If something's bad, it's bad, and if it's very bad, then it's very bad, right? If something bad or very bad occurs, then people noticing it might say, 'That's bad'; they might condemn whoever is responsible for it, right? Well, sometimes. But other times what they do instead is they make the prelude move. Regular visitors to this blog will be familiar with a common variant of the prelude move. It consists of acknowledging the badness of the bad thing but only as a prelude to adverting to the (real or alleged) background causes of that thing, in the hope of concentrating attention there and so diverting it from whatever was the bad thing covered in the prelude.
There is, however, another variant that has been more current during this last week. It's the prelude move as focused, not on root causes, but on regrettable responses. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes to a UN conference against racism, and that is a fact to savour in itself. The man is now notorious both as Holocaust denier and visionary of the destruction of the Jewish state. Whether you consider his speech as actually delivered in Geneva, or the fuller text that was given out before he made it and then lightened of certain (shall we say) 'provocative' themes, that speech carries the full stink of anti-Semitism. It was more or less predictable that it would, and it does. Included: 'Wasn't the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then U.S. administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing companies and the owner of the wealth?'; 'The world Zionism personifies racism...'; 'Efforts must be made to put an end to the abuse by Zionists and their supporters of political and international means and respect of the will and aspirations of nations.' Excised before delivery: 'the ambiguous and dubious question of the Holocaust'; Zionist penetration 'into the political and economic structure [of western countries] including their legislation, mass media, companies, financial systems, and their security and intelligence agencies... to the extent that nothing can be done against their will'.
In other words, unambiguous Jew-hatred with all its conspiracy-mongering, money-controlling and world-dominating trappings. Now, sit a moment in a quiet room and forget everything you've learned these last... ooh... approximately eight years. A spouting anti-Semite, and known to be one, is invited to address a UN conference whose aims prominently include combating racism. How can this be? Sixty-odd years after the Nazi calamity, when everything of the horror of it is known, this man who casts doubt on its reality is a keynote speaker at a gathering associated with the body formed in the immediate aftermath of that calamity and formed in order to work towards a future in which such things would no longer be countenanced by the international community. How can it be? So soon. Already. A ranting demagogue is saying such things again, and though some delegates walk out, others applaud him.
Very bad, right?
Unless you're a partisan of the prelude move. For, in that case, you just quickly move on - from the badness to those responses to it which you find regrettable. Who? Who else:
The Iranian president did not describe the Holocaust as "ambiguous and dubious" in his speech to the UN conference on racism, as first reported. He dropped the phrase at the last minute, but not in time for it to be deleted from the English text handed out by his officials after he spoke. In either version, Mr Ahmadinejad is hard put to disguise the views of a crude anti-semite. And that colours how people see his remarks on the establishment of Israel.
There you go: it 'colours how people see his remarks on the establishment of Israel', as if such remarks might be coloured differently. And the rest follows just as you'd expect: the comfort drawn from this speech by Binyamin Netanyahu; and that it is 'grist to the mill of UN haters'. Hold the haters stuff for a minute. A person need neither love nor hate the UN; she might just assess it for what it is and what it might become, weigh its strengths and its value, and also its deficiencies. This speech was a disgrace to the UN and to anyone associated with Ahmadinejad's invitation to address the Geneva conference. Why not keep that in one's sights for more than a moment - both that and what it means about the growth of one kind of racism today, anti-Semitism? But no, it's the pressing problem of UN haters, they who regularly roam the streets beating up UN officials.
Next up, you can sample, if you want, the always exquisite and here glitteringly besequinned Seumas Milne. He, at least, spends a few lines on the repugnance he feels at Ahmadinejad's grandstanding. But you know, as he does so, that there's a 'but' approaching on the wind, and verily there is. It is to introduce us to the notions that 'throughout the Arab, Muslim and wider developing worlds, the idea that Israel is a racist state is largely uncontroversial', and that the boycotters of the Geneva conference are themselves racist.
Racists one and all, right? Canada, the US, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany - and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Like I said yesterday, whatever the problem is, it has always got to be 'us'.