What has galvanised the digital denunciation of Murray and his corpus? Nelson does not say, apart from whingeing about remarks that have been "heated up" and "selectively edited to maliciously misrepresent him". Indeed, he goes out of his way to not talk about the material in question because "to repeat such smears is to spread them". Thankfully, we don't have to take Nelson's word for it, the recording is available. In one interview from last November, Murray accuses (then) Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf of wanting to import extreme religious sectarianism to Scotland, which would be the inevitable consequence of providing a safe haven for Palestinians. He calls Yousaf the "First Minister for Gaza" and says he "infiltrated our system", implying something improper about his participation in Scottish politics. This piece resurfaced after his remarks about the far right's racist rioting got wide circulation. Then Murray said,
If the army will not be sent in then the public will have to sort this out themselves and it'll be very brutal. I don't want them to live here. I don't want them here. They came under false pretences.Murray isn't saying that the army should be sent in to sort out the rioters. He's arguing that they be directed against the victims of the fascist mobs - the Muslims who came out to defend their community and, by extension, the asylum seekers that were firebombed in Tamworth and Rotherham. This cannot be interpreted as anything other than inciting racial hatred. And Nelson knows this, which why he hasn't repeated any of Murray's remarks.
As we know, Murray has a long history of marketing himself as a far right intellectual. Since the 7th October attack by Hamas, he has carved out a niche for being Israel's loudest cheerleader in their massacre of the Palestinians. There is no atrocity he won't "contextualise" and justify. Though the mask did slip back in November when, in the pages of the Jewish Chronicle no less, he asked his readers to spare a thought for the consciences of SS officers who directed the gunning down of Jews on the Eastern front. All to peddle his crank obsessive hatred against Muslims in general, and Palestinians in particular. By any reasonable definition, Murray is trash.
The Spectator's defence of their star columnist says a great deal about them. While it affects a broad church sensibility, and even occasionally publishes left wingers, hard right economics and hard right social conservatism is its comfort zone. Murray fits in commercially because "respectable" racism sells, and he fits the (doomed) class project of the most reactionary sections of British capital to turn back the tide of social liberalism. But defending Murray reveals a certain weakness on the right. He's been on the scene for nearly 20 years but, effectively, there is no one else. Yes, there are the gobshite columnists aplenty but he has the right's pesudo-intellectual space to himself. Good for getting writing and speaking gigs, but where their collective class project is concerned? Roger Scruton's departure to the hereafter hasn't brought forth a replacement, and so - effectively - Murray is the last "high functioning" right wing brain standing. And that's an immediate problem for the Speccie, because if Murray's racist drivel gets him exiled from polite society, where's the magazine going to get a new celebrity writer from? Matthew Goodwin doesn't cut the mustard because of his evident stupidity, and Rod Liddle is too wedded to old Labour economics to fit the hole. Murray is a protect-at-all-costs asset for the unhinged wing of the British right not because he's the best they've got, he's all they've got.
6 comments:
"Roger Scruton's departure to the hereafter hasn't brought forth a replacement, and so - effectively - Murray is the last "high functioning" right wing brain standing."
Indeed. Scruton was an tweed-wearing, anti-Thatcher, Tory traditionalist. I always enjoyed reading his stuff even though I disagreed with most of it. His enemy were the post-68 'new left', of which there was plenty of scope for critique.
I particularly enjoyed his debates with Terry Eagleton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm_rmS2-x7U
If this guy was an online cheerleader for the racist rioters, as heavily implied by that quote, will we see him face "the full force of the law" which has been promised to all the lesser-connected nobodies who can have such a charge pinned upon them?
Or will the connections presumably afforded to him by being a high profile Israel toady prove to be quite sufficient to deflect the force of the law somewhere else?
I know which way I'd bet.
Murray’s modus operandi is simple, he pokes the more regressive and hypocritical beliefs common amongst Muslims in the West to produce reactionary outrage. Could be the undeniable chauvinism of the Koran (it’s heresy to deny it’s there), could be misogyny from pre-Islamic cultural practices deceitfully glossed as religious requirement, or it could be relative indifference to religious violence from within, in particular the intercine violence common since early imperial expansion out of Arabia. Calling some of this out is taboo, whilst some of it is just insensitive or embarrassing e.g. Islamists struggle with Islamic Imperialism being a bit of a joke these past few centuries. As for Non-Muslim attitudes to Murray’s attacks on reactionary beliefs, I suspect the majority hold same sort of indifference Muslims hold to internecine conflict, some might, a little patronisingly, think it’s impolite because they can’t handle criticism in same way other groups can. It’s only the useful idiots who will chuck opposition to reactionary positions out in a morally relativistic rush to defend those who don't know any better. Murray probably is a crank, but he should be able to criticise short of inciting actual violence (cultural inability to handle criticism is not a justification). Most of the Muslim communities in the West are here because the West provides these very freedoms.
Kamo
The majority of Muslims living in 'Western' nations are here for the same reason that most other people are: they were born there, and circumstance prevents them from moving elsewhere.
@ David Parry
Your point is disingenuous, I wrote 'Muslim communities' not 'Muslims'. The majority of Muslims living in Western nations may have been born in those nations, which is not surprising given birth rates are typically higher than indigenous populations (something that correlates with poverty levels). Those communities developed from migration after the second world war, and they didn't uproot and travel thousands of miles because they aspired to the disbenefits of living in societies held back by pre-modern cultural conventions. Revealed preferences do not show mass migration towards theocracies and pre-modern tribal or closed societies.
So Kamo, that old chestnut - you don't see mass migration to Pakistan or Iran or Afghanistan or Algeria or Saudi. Why is that? Because people don't really want to live in "societies held back by pre-modern conventions" apparently. I can think of other reasons - for example, Afghanistan being a war zone for the last few decades, or Iran being under severe sanctions, or Algeria having a bloody civil war, or Pakistan being under military misrule with internal ethnic conflict and a bubbling border war with two neighbours. But in the case of Saudi, for example, lots of people do migrate there, but they only let in those who have something they want. Either skills, or a preparedness to do low paid hard jobs or be quasi slaves. Which, when you think about it, is not that dissimilar from our approach. Of course, we had also colonised their countries and exploited most of their resources and skills for a century or two. Which partly explains why they are pre-modern (as you put it so sensitively).
"Developed from migration" is sort of putting the cart before the horse. Migration was a result of the lack of development, which was a result of colonisation and exploitation, by...us. Returning migrants bring skills and connections and wealth, but ultimately the flow of wealth is still largely from those premodernists to us.
People follow the money. They look for prosperity and security. Until now, we have had a lot more of that than where they come from - hence the flow this way. Religion, race, culture, all that is incidental if you can't get by, or, as in some case you are being persecuted or starved. Escape somewhere safe, ideally where you know someone. It's as simple as that.
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