Whittering about Mugabe

Loads of predictable outrage about Mugabe going to Rome to pontificate at a UN Food Summit while his people are starving. Why the f**k do people bother. We know Mugabe will carry on until he drops off the perch, naturally or otherwise. While we concede his right to starve and kick hell out of people, and that of the Burmese generals to let people die in the Irrawaddy Delta, and the “international community” does indeed concede these rights, we may as well save our breath to cool our coffee. The point about Mugabe coming to Europe is that his security arrangements cannot be anywhere near as tight as they are in Harare. There must be millions of potential sniper nests in Rome. And with all these outrage-inspiring five course meals – dozens of waiters etc. must have had a chance to slip something in his lobster thermidor. It’s the old Roman way, after all. Where’s the Empress Livia Augusta when we need her? The disgrace is not that Mugabe went to Rome, but that he got back safely. At least Peter Tatchell had a go at him in Brussels a few years ago, and got a kicking for his pains. It wouldn’t have involved much more planning to take the man out for good.

We on the Left ought to be moving round to the idea of assassination to push the world in the right direction. The mainstream media wouldn’t print anything of this sort, so go the blogosphere! Marx queered the pitch rather by rejecting individual assassinations, but he thought that economic forces would do the job for us, and – sorry Karl – they haven’t and they won’t. And the argument that if our side start splatting baddies the baddies will start splatting “us” shouldn’t worry us lefties much. Assassination is one of the only ways I can think of of making a real impact on the ruling class, and of more or less confining that impact to the ruling class.