Robin Shepherd brings some sanity to the debate over Israel's refusal to allow Noam Chomsky to enter Israel and the West Bank.
He compares how the media spun the UK's ban on Dutch politician Geert Wilders from visiting last year.
In the sharply contrasting reactions to what ostensibly looks like two similar cases, what we have here is a remarkably illustrative case study of how the dominant opinion formers in the western media view the world. Chomsky, an extremist who displays complete contempt for reasoned discourse and who provides succour to totalitarian movements and their apologists around the world, is hailed as a hunted hero: a dissident being oppressed in a manner which led the Times gleefully to report an Israeli writer as saying “we may be becoming fascists”.
The Times article in question opened by describing Chomsky as “a leading left-wing political thinker”. The BBC went further, admiringly describing him as “Renowned US scholar Noam Chomsky”. Wilders is always described as “far-Right” Dutch politician, Geert Wilders. The tone of articles about him is condemnatory; the subtext consistently portrays him as a racist with no place in polite society.
Such are the values and beliefs which guide the thinking of a liberal establishment in Europe which has a near monolithic dominance over the political mainstream. A storm in a tea cup involving one of their heroes on the Jordanian border is indignantly magnified into a grotesque example of the horrors visited upon a gentle and brilliant intellectual by an oppressive Jewish state. A flawed but brave Dutch politician, a genuine political dissident who faces the threat of death and jail for his views, is excoriated and branded a pariah even though he has no grudge against the state which denied him entry.
Here's last year's coverage of Wilders from the Times and the Beeb for comparison. Read Shepherd's full post and judge for yourself.
