Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Jackie Ashley meets Melanie Phillips
I'm sure some of you are getting sick to death with this and wondering if I have an infatuation with Melanie Phillips, but there's a reason for it ... she has a new book out in which the ravings one will have found in her blog over the past few years have been distilled into a couple of hundred pages of hard copy. In today's Guardian, Jackie Ashley writes an account of a meeting she had with Phillips in a French café in west London. The impression I've got from hearing Phillips on The Moral Maze - that she is not someone who brooks discussion on things on which she's made up her mind - is backed up by this article:
Again, when I say that talking about Weimar and feral children is ruining her own case and that I really don't think things are that bad, she snaps: "No, I'm sure you don't. That was said to people like me in the 30s, exactly the same kind of argument from the same kind of people ... it is very resonant of Weimar and the prejudice against the Jews is very resonant of Weimar."
Phillips is quick to take offence. That she has just compared a gentle, quizzical interviewer to a complacent pre-Nazi-era German and to Stalin might - just might - have struck others as potentially offensive. That she finds a continuum between law-abiding, peaceful Muslim fellow citizens and terrorists might - just might - strike others as potentially "inflammatory". That her newspaper, the Daily Mail, pursues anyone who dares criticise it by vilifying them for years afterwards might - just might - strike her as an example of the intellectual bullying she attacks. And perhaps her emailing my editor before I have even sat down at the keyboard to write this article is, at the very least, unusually defensive behaviour.
Perhaps she simply has not the time to notice. Every question I ask she challenges, everything is a misrepresentation, everything a trap. On a personal level, I'm disposed to like her - she somehow seems vulnerable, tortured. I am genuinely interested, genuinely confused about the source of so much anger. But it's like interviewing a human cactus. Melanie, if everything is so utterly dreadful, in every way, how do you get up in the morning?
There's the usual bunk on rising antisemitism, that neocon is used as a synonym for Jew, that some liberal she does not name once said "oh, I hate the Jews" in the middle of a pleasant discussion, and that "it's now an accepted view that there is an international Jewish conspiracy stretching from Jerusalem to Washington, that has subverted the foreign policy of America in the interests of Israel to put the world at risk". She also regards the division "between those who actively espouse violence and those who do not" as an artificial one.
One thing Ashley doesn't bring up is the other side of the story of the left's reaction to Phillips' articles in the late 1980s on education and the family. The articles no doubt expressed views which weren't popular on the left, which a number of people seemed to take personally and vented their anger at her, "attacking [her] at parties, purple in the face, waving their Guardians". It would have been useful to hear another side to the story of Phillips' break with the Guardian: there is no quote from the offending articles, and no recollections or opinions are sought from other Guardian staffers from the time. And who exactly was attacking her at parties, anyway?
I felt a real sense of dissapointment with this article. Ms Phillips seemed desperatly not keen to actually engage with the interviewer - instead firing off totalising statements about how the interviewer's comments were similar to pre-Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia, and making her instantly dislike her by reporting a possible mis-representation to Rusbridger. I would like to hear her eloquently (fail) to explain why disliking Israeli policy in Palestine is anti-semetic, but instead we get platitudes about how anti-semtitism is wide-spread. Her inability to talk to anyone who doesn't agree with her makes me want to discount her as any kind of mind at all... Strange person.
I was involved in a series of e-mail exchanges with Ms Phillips for a number of weeks and can confirm she is certifiable.
In "Londonistan" she happily recycles the fraudulent story about Iranian givernment proposals to issue yellow ID badges for non-believers.
On her blog she wholeheartedly accept the IDF's conclusion that the murder of Huda Ghalia's family on Gaza beach was caused by a Palestinian landmine. But an expert from Human Rights Watch concluded that "You have the crater size, the shrapnel, the types of injuries, their location on the bodies. That all points to a shell dropping from the sky not explosives under the sand."
But you cant let facts get in the way of a good story can you? Telling lies to support a sinister agenda is what she has been accusing anti-semites of for most of her journalistic career. Pots and kettles indeed.
instead firing off totalising statements about how the interviewer's comments were similar to pre-Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia
I hope she means Stalin post-world war two.
Jews were widely favoured in pre-war Soviet Russia. She's talking about propaganda against jews but ironically Stalin's version of Goebbels was Jewish himself.
Again misleadingly playing the victimhood card that she claims to be so much against.
The basic point that Melanie Phillips makes in "Londondistan" is that Britain was too lenient in allowing Islamic extremism to grow unchecked. This is quite simply true.
For years Abu Hamza was allowed to preach hatred in the Finsbury Park mosque. The police did nothing, even when asked repeatedly by Muslims in the community, for fear of being accused of racism. And we have ridiculous laws that prevent us from deporting people who hate our society and want to destroy it.
Mel is not mad, she is right.
Wow even after her last embarrassment OP still continues to talk about things she knows jack about.
The basic point that Melanie Phillips makes in "Londondistan" is that Britain was too lenient in allowing Islamic extremism to grow unchecked. This is quite simply true.
Firstly there are a number of different kinds of terrorist groups that operate out of London. Secondly this is not a new situation. Read Bernard Porter's The Origins of the Vigilant State and tell me the situation is worse now than a hundred years ago in terms of terrorists in London.
For years Abu Hamza was allowed to preach hatred in the Finsbury Park mosque. The police did nothing, even when asked repeatedly by Muslims in the community, for fear of being accused of racism.
90% of Abu Hamza's preachings were aimed at the Saudi government and the scholars that supported them.Maybe that's not such a big concern for the police. Secondly they did infiltrate a spy into his mosque.
There are also two major Saudi dissidents who operate out of London and have no connections to the muslim community here. You're telling me that the police aren't arresting them because of fear of being called racist.
Mel is not mad, she is right.
Well I agree with you that she's not mad. She's a far-right jewish nationalist who passes herself of as a social commentator. I don't doubt her sanity though.
90% of Abu Hamza's preachings were aimed at the Saudi government and the scholars that supported them.
Well isn't it odd that so many of the Muslims who had worshipped peacefully at that mosque were forced out? He was a preacher of hate, not just against Saudis but against all non-Muslims and all Musims who disagreed with him. And he wasn't the only one. This country did nothing and let them stay. Kudos to Mel for telling the truth.
What do you all know about anything- You're all rabid anti-semitic, neo-Nazi, holocaust-denying, Islamo-fascists.
(Did I miss anything?)