Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - pictured - is suffering the unwanted attentions of an ‘unhealthy strain of leftwing McCarthyism'. Yes, the poor love has been mentioned in an article by John Pilger – a man she purports to be ‘so in awe of’ that she could ‘barely converse in his mighty presence’ – on account of her flirtation with the political right in the US. This, she wails, has left her with ‘second degree burns’.
Don’t go breaking my heart, Yazz. Unlike the real victims of McCarthyism, you are not the subject of a concerted campaign of vicious untrue allegations, fabricated in an atmosphere of febrile paranoia. You straightforwardly admit to attending six conferences of an organisation called the British-American Project, which is all that Pilger accuses you of doing. You challenge not a single one of the facts he puts forward.
There is no way you are on a moral par with the hundreds of progressive Americans who spent time in prison on trumped up charges, simply on account of their political sympathies. Any attempted comparison amounts to hyperbole of a wilfully stupid variety. It’s an insult to good people.
Let’s take your wretched parallel further. McCarthyism saw perhaps 12,000 US citizens lose their jobs, in many cases spending decades out of work as a result. There’s just a teensy-weensy contrast between their fate and your role as a regular broadcaster and national newspaper columnist, no?
And before you go making up fictitious bodily injuries, bear in mind that the repression born of McCarthyism drove some people to suicide. The senator from Wisconsin cost them their lives.
Remember the old adage, Ms A-B; there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so long as they spell your name right. Good night and good luck.
Posted at 18:24, 18 March 2008
Comments (11)
Don't be too hard on Yazz - she's named a few names I hadn't heard before (Rushanara Ali, by gum).
But no, of course not everyone who accepts BAP invitations buys into the BAP world view. (Certainly not all of it; certainly not all at once.) That's not how organisations like that work.
All you have to do is read comments at my blog, to know the right doesn't feel a need to even try to back up an accusation.
Good post.
Alibhai-Brown really shows why Pilger was right to write the article. She wears her heart on her sleeve, which is quite a good quality, and tells us a lot about BAP - but I don't think she would have done so if Pilger hadn't prodded her. What she tells us is that it is very important to BAP to try and influence semi-critical figures through flattery and cash - just like the old CIA fronts used to (Congress for Cultural Freedom, Encounter etc). I'm glad Alibhai -Brown has broken with BAP over Iraq, but she tells us how it is indeed an attempt to use money to win over a section of European social democracy to a more solid pro-US, pro "free market" line. And its interesting to find out Rushana Ali is a BAP-er. She fits the profile perfectly - a bit critical, a bit of a rising star, but I imagine ultimately loyal to the powers that be. I wonder who the Tory minsiter was ?
YAB starts a fight with Pilger? I think I'll sell arms to both sides.
I support your crusade for a sense of proportion, Dave, and I hope you will uphold it the next time your pals in the CPGB start squealing about a "witch-hunt" when some tawdry entryist project or front operation is exposed.
These days I'd have to verify in triplicate anything that Pilger said. If I asked him the time I make sure that every watch, clock and computer in Ipswich checked out. Briefly, example, has he said anything to back Iranian dissidents lately? Thought not.
But on this Dave is right, I opine, to support Pilger about the British American Project. It doesn't take much pilgrimage to follow their sordid traces. According to extensive research (well glancing at their Web Site) they are 'affectionately knowing as BAP'. One assumes that any female partipicants are known as being the 'charming baps.
Or perhaps the Yankee knowledge of the way we speak here is a little limited.
Anyway, a glance at the list of those who have been through the mill of the BAP reveals the truth of a theory which many (hey bey - me) on the left have long held. Which is the British politics are in fact run on a template formed at Houndstown California. On special training courses Baps go to for policy formation to the esteemed precinct.
The Sherrif, Deputy Dawg, spends his time a'rounding up varmits, sending 'em to the the local county jail (English translation: gaol), a-waging war on them darned pesky commies, and a-stringing up them upitty folk he don't like.
One hears, and Dave will know more of this than most of us do, that this organisation's presence may help to help to explain British elite's support, such as it was, for the invasion or Iraq. Possibly the even worst thing that she could have got involved in is the Henry Jackson Society (btw, Macshane, MP and former poodle for US policy in the EU is one of the latter. Mind you I think that his influence in the French politics has never recovered when he used the Sarkozy 'c' word to describe French socialists).
Oh, and wasn't Mandelson one them?
Mandelson, Mowlem, several other New Lab cabinet ministers - all BAPers. Plus Fabian society and Guardian types.
In 1997 BAP proclaimed half the new cabinet were Bapers.
Keep it in proportion
The HUAC summoned 2,375 men and women, which was enough to cost them their jobs. 400 went to jail. Eleven members of the CPUSA central committee were tried. 9,500 civil servants were dismissed and 15,000 resigned; 600 teachers lost their jobs and many fine actors and scriptwriters were unable to work again. Charlie Chaplin, the biggest Hollywood movie star of the pre-war years (and also a Communist) left America in disgust.
The 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act forced organisations to give lists of members (they might be Communists) and the 1954 Communist Control Act banned the Communist Party altogether.
If the BAP is a conspiracy then it's not a very good one.
I want to a BAP interview/seminar thingy some years ago (you go along to see if you are good enough to get selected to go on one of their trips.)
I didn't make the grade (but then again neither did a current member of the Cabinet, so I'm not too sad about it).
But I've never heard from them since. Either they decided I was an agent of the Comintern or they maybe weren't the Great Satan they are made out to be by some.
Certainly anything I got from them before the rejection was Atlanticist in outlook (though not as doolally as some stuff knocking around at the time), but so what?
I don@t want to be rude, Last of, but maybe they decided you werem@t worth the candle and would never amount to anything.
sue ra, yep. Maybe. On the other hand they could just be a small voluntary sector outfit and not the vast all controlling conspiracy some suggest.