Unite Against Polly Toynbee

Lenin's on top form at the moment, attacking the dreadful "Unite Against Terror" initiatve with gusto - certainly with more aggression than I could work up for it:

Frankly, this ridiculous campaign has absolutely nothing to do with uniting against ‘terror’. It is very selective about which terror it opposes. It opposes that carried out by a variety of groups inspired by a reactionary kind of Islamism. It doesn’t oppose that carried out by far right Colombian militias. It doesn’t show any solidarity with trade unionists and peasants being murdered by those terrorists. It doesn’t oppose the terrorism of states against civilian populations: the targeting of civilians by the Russian government in Chechnya; the massacre in Fallujah; the use of death squads in the ‘new Iraq’; the repeated assaults on Palestinians. About these, it is wordless – and culpably so. For a statement that supposedly unites against ‘terror’, it says only what is all too easy to say, and deliberately says nothing that could offend Mr Bush or Mr Blair. Read the statements by those who signed it – most of those who did so are obviously only interested in attacking the Left.

I’m afraid I haven’t gone far enough. The Palestinians are right to fight the Israelis, and I support their being armed with the tanks and helicopters that their opponents have. The Iraqi resistance is right to fight the occupiers, and I support attacks on UK & US troops. The resistance in Chechnya is right to fight the Russians, and I support attacks on the Russian army. I am a supporter – nay, glorifier – of terrorism. Potentially, under new legislation, I could be locked up or deported – if only my skin were brown and my face bearded.

"Unite Against Terror" stinks, absolutely reeks with the scent of old leftists turned apologists; the bitter, rather acred smell of hypocrisy and imperial vainglory, here trailing a McCarthyism of "sinister platitudes".

Also via Len, I notice that Polly Toynbee, the doyenne of socially responsible New Labour - never mind Iraq, look at the happy paupers - has had a funny turn:

The death cult strikes again, unstoppable in its deranged religious mania...

Whatever they intended, the message was loud and clear... (!)

In the growing fear and anger at what more may be to come, apologists or explainers for these young men can expect short shrift... [emphasis added]

Enlightenment values are in peril not because these mad beliefs are really growing but because too many rational people seek to appease and understand unreason... [emphasis added]

Meanwhile the far left, forever thrilled by the whiff of cordite, has bizarrely decided to fellow-travel with primitive Islamic extremism as the best available anti-Americanism around...

And so on and so forth. You have your instructions: To explain is to appease. We must fight the hordes with their own weapons. We must meet unreason with unreason.