Fahrenheit 9/11, Spiked online journal and Victim Theory!

I used to be an enthusiastic reader of the now defunct magazine LM so I was thrilled to discover, recently, the Spiked website and the brilliant writings of Mick Hume, Brendan O’Neil, Frank Furedi, and so on; I may even contribute financially at some point. However, I must take issue with Sandy Starr and her ridiculous views on ‘victimhood’, expressed in her article Cinema of Cynicism.

The Michael Moore film and phenomenon Fahrenheit 9/11 is self-evidently a very personal ‘documentary’ in which he gives his views on the war in Iraq, employing his usual, unconventional and rather eccentric methods. By its very nature, the film is about ‘self-promotion’ since Moore is the only ‘actor’ in the film and he speaks directly to the camera and audience. How could it be otherwise?

In all of the publicity surrounding the film, Michael Moore is synonymous with the title, Fahrenheit 9/11. People know that this is a Michael Moore film before they enter the cinema. To suggest that the audience is simple and fooled into thinking it is an objective look at politics and Iraq is to make victims of your average cinema audience, the very thing that Sandy Starr attacks. The audience are not stupid victims and they know that Moore is merely setting out his own agenda on his pet subject.

As for Moore using victims to criticise the war in Iraq, what else could he do? What other reason is there to oppose a war other than to point out that it will create victims and to use those available to illustrate the point? If a war creates no victims then there is no reason to oppose it in the first place since it is not an unjust war.

By the way, Brendan O’Neil says that Liverpool is a victim city and that they revel in it and that Boris Johnson was right to say what he wants and what he wrote in the Spectator (backed up by Mick Hume in The Times). But then your website – I forget which contributor – attacks Boris Johnson for being a victim (of Michael Howard) for being forced to go to Liverpool to apologise! This is victim theory gone mad! According to this new Victim Analysis Theory, you can be both a victim and a perpetrator/victimiser at the same time! No wonder Boris Johnson always looks so confused and bumbling.

It all reminds me of an incident about six years ago outside Next in Exeter, on the corner of Paris Street and High Street. It was late at night and I was walking to the bus station with my old friend – I’ll call him BS – after only about three pints down the pub. Some sort of rootless street urchin crossed the road towards us and I landed up being ‘assaulted’; when the police came and saw the smashed plate glass window and my cut lip and damaged shoulder, they gave me a leaflet for Victim Support, out in Polsloe Road. I went there two days later but it was a waste of time, not least being called a victim. Was I a victim? Was I a victim of Victimhood, that great anti-Room 101 of modern society?

http://www.spiked-online.com/