Labour's new spin doctor made excuses for the Charlie Hebdo killers
As Guardian columnist Seumas Milne is announced head of communications for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, journalists who now have to deal with him should know how cheaply he values their lives.
Just days after the Paris murders at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January, Milne took to the pages of the Guardian to rehearse for his new role as spin doctor – only this time for the killers.
In a column titled ‘Paris is a warning: there is no insulation from our wars’, and sub-headed, ‘The attacks in France are a blowback from intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. What happens there happens here too’, Labour’s new spinner-in-chief gets his deniability in early:
“Nothing remotely justifies the murderous assault on Charlie Hebdo’s journalists, still less on the Jewish victims singled out only for their religious and ethnic identity.”
Despite this proviso, Milne proceeds to list at length more justifications than had even occurred to the killers. After explaining that the cartoons and jokes in Charlie Hebdo were a ‘repeated pornographic humiliation’ for French Muslims, he casts a wide net:
“Of course, the cocktail of causes and motivations for the attacks are complex: from an inheritance of savage colonial brutality in Algeria via poverty, racism, criminality and takfiri jihadist ideology.
Everything, in short, except the agency of the killers themselves. (One could argue that the role of religious ideas in the murder of cartoonists for drawing a religious figure is more significant than the Algerian war of independence, which wound down in 1962, but leave that aside for now.) Milne’s apologia hits its stride as he asserts:
“But without the war waged by western powers, including France, to bring to heel and reoccupy the Arab and Muslim world, last week’s attacks clearly wouldn’t have taken place.“
Clearly? Given his articles after 9/11, 7/7 and the Woolwich murder of Lee Rigby, the only thing clear is Milne’s consistent victim blaming when it comes to Islamist terrorism.
Milne goes on to invoke the authority of the dead killers to make excuses on their behalf, repeating their self-serving propaganda in a liberal newspaper:
“Cherif Kouachi insisted the attacks had been carried out in revenge for the ‘children of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria’. Ahmed Coulibaly said they were a response to France’s attacks on Isis, while claiming the supermarket slaughter was revenge for the deaths of Muslims in Palestine.”
He then quickly reassures readers who might be getting the wrong end of the stick that ‘such wanton killings are, of course, entirely counterproductive to the causes they are supposed to promote’. Of course. Poor misguided terrorists. If only you had listened to Seumas!
‘Why does this matter?’ you might ask. ‘Milne has written countless god-awful things. Why is this of particular significance now?’ Well, I think for this reason.
Journalists who cover British politics will now presumably deal with Labour’s new head of comms on a regular basis. Due to this professional necessity, they deserve to know what he thinks of them.
When Milne says there is a ‘gulf that separates the official view of French state policy at home and abroad and how it is seen by many of the country’s Muslim citizens,’ adding ‘That’s true in Britain too, of course’, he means that his apologia for terror would apply to the murder of British journalists as well.
Hacks might have hated Lynton Crosby and Alistair Campbell, but at least they could rely on them to be solid on the right of journalists not to be shot in their workplace.
The same cannot be said for Campbell’s successor.
In Seumas Milne, journalists will be sitting down to lunch or speaking on the phone with a man of whom they know the following to be true:
If a fanatic stormed into their offices tomorrow and stuck a gun in their face – either out of dislike for something they had written or to act out some political grievance – Milne would be willing to say, in public, that this was at least partly their own fault.
Happy lunching, comrades.
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Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
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141 Responses to “When fanatics kill journalists, Seumas Milne blames something else”
Richard Robson
What people from the right side of the political spectrum fail to understand or at the very least do not want to confront is the fact that there is a very real reason why we have terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn, Seumas Milne and i imagine most right thinking leftists definitely do not condone such terrorist attacks as 911, 7/7, or the Charlie Hebdo Murders. Very clearly it is wrong to resort to violence in order to make a political / Economic gain or to exact revenge ( Even if that’s exactly what the British and American Governments have been doing for at the very least the last century ) However if we truly want to see an end to terrorism then we must look at the reasoning for these terrible events however hard or controversial it is to do so. It does not matter at this point if it was right or wrong for those terrorists to kill all those journalists, what matters is understanding why they did it and finding a way to prevent such things happening in the future. Everyone knows that its basic science to say that every action has a reaction, for example what goes up must come down. If the American and British Governments did not interfere so much in the political structures of other countries imposing their will and conspiring to overthrow any leader who does not conform, and if we did not take part in the destabilizing of the Middle east engaging in multiple illegal wars killing hundred of thousand of innocent men women and children, and selling weapons to countries on our human right abusers list, weapons that end up in hands on both sides of every conflict all for profit and political gain then we would not have a problem with terrorism at all. The terrorists on that fateful day chose to target the Journalists of Charlie Hebdo because with their drawings of the prophet Mohammed they symbolized everything that is wrong with western media and their sometimes if not blatant irresponsible reporting which more often than not constitutes as propaganda in favor of the ruling classes of Europe and America and paints a demonizing and unfair picture of the Muslim faith and any person or country who does not conform. Indeed the media onslaught Jeremy Corbyn has had to endure since he won the Labor Leadership is testimony to this fact. and i do believe that this article is yet another attempt to assassinate the character of Corbyns newly employed head of communications before he has had a chance to do anything of any consequence. This shows that this man Seumas Milne is someone the establishment fears and is someone to watch closely in the coming years leading up to the next General Election.
GhostofJimMorisson
Ever heard of paragraphs? Puts people off reading it. Mind you, thats probably just as well. I skimmed through it, and it’s complete waffle. You blame Charlie Ebdo for getting themselves killed for the ‘crime’ of drawing a religious/historical figure. You’re a cretin of the highest order.
veganista
He didn’t support them. Some of you people are right idiots! He is attempting to explain WHY they happened. Hasn’t it always been said that Blair an d Bush helped create extremists? Personally I don’t think Islamists need excuses but we in the West certainly don’t help the situation. I don’t agree with Milne on Charlie Hebdo but that doesn’t mean he is a hard boiled Stalinist! He would not condone the attack!
veganista
You know that, do you? You are spreading outright lies!!!
veganista
Absolute and utter RUBBISH!