The odius Niall Ferguson and his defence of Pinochet

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I was thinking about this thread the other day, specifically the stuff at the beginning about Cowley Road Mosque. There's a new Mosque being built in east Oxford near my girlfriend's house. It's made of the nice pale yellow local stone and one of the associated buildings (not the main part) has an almost neoclassical look about it. Well, neoneoclassical, I guess. So it looks like a recognizably 'Oxford' building while at the same time being very obviously a piece of Islamic architecture. Nicely done.
 

droid

Well-known member
Just had an interesting meeting with a researcher and Ferguson came up. She's met him a few times and had some tidbits. Apparently his Oxford colleagues were all equally appalled by his move to popular right wing revisionism.
 
Just had an interesting meeting with a researcher and Ferguson came up. She's met him a few times and had some tidbits. Apparently his Oxford colleagues were all equally appalled by his move to popular right wing revisionism.

He would have been my tutor had I read Modern History instead of what I did read.

My room in the third year was above his study. Let's just say he had a prolonged and detailed introduction, via his ceiling, to 94-95 jungle and hard techno, whether he liked it or not.

It was revenge for him waking me up most mornings by driving his ridiculous midlife crisis TVR into the quad outside.

John Gray was in the same college, in his bearded grump phase. I doubt they got on.

I think Ferguson is a very good historian though, despite all that. But then, I'm not a fucking marxist like you lot.
 

droid

Well-known member
From the same meeting (Im paraphrasing) - a very good historian who was excellent in his early work on economic history and is extremely clever, which makes his dangerous & poorly researched right wing apologetics for empire even more reprehensible.
 
From the same meeting (Im paraphrasing) - a very good historian who was excellent in his early work on economic history and is extremely clever, which makes his dangerous & poorly researched right wing apologetics for empire even more reprehensible.

Dangerous = true
Poorly researched = not drawing slavishly on your preferred narratives

Am I right?
 

droid

Well-known member
No. Poorly researched as in, disprovable through basic work and acres of evidence that contradicts the assumptions, arguments and conclusions.

The person I was speaking was not radical in any sense, liked Ferguson personally and had professional connections - yet threw Empire down after a few pages in disgust.
 

droid

Well-known member
But maybe thats wrong, maybe the system that killed 150-200 million people, committed numerous acts of genocide and laid the foundations for planetary destruction was actually a good thing.

Discuss.
 
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