The
effusive praise being heaped on the
brutal Saudi despot by
western
media and
political
figures has been nothing short of
nauseating; the UK Government, which
arouses itself on a daily basis by
issuing self-consciously eloquent
lectures to the world about democracy,
actually
ordered flags flown all day at
half-mast to honor this repulsive
monarch. My Intercept colleague
Murtaza Hussain has an excellent article
about this whole spectacle, along with a
real obituary,
here.
I just
want to focus on one aspect: a
comparison of the statements President
Obama issued about the 2013 death of
President Chávez and the one he issued
today about the Saudi ruler. Here’s the
entire Obama statement about Chávez
(h/t
Sami Khan):
Now
here is the one today about Abdullah:
One
obvious difference between the two
leaders was that Chávez was elected and
Abdullah was not. Another is that Chávez
used the nation’s oil resources to
attempt to improve the lives of the
nation’s most improverished while
Abdullah used his to further enrich
Saudi oligarchs and western elites.
Another is that the severity of
Abdullah’s human rights abuses and
militarism makes Chávez look in
comparison like Gandhi.
But when
it comes to western political and media
discourse, the
only difference that matters is that
Chávez was a U.S. adversary while
Abdullah was a loyal U.S. ally – which,
by itself for purposes of the U.S. and
British media, converts the former into
an evil villainous monster and the
latter into a beloved symbol of peace,
reform and progress. As but one of
countless examples: last year, British
Prime Minister David Cameron – literally
the
best and most reliable friend to
world dictators after Tony Blair – stood
in Parliament after being questioned by
British MP George Galloway and said:
“there is one thing that is certain:
wherever there is a brutal Arab dictator
in the world, he will have the support
of [Galloway]”; last night, the very
same David Cameron
pronounced himself “deeply saddened”
and said the Saudi King would be
remembered for his “commitment to peace
and for strengthening understanding
between faiths.”
That’s
why there is nobody outside of American
cable news, DC think tanks, and the
self-loving Oxbridge clique in London
which does anything but scoff with scorn
and dark amusement when the US and UK
prance around as defenders of
freedom and democracy. Only in those
circles of tribalism, jingoism and
propaganda is such tripe taken at all
seriously.
