“Dangerous cult” – Jonathan Cook attacks George Monbiot October 3, 2011

Counterpunch recently published a piece called: ‘The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian‘. With a title like that, you might think it was written by a rightwing crank. “Cult”, of course, denotes group-allegiance to a belief; but the Guardian’s writers/editors have pretty diverse views – not cult-like at all. The article also refers to the Guardian as “the left’s thought police”. What are these strange notions doing in Counterpunch?

Jonathan Cook, the article’s author, is no rightwing nut – so what examples does he provide to support his claims? He cites a handful of Guardian pieces that he objects to for various reasons, but spends most time* on a George Monbiot column (which happens to criticise a book by Edward Herman and David Peterson).

Monbiot, of course, isn’t “voice of the Guardian”. Nor is he its chief policeman or cult leader. He’s one writer among many. The Guardian has an editorial position and “structural” constraints, but those aren’t what Cook is arguing against when he goes into the details of his disagreement with Monbiot. (Cook wrote, for example: “Monbiot[‘s] treatment of Herman and Peterson’s work was so slipshod and cavalier it is hard to believe that he was the one analysing their books.”)

The handful of examples provided by Cook prove next-to-nothing about “The Guardian” in general (a newspaper which publishes thousands of articles by hundreds of writers), so, in order to make his article seem coherent, Cook has to pull a killer rabbit out of his rhetorical hat. What he conjures up is identity politics.

Monbiot is thus portrayed by Cook not just in terms of disagreements on an issue, but as someone aligned with the “wrong” side. Cook seems to identify himself with the “true” dissident left – Chomsky, Herman, Pilger, etc. That’s the “right” side. Notice how Cook characterises Monbiot’s behaviour towards Pilger and Chomsky (my bold emphasis):

“Monbiot also laid into journalist John Pilger for endorsing the book.”

“Monbiot also ensnared Chomsky in his criticism, castigating him for writing a foreword to one of the books.”

Hundreds of Counterpunch readers will get the idea that Monbiot “laid into”, “ensnared” and “castigated” their political heroes. Now compare what Monbiot actually wrote:

‘But here’s where it gets really weird. The cover carries the following endorsement by John Pilger [Pilger’s blurb]. The foreword was written by Noam Chomsky. He doesn’t mention the specific claims the book makes, but the fact that he wrote it surely looks like an endorsement of the contents.’

That’s all Monbiot has to say about Pilger and Chomsky. Merely a statement of fact: that they endorsed Herman and Peterson’s book, plus a subjective judgment about this being “weird” (because the book promotes “genocide denial”, Monbiot argues).

Cook claims that Monbiot was interested in “creating an intellectual no-go zone from which critical thinkers and researchers were barred – a sacred genocide”. But, far from creating a “no-go zone”, the publication of Monbiot’s article stimulated a large amount of open debate (on a topic which had previously been of interest mostly to specialists in the field).

It should also be noted that prior to Monbiot’s article, Herman and Peterson’s book had been reviewed unfavourably by an internationally recognised authority on genocide and genocide prevention, Professor Gerald Caplan. Herman and Peterson’s response to this critical review was to label Professor Caplan a “genocide denier” and “genocide facilitator” – quite gratuitously and without justification, in an odd tit-for-tat outburst. Jonathan Cook says nothing about this revealing context.

Jonathan Cook replies to me

I emailed Jonathan Cook (on 29/9/11). To keep it brief I asked him one thing only – to justify his “laid into” wording. Cook’s first email ignored my question and instead asked me why Monbiot would use the word “weird”. When I pressed him further, he replied that he would take my point seriously only if I “offered some indication” that I shared his concerns over what he described as Monbiot’s act of “real intellectual violence” (ie Monbiot’s claim of “genocide denial” with regard to Herman and Peterson).

After my third attempt to get Cook to answer the question, he provided an answer of sorts, mostly bad-faith presumptions about George Monbiot. Monbiot was “being sly” in using the word “weird”, Cook claimed; Monbiot was “insinuating” that Pilger had endorsed genocide denial; Monbiot “didn’t say it forthrightly” because he didn’t want to “alienate Pilger’s fans”. (Emails received from Jonathan Cook, 29/9/11).

* Bizarrely, after this blog piece was published, Cook complained to me by email that I was wrong to say that he spent “most time” on the Monbiot column. I replied with a word-count showing that he did indeed spend most time on the Monbiot section (by a long way). He replied that his section on Monbiot includes a digression about Chomsky, which, when subtracted, leaves the Monbiot section with a slightly lower word-count than the Assange section!

John Pilger’s “leaked” emails August 10, 2011

[Updated, Feb 2012 – Pilger has
again attacked Monbiot: see below]

I presume John Pilger allowed these email excerpts to be published. I like to think he originally intended them to be private, because slagging off people like George Monbiot – with non-specific (and thus unanswerable) assertions – achieves nothing useful in the public domain.

Here’s what Pilger’s (widely circulated) email is quoted as saying:

‘Chef Monbiot is a curiously sad figure. All those years of noble green crusading now dashed by his Damascene conversion to nuclear power’s poisonous devastations and his demonstrable need for establishment recognition – a recognition which, ironically, he already enjoyed.’ (Email from Pilger, 29/6/2011)

George Monbiot’s recent articles on nuclear power have sparked off a useful debate, with some reasonable challenges – but also with many knee-jerk misrepresentations of what he has written. Pilger’s assertion (that Monbiot had a “Damascene conversion to nuclear power’s poisonous devastations”) is clearly among the gratuitous misrepresentations.

The second part of Pilger’s remark – that Monbiot has a “demonstrable need for establishment recognition” – is the kind of unpleasant personal attack which usually indicates something other than a rational case. Pilger states that Monbiot’s “need” is “demonstrable” – but no demonstration is provided by Pilger.

Update (Feb 2, 2012)

I note that Pilger has once again attacked Monbiot (in another “leaked” email):

‘Since George Monbiot completed his Damascene conversion and decided the likes of Fukushima were good for the planet, and that smearing those who challenged other orthodoxies might be fun, he has barely drawn breath.’ (Pilger, email 24/12/2012)

This is, as noted above, a gross misrepresentation of what Monbiot wrote about Fukushima. Pilger goes on (in the same email) to attack Monbiot for not criticising the Guardian for having “supported and apologised for” the slaughter in Iraq:

‘Not a word reminds us of how the greatest, wanton slaughter of the new century – in Iraq – was so often subtly (and not so subtly) supported and apologised for in the pages of his own newspaper.’ (Pilger, email 24/12/2012)

This is remarkably hypocritical of Pilger, who, in a previous article, had praised the Guardian (along with the Mirror and Independent) for its Iraq coverage. Furthermore, pretty much all of what Pilger accuses Monbiot of omitting (over Iraq, including criticism of the Guardian/Observer, Andrew Gilligan’s claims etc) was covered by Monbiot back in 2004, in a Guardian article titled The Lies of the Press.

Note that both emails from Pilger were solicited (and “leaked” – presumably with Pilger’s permission) by a website called Medialens. For a decade, the editors of Medialens have waged what looks like a smear campaign against Monbiot. They claim that it’s “rational analysis”, but it looks more like a personal grudge. Back in 2002, Monbiot had written that Medialens were “narrow”, “not analytical, but ideological”. More recently, he described how Medialens launches an attack on him “every few months”. (I think Monbiot is being charitable here. Having read Medialens’s website and discussion forum for years, I’d estimate that on average they launch an attack on Monbiot every few weeks).

Fu Manchu now biggest threat? May 3, 2011

With the confirmed death of evil genius, Osama bin Laden, it seems that the biggest threat now facing the West is Dr Fu Manchu. This notorious master criminal has a PhD, making him more credible than bin Laden.

Meanwhile, the ‘radical’ blogosphere seems to be reacting to the corporate media’s obession with bin Laden… by obsessing over media coverage of bin Laden. The evil genius apparently knew how to make himself the focus of global attention, which is probably what real “power” boils down to.

“I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people – and the West in general – into an unbearable hell and a choking life.” – Osama bin Laden, CNN, February 5, 2002

Turning to Chernobyl

Which evil criminal (or systemic state/corporate abstraction) was responsible for the “million” deaths “caused” by the Chernobyl disaster (eg as a result of alcohol poisoning, etc, which may or may not have been caused, presumably indirectly, by the radiation from Chernobyl)? Hmm – approximately one million deaths alleged in a supposedly “prestigious” “scientific” report, and a messenger (George Monbiot) who gets attacked for revealing that this “prestigious” report has serious flaws, and isn’t even peer-reviewed. Throw in the inadequacies of epidemiology* to quantify mortality resulting from the disaster – and I get a major attack of déjà vu.

* “Greenpeace notes, ‘It is widely acknowledged that neither the available data nor current epidemiological methodology allows holistic and robust estimations of the death toll caused by the Chernobyl accident’. This is an important point. During my 40 year career in radiation protection I have observed fierce arguments (mainly related to differences of opinion on the magnitude of radiation risks) which have turned out in the fullness of time to be merely reflections of the large uncertainties inherent in the data.” (Monty Charles, review of Yablokov report, in Radiation Protection Dosimetry)