Douglas Murray and The Madness of Kings
‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue’, wrote Kipling. This single line sums up the focus of Douglas Murray in his recent journalism and latest book The Madness of Crowds. Taking a look at the main opinion-makers of modern journalism, there are two fundamental steps they plant their feet on. The first one is identity, — whatever that may be — one must write through and on behalf of an identity. The second is popular opinion as expressed on social media. And with marching precision, any journalist-stroke-writer can ascend the steps to esteemed opinion pages of the New York Times or the Guardian. Few have been as lucid in their critique of this process and the madness that fuels it as Douglas Murray. But in decrying the laziness of modern journalism he has fallen into the worst habits of old journalism.
When Bob Woodward along with Carl Bernstein wrote All the President’s Men, an obvious play on the phrase ‘all the king’s men’ from Humpty Dumpty, they took on the government’s lies and deception from an outsider’s perspective. Unfortunately, Woodward’s later work slowly descended into exercises in stenography at the subsequent kings’ feet. In wanting access to record the exact words at the White House, and behind the closed doors of politics, Woodward’s books have become more accurate and more dull. The journalist’s role is not to get as close to the originator of the government’s line of the day, it’s to interrogate the entire idea of any received truths. The first responsibility of the journalist is to not lie, only then can they begin to try towards the truth.
The most remembered journalists never forgot this point. George Orwell was reputed to never want to meet those whom he would eventually have to write about. Any contact could make the writer begin to find reasons to lie. A similar impulse kept I.F. Stone out of press conferences and at home reading congressional reports. Access may bring you closer to an information source, but distance gives you clarity in judging it. Unfortunately for British journalism, Douglas Murray abandoned this precept when the most influential foreign policymaker visited London.
Mike Pompeo, the man with more chins than principles, visited London last week. A religious demagogue who speaks of God placing him in power sat down to speak with Britain’s most reluctant atheist, Douglas Murray, the only interview he would take with a journalist. And under the duty’s taught by the stenographic school of journalism, Murray acted as the US state department’s London press secretary.
The same tropes were repeated for the benefit of no one, all soured by the predictable hypocrisy we have come to know and love from state department officials. But before we get to the hypocrisies its important to establish the tone.
After much teasing and build up Pompeo dropped the rehearsed quote to stand the test of time: ‘Confronting evil is hard’ but ‘freedom-loving democracies’ must ‘convince the Chinese Communist Party to behave’. McCarthy’s ghost whispering in Pompeo’s ear he added ‘We all know Communists, right?’.
Now we have established evil, who is salvation? Back to the more awkward garbled rhythm of Pompeo’s unaffected speech: ‘The way in which freedom-loving democracies behave — whether in the military space, the diplomatic space, the commercial space — the Chinese Communist Party simply isn’t behaving in that way’. What a long burst of nothing.
It is almost too easy to push the hypocrisy over seriatim, but ease is never a reason not to upbraid a government official. So let’s begin with the ‘military space’. Can anyone point to a greater violation of international sovereignty, law, and the proper conduct of war recently than the assassination of Qassem Soleimani? As Douglas Murray so aptly describes Pompeo as ‘Trump’s right-hand man’, a term often used to describe Soleimani himself, the analogy jumps off the page. Would it be proper ‘behaviour’ in the ‘military space’ for Iran, or China, to assassinate Pompeo while he was on a state visit to the UK?
Now diplomatic. How about the bullying of the ICC that has been central to Pompeo’s time as Secretary of State, calling them an ‘ungoverned radical group’ and impeding their investigations on political grounds. This at a time when the proper functioning of the court is most necessary considering the planned escalation of Israel’s annexations, the trial of the genocidal dictator Omar al-Bashir, and the US’s legacy in Afghanistan. But even international justice takes a back seat to the US’s defunding of the UN and their discrediting of the WHO during a global pandemic.
How about commercial? After decades of state subsidies for Boeing, the US has continued to use a WTO dispute to put up protectionist tariffs against its main competitor Airbus. Of course, protectionism is a right for America, but a form of socialism or communism when used by countries in the developing world. The unwritten rules of neoliberal institutions are that they exist to open developing markets, but never to interfere with developed states’ control over their economies. In truth, what is happening between China and the United States — for instance over telecommunications — is that all worshipped capitalist concept: competition. But because it is competition challenging US economic hegemony, it is evil.
Douglas Murray forgot to ask Pompeo about any of these. Or to ask any actual challenging — that is to say journalistic — questions. What part do you think Saudi airstrikes make in contributing to the suffering of the Yemeni people? In how far does the US provided arms contribute to that? How does increased settlement plans affect the relationship between Israel and Palestine? Does your government’s policies towards Hong Kong punish the people of Hong Kong more than the Chinese Communist Party? But instead, Douglas Murray got the chance to play transcriber to the latest State Department briefing and played the role impeccably.
Less we forget, this soft-balling is coming from the man happy to take lazy pot-shots at Noam Chomsky as a supposed ‘genocide-denier’ (see this defence relating to Cambodia). Such moral nitpicking would have been refreshing when facing the man who last year pushed through arms sales to Saudi Arabia worth billions of dollars. But that’s too obvious a moral problem. Be obsequious, transcribe the interview, then return to the real moral emergencies of the day. I think I saw a twitter post about a transgender squirrel somewhere…
But I must end by borrowing a phrase from Sam Husseini, who in amending the words of Kipling wrote ‘what is hard is to keep your virtue while walking with kings, not with crowds’. The award-winning author of The Madness of Crowds, having won today’s equivalent of a royal audience, has failed to properly see the madness of kings.
