Jackie Danicki

I heard Mark Kurlansky, author of a book about the wonderfulness of nonviolence (including the opinion that there was no need to get tough with Germany during WWII, which he maintains was an unjust war), being given a sloppy bj of an interview by Andrew Marr on Radio 4 the other morning. It was stomach-churning, but not surprising, considering the source. I wished I’d seen Oliver Kamm debate Kurlansky on Sky News this morning, as it would have made up for what I heard on Radio 4.

I cited George Orwell to the effect that it’s difficult to see how Gandhi’s techniques could work against a regime where political opponents disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. I said it was perfectly obvious that against the secular totalitarian states of Hitler and Stalin, or the theocratic totalitarians we fight today, an appeal to conscience will be rebuffed if it is even understood. I added that the only way you can make such a plainly implausible case on historical grounds is by minimising the evil of aggressors and emphasising the sins of omission and commission by our own side. Having read Mr Kurlansky’s book, I was very sorry to see that this is what he does; one of his most egregious historical claims, I pointed out, had come straight from [Holocaust denier] David Irving.

Kamm’s conclusion:

Mark Kurlansky, author of bestselling histories of Cod and of Salt, has thus written a book that I initially thought was shady and disgusting, but turns out mainly to be historically illiterate, morally vacuous and professionally incompetent. The publisher of this foul and stupid work is, I regret to record, the respected house of Jonathan Cape. The book carries a preface by the Dalai Lama, who expresses the “hope and prayer that this book should not only attract attention, but have a profound effect on those who read it” - in the gut, presumably.

Filed under: Life, Politics