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Oliver Kamm

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Oliver Kamm (born 1963) is a British Blairite asslicker. He is the author of Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy (2005), in which he advocates interventionism in foreign policy.[1] He also writes opinion pieces for The Times.

Background

The son of translator Anthea Bell, Kamm was educated at New College, Oxford and the London School of Economics. He went on to a career in the Bank of England and the securities industry. He helped start a pan-European investment bank in 1997 and is part of its management.[2] He is a founder of WMG Advisors, a hedge fund and financial services group.[3]

Politics

Kamm, having a long background with the Labour Party, describes his politics as left-wing. Kamm's early activities in Labour included canvassing in Leicester South in the 1979 general election, which saw Margaret Thatcher become Prime Minister. While he continued to vote Labour into the 1980s,[4] he eventually became dissatisfied with the party's leadership and policies, particularly its stance on nuclear disarmament, and left the party altogether in 1988.[5] He worked for the 1997 election campaign of Martin Bell, who is his uncle,[6] against incumbent Neil Hamilton, drafting a manifesto "so right-wing that Hamilton was incapable of outflanking it."[7] That year saw the rise of Tony Blair and his "New Labour" policies, which Kamm has been strongly in support of, particularly in regards to foreign and humanitarian intervention. Although generally supportive of the Labour Party in the 2005 general election, Kamm stated that he could not support Celia Barlow, the Labour candidate in his local constituency, Hove, because of her opposition to Blair's foreign policies. Instead, he stated that he would vote for the Conservative candidate, Nicholas Boles, who supported the Iraq war.[8]

A founding member of the Henry Jackson Society, Kamm supported the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In 2004, he outlined a case for supporting the re-election of George W. Bush.[9] In 2006, he was a signatory to the Euston Manifesto, arguing for a reorientation of the left around what its creators termed 'anti-totalitarian' principles. He favourably commented on Peter Beinart's The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, which has similar themes to Kamm's own book, arguing that the left should look to the policies of Clement Atlee and Harry S. Truman in the early days of the Cold War as a model for response to political Islam and totalitarianism.[10]

Because of his position on war and terrorism, critics such as Peter Wilby have stated that he is not actually left-wing at all.[11] Kamm rejects this criticism, saying that he "claim[s] to be left-wing, for the straightforward reason that it's true". He elaborates on his support for left-wing policies such as economic redistribution, progressive taxation and a welfare state. He also supports permissive abortion legislation and gay marriage.[12] Regarding socialism, Kamm wrote that former Prime Minister James Callaghan's "greatest single achievement" was to "destroy socialism as a serious proposition in British politics."[13]

Criticism of Noam Chomsky

Kamm is well known for his criticisms of the linguist and anarchist political writer Noam Chomsky. These are summarised in an article[14] for Prospect magazine opposing its readers' choice of Chomsky in the top position for its 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll.[15] Chomsky in turn accused Kamm of "transparent falsification" and claimed that Kamm's article demonstrated "the lengths to which some will go to prevent exposure of state crimes and their own complicity in them".[16] Kamm replied by accusing Chomsky of "polemical distortions" including failure to quote himself correctly.[17]

In late-2005 Kamm was co-author, with journalists David Aaronovitch and Francis Wheen, of a complaint to The Guardian when it published a correction and apology for an interview with Chomsky by Emma Brockes.[18] Chomsky complained that the article suggested he denied the fact of the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.[19] The writer Diana Johnstone also complained about references to her in the interview.[20] A Guardian readers' editor found that this[clarification needed] had misrepresented Chomsky's position, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis.[21] In his report for the Guardian, Willis detailed his reasons for rejecting Kamm's argument; Kamm maintains that his argument "remains unconsidered" by Willis.[22] The Independent's media columnist Stephen Glover criticized the Willis report and asks why Willis did not "reconsider Professor Chomsky's original complaint in the light of the evidence adduced by Messrs Aaronovitch, Kamm and Wheen in their letter".[23]

Criticism of Wikipedia

Kamm is a longstanding critic of Wikipedia. In an article for The Times[24] in August, 2007, he wrote that Wikipedia "combines the free-market dogmatism of the libertarian Right with the anti-intellectualism of the populist Left...The problem is not that there are too few voices in the editorial process, who can skew the result, but the opposite. Participation is prized more than competence...The notion that a false claim to knowledge is wrong is not part of Wikipedia’s culture."

Notes

  1. ^ The Guardian. "Comment is Free profile: Oliver Kamm".
  2. ^ Geras, Norman. "The normblog profile 9: Oliver Kamm", normblog, November 21, 2003.
  3. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "In Praise of Hedges", Prospect 117, December, 2005.
  4. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Foot again", Oliver Kamm's weblog, April 5, 2004.
  5. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "The liberal prospect now", Oliver Kamm's weblog, May 6, 2005.
  6. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Rural Writing", Oliver Kamm's weblog, September 3, 2005.
  7. ^ Kamm, Oliver."'Living Marxism' and 'Tory sleaze'", Oliver Kamm's weblog, December 13, 2003.
  8. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Help, I'm a pro-war leftie", The Times, May 2, 2005.
  9. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "The liberal case for returning Bush to the White House", Oliver Kamm's weblog, July 9, 2004.
  10. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Time for the Left to be brave again", The Times, November 7, 2005.
  11. ^ Wilby, Peter. "The Media Column", New Statesman, April 24, 2006.
  12. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Staggering", Oliver Kamm's weblog, April 20, 2006.
  13. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "James Callaghan", Oliver Kamm's weblog, March 30, 2005.
  14. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Against Chomsky", Prospect 116, November, 2005.
  15. ^ "The Prospect/FP Global public intellectuals poll—results", Prospect magazine's website.
  16. ^ Chomsky, Noam. "We Are All Complicit", Prospect 118, January, 2006 (abridged version); the full version is available at chomsky.info.
  17. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Kamm replies to Chomsky", Prospect 119, February, 2006.
  18. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Chomsky, The Guardian and Bosnia", Oliver Kamm's weblog, March 20, 2006
  19. ^ Brockes, Emma. "The Greatest Intellectual?", The Guardian, October 31, 2005; the article has since been withdrawn from the Guardian's website, but remains available at chomsky.info.
  20. ^ Johnstone, Diana. "The Bosnian war was brutal, but it wasn't a Holocaust", The Guardian, November 23, 2005.
  21. ^ Willis, John. "External Ombudsman Report", The Guardian, May 25, 2006
  22. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Guardian and Chomsky, concluded", Oliver Kamm's weblog, May 26, 2006.
  23. ^ Glover, Stephen. "Stephen Glover on The Press", The Independent, May 29, 2006.
  24. ^ Wisdom? More like dumbness of the crowds August 16, 2007, Oliver Kamm. The Times, accessed August 18, 2006
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