Johann Hari

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This page is currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved.
Please discuss changes on the talk page or request unprotection. Protection is not an endorsement of the current version. (protection log)
Johann Hari
Born 1979
Glasgow, Scotland
Occupation Journalist

Johann Hari (born 1979) is an award winning British journalist and writer. He is a columnist for The Independent and the Evening Standard and a regular arts critic on the BBC's Newsnight Review. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde and Ha'aretz. He has reported from many parts of the world. These include Iraq, war zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel/Palestine, Venezuela, Rwanda, Peru, Syria, France and Northern Ireland.

Contents

Early life

Hari was born in Glasgow to a Swiss-German father who worked as a cook and a bus driver and a Scottish mother who works with victims of domestic violence, but was brought up in London. He attended Aylward School, John Lyon School, North Cheshire Theatre School, and Woodhouse College, after which he graduated with a double first in Social and Political Sciences at King's College, Cambridge in 2001.

Politics

British domestic politics

Hari describes himself as a "European social democrat", who believes that markets "must exist as an essential tool to generate wealth".[12]. He supports some aspects of the Blair government, like the mild redistribution of wealth[13], but opposes others, like the treatment of asylum seekers.He is also a republican both on egalitarian grounds and on the grounds that he believes monarchy is "extremely cruel to the Windsor family at its core." [14] [15]

He has written that Britain has begun to "abuse" refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, and has reported from the homes of refugees and detention centres. [16] In 2004, Hari appeared as a guest on Richard Littlejohn's Sky News programme and challenged him about his claims that an asylum seeker could claim hundreds of pounds per week in benefits, stating that the true figure was just £37.77 per week. [1]

Hari is critical of both Conservative and Labour prisons policies, claiming on the basis of reporting from several jails that rehabilitation is impossible in over-crowded prisons, and that far too many mentally ill people are incarcerated.[17] [18].This position was criticised by the political commentator Stephen Pollard. [19].

He has also argued that Britain is in an "irrational panic" about paedophiles, producing harmful laws, pointing out that they are often the victims of sexual abuse themselves and that that persecuting them makes them more likely to offend. Hari has reported on favourably on rehabilitation programmes for paedophiles.[20] This position has been criticised by Sara Payne, whose daughter, Sarah Payne was murdered by a paedophile.[2]

Hari is a supporter of the international legalisation of drugs. [21] He argues that criminalisation of drugs, "simply hands the multi-billion dollar industry to armed criminal gangs." [22] and furthermore, that this is disastrous within the United States and Europe [23] but has been even more dangerous in Afghanistan [24], and in Colombia. [25]

Hari has also argued that social class is neglected in political debate, and has been hidden behind the "myth of a classless society".[26] He has been critical of the BBC comedy show Little Britain, which he accused of snobbery. [27],comments which were condemned as political correctness by a blogger. [28] However, he has praised the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, for celebrating English working class life. [29]

Hari supports gay rights, advocating full legal equality, including gay marriage [30]. He has criticized radical gay theorists, and ideas of gay difference, superiority or separatism[3] He has also been critical of associating 'camp' behaviour with homosexuality, [31],claiming that programmes like Queer Eye For the Straight Guy make it harder for gay men to understand their sexuality[32] and should be abandoned.[33]

Hari advocates women's rights. He has written that Muslim feminism is the key to unpicking Islamic fundamentalism, and that rape in Britain is "virtually an unpunished crime". He also rejects the idea that all psychological differences between men and women are socially constructed. Instead he takes the view that these differences are in part a product of biology[4] and suggests female biology might be seen as "superior" in a moral sense because oestrogen increases peacable emotions while testosterone increases violent ones.[34] He has also written critically about the fashion industry [5].

International affairs

He has been broadly supportive of Hugo Chávez's government in Venezuela, and has reported from the country on several occasions and interviewed Chavez. He was criticised by Oliver Kamm as being too soft on Chavez [35].

He has reported from Israel and Palestine, and argued for both a two-state solution along the 1967 borders and for Israel to become a "post-Zionist state" of all its citizens, a position outlined by Tom Segev[36]. He has drawn parallels between the earliest Zionists and the present day nationalist Palestinians [37] He derided the idea that either Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert would achieve a two-state solution.[38] Hari has interviewed trainee Palestinian suicide-bombers [39] and was dismayed by the election of a Hamas government in Palestine [40] because he feared persecution of women and homosexuals.

Hari is critical of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank[41]. He has argued that they force an undemocratic, neoliberal economic vision on poor countries [42] The World Bank contested this.[43]

He has written that nuclear disarmament is a vital issue. He argues it is more important now than during the Cold War, because "cold wars are proliferating across the world's hot spots". [44] He believes the solution is global disarmament in line with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This position has been mocked as "naive" by David Starkey.

Johann Hari was a prominent advocate of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many people on the left, most notably Noam Chomsky[45], believe Hari's initial support for the invasion of Iraq, after visiting Saddam's Iraq, contradicts his self-description as a left-winger. Hari always opposed the WMD rationale for war and said "the Bush administration is very obviously not doing this for the right reasons, to say the least"; but he believed – on the basis of opinion polls – that "a majority of Iraqis would rather takes their chances with a horrible American occupation than with the living hell of Saddam and his sons for generations to come."

He later said his initial support of the invasion had been a "terrible mistake", writing,

"The lamest defence I could offer – one used by many supporters of the war as they slam into reverse gear – is that I still support the principle of invasion, it's just the Bush administration screwed it up. ... The evidence should have been clear to me all along: the Bush administration would produce disaster." [46]

Hari has reported from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sending reports from Bukavu, Sud-Kivu, as well as Kinshasa and other parts of the country.[47] He wrote that there are two stories of the war in Congo: the "official" story, and the real one. The official story says that the Rwandan government invaded to track down the Hutu militias who had committed genocide in their country. But the real reason, Hari argues, was purely economic, because the Rwandan government did not go to where the militias were, but to where the resources were.Hari also wrote that unregulated corporations contributed to the "mass slaughter" in Congo and also Darfur.

He writes regularly that global warming poses a threat to the viability of human life. He argues there is an urgent need for greater regulation of the oil industry, and a "manhattan Project" to develop better renawable energy sources.[48][49] Hari attributed Hurricane Katrina to man-made global warming,[50] for which he was criticised by Bjorn Lomborg among others.

Other issues

Hari is a defender of the Enlightenment as a system of rational thought which he believes is under attack from several angles. [51]

Several of his other beliefs flow from this. He has written in favour of absolute free speech. [52] This position has been criticised as giving support to Islamophobes [53] and by the blog Lenin's Tomb [54]. He argues the popularity of alternative medicine is proof of increasing irrationality and anti-Enlightenment sentiment. [55]

He has critically interviewed Antonio Negri and Jacques Derrida, on the basis that postmodernist ideas are anti-Enlightenment and could be used to support religious fundamentalist or rightwing nationalist viewpoints. [56]

Hari is a self-described antitheist [57], a position influenced by Richard Dawkins[58] and Christopher Hitchens [6] He has criticised Buddhism, Islam[59], Judaism and Christianity for perceived fundamentalism. This criticism has earned him a personal retort from the Dalai Lama, as well as accusations of anti-Semitism[60] and Islamophobia [61] [62] which eh strongly denies. He has also written critically of the Catholic Church's stance on birth control [63] and Christian evangelicals who believe in the Rapture [64].

Hari has written about about his experiences of clinical depression, and Seroxat. Although he believes there are positive sides to Seroxat [65], he also believes it has drawbacks [7] As a result, he stopped taking the drug in 2006.

Public disagreements

With George Galloway and the communist left

Hari has engaged in polemics with his Member of Parliament, George Galloway who he accused of "supporting a string of dictators" and being a remnant of the part of the left that supported Stalinism.[66]. Galloway contested this. [67]

He is also critical of "the cult" of Che Guevara, describing him as a man who "stood implacably for forming a hardline alliance with the Soviet Union and Maoist China."[68]

With Niall Ferguson and defenders of British imperialism

In 2006, Hari engaged in a war of words with the historians Niall Ferguson and Lawrence James, which led to Hari being criticised in The Sunday Times and Daily Mail. In a column for The Independent, Hari described Ferguson's argument as "that the British Empire from the Victorian period on was a good thing with some unfortunate 'blemishes' that have been over-rated and over-stated."

He also labelled him "an apologist for mass death"[8] Hari says that after briefly noting the famines Ferguson "swiftly and reflexively minimises the crime", whilst Hari described the British Empire as a "psychopathic and murderous form of totalitarianism".[69] Ferguson then responded, arguing that the Indian famines were caused by "incompetence, negligence and indifference" but could not be compared to intentional genocide, and accused Hari of relying on sensationalist sources.[9]

Other writing

Hari is also the author of a book about the British monarchy which called for a republic, God Save the Queen?, and a play called Going Down in History. The performance of the latter at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was greeted with positive reviews, most notably by the Daily Telegraph as the work of "the new David Hare".[10]

Awards

In 2006, he was named one of Debrett's 'People of the Year'. In 2005, he became the youngest person ever to be nominated for the Orwell Prize. In 2003, he was named 'Young Journalist of the Year' by the Press Gazette awards. In 2000, he was named Student Journalist of the Year by the Times of London.

Notes

  1. ^ "I asked Richard how much a single asylum seeker is given in benefits each week. You'd think that a journalist who writes about asylum twice a week would, of course, know something so incredibly basic. His response was clear. He snapped: 'I have no idea'." [1]
  2. ^ She said she was "shocked and disgusted" by Hari and accused him of "insulting" the memory of her daughter. [2] He responded, "But adopting policies that provide a false meaning and a fake coda, like Megan's law... will end with even more dead kids." [3]
  3. ^ [4] writing: "Our goal should not be the seperatist vision which makes our sexuality the most important thing in our lives, a membership card to a neon ghetto somewhere over the rainbow. No, the goal of the gay rights movement should be the opposite of Harvey Milk: an integrated world where sexuality is just another trivial thing about a person, no more important than whether they fancy blondes or brunettes."
  4. ^ This position is supported by a number of recent scientific findings[5], some of which he alludes to in the column.
  5. ^ he argues it leaves "cluster-bombs of bulimia and anorexia into the minds of women across the world". [6]
  6. ^ "... I agree with Christopher Hitchens concerning atheism. I’m an anti-theist."[7].
  7. ^ "You enter a new state that I think of as ‘anti-depression’. We are not depressed, but nor are we like the undepressed. We are different. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we will never be truly, madly, deeply unhappy. It’s like we have been inoculated from the miseries of life." [8]
  8. ^ See British Raj#Post-rebellion developments
  9. ^ Ferguson recommended that Hari read Tirthankar Roy's Economic History of India, 1857-1947 on growth in the Indian population between 1880 and the end of British rule.[9] Hari pointed out that the population of China also grew under Mao, and that Ferguson himself had described one of his sources, a book by Caroline Elkins on British policy in Kenya, as "essential reading." Continuing the public debate, Hari also argued that British policies during the famine were not "a passive crime" as Ferguson claimed: India had exported food for the global marke and charitable relief efforts might be punished by the authorities.[10] Ferguson responded, accusing Hari of "relativism", saying that there is "a real difference between mismanaging a natural disaster on the basis of an erroneous understanding of economics, [...] and systematically pursuing 'the liquidation of the kulaks as a class'" as Stalin did.[11]
  10. ^ Daily Telegraph, August 17 2001]

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../j/o/h/Johann_Hari_63ab.html"