The corroding Left and the Covington controversy

“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” 

-          George Orwell, 1984

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

-       Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

One reason why George Orwell is an immortal figure in history instead of just a distinguished one is that he was the first public intellectual of his time to have seen through both Fascism and Communism. He did so at a time when most of his contemporary intellectual elites, including T. S. Eliot, E.H. Carr and George Bernard Shaw, supported Stalin and saw Communism as an antidote to Fascism and even the road to Utopia.

With the benefit of the hindsight, we can see that Orwell was dead right – he correctly diagnosed that Communism and Fascism are more brothers than opposites, that they are both systems of illegitimate forms of power. There is not one country that have experimented with Communism that has been remotely successful. To shoot down two straw-men – China’s economy rocketed when it gave up on Communism, privatised its industries and opened its market to the world in 1978; and Bernie Sanders’s favourite example of the Nordic model is in no way Socialist to anyone who remotely understands these terms. On the other hand, North Korea is a slave state, Venezuelans are so poor that the country is on the verge of civil war despite its enormous oil reserves, and Cuba’s economy continues to corrode.

However, Orwell suffered for his correct insights. By insisting that the intellectual, political and moral elites are wrong to say that opposition to Fascism has to be from a Communist position, he invited all sorts of accusations of treason, betrayal and calumny. For instance, he had great difficulties publishing his books for their anti-Communist messages, most notably “Animal Farm”. Thus, as Christopher Hitchens brilliantly analysed, Orwell revealed a trap-door built into the Left mentality – that in its blind insistence on solidarity, it can easily mutate into a position where anyone who dares to think for themselves and not tow the party line are seen as defectors or blacklegs. This is tribalism and can infect any ideology. But as Hitchens pointed out, what’s peculiarly redolent to a large swathe of the Left is that they tend to judge these ‘traitors’ by the lowest motives. For example the famous journalist Claud Coburn accused Orwell, who went to Spain to fight Fascism and who took a bullet in the neck for it, of consciously doing the work of Hitler by criticising the Left.

The tall Orwell, in the POUN ranks fighting against Facism in Spain

The above is simply a long way to say that the Left historically tends to have trouble 1) to allow people to break ranks and 2) to admit that they are wrong – hence the Covington Catholic School affair. A quick precis: a short video emerged on the 18^th of January showing a scene outside the Lincoln Memorial where a Native American man named Nathan Phillips, beating his drum as part of the Indigenous People’s March, was seemingly confronted by a group of cheering and hollering youths, most noticeable of all a young man wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap who also wore, as the New York Times reported a “relentless smirk”, standing face to face to Phillips. Nathan Phillips, 64, whom the media reported as a Vietnam veteran, claimed that he was surrounded by these youths and felt threatened and that he heard chants of “build the wall”. He claimed that the ‘smirking’ youth, Nick Sandmann, blocked his way as he tried to make way to the memorial to end his march.

The short video generated an instant torrent of outrage, most stridently from journalists, celebrities and politicians on the Left, who unequivocally and often with vulgarity, criticised the teenagers, in particular Sandmann, 16, who received abuse, obscene call to violence, threats of violence and even threats of death. These were not only aimed at Sandmann but other boys from the Covington Catholic School, their parents and the school itself, which was forced to close for security reasons. The Leftist news media were also unanimous in their condemnation of Sandmann; such as the Guardian, who highlighted the racism odorous in the US, and how the conservatives who were urging that the media not to be quick to judge are “constructing a parallel reality”. Or Huffington Post, who equated the MAGA cap to “an explicit message of racial intolerance and bigotry”.

One wonders what words Mr Abriss has left when confronted with something really nasty

Except very soon longer footage revealed a very different reality (from around the 1 hour mark). The kids were waiting for their bus when some members of a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, a radical and often violent group, started shouting obscenities at the teenagers and vilely taunting a black teenager in the group of students. The language is foul, including insults of white people, homophobic taunts and more. The students, riled up, started chanting their school chant in solidarity of their black friend. Then Phillips is seen marching up to the group of riled-up boys, banging his drum in the face of Sandmann, who stood there smiling. His smile took on a different meaning. Instead of a condescending smirk, it’s the nervous smile of a boy being confronted in a tense situation trying to keep his composure while trying to appear non-aggressive.

So Phillips lied in his account of the situation. He was the one who instigated the confrontation with the boys, who had been standing there for some time and who were hollering in response to the Black Hebrew Israelites, not directly to Phillips. Phillips then went away unimpeded after the brief standoff, the boys did not obstruct him as he claimed. Furthermore, it has since been revealed that Phillips lied about being a Vietnam veteran. There was also no chants of “Build the wall” as claimed by Phillips.

After the longer video disproved the unanimous narrative, many journalists shame-facedly (but honourably) corrected what they initially wrote on twitter or elsewhere, some with apologies. However, many were very grudging to admit their obvious and amateurish mistake. Others dug into the history of Covington School history to try to justify their error. The New York Daily News, for example, triumphantly unearthed a picture from 2015 of Covington School kids at a basketball game “in blackface”, proving that there is a history of racism in this institution. But in fact it is a blackout theme, a common practice in American sports where supporters dress and paint themselves in black to intimidate the opposition, as explained by the New York Times in a 2008 piece. The comedian Kathy Griffin dug up a picture of Covington School boys at a basketball game, claiming they were showing new Nazi hand signs – except anyone could have told her it’s the sign for a three-pointer in basketball. The Leftist mob even threatened NBC for daring to interview (with some wearisome questions) the 16 year old Nicholas Sandmann to get his side of the story, or in other words, doing what journalists should be doing.

You might say that the mistake of Leftist elites embracing Communism during the Second World War is somewhat pardonable as they faced the potentially extinguishing force of Nazism. This thin excuse is vaporised by the fact that the modern day Leftists in the US face no such threat. Instead, they have to manufacture new Nazis for them to share in the ‘bravery’ of being anti-Nazis. They called McCain a Nazi when he ran for the presidency and they have a history of insinuating Republicans as Nazis, as they now call Trump a Nazi; interestingly as they simultaneously embrace Louis Farrakhan, a man who thinks Hitler was “a very great man”. The Left has completely cheapened the word of its meaning and impact as well as showed their complete lack of knowledge and seriousness. Needless to say, this is rather pathetic.

But the Left has also retained the trap-doors mentioned above inbuilt into the Leftist mentality. They think like a herd and judged before the evidence was in. In so doing they almost succeeded in destroying a young man’s life, based on a grin that they interpreted freely as a sneer of bigotry and racism. How apt it is that Orwell wrote in 1984: “to wear an improper expression on your face was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.”

Upon proven wrong, many were not only not contrite, they doubled-down and made even bigger fools of themselves. Yet they still don’t expect to pay for their errors. Did any of the blue check-marked celebrities calling for violence or death of teenagers have their Twitter accounts suspended? No. But Twitter is very quick to ban users from conservative circles for much less than this.

The Left also once more exposed its double standard – they present themselves as the morally ‘superior’ side, whose virtues are tolerance, openness and celebrating of diversity. After every Islamist terrorist attack the Left unanimously call for (rightly, in my view) restraint, suspension of judgement and (condescendingly) for the population not to retaliate with violence. Yet, while being ready to meekly tolerate the most reactionary and fascistic Islamists, or even embrace antisemites like Linda Sarsour, they are quick to ostracise and defame genuine Liberal reformists like Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who were both named by the Leftist and increasingly irrelevant Southern Poverty Law Centre as anti-Islam extremists (Nawaz successfully sued SPLC for libel). As is when it is the case of a white, conservative teenager wearing a MAGA cap from Kentucky, the most putrid, exaggerated and unveiled vitriol come pouring forth before the facts are even settled. The activists clamber over each other to be more offended, hence to show their halo is the shiniest. Yet very little condemnation has arisen towards the five black Hebrew Israelite members who instigated the affair by insulting a group of children with the most vile language, or the lying Phillips. 

Journalism is replaced with activism, attempting to shape public opinion to a status quo their ideology insists, in spite of facts and reason.  Almost as if they are making themselves into a parody of Orwell, they fit themselves into another Orwellian mould: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

 

Thomas Sowell wrote: “If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.” And the public has – Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, two of the most far Left of publications, has had to lay off 1,000 staff.

The modern Left has lost all that made the Left noble while inheriting and metastasising all its flaws. It has become reactionary, strangely conformist and dogmatic in its insistence on groupthink while being stubbornly incapable of admitting guilt. It has become more and more totalitarian. This is the result of playing identity politics - prejudging people's moral worth based on shallow things like race or gender. The Left will continue to step on more rakes as they insist on carry themselves forward steeped in this muddled, principle-less and idiotic way of ‘thinking’. For those who saw the headlines and instantly jumped on the outrage train, perhaps think twice when the next scandal hoves into view, lest you appear again prematurely foolish.

The Totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

-          Christopher Hitchens