December 2008

Standpoint is published monthly by Social Affairs Unit Magazines Limited, a subsiduary of the Social Affairs Unit (Registered Charity No.281530). The views expressed in Standpoint are those of its individual authors, not those of the Social Affairs Unit Magazines Ltd and its Directors or those of the Social Affairs Unit and its Trustees and Director

Features

A Foreign Affair: David Bowie in Berlin

TOBIAS RÜTHER

December 2008

Haunted by Isherwood's shade, the British musician flirted with fascism, then became a hero to the youth of the communist East

Crises are good for art - political as well as private. Those who balance on the edge of the abyss need to keep their wits about them, looking not only down but ahead.

In the late summer of 1976, the mentally and physically exhausted David Bowie moves to West Berlin. For three years, he lives at 155 Hauptstrasse in Schöneberg, an unobtrusive district in the American Sector. Apartments are in short supply, but Bowie finds a loft with seven large rooms on the first floor of an art nouveau building near Tempelhof Airport. Next door is a gay bar; Marlene Dietrich was born around the corner.

Translated from the German by Daniel Johnson

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The Man Who Flew Too High

GILES MACDONOGH

December 2008

Demagogue and darling of Austria's far-Right, Jörg Haider had power within his grasp. Why couldn't he seal the deal?

Hearing the story, you are tempted to believe it had something to do with his car: a Volkswagen Phaeton. Classicists will recall that Phaeton was the son of Helios who asked his father if he might drive the sun's chariot across the heavens. Phaeton lost control of the horses and came so close to setting the world on fire that Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt.

Within days of his death, the secret life of the high-flying Austrian politician Jörg Haider began to unravel. For Haider, who was married with two daughters, it had been a day of parties. His last official engagement was at the Cabaret nightclub in Velden on Lake Wörthersee. He was in a bad mood and later it emerged that he had had a fight with his lover and right-hand man in the BZÖ (Alliance for the Future of Austria), Stefan Petzner.

COMMENTS: 2

A Norwegian Thatcher?

SIV JENSEN AND BRUCE BAWER

December 2008

The leader of Norway's Progress Party, Siv Jensen, has a good chance of winning next year's election. In an interview with Standpoint editor Daniel Johnson, she explains her views; Bruce Bawer explains the background to her meteoric career

Daniel Johnson: Your party, the Progress Party, has sometimes been accused, on the left and in parts of the media, of being far-right, comparable to Le Pen - what is your answer to that?

Bruce Bawer is an American writer based in Oslo and the author of While Europe Slept

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Africa Has a Dream: Obama

R. W. JOHNSON

December 2008

The new president will be welcomed by most ordinary Africans, if not by their rulers

Not long ago, Western journalists tracked down Barack Obama's youngest half-brother, George, aged 26, who lives on less than a dollar a month in a Nairobi slum. "If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related," he said. "I am ashamed." Kenyans as a whole are divided. Obama is an easily recognisable Luo name, which means that Prime Minister Raila Odinga's supporters love Obama, but the dominant Kikuyu, for the same reason, supported Hillary Clinton.

COMMENTS: 2

They Just Don't Get It

JONATHAN FOREMAN

December 2008

Many Britons - and even some Americans - have a false idea of what the US is really like. Are Hollywood and TV to blame?

There has been such enthusiasm for Barack Obama in Britain that it is strange no one seems to have looked into his feelings about Britain. It is perhaps natural for his foreign supporters to assume that their adoration of the president-elect will be returned, but there is no indication that Obama is at all Anglophile or interested in the "special relationship" in any profound way. All indications seem to be that he will be much more interested in winning the affection of what used to be called the Third World than in paying attention to the adoring electorates of Western Europe. Moreover, it's possible that he might look past all the British talk about how wonderful it is to have a black man in the White House and notice with distaste how little minority representation there is in British public life.

COMMENTS: 11

Their's is to Reason Why

ANTHONY LOYD

December 2008

A new generation of soldiers is as questioning of its role in Afghanistan as the society from which it is recruited

"Has anyone here ever been shot at?" God, is it already 21 years since that thawing Cold War afternoon of drizzle and cloud on Salisbury Plain? Standing around with a few dozen fellow platoon commanders on a training course, I was waiting to be reminded just how to identify an enemy firing position when the instructor sparked a moment of sudden interest with his question. Yet despite many of us there having already served for two years or more, only one man raised his hand in response. His experience had involved a few bullets, a few seconds of shock and an unseen gunman in South Armagh.

That short event, though, had him marked out as remarkable among us. The army that I had joined was still training for a conventional conflict in Europe. Northern Ireland, by then a theatre where the prospect of getting shot at was anyway fading by the month, was very much a secondary priority.

COMMENTS: 1

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