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Gilad Atzmon considers the significance of Tony Blair's almost certain victory in the British general election. He compares Britain to other morally degenerate democracies, such as Israel and the US, and says that, in the case of Britain, the question will not just be one of the ruling Labour Party's moral bankruptcy, but "the entire British society ... will lose its innocence, forever". Tomorrow the British people are going to elect a war criminal to be their prime minister for another five years. Not only is Blair a war criminal who initiated an illegal war, but, judging from the British media, the picture is crystal clear: the man is a compulsive liar who has surrounded himself with morally degenerate advisers and obedient servants. Even his attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, the man who was supposed to uphold law within government, isn't exactly squeaky clean when put under scrutiny. But, surely, this is not a great novelty. Blair and his junta didn't invent a thing. Politicians are known to be pretty horrible people and, if this is not enough, ordinary people do tend to put their fate into the hands of nasty politicians. Seemingly, there must be something appealing about mass murderers. Stalin and Hitler were loved by their people for more than a while. But then, democracy was supposed to change it all; we were supposed to become morally-guided, peace-loving creatures. Somehow, it didn't happen. Not only did it not happen, but we are now killing in the name of democracy. Thinking of Britain in terms of a morally degenerate democracy, we might as well draw a lesson from the cases of America and Israel, no doubt the two leading morally degenerate democracies. The current Israeli prime minister is a war criminal. And yet, it didn't stop the Israeli people from electing him twice. Needless to say, Sharon, has never laid down his weapons: day by day he is engaged in killing Palestinian civilians and ethnically cleansing those who manage to survive. But he continues to enjoy the support of the majority of the Israeli people. He is far more popular than any recent Israeli prime minister. It is no surprise that America is no different to Israel. In the last American election Bush's success was more than just marginal. This time he won the popular vote. The majority of the American people believe that the warmonger cowboy is the right man for the job. They must be happy with the American expansionist policy in the Middle East. Thus, we can deduce that it isn't only the British people who crown a war criminal. People love to be led by warmongers. But then, we should stop for a second and ask ourselves: is Britain as bad as Israel or America? Surely, we want to think that Britain is far better. In fact, it is the other way around: Britain is far worse. While in America and Israel it is the "right wing", the so called "lower classes" and the "uneducated" who are electing war criminals, in Britain it is the "centre left" who are doing the Job. In Britain, it is the "enlightened", "well-educated" and well-informed broadsheet readers who are doing this. In Britain, it is those who read, day after day, about the prime minister's lack of integrity. It is those people who read daily about the growing numbers of Iraqi civilian victims. True, they all admit in public that Blair is a dreadful choice but, nevertheless, they will vote Labour. Furthermore, while in Israel and America the shift towards the right is usually blamed on the direct assault on the American and Israeli people, the British people are yet to become victims of any direct terror. The British people will elect Blair in spite of his crimes, in spite of the horror for which this man is responsible. This support for Labour cannot be morally justified. Labour voters have developed a unique form of self-righteous blindness. They would say, yes we vote Labour in spite of Blair, we vote for health and education. As if the state of the National Health Service or schools is something to boast about. They would say, we vote for the economy, referring to Blair's prosperous economy, a miraculous success maintained by masses of abused illegal immigrants who are working and living in inhuman conditions. And yet I am not blaming the British voter or the Labour supporter. It isn't their fault. In fact, the British do not have much of a choice. They have to choose between the one who initiated the murder of thousands of Iraqi civilians and the one who supported this illegal war in the first place. They have to choose between Blair, the compulsive liar, and Howard, the tactical liar, a man who declares a populist war against immigrants while praising the British people for letting his Jewish grandmother escape the Nazis. Labour is a dead concept. But I am not suggesting that left-wing philosophy is over. The idea of equality is as alive as ever; it is just those people who were supposed to transform that idea into practice that are the problem. It is them who fooled us completely. It is the Labour Party that should have replaced Blair long before this doomed election. It is the Labour Party, once a major left-wing European institution, that has become a morally bankrupt power-seeking association. True, a few Labour MPs did rebel at the time of the Iraq war; some even abandoned their comfortable seats. But those who were not brave enough to stand up to Blair are the real bad people in this saga. Together with Blair, they have betrayed the very notion of humanism. As members of the ruling party, they have betrayed the British people. Clearly, it is the Labour Party that should have spat out Blair ages ago. It should have done it not only in order to protect world peace, but also to help Labour regain its moral ground. But now it is too late. Tomorrow, when Blair is re-elected, the question won't just be that of Labour's moral bankruptcy. Tomorrow, it will be the entire British society that will lose its innocence, forever. |
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