Long Live the Nun-killer!
Elegant language is the speciality of the novelist Martin Amis, and he scales the heights of elegance in the attack on the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in his new book, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million. Trotsky, writes Amis, was "a fucking liar and a nun-killer".
As he pursues his theme that Trotsky paved the way for the Stalin terror, however, Amis seems to miss a few relevant facts. For instance, Trotsky - a brilliant writer and agitator - was opposed to Stalin and his policies from 1923, even before Lenin's death. He continued that opposition so relentlessly that he was banished by Stalin in 1927, and spent the last 13 years of his life dodging Stalin's killers and organising a small band of followers to contest Stalinist tyranny all over the world. Almost all his close family was hunted down and murdered by Stalin's agents. In 1940, in Mexico, he too was murdered by a Stalinist hit-man.
After his death, Trotskyists sustained his ideas and his opposition to the regime in Russia. Their line was best summed up in the slogan: "Neither Washington Nor Moscow, but International Socialism." Trotskyists opposed the Russian invasion of Hungary and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. Trotskyists played their part in the downfall of the Stalinist regimes of eastern Europe and cheered the demolition of the Berlin wall. They kept alive the idea of a socialist society run from below that would liberate the masses (or "yobs" as Amis so tastefully calls them) from poverty, ignorance and disease. They were, in short, rather quicker off the mark in recognising and opposing the Stalinist menace than Martin Amis, who seems to have discovered it now, well over a decade after it was toppled.
Why are Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and the rest of the Reaganite rump that runs the US administration so desperate to topple the Saddam regime in Iraq? After all, the same Reaganites steadfastly defended the same tyranny during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The answer can be found in the shifting relationship with another even more foul and corrupt dictatorship that until now has enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the US government - Saudi Arabia. For half a century the brutal billionaires who rule that country have supplied cheap oil to the US, and then happily invested the proceeds there. Then came September 11, and the shock discovery that Saudi sheikhs are unreliable. One of them, indeed, is the prime suspect for the twin towers catastrophe. Fifteen of the 19 terrorist hijackers who caused it were born or brought up in Saudi Arabia.
Suddenly the old alliance cooled. Suspect Arab bank accounts were frozen. The families of the September 11 dead issued writs demanding damages from the Saudi government. Some Saudi billionaires took their money out of the US. Suddenly, an old question returned to haunt the US administration: where would they get their oil? To be certain to control the supply of oil, the US needs client Arab states. Saudi Arabia is no longer a reliable client. The next best hope is Iraq. But the regime there is not friendly any more, so, for the sake of the oil supplies, it's time for a regime change - and a war.
A sure sign that the US government wants Britain to help them in their war is a spate of presidential references to Winston Churchill. They date back to Lyndon B Johnson when he became president after Kennedy's assassination in 1963. He needed British support for the US war in Vietnam, and was worried when a Labour government was elected in 1964. Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, soon set the president at ease. He made "absolutely plain our support for the American stand against Communist infiltration in South Vietnam". Johnson was delighted and in July 1966 organised a special banquet for Wilson in the White House. "England," said Johnson, "is blessed with a gallant and hardy leadership. In you, sir, England has a man of mettle, a new Churchill in her hour of crisis." Wilson glowed. But at least he didn't commit any British troops to Vietnam. Tony Blair is keen to prove an even more gallant and hardy leader than Harold Wilson.
Palestine is Still The Issue. Twenty-five years ago, John Pilger made a television programme with that title. Now he has made another one, even more devastating. It goes out late at night on September 16. It features an Israeli father, wracked in grief for his little girl who was killed by a suicide bomb. He denounces the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which he regards as the real reason for his daughter's death. He is certain to be savaged by Zionists, but his detractors will find it hard to brand him an anti-semite.
As he pursues his theme that Trotsky paved the way for the Stalin terror, however, Amis seems to miss a few relevant facts. For instance, Trotsky - a brilliant writer and agitator - was opposed to Stalin and his policies from 1923, even before Lenin's death. He continued that opposition so relentlessly that he was banished by Stalin in 1927, and spent the last 13 years of his life dodging Stalin's killers and organising a small band of followers to contest Stalinist tyranny all over the world. Almost all his close family was hunted down and murdered by Stalin's agents. In 1940, in Mexico, he too was murdered by a Stalinist hit-man.
After his death, Trotskyists sustained his ideas and his opposition to the regime in Russia. Their line was best summed up in the slogan: "Neither Washington Nor Moscow, but International Socialism." Trotskyists opposed the Russian invasion of Hungary and the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. Trotskyists played their part in the downfall of the Stalinist regimes of eastern Europe and cheered the demolition of the Berlin wall. They kept alive the idea of a socialist society run from below that would liberate the masses (or "yobs" as Amis so tastefully calls them) from poverty, ignorance and disease. They were, in short, rather quicker off the mark in recognising and opposing the Stalinist menace than Martin Amis, who seems to have discovered it now, well over a decade after it was toppled.
Why are Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and the rest of the Reaganite rump that runs the US administration so desperate to topple the Saddam regime in Iraq? After all, the same Reaganites steadfastly defended the same tyranny during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The answer can be found in the shifting relationship with another even more foul and corrupt dictatorship that until now has enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the US government - Saudi Arabia. For half a century the brutal billionaires who rule that country have supplied cheap oil to the US, and then happily invested the proceeds there. Then came September 11, and the shock discovery that Saudi sheikhs are unreliable. One of them, indeed, is the prime suspect for the twin towers catastrophe. Fifteen of the 19 terrorist hijackers who caused it were born or brought up in Saudi Arabia.
Suddenly the old alliance cooled. Suspect Arab bank accounts were frozen. The families of the September 11 dead issued writs demanding damages from the Saudi government. Some Saudi billionaires took their money out of the US. Suddenly, an old question returned to haunt the US administration: where would they get their oil? To be certain to control the supply of oil, the US needs client Arab states. Saudi Arabia is no longer a reliable client. The next best hope is Iraq. But the regime there is not friendly any more, so, for the sake of the oil supplies, it's time for a regime change - and a war.
A sure sign that the US government wants Britain to help them in their war is a spate of presidential references to Winston Churchill. They date back to Lyndon B Johnson when he became president after Kennedy's assassination in 1963. He needed British support for the US war in Vietnam, and was worried when a Labour government was elected in 1964. Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, soon set the president at ease. He made "absolutely plain our support for the American stand against Communist infiltration in South Vietnam". Johnson was delighted and in July 1966 organised a special banquet for Wilson in the White House. "England," said Johnson, "is blessed with a gallant and hardy leadership. In you, sir, England has a man of mettle, a new Churchill in her hour of crisis." Wilson glowed. But at least he didn't commit any British troops to Vietnam. Tony Blair is keen to prove an even more gallant and hardy leader than Harold Wilson.
Palestine is Still The Issue. Twenty-five years ago, John Pilger made a television programme with that title. Now he has made another one, even more devastating. It goes out late at night on September 16. It features an Israeli father, wracked in grief for his little girl who was killed by a suicide bomb. He denounces the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which he regards as the real reason for his daughter's death. He is certain to be savaged by Zionists, but his detractors will find it hard to brand him an anti-semite.
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