John Le Carré

Mussolini, no slouch when it came to Fascism, defined his creed as the moment when corporate & state power became indistinguishable - or simply assumed he’d have them for his own - but W & the neocons, & their little minstrel Blair, had it all going for them: the embedded press, the fulminating Godbotherers, the pigs-in-clover magacorps - all toe-ed the line. WHY? In Europe we really don’t believe in war any more. I wish I c[oul]d say the same for Blair - & Busie boy, because they love it […]“ Tony Blair is a British Labour Party politician who served as Britain’s prime minister from 1997 to 2007. Under his leadership, Britain joined with American President George W. Bush’s U.S.-led coalition to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, for which both parties received much domestic and international criticism as did Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Among le Carré’s criticisms are the increased influence of both corporate interests and religious fundamentalism in politics as well as the practice of embedding journalists with military units during the wars in the Middle East, a practice that was criticized as potentially creating a tool for propagandists. Our letter paraphrases a quote often, but possible mistake, attributed to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: „Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.“ The quote appeared in the November 24, 2002 column „Scary Times in the USA,“ by Molly Ivens, a political commentator and critic of Bush’s wars. Le Carré also paraphrases a line from British author and humorist P. G. Wodehouse’s 1916 novel Uneasy Money: „For what is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of which Fate lies in wait for us with a stuffed eel-skin?“.