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Last updated on May 20th, 2017 at 07:22 am
“Controversial anti-Islam polemicist” Mark Steyn traces the fall from literary grace of “angry, Muslim-bashing firebrand” Martin Amis – who isn’t exactly at ease in his new role.
Tepperman is a moron, who would have belittled people who were worried about Hitler in 1930.
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2008 04 20 at 02:22 PM • permalink
Ah, the social perils of having to take a stand in a profession dominated by multi-culti neurotics, stalinoid poseurs, and cultural quislings! Steyn’s cheerful defiance is exhilarating; Amis’s somewhat self-conscious and embarrassed criticisms less so – but not at all to be despised, particularly in the hothouse of poisonous and man-eating flora that constitutes the postmodern literary world.
It’s strange when lifelong left-wingers like Hitchens, Amis, and Mamet finally turn the corner they never wanted to turn. They were indoctrinated into socialist dogma and cultural relativism in childhood. The orthodoxy is reinforced in university and in their lives afterward.
A previous generation of lefties was forced to reconsider in the wake of Stalin. The best of them did, the mediocrities didn’t.
The threat of Islamic fascism has caused a similar faultline to slip. It’s impossible for a serious thinker to buy into the Left’s dangerously obtuse fantasy. So again the annointed will become apostates, and their halos will be relocated to the heads of reliable mediocrities.
Amis raises a point I had not considered, and it is going to change the way I speak.
9/11.
3000 people murdered by vile 7th century barbarian scumbag believers in the paedophile ‘prophet’ mohammad: himself a lying, honourless, slave-taking, raping, child molesting, thieving parasite, an amoral monster and serial killer, a murdering sexual pervert and criminal who created a satanic cult now popular among the barbarians (at least, according to the Koran which I have read, and the bukhara hadiths, which I have read a lot of).
WHY do we use ‘9/11’? I thought it a sort of shorthand, and it may well be, but doesn’t the term dehumanise the event?
And that plays into both the neo-commie mantra and the barbarian theototalitarian one of their natural allies.
SO I think I’ll stop using that term. I think I’ll replace it with ‘the destruction of the Twin towers’ or ‘the fall of the Towers’.
Amis is right.
MarkL
canberra
“The man who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at forty he has no head.”
– Aristide BriandSome wake up, others dream on. Like our beloved rudderman.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2008 04 20 at 08:25 PM • permalink
I note that, just like that great British social commentator, Harry Hutton, Amis lived in South America for a couple of years. Hmmm.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2008 04 20 at 08:37 PM • permalink
For my part, I’m still stuck trying to figure out how being anti-jihad means one is “racist.”
Wouldn’t that mean that Martin Luther created an entire new race? That the Shahada (“there is no god but allah . . .”) is an unapologetic declaration of racism? That religious belief is immutable?
Well, no. What it means is that the left sees no need to respond to the many and obvious evils of non-liberal thought with rational labels or with token attempts at understanding and argument. It’s far easier to simply apply the most pejorative label one can think of to any deviation from correct thought.
One should not be forced to hear offensive ideas, and the simplest way to chase those offensive ideas away is to claim that their proponents are evil, or racist, or fascist.
There is so much to loathe in the way the interview is spun to make him look bad, don’t know where to start with all these sly digs..how about this:
“Former disc jockey Mark Steyn”
so
“Former train driver John Curtin”
“Former pool digger Clint Eastwood”
“Former clerk Einstein”
“Former carpenter Jesus”Imagine how much more respect these guys would’ve had if not for their pleb backgrounds…
Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 04 20 at 09:55 PM • permalink
#12 Well said. Steyn makes similar comment in the article:
“‘Racist,’ of course, no longer has anything very much to do with skin colour. It merely means you have raised a topic that discombobulates the scrupulously non-judgmental progressive sensibility. I wonder if one reason we seem so bizarrely fixated on ‘climate change’ and the flora and fauna is because it’s one of the few subjects we can talk about without having any dissenting view greeted by cries of ‘Racist!’ For the moment.”
#8 Mark L: I am with you and will not use “9/11” again. Your suggestions will serve well for starters. However, we need something that conveys more of the terror that was inflicted on the hundreds of humans in the four airliners, and on the thousands of humans in the destroyed buildings. “Massacres” is suggested as the main noun. How about some apt descriptors?
Listen to null]this BBC interview with Martin Amis[/url], not only for his clear arguments but for the left-wing bias of the interviewer trying to catch him out. It last about half an hour.
Posted by Angela Bell on 2008 04 20 at 11:20 PM • permalink
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/924_interview_archiv/page2.shtml
Posted by Angela Bell on 2008 04 20 at 11:22 PM • permalink
Well I clicked on the “Free Mark Steyn” button, but I didn’t get one.
Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 04 20 at 11:28 PM • permalink
#23 supporting middle-eastern democracies (Israel, now also Iraq) that’s racist too.
believing in nutcase anti-American conspiracy theories; or
anti-Jewish conspiracy theories (including those about Israel); or
that the myriad problems of the third world are all the fault of America, Britain and France; or
other anti-Western conspiracy theories,
that’s all totally fine.Posted by daddy dave on 2008 04 21 at 06:38 AM • permalink
#17 Yes, I saw that on the news tonight, with dear old dad being fed his lines about how it was all a set up, and police corruption.
What a pack of tossers.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2008 04 21 at 07:39 AM • permalink
Egads, if ever an article needed a Fisking.
Tepperman is so tonedeaf that this actually makes sense to him:
He describes 9/11 and its aftermath as a “moral crash” and is quick to chastise the West for its excesses in response (including “extraordinary rendition … Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib … two wars, and tens of thousands of dead bodies.”) He criticizes all religion as violent and reactionary.
But as time, and the book, progresses, Amis abandons this evenhandedness—and soon sense itself, as though to prove his point that “terrorism undermines morality.
So, Liberal navelgazing – even handed.Stating that “terrorism undermines morality” – Islamophobic racism of the worst sort.
Posted by CrankyNeocon on 2008 04 21 at 08:15 AM • permalink
3000 people murdered by vile 7th century barbarian scumbag believers in the paedophile ‘prophet’ mohammad: himself a lying, honourless, slave-taking, raping, child molesting, thieving parasite, an amoral monster and serial killer, a murdering sexual pervert and criminal who created a satanic cult now popular among the barbarians (at least, according to the Koran which I have read, and the bukhara hadiths, which I have read a lot of).
MarkL! Didn’t Karl appoint you as the VRWC outreach liason with the Islamic community? I don’t think you’re getting into the spirit of it yet.
Posted by wronwright on 2008 04 21 at 08:22 AM • permalink
For a while I tried to refer to the attack on the Twin Towers as “The Atrocity”, there being no other that merited the capital letters. That didn’t catch on (no surprise) so I call it 9/11.
As for our reaction being excessive, it was just the opposite. We made a cool consideration of who had done the deed, requested their extradition from those hiding them and, when that was arrogantly refused, proceeded to take out the refusers with the minimum of collateral damage to civilians. We have treated our prisoners in exemplary fashion, considering that almost all of them could legally be shot out of hand under international law for being illegal combatants. In Iraq we have attempted to address the real “root causes” of the terrorism, which lie in the dysfunctional Arab/Muslim political culture.
Now we could have done it differently. Arabs are always whining that their rage justifies some vicious atrocity that they commit. Well, my rage that day, and probably that of 95% of Americans, would have justified Bush saying this on 9/12:
“All you Muslims, y’all listen up. Those three bombs that nuked Kandahar, Tikrit and Tripoli a few minutes ago at noon were warning shots. Every time an American is killed or injured by a Muslim terrorist anywhere in the world we are gonna nuke another one of your cities. When we get done with the cities we’ll start on the large villages. Now y’all know who these terrorist swine are, y’all know where they live, y’all have been supporting them for years, and y’all ain’t hampered by notions like due process and rule of law. So y’all are gonna go out and kill every one of these swine ans send us their heads. Remember, if any of them kill any of us, you get nuked. Don’t think we didn’t notice all you bastards dancing in the streets over the murder of thousands of Americans. Y’all can take any complaints and stuff them hard where the sun don’t shine. Be sure to send us the heads. We want to build a memorial to the people your buddies murdered, and we think a pyramid of skulls would make a nice touch. Condi tells me there’s historical precedent.”
But we reacted not like Arabs but like mature, reasonable adults. Maybe next time they won’t be so lucky.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2008 04 22 at 10:13 PM • permalink
My socialist sister in the UK looked a little askance, last year, during my visit, over an Indian dinner, at the local restaurant, (Oh, come on Wimpy, get to the point) when I even mentioned Martin Amis!!
It’s amazing how, in all ideologies and religions, the most venom is reserved for the apostate.