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Shilling for war.
Satire? Serious? Sunday
Satire? Serious? Sunday
Times prints column asking
to ‘give war a chance’
&
attack CHINA
RT,
12
August, 2019
Life
in Britain has become far too easy and it's high time for another
war, an eye-catching column in the Sunday Times argues, prompting
both outrage and confusion about whether it was meant to be satire or
the new normal.
“I
was wondering, idly, recently if maybe it was time for us to have
another war with someone,” journalist
Rod Liddle’s provocative column begins,
giving readers a disturbing taste of what’s to come. No, he doesn’t
want a "hi-tech
war" like
the invasion of Iraq but instead is hoping for an even bigger event
which "impinges
on us all."
It
gets worse. Dismissing France as an "obvious
candidate" for
British aggression, as that war would be over "too
quickly" –
a none too subtle dig at the French collapse of 1940 – he muses
that the best bet is to attack… China.
War “reduces
personal dissatisfaction” and "increases
social cohesion and integration,” booms
Liddle.
You’ll observe Rod Liddle would be too old to serve in such a war. He would just like to watch it on television
I'm saying notions like this raised more more often by morons with no understanding of how the horror could actually happen to them, and not be just some abstract TV spectacle.
His
record shows him no stranger to feeding on controversy and
outrageous, click-baity opinion pieces, who clearly doesn’t care
that his supposed humor doesn’t translate well into Chinese – or
any other language, really. For some, this was already too much to
take.
“Even
as satire, this is offensive and extremely not funny to those who
have experienced war. Sorry that my sense of humour cannot be
stretched to encompass the death toll in Iraq,”tweeted historian
Moudhy Al-Rashid at the end of a series of scathing (and
not-safe-for-work) comments.
Others
were also incensed by the newspaper’s decision to publish the
piece, with one writer Musa Okwonga suggesting it
was time people began to "interrogate
the editorial policy of the Sunday Times."
The
irony or sarcasm, if intended, went right over the head of people who
were dumbfounded by the "stomach
churning" article.
There
was more, however: Liddle’s piece went on to make digs at
millenials, the Extinction Rebellion, the demographic crisis, and
even the New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern.
“We
have become softened and prone to be frit at everything, perpetually
discombobulated in our pacific affluence and our ease, to the extent
that we would throw it all away,”
Liddle
writes, reaching to texts from 1897 and even the 5th century BC to
prove “the
beneficial social effects of war.”
There
were, of course, readers who assumed the author was simply trying his
hand at some social commentary on our troubled world, and came to
defend the columnist’s free speech and satire.
It's satire. Not funny in my opinion, but satire nonetheless. In other words he's free to write it, and we're free to criticize it.
The
overwhelming response, however, seems to be that of deep disturbance
and disgust. Was that someone probing the ground for an actual war
cry of tomorrow? Could this be an actual way of thinking for “the
establishment?”
Have
the two world wars taught us nothing?
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