January 20, 2010
Rod Liddle: Anatomy of a Bully
…the characters of mans heart, blotted and confounded as they are, with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible onely to him that searcheth hearts. And though by mens actions wee do discover their designe sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to be altered, is to deceypher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that reads, is himself a good or evil man.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
I was disappointed to see the normally erudite Catherine Bennett let herself down rather badly on Sunday. Coming to an incoherent defence of rightwing demagogue Rod Liddle, her piece in the Observer could be summarised as “Rod Liddle is my dinner party chum, so I’m going to defend him – despite the fact he is a noxious toad – and imply that the fault lies with everyone else.”
Bennett was eviscerated in the comments thread (an experience familiar to all CiF contributors, but for once actually justified). Sunny Hundal – whom Bennett attacked in her piece – likewise posted a devastating reply at the Guardian last night. Bennett must have felt especially silly even by the end of Sunday, however, when Sunny posted messages on Liberal Conspiracy that appeared to show Rod Liddle using the alias “monkeymfc” to write extreme racist and misogynistic tirades on a football supporters’ message board. (Liddle’s status of confirmation or denial fluctuates; at present Sunny is still posing the issue as an open question regarding Liddle’s authorship).
Prior to this, Liddle has previously used his Spectator blog, as well as his Sunday Times column, to spout offence and bigotry at every turn. Particular examples include religious bigotry, racism, racial determinism and climate change denial.
The standard defence when Liddle writes something heinously obnoxious and offensive is always the same: it’s “just a joke”, and Liddle is “being ironic”. Or as Bennett pompously put it, Liddle’s opinions have “merely been expressed in a style that is calculated, in the tradition of Julie Burchill and the late Auberon Waugh, to enrage readers who do not find him amusing”.
It can be really frustrating when the “just a joke” line is employed to defend vile nastiness. After all, it’s pretty much impossible to prove that somebody wasn’t “just joking”. Indeed there’s good reason for that, and here’s some philosophy you weren’t expecting.
It turns out to be hard enough to prove that other people even have minds, let alone establishing what the intentions in those minds were. Or for that matter, that other people even exist independently of, say, the machinations of an evil demon that controls your/my every waking moment.
Descartes (in)famously attempted to offer a proof for at least his own existence by reasoning “I think, therefore I am”.* But in the end he needed to appeal to God to get this solution going.
David Hume ended up concluding that we can’t prove that there is an external world, or that other people have minds (and aren’t just illusions, or automatons, or whatever). Instead, he concluded that we are mentally hard-wired to simply believe that other people have minds and live in a world external to our own experiences, and this is a fundamental aspect of “human nature” that allows us to comprehend anything at all. But on Hume’s picture, we can’t prove that Rod Liddle has a mind (assuming, contra-some of his articles, that he does), let alone what his intentions somehow originating in his mind are or were.
But then, the philosophical high road isn’t the best way to approach a case like Liddle’s. The issue isn’t about rationally proving whether he meant what he said as “just a joke” or otherwise. Instead, we need to take a rounded look at Liddle himself, and ask what on earth he’s playing at when he’s making his nasty little assertions.
It may be that Liddle really believes the nastiness he spouts. It may be that he doesn’t, but just likes the attention. Either way, a man of his age and experience can’t reasonably be supposed to be ignorant of the knowledge that what he says is nasty. And that other people will find it so. You just don’t get that far in life without understanding these things.
So it can’t just be a joke coming from Liddle, because he knows that his “jokes” are nasty, and hence aren’t “just” jokes at all. So why does he claim his behaviour is simply “joking”?
This reminds me of a case I heard about back at University. Some girls at another college had asked not to be referenced by name in the college’s undergraduate rag. In response, the authors of the rag described the girls as “bleeding cunt feminists”. Everyone in the college knew who the “feminists” in question were, of course. The authors claimed in their defence that it was “just a joke”.
Except it wasn’t. Because when you know somebody has been deeply offended by something, and you knew beforehand that they would be, you’re not claiming that it was “just a joke” at all. On the contrary, that phrase is used to increase offence and to augment any harm caused. It’s not only a callous refusal to admit any guilt or sorrow. It’s also an act of rubbing salt into open wounds by trivialising the victim as a whining kill-joy.
The same is true of Rod Liddle. He knows he’s not joking, because he knows what he writes, even if funny to him, is extremely obnoxious, offensive and hurtful to others. There’s no humour-failure going on with his targets. But by implying there is, Liddle gleefully turns the screw.
The “it’s just a joke” meme is a standard follow-up weapon in the arsenal of every bully in the land. Rod Liddle is no exception. He’s just got a bigger platform than most. With any luck, he’ll soon fall off it. Onto his head.
–
* Or possibly “I think, I am”. This is the famous “cogito”. Whether it includes an inference signified by the word “therefore” is a bone of centuries-long philosophical contention.
chris said,
January 20, 2010 at 12:55 pm
What would happen if some prominent writer were to consistently write obnoxious insults about people who (say) were privately educated?
Would Liddle’s defenders be so keen on defending his free speech? Would Liddle’s opponents object as much?
Why is my example merely hypothetical?
Paul Sagar said,
January 20, 2010 at 11:31 pm
To be honest Chris, I don’t think I really follow.
Can you spell your point out for me?
Or are you just making the point that this sort of thing is bound up with class power structures and social expecations/limits on legitimacy which are themselves orientated around class and status?
Tom Freeman said,
January 21, 2010 at 4:37 pm
More philosophy: maybe Occam’s razor can help.
Given the evidence constituted by Liddle’s published work, which is the simpler explanation: that he’s just a bit of an arse but also likes to satirise real grade-A bastards, or that he’s a real grade-A bastard who tries to hide under the cloak of being just a bit of an arse?
Tom N said,
January 23, 2010 at 6:49 am
‘Or as Bennett pompously put it, Liddle’s opinions have “merely been expressed in a style that is calculated, in the tradition of Julie Burchill and the late Auberon Waugh, to enrage readers who do not find him amusing”.’
I think it’s arguably less pompous to make an accurate, telling comparison between two very different writers – both of whom you clearly haven’t read – than to jemmy in an irrelevant, tenuous connection to early modern European philosophy; all in the effort to show us that – yes – you have read Hume on Induction. At least you didn’t accuse Liddle or Bennett of being bad writers.
‘Bennett was eviscerated in the comments thread’ .You clearly haven’t read it or if you did saw only what you wanted to see. I did read it. Just now. Just so I could write those last couple of sentences knowing I was right. It took time. The vast majority of the comments don’t even mention Liddle; most discuss Twitter. Most don’t even refer to Bennett. If they neither refer to nor mention her they cannot – a fortiori – ‘eviscerate’ her.
Similarly with this gem of analysis: “Rod Liddle is my dinner party chum, so I’m going to defend him – despite the fact he is a noxious toad – and imply that the fault lies with everyone else.”
Er no. Do you think any fair-minded reader who reads Bennett’s article will agree that her article could be reduced to that? It was disclosure: had she not mentioned that he’s a friend you could have accused her of sticking up for her chum without informing people. Or perhaps you were just being hyperbolic – you know, like a writer. Not to be taken literally…..would be a terrible shame if it were taken out of context and it looked like you were doing her an injustice.
Perhaps I’m wasting my time here but, as it happens, you and others have got Liddle completely wrong. On the one hand he is a self-described ‘fundamentalist liberal’, on the other as an Old Labour type socialist: high taxes, state education, even some nationalisation – the lot. It’s an interesting mix and one that makes for good commentary. He lost his job at the Today programme for writing an article saying the Countryside Alliance march would remind people why they voted Labour. He wrote it in the Guardian. Not looking very right wing so far.
He is not anti-Islam, though he dislikes the veil for feminist reasons, as you so lazily suppose but against Islamism: a pretty simple distinction. Much of his palpable anger stems from what he perceives as its intolerance towards women, something I would have thought a self-describer feminist would have been in full agreement with.
Similarly with multiculturalism and immigration. These are not left/right issues. Liddle is very much of the Frank Field school in having strong concerns about the effect of excess immigration on social cohesion and on white working class communities. You may disagree, many do, but I don’t see how this makes him a low down dirty ‘waycist’. He also makes points about certain unfortunate cultural tendencies within the black community but so too have those well-known racists Diane Abbott and Trevor Phillips. The ‘goat curry’ furore is another piece of nonsense. Anyone who reads his blog knows that it was a sarcastic back reference to an earlier post satirising the worthiness of a certain type of metropolitan liberal and their view of multiculturalism. Ripped from context it looks bad but so what?
Demagogue? Are you just trawling the sub-academe dictionary for terms that only bad news paper writers use and picked ‘demagogue’ before you got to ‘discourse’, ‘magisterial’ and ‘narrative’? He’s not Hitler; Christ, he’s not even Galloway. If you look in the comments section of the New Statesman piece you have linked to, you will see a spirited exchange of views in which Liddle answers his critics point by point and, in my view, gets the better of them easily, whilst dishing out a few good insults too. Great fun. Does the same on his blog. How many writers actually do that? You do and it’s to your credit (the responding not the insulting). He explains his view on the medium of blogging and hints at the coming discussion we need to have, namely, how are we to treat things like twitter feeds and Facebook posts. See his latest for the Speccie: hihttp://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5719253/5719223/part_4/would-a-terrorist-really-post-a-warning-on-twitter.thtml
Incidentally, I made many of these points when I defended OUCA, an exchange which – for your own reasons I’m sure – I see you have deleted.
As for Hundal’s ‘devastating’ reply, what exactly did Benett get wrong? She identified the risk inherent in this new form of Twitter flashmoberry. A complaint from someone who only has to click a button online to register a complaint having heard from a Twitter feed that ‘Rod Liddle says black people are more stupid than white people’ is worth very little. Moreover there are free speech implications. The climate in which speech operates is as, if not more, important than the formal restrictions one is subject to. We’ve had this discussion before when it comes to political correctness and racist jokes.
Liddle believes, as do I, that causing offence is not the same as being offensive. A lot of perpetually upset people need to grow up and realise this. Which brings us to the Indy.
Apparently, he can’t be editor of the Indy because it’s a ‘serious’ paper. Well who better to save the Indy, a paper so turgid and worthy that without serous reform it’s hard to imagining it surviving for too much longer in its current Guardian-lite form, than an award-winning editor who was at the helm when the Today programme’s audience got above 6 million, did a series of fantastic investigative reports – including the Gilligan Iraq ones that everyone now knows are true – and generally reached a peak of quality to which it has yet to return?
The great irony is that Liddle has shown time and again that he can work very well with people who completely disagree with him, a recipe for a great editor. I think he would actually make the paper a truly independent voice once again. I wonder how many of his critics can actually tolerate working with people with whom they disagree.
Anyway, as to being a ‘bully’ (so many accusations, so little time, huh?), Yes, we can never know – not even philosophically – the contents of another’s mind. Big deal. We approximate and look to actions ‘by their deeds shall ye know them’ etc. We also make inferences to the best explanation.
Regarding ‘just a joke’, Yes, bullies can say horrible nasty things and then inflict further humiliation by pretending their victim’s offence is yet another example of the victim’s maladjustedness, the aim being to convince the victim that their own protest demeans them even more. We all remember it from school. It’s nasty. However it is not the only situation.
There are cases where something is, yes, a joke and one that goes too far. Saying it was a ‘joke’ shows that, though it caused offence and upset, this was not what was intended. Sometimes many of us step over the line. We then apologise but add it was a joke to show that such sentiments are not what we really think. The Harriet Harman article ‘would you?’ is a case in point.
But bullying? First, it’s bad comparison. Normally with bullying you need 3 things: acquaintance, repetitiveness, and ill intent. You need acquaintance: it doesn’t make much sense to talk about Liddle ‘bullying’ an abstract entity like ‘the muslim community’ for example. The ‘bleeding cunt feminists’ case you mentioned had this acquaintance, the people were known to each other, which is why it is absolutely unlike what we’re discussing.
There are also the cases where, without context, the words themselves are misleading and saying when challenged that it was a joke is meant to show that the interloper has misunderstood what is going on.
‘It may be that Liddle really believes the nastiness he spouts. It may be that he doesn’t, but just likes the attention.’
Or maybe he believes what he says, what he says isn’t nasty, and he likes the attention by writing in a way that is pungent and irritates people he dislikes. He knows it offends and upsets some people and doesn’t care and is happy doing so because it is not offensive. This is the problem when you get stuff second hand. I notice that you linked mostly to other left wing blog sites outraged by something they thought they had discerned, usually incorrectly, in a Liddle article. Best read in the original I find.
Tom N said,
January 23, 2010 at 6:53 am
‘Or as Bennett pompously put it, Liddle’s opinions have “merely been expressed in a style that is calculated, in the tradition of Julie Burchill and the late Auberon Waugh, to enrage readers who do not find him amusing”.’
I think it’s arguably less pompous to make an accurate, telling comparison between two very different writers – both of whom you clearly haven’t read – than to jemmy in an irrelevant, tenuous connection to early modern European philosophy; all in the effort to show us that – yes – you have read Hume on Induction. At least you didn’t accuse Liddle or Bennett of being bad writers.
‘Bennett was eviscerated in the comments thread’ .You clearly haven’t read it or if you did saw only what you wanted to see. I did read it. Just now. Just so I could write those last couple of sentences knowing I was right. It took time. The vast majority of the comments don’t even mention Liddle; most discuss Twitter. Most don’t even refer to Bennett. If they neither refer to nor mention her they cannot – a fortiori – ‘eviscerate’ her.
Similarly with this gem of analysis: “Rod Liddle is my dinner party chum, so I’m going to defend him – despite the fact he is a noxious toad – and imply that the fault lies with everyone else.”
Er no. Do you think any fair-minded reader who reads Bennett’s article will agree that her article could be reduced to that? It was disclosure: had she not mentioned that he’s a friend you could have accused her of sticking up for her chum without informing people. Or perhaps you were just being hyperbolic – you know, like a writer. Not to be taken literally…..would be a terrible shame if it were taken out of context and it looked like you were doing her an injustice.
Perhaps I’m wasting my time here but, as it happens, you and others have got Liddle completely wrong. On the one hand he is a self-described ‘fundamentalist liberal’, on the other as an Old Labour type socialist: high taxes, state education, even some nationalisation – the lot. It’s an interesting mix and one that makes for good commentary. He lost his job at the Today programme for writing an article saying the Countryside Alliance march would remind people why they voted Labour. He wrote it in the Guardian. Not looking very right wing so far.
He is not anti-Islam, though he dislikes the veil for feminist reasons, as you so lazily suppose but against Islamism: a pretty simple distinction. Much of his palpable anger stems from what he perceives as its intolerance towards women, something I would have thought a self-describer feminist would have been in full agreement with.
Similarly with multiculturalism and immigration. These are not left/right issues. Liddle is very much of the Frank Field school in having strong concerns about the effect of excess immigration on social cohesion and on white working class communities. You may disagree, many do, but I don’t see how this makes him a low down dirty ‘waycist’. He also makes points about certain unfortunate cultural tendencies within the black community but so too have those well-known racists Diane Abbott and Trevor Phillips. The ‘goat curry’ furore is another piece of nonsense. Anyone who reads his blog knows that it was a sarcastic back reference to an earlier post satirising the worthiness of a certain type of metropolitan liberal and their view of multiculturalism. Ripped from context it looks bad but so what?
Demagogue? Are you just trawling the sub-academe dictionary for terms that only bad news paper writers use and picked ‘demagogue’ before you got to ‘discourse’, ‘magisterial’ and ‘narrative’? He’s not Hitler; Christ, he’s not even Galloway. If you look in the comments section of the New Statesman piece you have linked to, you will see a spirited exchange of views in which Liddle answers his critics point by point and, in my view, gets the better of them easily, whilst dishing out a few good insults too. Great fun. Does the same on his blog. How many writers actually do that? You do and it’s to your credit. He explains his view on the medium of blogging and hints at the coming discussion we need to have, namely, how are we to treat things like twitter feeds and Facebook posts. See his latest for the Speccie: hihttp://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5719253/5719223/part_4/would-a-terrorist-really-post-a-warning-on-twitter.thtml
Incidentally, I made many of these points when I defended OUCA, an exchange which – for your own reasons I’m sure – I see you have deleted.
As for Hundal’s ‘devastating’ reply, what exactly did Benett get wrong? She identified the risk inherent in this new form of Twitter flashmoberry. A complaint from someone who only has to click a button online to register a complaint having heard from a Twitter feed that ‘Rod Liddle says black people are more stupid than white people’ is worth very little. Moreover there are free speech implications. The climate in which speech operates is as, if not more, important than the formal restrictions one is subject to. We’ve had this discussion before when it comes to political correctness and racist jokes.
Liddle believes, as do I, that causing offence is not the same as being offensive. A lot of perpetually upset people need to grow up and realise this. Which brings us to the Indy.
Apparently, he can’t be editor of the Indy because it’s a ‘serious’ paper. Well who better to save the Indy, a paper so turgid and worthy that without serous reform it’s hard to imagining it surviving for too much longer in its current Guardian-lite form, than an award-winning editor who was at the helm when the Today programme’s audience got above 6 million, did a series of fantastic investigative reports – including the Gilligan Iraq ones that everyone now knows are true – and generally reached a peak of quality to which it has yet to return?
The great irony is that Liddle has shown time and again that he can work very well with people who completely disagree with him, a recipe for a great editor. I think he would actually make the paper a truly independent voice once again. I wonder how many of his critics can actually tolerate working with people with whom they disagree.
Anyway, as to being a ‘bully’ (so many accusations, so little time, huh?), Yes, we can never know – not even philosophically – the contents of another’s mind. Big deal. We approximate and look to actions ‘by their deeds shall ye know them’ etc. We also make inferences to the best explanation.
Regarding ‘just a joke’, Yes, bullies can say horrible nasty things and then inflict further humiliation by pretending their victim’s offence is yet another example of the victim’s maladjustedness, the aim being to convince the victim that their own protest demeans them even more. We all remember it from school. It’s nasty. However it is not the only situation.
There are cases where something is, yes, a joke and one that goes too far. Saying it was a ‘joke’ shows that, though it caused offence and upset, this was not what was intended. Sometimes many of us step over the line. We then apologise but add it was a joke to show that such sentiments are not what we really think. The Harriet Harman article ‘would you?’ is a case in point.
But bullying? First, it’s bad comparison. Normally with bullying you need 3 things: acquaintance, repetitiveness, and ill intent. You need acquaintance: it doesn’t make much sense to talk about Liddle ‘bullying’ an abstract entity like ‘the muslim community’ for example. The ‘bleeding cunt feminists’ case you mentioned had this acquaintance, the people were known to each other, which is why it is absolutely unlike what we’re discussing.
There are also the cases where, without context, the words themselves are misleading and saying when challenged that it was a joke is meant to show that the interloper has misunderstood what is going on.
‘It may be that Liddle really believes the nastiness he spouts. It may be that he doesn’t, but just likes the attention.’
Or maybe he believes what he says, what he says isn’t nasty, and he likes the attention by writing in a way that is pungent and irritates people he dislikes. He knows it offends and upsets some people and doesn’t care and is happy doing so because it is not offensive. This is the problem when you get stuff second hand. I notice that you linked mostly to other left wing blog sites outraged by something they thought they had discerned, usually incorrectly, in a Liddle article. Best read in the original I find.