Bono has got plenty of abuse over a 40-year career straddling pop and politics. So the heat he has been feeling over his stance, or lack of stance, over Israel-Palestine must come as no surprise. The role the U2 frontman played in Northern Ireland politics featured in the recent BBC series Simon Schama’s Story of Us in which the British historian also examined the pressure put on Seamus Heaney to take sides in the Troubles. Bono defended Heaney’s refusal to engage in political rhetoric, saying “he is trying to get you away from the obvious topsoil; he is saying: dig deeper into who you are”.
Bono took a more literal approach on the North, repeatedly condemning both republican and loyalist violence, and pouring scorn on those misty-eyed Irish Americans who helped to fund the IRA’s bombing campaigns. On the Middle East, he has been studiously even-handed. In an article in The Atlantic timed for publication with his receipt of the US presidential medal of freedom in January, Bono wrote “freedom must come for the Israeli hostages” but also “Israel will never be free until Palestine is free”.
Such comments cut little ice with critics of Bono’s decision to accept the award from Joe Biden, with several peers in the music industry accusing him of selling out. Bono’s purported crime was one of omission, not of commission. He should have turned the award down, critics say. Failing that, he should have used the opportunity to condemn Biden over America’s arming of Israel. In short, the problem was not that Bono did something; it’s that he did not do something.
It’s perfectly legitimate to criticise someone over an act of omission. However, the moral calculation appears to be more opaque, because for every act you perform there are an unlimited number of acts you don’t perform.
Sins of omission are central to a new critique of the left by Eric Heinze. In his latest book, Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left, the London-based law professor examines a key contribution that liberals have made to our understanding of the world. Critical theory is the name given to a school of thought that places current affairs in the context of inherited power dynamics or systemic injustices.
Heinze thinks critical theory is a good thing but believes it should be applied consistently. In recent years, left-wing activists have championed social reforms through scrutiny of structural biases and “histories of racism and colonialism” – the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter and LGBT+ solidarity can be seen as products of critical theory. But Heinze wants us to look at all histories, not just those in which the villains are pale-skinned western European men.
He brings the critique to bear on the Middle East, saying “either all these histories [of discrimination] are relevant or none of them are”. There should be no free pass, he suggests, for activists who are “insisting that they have no truck with Hamas, Hizbullah, Iranian mullahs ... or other such entities” but who “ultimately recapitulate these entities’ stances on Israel, again with little reference to a long history on the left of supporting repressive powers”.
Speaking to The Irish Times, Heinze says he is not trying to call out hypocrisy – this can be found across the political spectrum. Nor is he trying to answer “who was worse?”, left or right? Rather he argues “that once we start down this road of critical history then, by definition, we cannot pick and choose only the histories that advance our preferred political aims”.
“So yes,” he says, “it is legitimate to examine Gaza with reference to generations of Euro-American imperialism, neocolonialism, capitalism, and racism. But then we must equally examine it with reference to the devastatingly violent and repressive role played, for example, by a Kremlin that, for decades, enjoyed at least overall legitimacy if not zealous support from major currents on the left.”
Cases of anti-Semitism are sometimes reduced to “the actions of only a small minority and not the real left”, he writes, but “this is not a distinction that leftists ordinarily draw”. He cites the examples of George Floyd and Stephen Lawrence, murder victims in the US and UK respectively, who “are seen on the left as victims not of a small minority of racists but of broader, unconscious, and structural biases”.
Heinze’s thesis acts as important corrective – even if it does run the risk of being reduced to “whataboutery”. Not the usual “whataboutery” where ideological foes list off opposing atrocities. But rather a “whataboutery” that says you need to demonstrate sufficient self-scrutiny of your ideological biases before I’ll bother listening to you. (Heinze does not advocate this stance but there are prominent commentators on both the left and the right who do.)
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Some may feel that the scale of horror in the world today calls not for humility nor self-examination but rather pure anger. But Schama reminds us of Heaney’s example. Amid “the din of shouting, cursing and mutual hatred”, the historian observes, Heaney was committed to a belief “that we have more in common” than in contrast – and that this can be revealed by digging deeper “into who you are”. Schama says: “Right now what the world feeds on is exactly what Seamus Heaney didn’t do, in other words, being installed in mutually warring tribal camps and degrading your enemy.”
