The delusion of the Houthi pacifists

I see ‘Not in my name’ is trending on social media. It’s in response to the US and UK strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. The tweeting classes want to make it clear to the world that such uncouth militarism has nothing to do with them. ‘My conscience is clean’, these time-rich signallers of rectitude are really saying.

Has there ever been a slogan as smug, self-satisfied and outright narcissistic as ‘Not in my name’? It is notably not a political cry. It advances no programme, makes no demands. It is a world away from the catchy mottos of the Sixties, like ‘Hands off Vietnam!’ or ‘Vietnam for the Vietnamese!’

Instead, it’s all about the self. It’s about my name, my reputation. It’s about keeping oneself unsullied by world affairs. It’s a curious mix of fatalism and haughtiness — both vices, surely — where the sloganeer seems to accept that a bad thing is going to happen and wants to make sure he remains unstained by it. Noisily fortifying one’s own moral prestige is what passes for middle-class radicalism these days.

And what exactly is ‘not in their name’? A few airstrikes against a gang of medieval pirates. The firing of some missiles at the psychotic anti-Semites of the Houthi movement who have been holding global trade to ransom these past few weeks, and by extension holding to ransom the living standards of a great many human beings.

I’m sorry, but if such just action gives you sleepless nights, so much so that you feel a burning urge to advertise your aloofness from it all, then it’s possible your ‘name’ didn’t count for much in the first place.

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

The ‘Not in my name’ narcissists need to calm down. The way they’re talking you would be forgiven for thinking that Biden and Sunak are committing a calamity of Iraq proportions. That their joint strikes on Houthi command centres and munitions depots are Vietnam 2.0. That the world is about to be plunged into chaos.

Get a grip. The Houthis started this latest round of conflict in the Gulf, with their assaults on container ships in the Red Sea. More than 25 ships have been targeted by these Islamist pirates since the Hamas pogrom of 7 October. And they’ve made it clear they will carry on attacking ships until Israel calls off its war on Hamas. In short, Israel must capitulate to the anti-Semites who slaughtered more than a thousand of its citizens or else these anti-Semites in Yemen will continue sabotaging free trade.

What were Britain and America meant to do in response to this moral blackmail, these vile threats, these acts of piracy against the ships of the free world by reactionary hotheads who long for the destruction of our ally, Israel? Sit back? Shrug? 

Pacifists are frustratingly simple-minded. ‘Actions have consequences!’, they’re crying today, following the US and UK strikes. But not acting has consequences too. If free nations that have a clear moral interest in maintaining the flow of goods across the earth were to do nothing in response to these nutters, it would have emboldened them. It would have implicitly sanctioned the Houthis’ trade-wrecking violence. It would have let them know their piracy will go unpunished.

Come down from your moral high ground, peaceniks. The lack of oxygen up there has clearly affected your ability to think straight. If the world did what you wanted – i.e. nothing – there would have been not peace, but violence. Our inaction would have inflamed their actions.

I’m sorry, but emboldening reckless, illiberal, Jew-hating pirates seems a high price to pay for your ‘name’. I’m going to venture that the right of ship-hands not to be attacked by religious extremists, and the right of working people around the world to receive delivery of the goods they need for a good life, count for more than propping up your fragile sense of virtue.

Much of the kneejerk online fury about the US and UK strikes smacks of moral cowardice to me. It feels like pusillanimity dressed up as pacifism. I know the ‘Do something!’ lobby, those laptop bombardiers who love to watch wars from afar, can be irritating. But the ‘Do nothing!’ lobby is worse sometimes. How easy it is for comfortably off leftists in the West to shrug a collective shoulder over Iran’s proxy pirates who ‘only’ pose a threat to Jews and working people engaged in shipping and delivery. Nothing to do with us, right?

The Houthis are a despicable movement. They have imposed a ruthless Islamist tyranny in the parts of Yemen they control. Women’s rights are non-existent, homosexuality is criminalised, dissent is crushed. And their horrific racism is written into their very slogan: ‘God is the Greatest. Death to America. Death to Israel. A curse upon the Jews. Victory to Islam.’

In recent weeks I’ve seen British leftists fantasising that the Houthis are anti-capitalist renegades whose Red Sea antics will rattle the arrogant West and help save the people of Gaza. These people have lost the plot. Their fashionable turn against Western civilisation, their obsessive anti-Westernism that they falsely advertise as anti-imperialism, has now led them into the arms of one of the most reactionary and racist movements on earth.

There is no question that Western military intervention can be a destructive thing. I have opposed every regime-change war of recent years for that reason. But the limited strikes on the Houthis are different. On one side we have the defenders of free trade and of the Jewish people’s right to their own homeland, and on the other a gang of religious hysterics who loathe free movement, free thought, women, gays and Jews. I know which side I’m on.