I had a lovely lunch this week with a couple of friends. The male of the couple has been mentioned so often now he needs a nickname like the Quarterback and the Navigator. Let’s call him Hercules1
He and I had a quick drink before lunch. He warned me to stay off the subject of Gaza because his lady friend is pro-Palestine. He supports Israel, but has made his point and got nowhere so now he’s keeping the peace.
I am a digital native, but Hercules and his lady friend are not even digital immigrants. He won’t look at Facebook to view an amusing video, let alone wade into the political morass of X. The only blog he reads is this one and only because I write it. He won’t comment here. He only responds directly to what I write – over beer or in text messages.
This is actually a useful control for me. His information is all mediated by the MSM. His chosen data wells are The Times and BBC News. To give him credit, he applies critical thinking and is aware of (and resists) their biases. This is how the world was before social media. Despite his intelligence and – I’d go so far as to say – occasional wisdom, he can’t be swayed by what he’s never read, heard or seen.
Someone should write a book on how history might have turned out if the general public back then had access to social media. Would Hitler or Stalin have had (in their terms) such tremendous success if ordinary Germans and Russians could read on x.com about the camps and gulags? For that matter could the Allies have held it together without unchallenged “Uncle Joe” propaganda in 1940s cinema newsreels?
When the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan, my driver in Moscow – who’d fought in the Red Army there – laughed and said;
We could do anything to them. Anything at all. And we still couldn’t beat them. The West’s soldiers have no chance with their press on their shoulders and their mothers watching on TV.
Future historians may ask how first Gaza and then, God help us, some future re-run of the Battle of Vienna, would have turned out if the MSM had been our only well of information.
Hercules was critical of my Jimmy Kimmel post. Perhaps he has a point?
I read your Jimmy Kimmel column … and have been thinking about it … obviously I agree about the sadness of Charlie Kirk’s death … and about the smug hypocrisy and disgusting / dangerous awfulness of Kimmel and much of the Left. However, otherwise I wasn’t at all comfortable with much of what you wrote.
For me its polemical tone is too much like an Old Testament prophet justifying the smiting of some other tribe … by decrying their absolute evil.
You seem to be turning the Left’s identity politics back against them, i.e. categorising and judging everyone’s morality solely by their politics…
In particular you seem to suggest that simply by being on the Left they are all are guilty of killing Charlie Kirk, as if it’s “the Left” who killed him rather than … one sad deluded individual. That’s just weird. Are all Muslims worldwide, or even just in Gaza, equally guilty for the 7th October incursion and massacre?
I bridle, to be honest, at being held to such a standard when everyone of my political persuasion has been defamed and (where they could) silenced by the Left for so long. No Old Testament prophet was ever so tribal as the Western Left has been for years. But of course Hercules has never been on social media and those cowards don’t call you “far right” to your face in the pub.
I accept that to the precise extent my Kimmel post contradicts my Dank Right post, it’s wrong. I don’t think it does but Hercules went on to mention Dr. Martin Luther King (as I did in the latter) by way of rebuke. King is a useful example. He was of the Left. He was also an immoral hypocrite. Still I accept gladly that his “content of character” test is no less valid because he didn’t come well out of it himself.
War is no time, however, to seek out the good in the enemy. Israel is fighting for the survival not just of its state but of all its people. To attempt to find good Gazans amid the Hamas thugs is – during a war – bourgeois twaddle. The time for reconciliation is when the war is won.
George Orwell’s famous quote that;
“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
is apparently an “improved” version of his actual comment about wartime pacifists;
“Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.”
I mentioned that and suggested those of us sheltering behind “rough men” shouldn’t be too harsh on them for the ways they psych themselves up to do what we ask of them. I added;
The ones in Gaza are at least as guilty as the Germans of Dresden or the Japanese of Hiroshima. Maybe more than the Japanese who didn’t vote for their Emperor as the Germans did for Hitler and the “Palestinians” for Hamas. Maybe more than the Germans too. There were some good Germans helping Jews escape the Shoah but not one Gazan has helped a hostage.
In fact, the IDF is much more squeamish about innocent casualties than any army in history. They do their best to avoid killing civilians – even placing their own troops in more jeopardy by giving Gazans advance notice of operations. I would not do that if I led them.
Meanwhile the elected rulers of Gaza, Hamas (who would rule the West Bank too if Abbas allowed long-overdue elections) deliberately place civilians in harm’s way to elicit sympathy from useful idiots. They put journalists’ tabards and doctors’ white coats on their own soldiers and parade children with degenerative diseases as if they were starved by IDF action.
If you consume only mainstream media, you know nothing of this. The New York Times front page Netanyahu mentions has been hugely successful agitprop for Hamas.
Hercules was horrified when I told him that, on reflection, I felt uneasy to have agreed not to discuss Gaza over lunch. In his view it was just good manners. Yet more and more I am asking myself “What would Charlie do?” Charlie was polite. He listened to other points of view. But he did not back away from truth. He braved a bullet that seems inevitable in retrospect. What kind of coward won’t brave even the metaphorical bullets of a discomfited friend?
I grew up among those rough men who fight. I’m more concerned about their success in time of war than the nice feelings of bourgeois friends. Perhaps that makes me rough too? Many of the public school sorts I worked alongside for decades often seemed to think so.
From friendship, I won’t go against Hercules’ wishes on this point in future. Still, I worry our civilisation is going to die of kindness, tolerance and politeness.
Our opponents will never STFU to spare us offence. They won’t police their attitudes even if that leads to murder. Nor will they stifle their celebrations when we die.
We have to be better than that, yes, but we can’t be too fastidious either. We need less polite reticence and more Charlie-Kirking.
- He’s an Aston Villa man. Hercules is the male of their two lion mascots. ↩︎
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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