Andrew O’Hagan On The RNC

Andrew O’Hagan has a crack­ing report from the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion in the cur­rent issue of the London Review of Books.

I found the piece via Phil Gyford, who pulls out the fol­low­ing exchange:

‘The Mus­lims just hate us for our love of freedom,’ said a woman from Iowa wear­ing a cloth ele­phant on her head. ‘They don’t have any cul­ture and they hate us for having a great one. And they hate the Bible.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘The Iraqis had a cul­ture for thou­sands of years before Jesus was born.’

‘What you saying?’

‘I’m saying Mus­lims were build­ing tem­ples when New York was a swamp.’

‘You sup­port the Iraqis?’

‘No.’

‘You sup­port the killing of inno­cent people going to work? People who have to jump out of windows?’

‘You aren’t lis­ten­ing to me.’

‘No, buddy. You ain’t lis­ten­ing. These people you sup­port are trying to kill our chil­dren in their beds. Where you from anyway, the New York Times?’

Of course, this isn’t some Amer­i­can malaise. A friend told me recently about an over­heard con­ver­sa­tion about the Beslan seige, with one woman saying with utter cer­tainty to another that the unfold­ing dis­as­ter was the fault of ‘terrorist Pakis’ and that the siege was taking place in Bris­tol.

Call me naive, but it never ceases to amaze me that people will make sig­nif­i­cant deci­sions on the basis of, well, bizarre non­sense - what the hell does that convention-​goer mean by ‘no culture’? - and the untruths made true by simple, unre­lent­ing rep­e­ti­tion in cer­tain quar­ters of the news media.

Worse still, as O’Hagan found, the think­ing tra­di­tions of the Left are some­thing of a straight­jacket when the oppos­ing side com­pletely eschew argu­ment and dis­cus­sion, skirt over grey areas, and base their deci­sions on blind faith. Add to that the fact that the right has, in effect, total con­trol of the pop­u­lar media in the US and the UK, and the sit­u­a­tion looks even more hopeless.

What to do? The ghost of my ten-​year-​old Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mu­nist self prob­a­bly has a few unpalat­able sug­ges­tions on how best to pro­ceed, but today I’m afraid I can only quote my infa­mous uncle and sug­gest that, well, we’re all fucked.

On that cheery note, I’m off to Zagreb. See you in a week, assum­ing the sky doesn’t fall on our heads in the interim.

Posted at 1pm on 21/09/04 by Jack Mottram to the politics category.
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Tags: journalism, politics