With a proprietor who claimed that all the Egyptians he knew were white, and who whinged about the “Jewish Owned Press”, it should come as no surprise that the Murdoch Sun has no problem giving a platform to bigots. But one outburst at the end of last week shows that this has now spilled over into not only lying - which, after all, is de rigueur at the Baby Shard Bunker - but Apartheid apologism as well.
To no surprise at all, the Voortrekker from the 12th floor has turned out to be none other than Rod “a smile, a song and a four-pack of Stella” Liddle, who has taken a white supremacist story and used it in his latest column. Buried away under a routine attack on Philip Hammond for daring to flirt with reality, we find “I FELT a little sorry for Theresa May being forced to dance with a bunch of South African children”.
Then he goes totally Boer apologist: “She should have been a bit tougher with the South Africans on their genocide of white farmers, too … A viciously racist policy supported by the South African government … Give it ten years and South Africa will be as economically useless and corrupt as the rest of the continent”. Totally out of order.
There is no “genocide of white farmers”, as Zelo Street has pointed out previously. The claims of increased numbers of murders of white farmers is not borne out by those pesky facts: The murder rate among white farmers is actually declining. Any claim to the contrary - including the incendiary claim of “genocide” - are usually the product of Apartheid apologists whose agenda is avowedly racist. And that’s where Liddle is.
There is no “viciously racist policy” being enacted by the South African Government. There is debate about land reform, and that is inevitable, given that in the years after 1948, black farmers were dispossessed as land was seized by whites. For some reason, Rod Liddle and his fellow Sun columnists have no problem with that.
Moreover, as Business Tech has pointed out, “This is hard evidence that banks are committed to sustainable land reform and are confident that South Africa can find practical solutions to the challenges of restitution, redistribution and security of tenure, it said … However, it cautioned that to be effective and sustainable, any solutions, including a possible amendment to the constitution, must provide for”.
Banks support land reform? Liddle didn’t mention that, did he? Nor did he mention that historical dispossession: as the Economist has put it, “In the words of [Cyril] Ramaphosa the taking of land by whites from indigenous blacks is South Africa’s ‘original sin’. And it is impossible to appreciate the emotional pull of land reform today without understanding the past”. It’s a complicated issue. And it’s for South Africa to sort out itself.
But all that is too much for the Sun’s loudest-mouthed racist bigot, so Liddle simply calls “racist” on someone else and accuses them of officially sanctioned genocide.
All of which means you should remember one thing: Don’t Buy The Sun.
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2 comments:
It's indicative of far right hysteria and desperation that Murdoch gives space to an utter racist moron like Liddle.
The political winds of change are blowing through Europe and the USA. Liddle-type idiots can only cling to the wreckage of their irrational hatreds. Eventually they'll be left with no alternative except self-detestation.
People like Liddle are not only Yesterday Men, they are Yesterday's Hate. At the present rate he'll end up chewing the same carpet as Hopkins.
I don't agree with what Rod Liddle says except for the bit when he says "given ten years South Africa will be as useless and corrupt as the rest of the continent", it already is!
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