On Kipling and cognitive dissonance

In a characteristically witty email today, my pal Mick shared his horror at realising he agreed with something Hitchens had written in the Quail on Sunday. Relax Michael. It’s cognitive dissonance makes us uncomfy when people with views we detest also have ones we share. I dare say Stalin and I could have found points of agreement on the novels of Sholokhov or the films of Eisenstein – though on matters like this, those in the public eye have a bit more than dissonance to contend with. Were the Labour leader to say such a thing he’d invite a jubilant Mail headline the very next day. Comrade Corbyn – “STALIN WAS RIGHT”

(Some say we have the press we deserve, but what kind of pass have we come to that a term of kinship between those with a shared dream or duty should be routinely used in so cheap and nasty, so gratuitous a sarcasm? The abuses of Stalinism aren’t the sole culprit here. The c-word is a good and wholesome one, and we’re the poorer without it.)

As Kipling so eloquently put it … to hear the truth you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves to lay a trap for fools. Honest brokers in the public eye – who cannot but incur the wrath of a billionaire press which also defines the centre ground for less sharkish media – find their every deed and utterance decontextualised and reassembled in poisonous forms. And as shown by a Guardian commentariat exchange in December, you needn’t be a tabloid writer to run with the pack.

Ninjawarrior‘s debating style routinely features such constructs as brass-necked … tolly  [sic] bonkers … pathetic … hotch-potch of hard Left misguided and deluded middle class protest clubs, contaminated by outdated , self-obsessed, pompous self-interest … and the likely sexist – we can guess but never be sure of gender in online persona – absolute tripe, darlin’.

On December 11 ninjawarrior had this to say below a piece entitled Corbyn praises Stop the war coalition:

Anti-war coalition – what a pile of piffle – how do I know ? “Andrew Murray, chief of staff at Unite and a member of the Communist party of Great Britain” says it all really. So Corbyn is in bed with the chief of staff of Unite and a communist to boot. “with friends like that, …………. ” and this naïve idiot wants to be P.M. ??? a complete comedy show : you couldn’t make it up.

When DrGee pointed out that ninjawarrior did ” make it up”, the latter demanded: “which bit was made up?”

Understandably perhaps, DrGee had by now had enough, leaving zerohoursuni – a chap we steel city scribblers have had our collective eye on for a while now  – to inject a note of sanity.

The bit that says Corbyn is “in bed with” a communist when all they share is a belief the war on Syria is morally wrong, strategically inept, and (unlike facing down Ankara and Riyadh, or getting real with Assad, Putin and the funny hats in Teheran) not a credible way of defeating Isis. StW is a popular front, defined as the coming together of diverse groups who for one particular issue are prepared to set aside sectional interests and differences. Ergo, jumping from shared belief on one topic to “in bed with” is indeed ‘making it up’.

At other times dissonance can be dispelled by the simple expedient – seldom a bad idea – of sharpening our thinking. My recent piece on 9/11 ‘Truthers’ elicited a reply that included this:

Where certainty is claimed, the finger tends to point in the direction of Mosad. As you’ll quickly gather, this development presents an awkward problem, especially for marxists and anti-racists, like myself. A minefield in fact.

Blaming Mossad for 9/11 is no less fanciful than blaming Bush, and just as reactionary. More to the point here, should incontestable evidence of Mossad involvement emerge, this would only be an “awkward problem” for those – including many Zionists and too many (i.e. greater than zero) anti Zionists – who through ignorance or mendacity fail to distinguish hostility to Israel (its racism, aggression, linkage to imperialism and the ethnic cleansing on which its current form is premised) from antisemitism.

Otherwise, no problemo – apart from egg on the face for the likes of me. That’s a risk I embrace with heroic fortitude in the interests of pushing back the frontiers of inquiry.

Finally on cognitive dissonance, I aspire, usually without success, to keep in mind – in the face of racism, fascism, snobbery, misogeny or other forms that combine the stupid, the vicious and the downright ugly – that life is not simple. The person displaying those traits may also be the one to risk their life, while my PC pals hold back and wring their hands, to pull me from blazing building.