Andrew Marr does it Again
On this week's Start the Week,
Marr employed the same tactic he tried in the episode
Priyamvada Gopal appeared on,promoting neo-imperialism by claiming
the ideological superiority of the West. Her experience
was not an isolated incident; the show seems to have
become nothing more than a mouthpiece for Marr's racist
imperialist ideology.
Marr brought on an African Muslim female politician who
unlike Priyamvada Gopal did not stand up for the integrity of
non-Western cultures. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is known for her
condemnation of Islamic practices, which although often
justified,is undermined by her argument that Muslims need
Western societies to spread their liberal 'Western'values
of rationality and enlightenment (Muslims'
problems will be solved by reading Voltaire, she claims.)
Marr then combines this argument with the promotion of 'The
British Moment,'published this week by the Henry Jackson
Society, represented on the show by Alan Mendoza. This is
another right wing publication which claims that the promotion
of democracy and human rights was justification enough for
the invasion of Iraq,even if 9/11 had never happened. British
foreign policy, in other words, has the responsibility to 'actively
promote liberal values across the world.'
This becomes more worrying because in today's 'Comment is Free,'
the same column in which Gopal denounced these tendencies (see first post), the
Guardian published an article by John Lloyd:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_lloyd/2006/07/to_the_death.html.
He mentions the show and uses Hirsi Ali's example to claim that
Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with British foreign policy;
according to him Islam and by extension Muslims are inherently violent,
primitive and dangerous. Such a conflation of elements of Islam which
are violent in origin and practice, with the beliefs of all Muslims who
in different cultural contexts vary in their convictions, easily leads
to the promotion of imperialist and racist agendas.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/starttheweek.shtml.
Marr employed the same tactic he tried in the episode
Priyamvada Gopal appeared on,promoting neo-imperialism by claiming
the ideological superiority of the West. Her experience
was not an isolated incident; the show seems to have
become nothing more than a mouthpiece for Marr's racist
imperialist ideology.
Marr brought on an African Muslim female politician who
unlike Priyamvada Gopal did not stand up for the integrity of
non-Western cultures. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is known for her
condemnation of Islamic practices, which although often
justified,is undermined by her argument that Muslims need
Western societies to spread their liberal 'Western'values
of rationality and enlightenment (Muslims'
problems will be solved by reading Voltaire, she claims.)
Marr then combines this argument with the promotion of 'The
British Moment,'published this week by the Henry Jackson
Society, represented on the show by Alan Mendoza. This is
another right wing publication which claims that the promotion
of democracy and human rights was justification enough for
the invasion of Iraq,even if 9/11 had never happened. British
foreign policy, in other words, has the responsibility to 'actively
promote liberal values across the world.'
This becomes more worrying because in today's 'Comment is Free,'
the same column in which Gopal denounced these tendencies (see first post), the
Guardian published an article by John Lloyd:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_lloyd/2006/07/to_the_death.html.
He mentions the show and uses Hirsi Ali's example to claim that
Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with British foreign policy;
according to him Islam and by extension Muslims are inherently violent,
primitive and dangerous. Such a conflation of elements of Islam which
are violent in origin and practice, with the beliefs of all Muslims who
in different cultural contexts vary in their convictions, easily leads
to the promotion of imperialist and racist agendas.
