

New Guardian columnist Joshua Treviño

(from Flickr via the Electronic Intifada)

In case you’ve missed this story: The Guardian, the left-liberal U.K. news outlet that operates the third-most popular news website in the world, last week announced a surprising addition to its editorial team: Joshua Treviño, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and co-founder of the right-wing RedState.com. Within hours, Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada responded with a post reproducing tweets from last summer in which Treviño declared that it would be “cool” with him if the Israelis shot the participants in the 2011 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, then went on to observe that the flotilla was “not morally different from a Nazi convoy”

Not surprisingly, several participants in that flotilla, including me – and, no doubt, scores of other Guardian readers – immediately protested to Janine Gibson, editor in chief of the Guardian US, who was quoted in the press release about her pleasure at bringing Treviño’s “important perspective” to readers. We acknowledged the Guardian’s desire to present diverse points of view, but questioned the choice of someone whose approach to political debate is to call for gunning down those he disagrees with.

The Guardian brass, who are reportedly counting on expanding their U.S. readership online to stanch the flood of red ink they’ve suffered in recent years, apparently took the issue complaints seriously enough to ask Treviño to respond immediately, even though his column wasn’t scheduled for launch until Monday. The result was a column he called “My 2011 Gaza flotilla tweet: a clarification” – a pathetic piece of posturing in which he acknowledged a “lack of rhetorical integrity” but insisted it was all a misunderstanding: yes, his tweet did leave “the widespread impression … that I actively urged the IDF to shoot Americans, that I welcomed their death, or that I hoped for that outcome,” but “Nothing could be further from the truth.” In fact, he argued, his position was no different from those put forward by Hilary Clinton, who at the time endorsed the Israelis’ “right to defend themselves” (from peaceful, unarmed activists planning to carry only letters and drawings to Gaza, with no intention of entering Israel or its territorial waters) and Rick Perry, who demanded that we be prosecuted. (The response I sent to Gibson about Treviño’s column is at the of this post.)

In her e-mail reply to those of us who had complained about the hiring of Treviño, Gibson said she hoped that his “clarification” would persuade us that “there might be something important to be gained from hearing from him.” It actually had the opposite effect, succeeding only in making clear that he’s a weasel as well as a thug – and that his writing is as lame as his politics are reactionary. The Guardian website was immediately flooded with responses – now approaching 300 – nearly all of them expressing shock at the Guardian’s decision to hire him. Several of the commenters exposed other highlights from Treviño’s career, such as his 2007 proposal that the U.S. occupation forces in Iraq follow the example of the British in the Boer War, in which “a fractious, semi-fanatical culture was slowly ground into submission by … taking their women and children away to concentration camps, by laying waste to the countryside,” and so on. (Treviño has apparently taken this post offline, but blogger Spencer Ackerman reproduced the core of it here.)

Meanwhile, Richard Silverstein chimed in on the controversy at his Tikun Olam site, and Abunimah kept the heat on with a strong column at Al Jazeera. Then came a real stunner: a new post from Abunimah demonstrating that the Guardian had surreptitiously modified its press release about Trevino’s appointment (demoting him from member of their “editorial team” and “Correspondent” to part of their “commentary team” and “commentator”) – and then had the temerity to demand a correction from the Electronic Intifada for quoting the original wording!

The e-mail the Guardian press office sent Abunimah describes Treviño as simply “a freelance writer on contract to write opinion pieces [that] will appear on the Guardian’s Comment is Free section … along with articles from many other freelance writers.” If true, that would suggest that the Guardian has already dropped him from the more important position they originally hired him for. (He had already had several columns published in the Comment is Free section, including one on August 11 – would the Guardian have issued a press release merely to announce that one of the scores of people who freelance for that section would continue to do so?)

More likely, the Guardian is simply hoping that the modified wording will somehow placate angry readers on the left, without costing them the new right-wing readership his hiring was designed to attract. As the sharp-eyed Abunimah observes, the press release still includes a contact at the Guardian for arranging “future bookings with Treviño” – a service it isn’t likely to provide for a mere freelancer.

Whatever the Guardian bosses hoped to accomplish by doctoring their press release, it seems likely that the scheme has backfired – thanks to Abunimah’s diligent detective work, it is only bringing new attention to the controversy and compounding the embarrassment to the Guardian. (Another prominent British publication, the New Statesman, has now picked up on that issue.) And the tide of protest over the hiring of Treviño with any title continues to mount: M.J. Rosenberg add his thoughts here, and the Guardian itself on Sunday posted a letter in which several dozen prominent British academics and activists, including Ilan Pappé, Ghada Karmi, and Ahdaf Soueif express their “shock and dismay.”

If you want to let the Guardian know how you feel about the appointment of Treviño, add a comment to his “clarification” column (registration required but free), and/or write directly to Ms. Gibson at janine.gibson@guardiannews.com and cc her managing editor, Nell Boase, nell.boase@guardiannews.com, and editorial administrator Kylie Lacey at kylie.lacey@guardiannews.com. Facebook users can also “like” a page entitled “No Incitement to Murder: Treviño off the Guardian.”

Here’s the note I sent Ms Gibson et al. in response to her message pointing me to Treviño’s attempt at self-justification: