George Monbiot upsets Travellers' Times with Boxing Day article

[Zardoz]

George Monbiot's caricature of travellers - as a man of Jewish descent George should know better.

To George Monbiot and The Guardian

http://travellersolidarity.org/2013/01/02/to-george-monbiot-and-the-guardian/

 Posted by TravellerSolidarityNetwork on January 2, 2013 · 19 Comments  

Racism against Travellers leads to violent attacks, verbal abuse and continued impoverishment. In 2011, hundreds of riot police evicted and destroyed the largest Irish Traveller site in the country, Dale Farm, leaving dozens homeless, including children. Over the past year, Romani people in Hungary, France and Italy have been attacked and killed by right wing groups. Anti-Traveller racism is far from a laughing matter. That George Monbiot decided it was appropriate to devote an entire article to a racist anecdote about meeting a Traveller man is unforgivable. (`The day my inner anarchist lost out to the bourgeois me, December 26th`).

At length, Monbiot describes the Traveller man he meets as `filthy', telling crude jokes, being interested only in animals, and – for the greater part of the piece – as a thief. He implies that all Travellers are stupid and bestial. This caricatured sketch of a nameless representative of an ethnic group is as venomous as far-right propaganda against Muslim or Jewish communities, and should be answered with as little tolerance and as much opposition.  The apologism he offers the reader by stating he has written about, or even campaigned against, the harassment of Travellers only serves to make this drivel appear more socially acceptable, the equivalent of stating "but some of my best friends are black." The title essentially states that although his "inner anarchist" would like to be open-minded about Travellers, this is impossible due to the harsh facts of the "reality" he constructs through a generalisation of Travellers. One incident he recounts, in which a couple of men (who he describes as Travellers) are violent and dishonest, serves to criminalise an entire group of people: a case study in modern day racism.

The title of the piece encourages the perception that all Travellers are thieves, and that any argument to the contrary is simply `anarchist' fiction. He even jokingly acknowledges that this form of racism is bourgeois, as if by sheepishly admitting that he is speaking on behalf of the police and the state he can get away with it. By contrasting the man's experience of the police assault that landed him in A&E with his portrayal of him a thief and violent thug, he delegitimises reports by Travellers of police violence, turning the victim into the accused.

Despite having reported on years of police attacks against environmental campaigners, Monbiot has failed to allow these confrontations with the law to open his eyes. Instead, the prejudice of the police and the injustice of the state are omitted from his account; forces which would otherwise be suspect are now affirmed for the sake of Monbiot's racist monologue.

The petty version of revenge Monbiot enacts by writing this article only exposes further the intense inequality of power between the liberal establishment and criminalised communities, an inequality which he has no desire to examine. The Guardian is also implicated in this racist drivel, which  shows it to be as blind, ignorant and malicious as the other British newspapers which continue to print the material which bolsters both vigilante and state attacks against
 Travellers.

The Traveller Solidarity Network believes that both Monbiot and the Guardian Group should apologise unreservedly for the article. But beyond this, journalists should understand the situation Traveller, Gypsy and Romani people face and the role the media could play in helping to put an end to this `acceptable' form of racism.

Until then, this kind of writing should be seen to be as damaging to Travellers' lives as fascists and riot police.









dicegeorge says: 
 January 14, 2013 at 6:42 pm 
http://travellersolidarity.org/2013/01/02/to-george-monbiot-and-the-guardian/#comments
I agree with almost everything almost everybody wrote here!

George Monbiot's reply is at:
http://www.monbiot.com/2013/01/10/as-it-happened/
 where he writes:

As It Happened 


January 10, 2013

A letter to the Travellers' Solidarity Network. 

By George Monbiot, published on http://www.monbiot.com, 10th January 2013.

Dear Travellers' Solidarity Network, 

You have made some grave allegations about me on the grounds of a radical misinterpretation of an article I wrote. It is hard to understand how you could have misread it so badly, but I'm prepared to believe it's an honest mistake. 

You accuse me, among other faults, of racism; of "imply[ing] that all Travellers are stupid and bestial"; of believing that it's impossible to be "open-minded about Travellers"; of constructing "a generalisation of Travellers"; of "serv[ing] to criminalise an entire group of people"; of "encourag[ing] the perception that all Travellers are thieves"; of "delegitimis[ing] reports by Travellers of police violence; of turning the victim into the accused"; of seeking revenge and of acting maliciously. 

These are extremely serious charges, and I would have hoped that, for the sake of your own credibility if nothing else, you would have ensured that they were well-supported before making them. I challenge you to show where I have said or implied any of these things. Your account of the story I wrote is pure fiction. 

My views of the situation concerning travellers are contained in the following articles, and they have not changed since I wrote them:

http://www.monbiot.com/1995/05/15/britains-cultural-cleansing/

http://www.monbiot.com/1999/11/04/criminally-different/

http://www.monbiot.com/2003/11/04/acceptable-hatred/

I have long argued against the kind of racism, generalisation and persecution of which you are accusing me. However, I do not accept that this defence must extend to pretending that all travellers are at all times virtuous. Nor do I believe it trumps the duty to tell a story truthfully and well. 

What I described was exactly what happened. I made no generalisations, no implications, no comments on travellers at all – except one: "Travellers 
 were often – and for good reason – wary of telling people much about their lives." My article sought to make no points, draw no lessons, extract no morals. It was an account of a remarkable coincidence – nothing more, nothing less. What you read into it simply was not there.

I see the man I met as part of life's rich tapestry, and have no malice or feelings of revenge towards him. After I lost my coat, I bought a new one of the same kind; it wasn't expensive. Every community contains a wide range of characters, and it seems to me that travellers are no different in this respect from anyone else. I made no claim to the contrary. 

When I first read your response, it struck me as so crazy that it was not worth answering. But it has been picked up by other people and circulated online, and has become the basis of a new tranche of hatemail. You have made some very serious false accusations and attacked someone who has a long history of support for your cause on an entirely groundless basis. I am writing to ask you to put the record straight. At the very least I'd ask you to publish this letter on your website.

Yours Sincerely, 

George Monbiot










Time for an apology

 Posted by TravellerSolidarityNetwork on January 14, 2013 · 1 Comment  

George Monbiot's response to the strong criticisms we leveled against his racist anecdote about Travellers in a boxing day Guardian article fundamentally conflates our charges against the article with a wholesale attack on the author's identity. This confusion allows Monbiot to defend his article with a defense of himself, and thereby willfully miss the point.

By citing other articles from 10 and 15 years ago, he attempts to absolve the racist nature of the anecdote with a proof of his general character. However, even the most virtuous of credentials cannot absolve the content of the most recent piece. It is not controversial that racism is not limited to overt `racists', but is part of the way so many of us unconsciously act and speak in our everyday lives. This is true of even the most experienced anti-racist campaigners, as many will readily admit.

Monbiot epitomises a classic justification of racism in his defense that he was `simply telling the truth'. We believe – perhaps wrongly – that a thousand things happen to George every day, but that some are selected as worthy of report and publication. That process of selection requires a careful examination not only of the audience for whom it is written, but also the reasons that the story may seem appealing. If it truly "sought to make no points", then why write it?

In this instance, it is clear that the appeal of the story arises from Monbiot's supposedly dangerous flirting with racist stereotypes. To state that he "made no generalisations, no implications, no comments on travellers (sic*) at all" purposefully misses the point of how a stereotype works. Stories are retold precisely when they fit the racist stereotypes – a crime can be reported in a newspaper as a Traveller crime or a crime committed by an asylum seeker, but would never be described as settled person crime, or white crime. And so, what Travellers face everyday, is a constant barrage of negative stories, and a constant scrutiny through the lens of these propagated stereotypes.

Monbiot acts as if he's writing in a vacuum in which these racist stereotypes don't exist, yet his readers easily identify the connection between anecdote and stereotype in the article; for example, one who commented "In this story we are supposed to be surprised by the fact that travellers act like travellers", or another who wrote "The problem is, what does one do with a subculture (travellers) that is almost entirely sociopathic?" Indeed, it is hard to believe that Monbiot is unaware of the political implications of his `anecdote'. He is after all, a political writer, and chose to title his piece "The day my inner anarchist lost out to the bourgeois me".

Other readers responded to the article thanking George for being brave enough to say what we were all, apparently, thinking. This false concept of the `bravery' to `tell it as it is' stems from the idea that we live in a world which has become too politically correct, where racism and misogyny have been stamped out, and only a few heroic voices remain to champion the forlorn traces of `truth'. These people labour under a misapprehension. The war has not been won: the `truth' they champion reinforces a system which discriminates against and hurts people based on their ethnicity.

Monbiot's response to our criticisms fails to understand the way that racism operates in society or to offer any apology for the contribution his article makes to the perpetuation of racism in society. As such, it was either disingenuous or woefully ignorant.

—

*NB: The terms `Gypsies' and `Travellers' should be capitalised. Stop Hate UK explains: "In the same way that Christians, Jews, Kurds and all other ethnic groups should receive capitalisation, so should Gypsies and Travellers. Not capitalising ethnic and faith groups treats them with disrespect. To capitalise all ethnic groups other than Gypsies and Travellers implies that you do not recognise them as an ethnic group."