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”
Labourisntworking
Really? Why am I not surprised? Do as I say not do as I do! Like Tony Benn, a millionaire socialist who married an American multi-millionairess, left nothing to the Party, and set up trusts to avoid Inheritance Tax!! The workers flag is brightest pink, it’s not as red as people think!!
hederer
There is a total absence of intellectual analysis in this demonization of Milne. He is NOT apologising for the vile acts of terrorists but searching for the deep political and military triggers for such violence. You sound like the blinkered Daily Mail hacks
fuckleftfootforward
you’re all idiots. while you felate each other with facile self-congratulatory remarks about ‘stalinist’ this and ‘apologist’ that, you do nothing other than reveal the simple fact that you’re incapable of turning a critical eye to the actions of western liberalism (something which by the way is not synonymous with being a ‘terrorist apologist’ or a ‘stalinist’). ‘muslim on muslim violence’ indeed, and i suppose our illegal military intervention in iraq and subsequent decade of cock-ups there has nothing to do with current crisis going on, right? or maybe we’re just well-meaning humanitarians who made an honest mistake? Grow up. your blatant defence of western sovereign interests is myopic to the point of being delusional. Atleast have the decency to admit that’s what you are defending. ‘left foot forward’ my arse, the vacuity of this liberal closet-tory blairite tripe amazes me – ‘stalinist ideologue’? are you listening to yourself? you sound deranged. It is YOU who are the ideologues. Atleast some people have the courage to defend the oppressed of this world instead of arrogantly dismissing any shred of legitimacy they lay claim to because of the actions of a handful of psychos who fancy themselves ‘matryrs of god’, yes, they do happen to either speak the same language, share the same religion or have the same skin colour as the rest, although i don’t know what that has to do with anything. Are you responsible for the excesses of national socialism? they were white, they were european. Or the genocides of the belgian congo? or abu graib? or the great indian famine? i suppose the thousands of civilians killed in drone strikes orchestrated by the ‘great liberal democracies’ of the west over the past 15 years don’t qualify as terrorist attacks in the same way as the murders of 12 white europeans. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
bluewaffle
Is this the webpage where the Blairites come to die. Lol
Bluesman1950
Why do you think that so many Conservatives and UKIP supporters did what I did, paid up £3 and voted for Corbyn? Do you think we did it to get a radical left-wing government?
Watching the left jumping deliriously around, convincing itself that it has the mood of the nation and appointing progressively more extreme Trots to frighten the horses makes that the best £3 I ever spent!