When I started this blog, if I wanted to blog something but didn't have time I would put a marker on it by posting something like, "I'll return to this later" and used to do just that. Now I rarely if ever do. So when I
posted on the absurdity of the tributes to Professor Norman Geras it was short, referenced one of his dodgy entries and I said I'd return later and then I forgot all about it.
Well now Flying Rodent (
Between the Hammer and the Anvil) has done a rather good obit which he calls
Requiem for a Blog, (note, not a Blog
ger). I've seen some complain that this Flying Rodent chap tends to express himself very strongly whilst venting a six of one/half dozen of the other non-position on most things. This obit exemplifies the former but not, thankfully, so much of the latter.
So at the start we see the Rodent commenting on the ludicrous tributes thus:
I'd say that the
one point they all share is entirely accurate - that Normblog was one
of the great pioneers of the blogging game.
Try as I might, I
can't imagine blogs without the Professor, much as I can't picture
modern opinion thinkery without Chris Hitchens. More than any other I
can think of, Normblog really should be seen as the archetype of the
form.
The form being blogging, not pro-war, pro-Israel, "the left left me not me them" form, blogging itself. All Geras's friends accord to him a pioneering and pivotal role in blogging which he simply didn't deserve. At which point it's useful to point out that Geras had to ask a real founder of the form, Chris Bertram, how to get his (Geras's) blog off the ground. Here's Bertram in his post on the tenth anniversary of
Crooked Timber:
That first email also invited two other people: Matthew Yglesias and
Norman Geras. Yglesias (a Harvard undergrad) was a rising star in the
blogosphere but had yet to morph into his current superstar incarnation.
Geras I knew because we’d once been on the editorial committee of New
Left Review together and he’d recently phoned me up for advice on
starting to blog.
Actually Bertram goes on to relate the story of how Geras, mercifully, never got to be one of the Crooked Timber above the liners:
That provided us with the first crisis in the (pre)history of Crooked
Timber. (Actually, I think, our only real crisis within the group.) At
the time, we were either just before or at the start of the Iraq war and
some of us were hesitating about which line to take. Geras used the
opportunity of the shared emails to bombard everyone with pro-war
articles and, after he had circulated a particularly egregious bit of
warmongering concern-trolling from Johann Hari, Daniel snapped. If Geras
were in, then Daniel would be out. But Geras, facing a bit more
scepticism than he wanted, was already sensing that the group wasn’t for
him. So we were able to keep Daniel for Crooked Timber. Geras went off
to promote so-called “humanitarian intervention” at a solo-blog. He’s
been doing that in his characteristic style for a decade; I think we got
the better part of the bargain.
Anyway, having got his obligatory "half a dozen of the other" stuff out of the way at the outset Flying Rodent goes on to list some characteristics of the Normblog style:
I think you can split Normblog's political blogging into a few distinct categories:
- Finger-waggy,
history-heavy lectures upon the virtue of the current political
settlement, usually prompted by some no-mark calling for a non-specific
revolution, the jailing of public figures etc. The prime example here
was the Prof's response to the financial crisis, which IIRC was to
ignore the globe-spanning corruption and destruction and the resultant
austerity catastrophes, in favour of ticking off the only popular
protest movement that emerged from the ruins. Marxism certainly isn't
my specialist subject, but Normblog's decision to focus on hectoring of a
bunch of nameless hipsters and students suggests that I know even less
than I thought I did.
-
Sensible-sounding calls for men of violence to do insane and wildly
dangerous things. Generally along the lines of "I read about the
suffering of the oppressed people of Abroadistan today. All decent
people would agree that it's now necessary to (antiseptic-sounding
euphemism for killing lots of motherfuckers) after which (Cough, cough,
mumble) ...Freedom and human rights throughout the region". Worryingly
vague on the specifics, but rock solid on "first principles", which was
always a bit of an obvious dodge around practical reality.
- Reminders that
e.g. The Taliban are cruel and vicious, presented in tones that suggest
that only the author and his mates were aware of this.
- Assertions
that democracies can indulge in all manner of violent and lunatic
behaviours, because the mere act of people choosing which version of the
Thatcherite consensus they wish to rule confers some form of
law-swerving legitimacy. Usually deployed in a stentorian lesson on how
Americans shooting fuck out of people for no sane reason is an entirely
different phenomenon from other foreigners shooting fuck out of people
for no sane reason.
- A tiresome and
annoying pretence that some minor opinion columnist must logically be
saying a thing which he or she patently has not said. The best example
is the Prof's ten-year habit of kidding on that he couldn't grasp the
meaning of the word "understand", a word he regularly portrayed as
meaning "condone and encourage (violent incident (x))", rather than, you
know, "comprehend". This one was odd at first, and only became more
embarrassing and annoying with repetition, much like a non-stop,
decade-long rendition of The Welly Boot Song would.
- Requests for
others to engage with the author's ideas, usually accompanied by
implications that we hadn't given a matter as much deep thought as the
Prof had, or that we were unaware of our biases. The classic is "I can
see it from here, so maybe something is blocking your view of it...
Maybe if you came over here, you'd see it". Basically a series of
repeated requests for vastly more intellectual charity than the author
was ever willing to grant anyone else.
- Lengthy "thought experiments" of the "You hear your neighbour beating his wife and grab your trusty rocket-launcher"
genus. I imagine that even Normblog's most avid readers would
acknowledge that the sole function of these whimsical scenarios were to
simplify complex matters well past the point of bathos, with the aim of
justifying whatever wacky suggestions couldn't be argued for in their
own terms. Of course, the answer "let's ignore that scenario because it's preposterously reductive and self-serving" was merely a symptom of the speaker's unwillingness to engage.
- And of course, the huffy complaints that people the Prof had spent
years barracking and denouncing refused to credit his good intentions -
roughly, "Why oh why oh why won't these godawful bastards admit that
there were good reasons for supporting the disastrous invasion and
occupation of Iraq?". A reader who got their news from Normblog alone
would swiftly conclude that this shameful reluctance to afford charity
to the madcap ideas of Professors Emeritii of Politics was one of the
major injustices of the era.
There's also some good detailed stuff on Norm (and co's) mo like the shrill denunciations of this or that obscure academic before this corrective appears:
It's for this reason that I say that Normblog was the apex of the form -
an era of violent right-wing monsters rampaging like beasts across the
planet, while a bunch of white academics argued in fiery tones that the
biggest issue of the age was some conveniently abstract demon like
"relativism", or some similar nonsense.
Hmm, so the earlier undue compliment was actually a put-down. Good for Rodent. And spot on identifying the use of "relativism" as a "conveniently abstract demon".
My title suggests there has only been one decent honest obituary for Geras and that that was from this Flying Rodent chap. Re-reading Chris Bertram's post above, I now think that Bertram's was a worthy if premature obituary, premature because Geras was still alive when it was written.
