Oliver Kamm
Oliver Kamm (born 1963) is a British blogger, journalist and author. He writes opinion pieces for The Times and has recently published the book Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy for the Social Affairs Unit. Kamm, having a long background with the Labour Party, describes his politics as left-wing. He is known for his interventionist views pertaining to foreign policy.
Background
The son of translator Anthea Bell, Kamm studied at Oxford and London universities, and had a career in the Bank of England and the securities industry. He helped start a pan-European investment bank in 1997 and is part of its management.[1]
Kamm's early activities in Labour included canvassing in Leicester South in the 1979 general election, which saw Margaret Thatcher become Prime Minister. While he continued to vote Labour into the 1980s, [2] he eventually became dissatisfied with the party's leadership and policies, particularly its stance on nuclear disarmament, and left the party altogether in 1988. [3] He worked for the 1997 election campaign of Martin Bell, who is his uncle, [4] against incumbent Neil Hamilton, drafting a manifesto "so right-wing that Hamilton was incapable of outflanking it". [5]. That year saw the rise of Tony Blair and his "New Labour" policies, which Kamm has been strongly in support of, particularly in regards to foreign and humanitarian intervention. Although generally supportive of the Labour Party in the 2005 general election, Kamm stated that he could not support Celia Barlow, the Labour candidate in his local constituency, Hove, because of her opposition to Blair's foreign policies. Instead, he stated that he would vote for the Conservative candidate, Nicholas Boles, who supported the Iraq war. [6]
A founding member of the Henry Jackson Society, Kamm supported the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In 2004, he outlined a case for supporting the re-election of George W. Bush. [7] In 2006, he was a signatory to the Euston Manifesto, arguing for a reorientation of the left around anti-totalitarian principles. He favourably commented on Peter Beinart's The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, which has similar themes to Kamm's own book, arguing that the left should look to the policies of Clement Atlee and Harry S. Truman in the early days of the Cold War as a model for response to political Islam and totalitarianism. [8]
Because of his stances on war and terrorism, critics such as Peter Wilby have stated that he is not actually left-wing at all. [9] Kamm rejects this criticism, saying that he "claim[s] to be left-wing, for the straightforward reason that it's true". He elaborates on his support for left-wing policies such as economic redistribution, progressive taxation and a welfare state. He also supports permissive abortion legislation and gay marriage.[10]
Kamm is especially critical of the RESPECT party and its most prominent figure, George Galloway, characterizing them as supportive of fascism and likening Galloway to Oswald Mosley, the former Labour MP who left Labour to form the British Union of Fascists. [11] He wrote that RESPECT, which he considers a front organization for the Socialist Workers Party, is equally as contemptible as the British National Party, [12] and that it promotes anti-semitism because of the SWP's promotion of jewish Israeli activist and jazz musician Gilad Atzmon. [13]
Criticism of Chomsky
Kamm is well known for his criticisms of the linguist and political writer Noam Chomsky. These are summarised in an article [14] for Prospect magazine opposing its readers' choice of Chomsky in the top position for its 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll. [15] Chomsky in turn accused Kamm of "transparent falsification" and claimed that Kamm's article demonstrated "the lengths to which some will go to prevent exposure of state crimes and their own complicity in them". [16] Kamm replied by accusing Chomsky of "polemical distortions" including failure to quote himself correctly. [17]
In late-2005 Kamm was co-author, with journalists David Aaronovitch and Francis Wheen, of a complaint to The Guardian when it published a correction and apology for an interview with Chomsky by Emma Brockes. [18] Chomsky complained that the article suggested he denied the fact of the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. [19] A Guardian readers' editor found that this had misrepresented Chomsky's position, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis. [20] In his report for the Guardian, Willis detailed his reasons for rejecting Kamm's argument; Kamm maintains that his argument "remains unconsidered" by Willis. [21] The Independent's media columnist Stephen Glover criticized the Willis report and commented favorably on the arguments put forth by Aaronovitch, Wheen and Kamm.[22] By contrast, bloggers Brian Leiter and David Peterson (the latter belongs to the Srebrenica Research Group, which denies that there was "a single large massacre of Muslims by Serbs" at Srebrenica in 1995 [23]) harshly condemned Kamm's praise for the original Brockes interview and his later decision to lodge a complaint after the editor's ruling in favour of Chomsky. [24] [25]
Notes
- ^ Geras, Norman. "The normblog profile 9: Oliver Kamm", normblog, November 21, 2003.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Foot again", Oliver Kamm's weblog, April 5, 2004.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "The liberal prospect now", Oliver Kamm's weblog, May 6, 2005.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Rural Writing", Oliver Kamm's weblog, September 3, 2005.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver."'Living Marxism' and 'Tory sleaze'", Oliver Kamm's weblog, December 13, 2003.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Help, I'm a pro-war leftie", The Times, May 2, 2005.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "The liberal case for returning Bush to the White House", Oliver Kamm's weblog, July 9, 2004.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Time for the Left to be brave again", The Times, November 7, 2005.
- ^ Wilby, Peter. "The Media Column", New Statesman, April 24, 2006.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Staggering", Oliver Kamm's weblog, April 20, 2006.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. ""The most conservative voice in this election"", Oliver Kamm's weblog, April 22, 2005.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Agreed, we shouldn't vote for the BNP – but its twin, Respect, is just as bad", The Times, April 25, 2006.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "The Red and the Brown", Oliver Kamm's weblog, July 23, 2004.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Against Chomsky", Prospect 116, November, 2005.
- ^ "The Prospect/FP Global public intellectuals poll—results", Prospect magazine's website.
- ^ Chomsky, Noam. "We Are All Complicit", Prospect 118, January, 2006 (abridged version); Chomsky, Noam. "We Are All Complicit", chomsky.info, January, 2006 (full version).
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Kamm replies to Chomsky", Prospect 119, February, 2006.
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Chomsky, The Guardian and Bosnia", Oliver Kamm's weblog, March 20, 2006
- ^ Brockes, Emma. "The Greatest Intellectual?", The Guardian, October 31, 2005; the article has since been withdrawn from the Guardian's website, but remains available at chomsky.info.
- ^ Willis, John. "External Ombudsman Report", The Guardian, May 25, 2006
- ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Guardian and Chomsky, concluded", Oliver Kamm's weblog, May 26, 2006.
- ^ Glover, Stephen. "Stephen Glover on The Press", The Independent, May 29, 2006.
- ^ Srebrenica Report. "[1]" Press Conference: Researchers and Former UN Officials Challenge Portrayal of Events at Srebrenica, July 12th, 2005.
- ^ Leiter, Brian. "Oliver Kamm, Marko Attila Hoare, and the Importance of Being Able to Read", The Leiter Reports, November 25, 2005.
- ^ Peterson, David. "Oliver Kamm", David Peterson's blog, December, 2005, and subsequent updates.