So it turns out Norm Geras has died. To be honest this wouldn’t matter to me one way or another, if not for the fact that his death has caused otherwise sensible people to behave as if a great intellectual has passed away (reaching dizzying heights here). It’s a repeat of what happened when Hitchens died, with even less justification.
Even the backhanded compliment flyingrodent gave that he “can’t imagine blogs without the Professor — Normblog really should be seen as the archetype of the form” is giving him too much credit. What Norm Geras did is no different from what the rightwing and “decent left” US warbloggers did and do: smear, lie, distort to manufacture outrage. The only thing Geras added was to play up his seventies marxist credentials to imagine how Marx and Engels would’ve totes supported the War on Iraq. Oh, and of course a certain sort of (imagined) upperclass English loquaciousness (e.g.).
In short, my opinion of Geras remains unchanged after his death, a bullshitter who used his writing talents to help make the world slightly worse, though only a minor offender compared to people like Hitchens.
guthrie
November 11, 2013 at 1:10 pmClicking through to the tributes, it struck me that they were generally by people I’d never heard of, from the right or left. Moreover, part of the problem is that some of the tributes appear to be based simply on him as a person that they knew and got on well with, which is all very well if you ignore the dangers of someone’s ideology. I suppose that is usually the case though, if you personally knew someone who had died, you would respond on a personal level first. That, I find, is a problem everywhere, that someone you know personally can’t be a thief/ murderer/ liar; I think blogging lends itself to criticism much better because people are properly separated and something akin to Stockholm syndrome doesn’t form. (there’s problems raised by the separateness of blogs too of course)
chris y
November 11, 2013 at 3:18 pmAs I tried to point out in FR’s comments, people who regret Geras’ passing are those who remember that he had a life before Normblog, when he was, if not a great intellectual, at least an interesting one, a genuine expert in the thought of Rosa Luxemburg, and an active member of the Fourth International.
As far as I’m concerned, the Geras I used to know died at some indeterminate date before the invasion of Iraq. I have no idea what happened to him; his “decentist” turn came as a genuine shock, not just to me but to people like Chris Bertram, who had worked much more closely and more recently with him. Well, to paraphrase Trotsky, we note his passing and move on.
Alex
November 19, 2013 at 10:54 amThis was basically a moment that pointed up the difference between the Crooked Timber team and the rest of us – for them he was a dear colleague long before he was a horrible wanker. Also, D^2 and quite a few others either knew him from Oxford or else were taught there by people who knew him.
This was one of the surprises reading Ralph Miliband, by the way – encountering someone on the left taking Geras seriously.
Alex
November 19, 2013 at 10:55 am(as I said to my girlfriend the other day regarding a “hole in my culture” she identified – it’s like a hole in a pair of fishnet stockings. there are a lot of them and they’re sort of the point.)
chris y
November 23, 2013 at 12:56 pmBut you’re a chabby, Alex.