Hitchodamus

Hitchodamus: "The big story so far in 2011 has been the Tunisian revolution, in which the Arab masses of Tunisia finally rose up against their US backed dictator, threw off the shackles of oppression, and took their first tentative steps towards democracy. As Juan Cole has pointed out, this has the potential to be far more significant than the Iranian revolution of '79: despite its anti-imperialist rhetoric, the Iranian revolution really only had appeal to the minority Shia Islamic sect, and the specifically Persian nature of the Iranian regime made it of less interest to Arabs. But Tunisia is a (majority) Sunni Muslim country, and an Arab one to boot, which makes its revolution possibly of far greater import: the majority of American puppet dictatorships in the 'Middle East' are Sunni Arab, and they are hopefully feeling a lot more nervous after hearing the news from Tunisia, as well as reports of riots breaking out in Jordan and Algeria.

Luckily for this blog our fat little friend managed to waddle to Tunisia in 2007, and admirers of his prophetic gift (who can forget his enigmatic prediction of WMD's in Iraq?) would have expected nothing less than searing insights into Tunisia's future. And so it proved.

'On the face of it, [Tunisia] is one of Africa's most outstanding success stories. In the 2006–7 World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, it was ranked No. 1 in Africa for economic competitiveness, even, incidentally, outpacing three European states (Italy, Greece, and Portugal). Home ownership is 80 percent. Life expectancy, the highest on the continent, is 72. Less than 4 percent of the population is below the poverty line, and the alleviation of misery by a 'solidarity fund' has been adopted by the United Nations as a model program. Nine out of 10 households are connected to electricity and clean water. Tunisia is the first African state to have been accepted as an associate member of the European Union. Its Code of Personal Status was the first in the Arab world to abolish polygamy, and the veil and the burka are never seen. More than 40 percent of the judges and lawyers are female. The country makes delicious wine and even exports it to France. The Tunisian Jews make a potent grappa out of figs, which is available as a digestif in most restaurants....I remembered what my old friend the late Edward Said had told me: 'You should go to Tunisia, Christopher. It's the gentlest country in Africa. Even the Islamists are highly civilized!' ' (Note: the word 'friend' has a technical definition in the Hitchens lexicon (Hitchecon?), meaning 'someone who hates me'. 'Old friend' on the other hand means 'someone who hated me but who is safely dead, and who, therefore, can't rebut my lies').

Hitchens then goes on to describe the main threat to this paradise. Would it by any chance be the torturing, murdering, thieving, dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali? Of course not.

'Mr. Ben Ali does not make lengthy speeches on TV every night, or appear in gorgeously barbaric uniforms, or live in a different palace for every day of the week. Tunisia has no grandiose armed forces, the curse of the rest of the continent, feeding parasitically off the national income and rewarding their own restlessness with the occasional coup. And the country is lucky in other ways as well. Its population is a smooth blend of black and Berber and Arab, and though it proudly defends its small minorities of Shiites, Christians (Saint Augustine spent time here), Baha'is, and Jews (there is a Jewish member of the Senate), it is otherwise uniformly Sunni. It has been spared the awful toxicity of ethnic and religious rivalry, which makes it very unusual in Africa. Its international airport is named Tunis-Carthage, evoking African roots without Afrocentric demagogy.'

In other words, although Hitchypoo is far too coy to state it, this was an American backed dictatorship, and, as we all know, American backed dictatorships are always rather super when compared to bad, wicked dictatorships that defy the US, like France.

Of course there must be a snake in this Eden, and there is. And guess what? It just happens to be Islamism. What a shocker.

'Tunisia's achievements, though real enough, are fragile. When the terrorists target tourists, they pick the economy's most vulnerable spot. (The Djerba atrocity had a real effect on that year's overall figures.) But, of course, they also isolate themselves, first by creating poverty and unemployment and second by violating the inflexible laws of Muslim hospitality. So this is the edge of uncertain awareness on which an outwardly happy and thriving society is poised.'

So there you go. It is 'Islamic terrorism' that has created all the poverty and unemployment in this 'thriving' country (and not say, Ben Ali's systematic looting of the country).

Hitchodamus concludes: 'An enclave of development, Tunisia is menaced by the harsh extremists of a desert religion, and ultimately by the desert itself. As with everything else in Africa, this is not a contest we can view with indifference.'. The word 'we' of course has a technical definition in the Hitchecon, meaning, 'rich white people like me'.

Well! The foolish masses of Tunisia, obviously having let their subscriptions to Vanity Fair lapse, chose not to believe in the good intentions of Mr Ben Ali, even though they have Christopher Hitchens' own personal word for what a splendid chap he is. What follows next is anyone's guess, but it would be difficult to be worse than the ghastly kleptocracy that has been overthrown. The main surprise is that Hitchens, his brilliant mind attuned to the very souls of the Tunisian masses, failed to see the coming upheaval. Perhaps he should have actually read the quote from Pliny the Elder that he copied and pasted out of the Wikipedia to up the word count at the beginning of his piece: 'Ex Africa semper aliquid novi' ('There is always something new out of Africa').'

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