Thread by @clim8resistance

So why does Monbiot hate these people so much?

It's easy to see why. @ClarkeMicah (and Spiked for that matter) are the far more able and consistent critics of Western foreign policy and warmongering.

This is fundamental.

https://twitter.com/clim8resistance/status/1416355193545969665

When Hitchens and Spiked have pointed out the flaws and self-serving nature of the putative casus belli, Monbiot calls these critics 'apologists' for dictators' crimes. This has two causes.

1. Monbiot's moral universe is rendered in stark black and white, and nothing between.

2. The stark moral categories that divide Monbiot's moral universe into unimpeachable good and irredeemable evil cause him to be bound by and to trip over his own arguments.

This puts Monbiot far beneath those he criticises.

@DavidRoseUK, who Monbiot blames for the Iraq war, however, explained himself and the nature of journalism.

newstatesman.com/politics/2007/…

Monbiot doesn't acknowledge Rose's honest reflection and discussion of his mistakes.

But where is Monbiot's violent moralisation against Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch -- and other cowardly war mongers? And where is their reflection?

Unrepentant blowhards double down, of course, and traduce their critics as 'genocide-deniers', 'Saddam/Assad apologists', and of course, 'far-right white-supremacists'. That is what it means to be *consistently* against UK foreign policy and warmongering, you see.

Hence, lacking self-awareness, as Monbiot vacillates, he sees others changing their position.

And it is precisely their commitments to principles that upsets him. Those principles *must* be evil, right?

Says Monbiot, "Nigel Lawson was the George Osborne of his generation, devastating public services and inflicting massive, unnecessary pain on the poor."

Unemployment was at 3 million when Lawson arrived at #11. But by 1989, unemployment had halved.

What a terrible bastard.

Monbiot cannot explain Lawson's economic policies in anything other than the stark moral terms. He is no better able to explain Matt Ridley's role in Northern Rock, either. But with a series of popular and imaginative natural science books behind Ridley...

... Perhaps Monbiot's ire is simple jealousy. I don't agree with all of @mattwridley's bio-metaphysics ('ideas having sex'). But that doesn't mean that his arguments are not a deeply challenging, innovate, interesting and worthwhile. They surely are....

But what's Monbiot's theory of innovation? How does he place the human at the centre of our own history, as it as made?

"Ours is a struggle against ourselves", he says. It was all for nought. We were better off in the caves.

monbiot.com/2005/12/05/the…

And Bjorn Lomborg's sins, of course, are not even in challenging the core tenets of the new religion, but merely examining their consequences, by asking what, if we wanted to do the most good in the world, what would it be -- mitigation or something else.

Heresy. That's all.

Lomborg is one of those men who has "helped push us towards catastrophe", says Monbiot. "Wait a second", says Lomborg...

As the chart shows -- and it should be remembered that it would be even more substantial if it took account of population growth -- it requires a huge leap of faith to stay with the "catastrophe" narrative after the benefit of a historical perspective.

Monbiot's 'catastrophe' narrative really is an article of faith. Bad faith. Literally faith... It has been disproved, but he adheres to it in the face of facts.

It is an article of faith that allows him to moralise about Lawson, Rose, Lomborg, Ridley and Hitchens.

And of course, against the late Christopher Booker.

What did they all show?

An unwillingness to take official narratives at face value. An unwillingness to be swept along by orthodoxy. A desire to discover truths for themselves.

And that makes George so very, very angry.