), so the following has had to suffice where that cult is concerned:

As for the blood libel, what about the blood libel that all opposition to the Iraq War was anti-Semitic? That was said routinely at the time, and for a long time thereafter. They all did it. Every one of them.

Certain British websites only stopped when I lately started making a fuss about it, especially the powerful Harry’s Place, the limitlessly funded notice board by means of which Israel’s violently racist, fanatically anti-British secular Hard Right incites its supporters in Britain to torrential abuse of specific academic, political and media figures and their actual or potential employers, and even of the likes of student unions, while attempting, not without success, to take over the Labour Party.

That blood libel still crops up from time to time. The people loudest in berating Raed Salah for his blood libel put their own into print or onto the airwaves every single day for months, and regularly for years. They have never expressed one word of remorse, either for that or for their catastrophic war itself.

And:

The signatories to the Project for the New American Century, the Patrons of the Henry Jackson Society, Avigdor Lieberman’s party and those who sit in coalition with it have on their hands the blood of 69 Norwegians, mostly teenagers.

The same goes for Kamm.

Buy the book here.

37 comments:

  1. "Everyone has long since forgotten about it. Except him."

    Given your rather emotional post yesterday his work obviously stuck in your memory.

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  2. I have never seen the thing itself. But he was even on here on Christmas Day, trying to spew abuse about it. I sat down to moderate comments on Boxing Night, and was entirely unsurprised to find them.

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  3. You are the link man between Milbank and Clark. The anti-Kamm alliance has been a long time coming, but this is its moment. He works for the only media company with low enough standards to employ him, but that company's days on British soil are numbered. Looks like this McAviney has only ever been published nationally in the Times and the Sunday Times. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

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  4. Even more than Neil, the way they treat you, anyone would think you were a fictional character. They have no concept of you as a real human being. They seem to find it personally offensive that you exist. Isn't McAviney technically still at Durham doing some postgrad thing? It is time he was kicked out.

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  5. Don't forget, "if you believe in “al-Qaeda”, or in “the global terrorist network”, or in “Taliban” distinct from the Pashtun as a whole, or in any connection between Afghanistan and the events of 11th September 2001, or in any connection between Iraq and those events, or in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or in such weapons as a threat to America or Britain even if they had existed, or in an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, or in such a programme’s threat to America or Britain even if it existed, then you are exactly as sane as if you were a believer that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, or a believer that the events of 11th September 2001 were an inside job, or a LaRouche supporter, or someone waving an Obama-Hitler placard at a Tea Party." The wonders of downloading.

    I cannot praise your book too highly. No wonder the enemies of a critique of neoliberal, social liberal warmongery will go to these lengths against you, against Neil, against John Milbank and Phillip Blond, against Maurice Glasman. Keep the faith.

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  6. Are your friends in Lanchester looking forward to your book David? You must be quite the chap in a place like that.

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  7. They'll have bought it by now. Indeed, I know for a fact that some of them have. By the time that I see them again, some of them might even have read it.

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  8. According to Milbank's blurb contribution, you are the granddaddy of them all: "Before Red Tory and Blue Labour there was David Lindsay. He was arguably the first to announce a postliberal politics of paradox, and to delve into the deep, unwritten British past in order to craft, theoretically, an alternative British and international future. It is high time that the singular and yet wholly pertinent writings of this County Durham Catholic Labour prophet receive a wider circulation." Thus speaks a trustee of Phillip Blond's think tank, probably the most influential Trustee.

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  9. You must cut quite a dash round the village with your connections to both the Parish Council & the local RC church. Tell me David, is the local RC church filling up with the young orthodox or is it just the usual lot of boomer liberalism?

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  10. David Lindsay is our lost leader, yes. The man who was passed over for a pretty boy who has never had an original thought in his life, is about one twentieth as clever as he thinks he is, is about one two hundredth as clever as David Lindsay, and is only in politics because he missed out on being a pop star or a footballer. Everybody, absolutely everybody, assumed that the candidate was going to be David. The one they put up instead was comically unelectable.

    The rest is history, including the women only short list to succeed Hilary Armstrong. I know David is friends with Pat Glass and thinks very highly of her, but if he had become a district councillor in 2003, he would easily have held on when unitary local government came in and been so well placed that he could not have been denied this seat. From that platform, he would have cleaned up as an Independent against a women only candidate and Labour would have known it, they would not have dared risk it.

    A lot of the great and good of local politics will not like this book one little bit, for two reasons. One, they will agree with every word of it. Two, it is the biggest reminder yet of what they deprived the community of nearly a decade ago. The author of this book would have been capable of being a cabinet minister, maybe even more that. They forced him out because they wanted somebody who was employed by the then MP, would have looked good as a poster on a teenage girl's bedroom and was as thick as pigsh*t. They have only themselves to blame, but we have them to blame.

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  11. Anonymous 22:40, it's an interesting mixture, actually. But on topic, please.

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  12. I'll stay on topic David. But please do post about the local church & your place in it sometime. The local church is the hope of the world & all that.

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  13. Tell me David. I know that you wrote for the Daily Telegraph blogs section for a short period of time. I gather that you were then dismissed by Damian Thompson, who is the editor of those blogs. Do you feel that you were wrongly dismissed? Why did he employ you in the first place if he is apparently so hostile to your own beliefs?

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  14. He never "employed" me. It was an unpaid position then, and according to a recent edition of Private Eye it still is. By his action, the reason has always been in the public domain, and it is reproduced as follows in Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory, as part of a discussion of any possible Israeli objection to "interference" in internal Israeli affairs:

    "For pointing out one of the facts conceded by that of Fox’s resignation, namely the treasonable relationship of 80 per cent of Conservative MPs, including David Cameron, to the State of Israel in general and to its ruling racist Far Right in particular, I was removed from Telegraph Blogs and branded insane by that website’s Editor, as much proof as one could possibly want that editorial control over the ostensible voice of Tory Britain is in reality exercised by that foreign and largely hostile State in general, and by that fanatically anti-British Far Right in particular."

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  15. Thank you David. What was it that Liam Fox resigned from? I gather that you wrote for the Telegraph blogs in 2009 before the Liam Fox was in the government. Am I correct to say that it was in the autumn of 2009 that you were writing for Telegraph blogs?

    Why do you think Damian Thompson opted to bring you into Telegraph blogs? He must have known that you are not keen on the Israeli government.

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  16. You would have to ask him.

    The Israeli Government, in turn, is not keen on Catholics. For example, the ancient indigenous Catholics of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth.

    But that, like the fate of the ancient indigenous Catholics of Iraq, or putatively of Syria, matters not one jot to the self-appointed arbiter of Catholic orthodoxy in the British media, the universally acknowledged go to guy for the perspective of Catholic Tradition.

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  17. Even your patience is not inexhaustible, I see.

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  18. I'm no apologist for the Israeli government. I'm just trying to get my head around how & why Damian Thompson, Oliver Kamm & Vinnie McAviney are sufficiently bothered by yourself David that they are willing to conspire with one another to prevent your ideas from spreading.

    Surely the many influential people you claim as being on your side will be willing to recommend your work on their own initiative. As these influential people do this, public awareness of your writing will become widespread.

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  19. McAviney thinks of it all as some public school joke, plus he wants to get on in the Murdoch Empire and especially at The Times. Thompson I suppose has those reasons of his own which everyone really knows, but which he would not want said out loud. And Kamm is just evil.

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  20. Ed West mentions the Christians in the Middle East quite often when he blogs on Telegraph blogs. Damian Thompson doesn't seem to be in any hurry to be rid of him. Damian Thompson also promotes the pre-Vatican II Latin rite ( I can't call it the Latin Mass in case your friend Miner's Boy turns up & corrects me again). Mr. Thompson writes very approvingly of Pope B16. I cannot see why he would not be a Catholic in good standing.

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  21. Oh, although Ed would have to explain how his neoconservative views squared with his concern for the Christians of the Middle East (he never has yet), no one disputes any of that...

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  22. The most recent piece on Edwestonline is about Neoconservatism.

    It is my understanding that the Daily Telegraph has long been a pro-Israeli newspaper. Damian Thompson must surely work within those confines.

    Damian is a keen advocate of classical music & high standards in the liturgy. He has showcased the work of the New Liturgical Movement (I don't know if you are a fan of them). Ed West is one of the main young writers out there willing to confront the legacy of boomer liberalism.

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  23. Again, no one disputes any of that...

    Well, apart from Ed's critique of boomer liberalism. Only up to a point, as his foreign policy views demonstrate.

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  24. If no-one disputes any of that then what do we dispute about Damian Thompson?

    That is, apart from the fact that he works for a newspaper you were happy to write for & that you left long before the 2010 General Election. Your response to the actions of Liam Fox after he was made a cabinet minister therefore could have not caused you to be removed from Telegraph blogs. Something else happened David.

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  25. You never could cope with that sort, David. No wonder you gave up supply teaching in the North East and took up undergrad tutoring and writing book at Durham. You'll hate me for saying that, I don't even dare give my name.

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  26. What I'm saying is that the number of MPs who are friends of Israel is more or less public knowledge. I'm surprised that you would be asked to leave Telegraph blogs for pointing this out. Indeed, surely you would simply be told not to publish anything on the subject instead of being allowed to publish & then being removed.

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  27. Perhaps it is time you forgave Damian Thompson. He did his job. It cost you nothing as you have informed me that you weren't being paid to write for Telegraph blogs. Damian is an orthodox Catholic who is doing his best to promote high liturgical standards as well as Summorum Pontificum within the Catholic church of England & Wales.

    Have you prayed for reconciliation with this fellow bachelor Catholic journalist?

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  28. He has cost me far more than he I have any intention of discussing on here. And his orthodoxy is highly questionable, to say the least, on matters from economics, to sexual morality, to wars.

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  29. I thought that differing from the Magisterium on economics & politics is permissible, that one may do so & remain in good standing to receive communion. I though it was on "life" issues that no dissent is permitted.

    I wasn't aware that Damian Thompson dissents on matters of sexual morality. I have read people alleging that he is a homosexual, but I don't know if that is actually true. Even if it were true, merely being homosexual does not mean one is not Orthodox.

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  30. Self-serving nonsense put about by certain American interests but mysteriously unnoticed everywhere outside America and the most extremely Americanised right-wing circles elsewhere.

    The American Church, especially, is riven between "conservatives" who accept the Church's Teaching on bioethical and sexual matters while pretending not to know that the economic and foreign policies that they excoriate are in fact the Church's Teaching on justice and peace, and "liberals" who accept the Church's Teaching on justice and peace while excoriating that on most bioethical and most or all sexual matters.

    Neither is any more orthodox than the other, and both echo the Americanist heresy. Since there are no new heresies, that was a manifestation of the same error that has presented itself at Byzantium in the eleventh century, in England in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, in France and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, in German-speaking Europe and the Hapsburg lands in the eighteenth century, and among the Croats of Croatia and of Bosnia-Herzegovina from the 1990s onwards.

    The influence of each of these can still be felt, while there were and are several further examples. Both sides of neo-Americanism belong in that category.

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  31. So, how does Damian Thompson dissent from church teaching on bioethical & sexual matters?

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  32. "Damian Thompson also promotes the pre-Vatican II Latin rite ( I can't call it the Latin Mass in case your friend Miner's Boy turns up & corrects me again)."

    I was not 'correcting' anyone, I was simply making the point that the term 'Latin Mass' refers to any Mass celebrated in Latin. It does not refer to any particular edition of a Missal. if I may be a little pedantic you are also incorrect in referring to it as the pre-Vatican II rite because it did not end with Vatican II (1962-1965). Pope Benedict XVI has recently stated: "this Missal was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted." It is not a quiestion of correction, it is simply a question of getting things right. In fact, this form of Mass is becoming very popular with many young people around the world, with seminarians in particular.
    You are presuming that I am a friend of David Lindsay. Why? Is everyone who posts a comment a friend of David Lindsay? Hardly. I am only interested in information being factually correct. This is why I am not a journalist but merely a 'Miner's Boy'.

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  33. Thank you Miner's Boy. I always value your contributions.

    On the subject of friendship, let us pray that David Lindsay & Damian Thompson are reconciled.

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  34. Now, now, David. Don't forget your catechism. Love thy neighbour as thyself.

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