Oliver Kamm

Oliver Kamm (born 1963) is a British writer and journalist. He wrote Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy (2005), an advocacy of interventionism in foreign policy.^[1] He is a leader writer and columnist for The Times.

Background

The son of translator Anthea Bell,^[2] Kamm was educated at New College, Oxford and Birkbeck College, University of London. He went on to a career in the Bank of England and the securities industry, including as the Head of Strategic Research at Commerzbank Global Equities in London.^[3] He helped start a pan-European investment bank in 1997.^[4] He is a former investment banker.^[5]

Politics

Kamm describes his politics as left-wing.^[6] Kamm's early activities in Labour included canvassing in Leicester South in the 1979 general election, which saw Margaret Thatcher become Prime Minister. While he continued to vote Labour into the 1980s,^[7] he eventually became dissatisfied with the party's leadership and policies, particularly its stance on nuclear disarmament, and left the party altogether in 1988.^[8] He worked for the 1997 election campaign of Martin Bell, who is his uncle,^[9] against incumbent Neil Hamilton, drafting a manifesto "so right-wing that Hamilton was incapable of outflanking it."^[10]

That year saw the election of the 'New Labour' government of Tony Blair, which Kamm strongly supported, particularly its foreign policy and 'liberal interventionism'. Although generally supportive of the Labour Party in the 2005 general election, Kamm stated that he could not support Celia Barlow, the Labour candidate in his local constituency, Hove, because of her opposition to Blair's foreign policies. Instead, he stated that he would vote for the Conservative candidate, Nicholas Boles, who supported the Iraq war.^[11]

A founding member of the Henry Jackson Society, Kamm supported the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In 2004, he outlined a case for supporting the re-election of George W. Bush.^[12] In 2006, he was a signatory to the Euston Manifesto, arguing for a reorientation of the left around what its creators termed 'anti-totalitarian' principles. He favourably commented on Peter Beinart's The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, which has similar themes to Kamm's own book, arguing that the left should look to the policies of Clement Attlee and Harry S. Truman in the early days of the Cold War as a model for response to Islamism and totalitarianism.^[13]

On 27 January 2010, Kamm announced on BBC Radio 5 live that he believed Tony Blair had been the greatest peacetime Prime Minister of the 20th century.^[14]

Because of his position on war and terrorism, critics such as Peter Wilby have stated that he is not actually left-wing at all.^[15] Kamm rejects this criticism, saying that he "claim[s] to be left-wing, for the straightforward reason that it's true". He elaborates on his support for left-wing policies such as economic redistribution, progressive taxation and a welfare state. He also supports legal abortion and gay marriage.^[16] Regarding socialism, Kamm wrote that former Prime Minister James Callaghan's "greatest single achievement" was to "destroy socialism as a serious proposition in British politics."^[17] He has also supported the rendition of suspected terrorists.^[18]

Kamm has written in Index on Censorship in response to the 2009 visit of Geert Wilders argued that "No one has a right in a free society to be protected from anguish".^[19]

Regarding the bombing of Dresden, he has asserted that the bombing of the city "was not a crime. It was a terrible act in a just and necessary war."^[20]

In September 2011, Kamm wrote in the New Statesman that he supports the Euro and admonishes Labour's recent criticisms of it: "Monetary union is not the cause of the crisis. Done properly, it may help insulate member states from disruptive volatility in the international capital markets".^[21]

Criticism of Noam Chomsky

Kamm has criticised the linguist and political writer Noam Chomsky, with his work appearing in David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine. His thoughts on Chomsky are summarised in an article^[22] for Prospect magazine opposing a readers' poll choice of Chomsky in the top position for its 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll.^[23]

Chomsky in turn accused Kamm of "transparent falsification" and claimed that Kamm's article demonstrated "the lengths to which some will go to prevent exposure of state crimes and their own complicity in them".^[24] Kamm replied by accusing Chomsky of "polemical distortions" including quoting himself selectively.^[25]

Kamm continued to comment about Chomsky’s political writings on his blog. In 2005 Kamm maintained that the “leitmotif of [Chomsky's] entire political output, to which he returns again and again, is that the US is morally inferior to Nazi Germany.”^[26] In At War With Asia Chomsky wrote that “Nazi Germany was sui generis, of that there is no doubt. But we should have the courage and honesty to face the question whether the principles applied to Nazi Germany and fascist Japan do not, as well, apply to the American war in Vietnam.”^[27]

Notes

1. ^ The Guardian. "Comment is Free profile: Oliver Kamm".
2. ^ Oliver Kamm "Say it loud — I’m a pedant and I’m proud", The Times, 26 June 2009
3. ^ Investments: Strategy vs superstition BBC Online, January 22, 1999.
4. ^ Geras, Norman. "The normblog profile 9: Oliver Kamm", normblog, 21 November 2003.
5. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "In Praise of Hedges", Prospect 117, December, 2005.
6. ^ Raimondo, Justin. "The Kamm Scam: Fake "Journalist" Defends a Forgery", Antiwar.com, 4 January, 2010.
7. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Foot again", Oliver Kamm's weblog, 5 April 2004.
8. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "The liberal prospect now", Oliver Kamm's weblog, 6 May 2005.
9. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Rural Writing", Oliver Kamm's weblog, 3 September 2005.
10. ^ Kamm, Oliver."'Living Marxism' and 'Tory sleaze'", Oliver Kamm's weblog, 13 December 2003.
11. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Help, I'm a pro-war leftie", The Times, 2 May 2005.
12. ^ Kamm, Oliver "The liberal case for returning Bush to the White House", Oliver Kamm's weblog, 9 July 2004
13. ^ Kamm, Oliver "Time for the Left to be brave again", The Times, 7 November 2005.
14. ^ "The legalities of the Iraq war", BBC Radio 5 Live, 27 January 2010
15. ^ Wilby, Peter "The Media Column", New Statesman, 24 April 2006
16. ^ Kamm, Oliver "Staggering", Oliver Kamm's weblog, 20 April 2006
17. ^ Kamm, Oliver "James Callaghan", Oliver Kamm's weblog, 30 March 2005
18. ^ Kamm, Oliver "Ordinary rendition", The Guardian, 11 March 2008
19. ^ Kamm, Oliver "An Unlikely Champion", Index on Censorship, 16 October, 2009
20. ^ Kamm, Oliver (21 March, 2010). "The bombing of Dresden cannot be used to diminish the holocaust". The Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7066298.ece. Retrieved 17 September, 2010. 
21. ^ Kamm, Oliver "This is no time to give up on the euro", New Statesman, 29 September 2011
22. ^ Kamm, Oliver "Against Chomsky", Prospect 116, November, 2005
23. ^ "The Prospect/FP "Global public intellectuals poll—results", Prospect magazine's website
24. ^ Chomsky, Noam. "We Are All Complicit", Prospect 118, January, 2006 (abridged version); the full version is available at chomsky.info
25. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Kamm replies to Chomsky", Prospect 119, February 2006
26. ^ Kamm, Oliver. "Chomsky and the Vietnam War - a study in failure", Oliver Kamm's weblog, January 24, 2005
27. ^ Chomsky, Noam. At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina (1970; 2004) ISBN 978-1902593890 p.236

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Name	Kamm, Oliver
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Date of birth	3 February 1963
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