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October 30, 2002
David
Frum's Guide to Mythology
You've
got to love being right wing in Britain – why here it verges
on being a semi-respectable position. We don't have a New York
Times to make us feel emotionally insecure about our belief
system, and indeed, unlike both America and Canada for example,
we even have a national Conservative party. All in all, despite
everything, we're doing quite well: perhaps that's why there's no
real call for shrillness in Tory discourse. Which, naturally, made
the irruption of Mr David Frum into The Daily Telegraph a
distinctive event. For there he was, putting the world to rights,
demolishing four 'myths' we, apparently, have latterly been foolish
enough to hold about the US, and confirming one 'truth' (or rather,
asserting one fiction he'd very much like to be true). I don't know
why Americans put up so pliantly with being told to send their boys
off to fight in Canada's wars, but I'm drawing a line in the sand:
this far Canuck warmongers and no further! It's time to take the
war to them.
As
the Telegraph didn't tell us – and nor did he for that matter
– Mr Frum's potted biography at the end of his five articles was
unduly modest: 'David Frum was President Bush's speechwriter in
the first year of his administration. He is now a resident fellow
at the American Enterprise Institute and is writing a book about
the Bush presidency' which is true enough as far as it goes. Also
true is the fact that he
left under a bit of a cloud when
his wife, the writer Danielle Crittenden, boasted about his authorship
of that felicitous little phrase, the axis of evil. You'll
remember that, that's the thing that includes North Korea, because
then it might have had nuclear weapons, and Iraq-which-we-must-fight-because-it-already-does,
and then those crazy red goons went and admitted that they do in
fact have them, but we don't need to invade them just yet, and oh,
my head begins to hurt. Anyway, maybe he was always planning
to go, that doesn't really matter, the point is, he's got form
he ought to be proud of. The thing this scion of the Canadian haute-bourgeoisie
(his father-in-law is Peter Worthington, that rare bird, a right
wing hack from the great Dominion not yet inflicted on British and
American readers by Conrad Black) evidently isn't proud of is that
whole 'being Canadian' thing, for he excessively shy of. So much
so that in his articles written for a right wing British audience
you could have been forgiven for thinking that that this was an
American writing, you know, all that, we, our stuff.
A strange embarrassment which I admit I cannot account for, but
we must move on.
This
series kicked off with a pleasant enough conceit, which had British
schoolgirls recognising Mr Frum and accusing him of being part of
'the Jewish lobby'. I leave it to your own inventive imaginations
which of these unlikely happenings is the most implausible, but
let's pick up on Mr Frum's social dissection of the teenage girls.
They were wearing 'Islamic headdress', which has a pleasingly old-fashioned
ring to it - one could almost imagine a pro-consular Frum examining
the native squaws of Manitoba and dispatching picture perfect sketches
of their fanciful apparel back to the Natural History museum in
Kensington. Helpfully these two stock characters, with their ludicrous,
inherently implausible and grossly offensive juvenilia got Mr Frum
going. For you see, although the idea of a Jewish lobby is objectionable
pants (and of course it is, don't make me have to come over
there web-based emailers), there is, what would you know, a British
press conspiracy devoted to promoting false notions of US fallibility.
The epistemological implications of this escape Mr Frum but allow
me to present them for you: the reason why notions of 'Jewish conspiracies'
are vile nonsense is surely obvious to us all. It is exactly because
of the unfeasibility of what would have to underlie them that we
really ought, all of us, to appreciate that the idea that, for instance,
concerted media attacks on America are nothing other than the random
effusions of a free press. Unfortunately, like the rest of the neo-con
magisterium, Mr Frum can't take criticism.
Moving
on from convenient school girls Mr Frum, in his campaign to rebut
myths, finds . . . a boozy left wing hack. Aren't they all? they
certainly are in most novels and television programmes. This helpful
fellow opines for Mr Frum's benefit that all criticism of America
is actually motivated by envy. So you there are. And on and on he
goes, swishing away at the notion of a 'Jewish lobby' and its alleged
power. Mind you, there's a thing I have never understood: very unfairly
– in fact it's downright dirty, falsely exploiting as it does
some seriously dark matter – a standard neo-con refrain is
that, 'to criticise Israel is to criticise the Jews, ergo the critic
is an anti-Semite'. Yet, if instead of silliness like a 'Jewish
lobby' we talked about the 'Israeli lobby', which there undoubtedly
is, and which people from all denominations and none are proud to
proclaim themselves members of (Mr Frum, for one, does) why the
idea that Israel must always be rendered as Jewish, hence the false
syllogism employed above, but it doesn't work the other way round?
I mean, my friends looking forward to the rapture aren't, as far
as I can tell, really the sort of friends I would want come the,
uh, Coming were I Jewish, but let's, uh, dispense with that line
of reasoning too.
What,
invariably, is the problem with people like David Frum, when they
embark on the entirely estimable business of challenging such anti-Semitism
as there is, is that they so often, so quickly, so venomously
resort to exactly the same category-error of smear and lie anti-Semites
do. Take this disagreeable little passage:
Nor
is the political Left immune to older prejudices: a Labour minister
complained to me about the Israelis 'rampaging through the Holy
Land at Easter' – an unconscious hint that, while dechristianised
Britain may have lost its faith that Christ ever lived, it has not
quite forgotten who killed Him.
Can
you do anything other than shudder for the sake of Mr Frum's soul
when you read stuff like that? From finding shooting at Christ's
birthplace marginally offputting to incipient shouts of 'Christ
killers'? This isn't journalism, it's well paid hysteria.
It's
useless to point out that lie number one is peddled during the course
of this
article as well: that Israel is a democracy. You and me both
know that to be a democracy there's only one simple test you need
to pass: you let all the people living inside the borders you claim
as your own to vote in your elections. The thing of interest about
the Frumian schema served up to poor, suffering Telegraph
readers is that he retails the line that, 'supporting Israel is
a cause for conservatives and Republicans (good),
and opposing [sic] Israel is the cause of liberals
and Democrats (bad)'. Because, presumably, conservatives
and Republicans, unlike the evil liberals and Democrats, always
and everywhere support freedom abroad and fight tyranny. That
must be it, that really must account for the party divide on this
issue, seriously, it's what David Frum says.
If
I had to single out the lousiest argument advanced by Mr Frum over
the course of many thousands of words, it's this
one, written of Saudi's friends in, well, in the military-industrial
complex in the US:
As
Saudi Arabia's veteran ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, told
the Washington Post in a report this February: 'If the reputation
. . . builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave
office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who
are just coming into office'.
It
was a shrewd assessment, and, after nearly 20 years, in America,
Prince Bandar has acquired some very good friends indeed.
Got
that, the Saudis buy their friends, that what money does,
no one, not can we assume, the cited troop of 'the Brent Scowcrofts
and the James Bakers, the Anthony Zinnis and the Laurence Eagleburgers',
would possibly speak up for historic US policy in the region unless
bought and paid for by Prince Bandar. Whereas . . . when we were
earlier told that noted philo-Semite Bill Clinton was fortunate
enough to lead a party where, by Mr Frum's estimate, 'one third
of the money given to Democratic candidates comes from Jewish donors',
this is immaterial? I certainly believe it's immaterial, I'm a sufficiently
ugly and unregenerate Conservative not to believe that one is tainted
by any kind of financial donation. That, indeed, more fool an unsavoury
sort for giving you his money, on the age-old principle, better
me (a virtuous cove) than him. Not so David Frum, who operates in
a world where Saudi money 'buys' folk but 'Jewish' money doesn't.
That's an ugly outlook, and I'm priggish enough to be glad that
I don't share it.
There's
more to come on Mr Frum, and we'll peer at him again next week.
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