Sunday, May 14, 2006
GOONS AND THEIR FRIENDS
Ian Buruma on the left’s love of tyrants:
One of the most vexing things for artists and intellectuals who live under the compulsion to applaud dictators is the spectacle of colleagues from more open societies applauding of their own free will. It adds a peculiarly nasty insult to injury.
Stalin was applauded by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Mao was visited by a constant stream of worshippers from the West, some of whose names can still produce winces of disgust in China. Castro has basked for years in the adulation of such literary stars as Jose Saramago and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Even Pol Pot found favour among several well-known journalists and academics.
Last year a number of journalists, writers and showbiz figures, including Harold Pinter, Nadine Gordimer, Harry Belafonte and Tariq Ali, signed a letter claiming that in Cuba “there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959 ...”
Latest goon fawned over by the anti-US left: Hugo Chavez, who at least holds the distinction of being elected. More from Buruma:
The danger of Chavism is not a revival of communism, even though Castro is among its main boosters. Nor should anti-Americanism be our main concern. The US can take care of itself. What needs to be resisted, not just in Latin America, is the new form of populist authoritarianism.
Nice phrase, that. Nice description, too, of so many leftoid stances.
UPDATE. Chavez’s former mistess: “At the rate he’s going, his end can only be violent”.
UPDATE II. Young Chavezniks may be cured by meeting their non-charismatic idol. The UK Telegraph’s Colin Freeman reports from a Vienna anti-globo summit:
Revolutionary fervour, [one activist] said, would wane if the pair waffled on too long. “I heard that when people listened to Chavez’s speeches at the main summit last week, they were quite enthusiastic when he started, but not quite so much by the time he ended."
And there was no escaping a hefty dose of pamphlets bearing titles such as “The evils of the Anglo-American cultural hegemonic model”. If the organisers had cut their paper use by a third, it would have saved a rainforest or two.