Oliver Kamm

Oliver Kamm (born 1963) is a British blogger, journalist and author. He writes articles for The Times and has published the book Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy for the Social Affairs Unit. In the book he argues in favour of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

He studied at Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College, Leicester and Oxford University and had a career in the Bank of England and the securities industry. He helped start a pan-European investment bank in 1997 and is part of its management [1]. He is the nephew of former MP Martin Bell and was his adviser from 1997 to 2001.

Kamm was a founding signatory in 2005 of the Henry Jackson Society principles, advocating "a ‘forward strategy’ to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so," including the possibility of military intervention.[2]

Kamm is probably best known for his criticisms of the linguist and radical political writer Noam Chomsky. These are summarised in an article [3] for Prospect magazine opposing its readers' choice of Chomsky in the top position for its 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll. Chomsky retorted [4] that Kamm's article demonstrated "the lengths to which some will go to prevent exposure of state crimes and their own complicity in them". Kamm replied by claiming that Chomsky had failed to quote himself correctly. [5]

In late-2005 Kamm was co-author, with the writers David Aaronovitch and Francis Wheen, of a 4500-word complaint to The Guardian newspaper when it published a correction and apology for an interview with Chomsky by Emma Brockes. [6]. The original interview had suggested Chomsky denied the fact of the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. The Guardian's readers' editor found that this had misrepresented Chomsky's position, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis. [7]. The decision was criticised by The Independent's media columnist Stephen Glover in light of the evidence presented by Aaronovitch, Wheen and Kamm.[8]

Kamm also writes frequently about Jewish and Christian matters, though he appears to be an atheist himself. [9]

Kamm’s web persona became fodder for an extensive parody blog run by someone calling himself “Oliver Kampf,” which ran from August 2004 to March 2005.[10] Kamm has more recently been the target of a spoof e-mailer, who wrote to prominent thinkers, including Andrew Sullivan, identifying himself variously as Kamm’s friend, representative, and Kamm himself. Responding to the parodist on his blog, Kamm dismissed him as a “crank.” [11]

External links

• Oliver Kamm's blog