18.3.04

LINK: Norman Geras goes off on the glib usage of tragedy for political advantage:

"'Glib' here is right, but that isn't the worst of it. As someone who has spoken more than once on this blog in favour of mass demonstrations aimed against terrorism and tyranny rather than against, well, the liberation of peoples, I have no quarrel with Madeleine Bunting's expression of admiration and support for the way the citizens of Spain collectively expressed themselves the day after they were attacked. But her attempt to co-opt the meaning of other people's protest - a protest of millions of heads, of uncountable thoughts and emotions - and of their fresh, day-old mourning for one's own contestable point of view I found unseemly and callous."

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