Much fury on Twitter in the last 48 hours about Boris Johnson's anti-Obama diatribe. A lot of writers I admire have poured scorn, mostly from the Left, on Boris's suggestion that Obama's stance on Brexit might be influenced by his Kenyan background. In particular Boris suggested that Obama might have been instrumental in the removal of a bust of Churchill from the White House.
Principal amongst Johnson's accusers was Nick Cohen, who wrote in the Spectator ("Boris Johnson's attack on Barack Obama belongs in the gutter") that the Mayor of London was "a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard . . . but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the tricks of the fraudster to advance his worthless career". Cohen continues, "I'm not someone who throws accusations of racism around . . . But, come now, the fantasy that Obama is the heir of the Mau-Maus with no right to govern is a racist lie" which Johnson "perpetuates".
Golly. Is Cohen right? Certainly the Twitterati thought so. I wasn't so sure, and plunged into the 140 character mosh pit to try and establish what exactly Johnson had said which was racist. Interestingly, the responses tended to dry up on the second or third exchange of views. Typical was the Blairite hack John McTernan, who could manage no more than "It's racist. Pure and simple".
(Update - the following day McTernan elaborated on his views. He wrote, "It is sneery, de haut en bas, touch of the tarbrush, straight down the line English racism". I replied, "So you keep saying. But you don't say why. Forgive me for finding that a little lame." Nothing back from McTernan so far.)
So what exactly did Johnson say which was so offensive? Cohen quotes him thus. "Some said (the removal of the Churchill bust) was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire - of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender".
"Who are the ‘some’ who say that Obama is a Kenyan at heart?", demands Nick Cohen.
Inconveniently for him, one of the most vocal is Barack Obama himself, who, er, devoted a large part of his book Dreams of My Father to his Kenyan heritage. And rather awkwardly for Cohen and his fans, Obama went to Kenya on a state visit in July 2015, and began a speech there by saying, "I am proud to be the first American president to come to Kenya, and of course I'm the first Kenyan-American to be president of the United States". Kenyan-American. There you have it.
When the journalist Iain Martin tweeted these remarks there was some furious back-peddling by Cohen's supporters. You could almost hear them thinking, "Shit, Obama thinks he's part-Kenyan too. What are we going to say now?"
Obama is entitled to be proud of his ancestry (even though his Dad comes across as an utter flake in Dreams of my Father), but on the other hand is it really beyond plausibility to suggest that a man whose father was born in a British colony and whose grandfather was, apparently, imprisoned by the British, might not, well, be too keen on Britain? And yet to suggest that is, for Cohen and his supporters, to step into the gutter.
A much more fruitful avenue for Cohen to explore might have been to wonder whether Johnson was actually right. He might also have pondered what the consequences of Presidential anti-British bias might have been. After all, a President who disliked Britain would surely want the worst for us; and yet here's Obama firmly advocating Remain. Surely Boris missed a trick here. He should have been trumpeting that Obama's anti-British bias must mean he secretly felt it would be best for us to Leave. What an endorsement for Brexit that would have been.
But this is all too subtle for Cohen. "The fantasy that Obama is the heir of the Mau-Maus with no right to govern", he writes, "is a racist lie that appeals to deep, dark traditions in the US. From slavery, through the Civil War, the backlash against Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, the argument has been the same: blacks have no right to vote, and black politicans have no right to rule. Johnson perpetuates the fraud".
It's worth noting that Cohen not only makes no attempt to demonstrate that Johnson is racist, but also doesn't try to justify his association of Johnson with these repellent manifestations of US racism.
If I were Boris I'd be rather peeved. Even if Kenyans were a race, which they're not, and even if Boris were wrong about Obama's hostility to Britain, which we can't know, where is Cohen's evidence that the remarks were motivated by hostility to Kenyans (or even Kenyan culture, for heavens' sake)?
Boris is not even suggesting that Obama would be wrong about any anti-British antipathy he might have. He's simply wondering whether it might have influenced Obama's views on Brexit. The answer to that might be a very short "no" (and that would probably get my vote), but it is a very very long way from that to suggesting, as Cohen does, that even to ask the question makes you a racist.
You may accuse me of overthinking this, but I'm simply baffled why a journalist and commentator of Cohen's calibre should get this so thoroughly wrong.
One last point. Nick Cohen has an honourable record as an advocate of free speech. And yet his dog-whistle cry has brought out the dim-witted censors in their droves.
