Marko Attila Hoare, a Balkan specialist whose views I greatly respect, recently launched a blog called Greater Surbiton. From his bio:
I have been variously accused of being a neoconservative, Trotskyite and Croat nationalist and a supporter of Islamism and Western imperialism. Depending on how you define these terms, some or all of this may be accurate.
I’m honored to see that Dr. Hoare has included Lerterland on his blog roll, and I am of course reciprocating.
One recent post concerns leftist protesters getting their skulls cracked by a Marxist state government in West Bengal. Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Howard Zinn and others have written a patronizing, Orwellian open letter, not to condemn the government, but to admonish the protesters: “The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to split the Left.” (Interesting to note the absence of Arundhati Roy’s signature; she usually joins these Chomsky missives without reservation.) Here is one Indian activist’s angry and unsparing response to Ali and friends.
I didn’t care much for David Leaf’s recent documentary “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” and one reason was the film’s heavy reliance on Tariq Ali, a supporter of Hezbollah. It’s not clear to me why we need Ali’s help in understanding the man who sang “Give Peace a Chance.”
[Update: Chomsky, Ali and co. respond with yet more Orwellianism; Hoare deconstructs.]
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