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January 22, 2007
Observer columnist Nick Cohen asks, 'Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left? The question refers to the neo-conservative claim that those who opposed the Iraq war opposed the overthrow of a fascist regime of Saddam Hussein. This 'you are with us or against us' ---if you did not support the Iraq war, you were for the other side' ---was the talking point of the Bush Administration and dutifully followed by the Howard Government.
The extract below is from Nick Cohen's book about the failings of the modern left entitled What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way. Nick Cohen is an author, columnist and signatory of the Euston Manifesto and publishes in the New Statesman. In the extract Cohn argues that anti-Americanism has left it blind to the evils of militant Islam. In the extract published in the Guardian he asks, 'why is the world upside down? ' He spells out what he means:
In the past conservatives made excuses for fascism because they mistakenly saw it as a continuation of their democratic rightwing ideas. Now, overwhelmingly and every where, liberals and leftists are far more likely than conservatives to excuse fascistic governments and movements, with the exception of their native far-right parties. As long as local racists are white, they have no difficulty in opposing them in a manner that would have been recognisable to the traditional left. But give them a foreign far-right movement that is anti-Western and they treat it as at best a distraction and at worst an ally.
Few on the Australian left supported the regime of Sadam Hussein. It was recognized as a form of totalitarianism that oppressed the Iraqi people. Nor does the main currents of the Australian Left within the liberal tradition support the current Iranian theocracy; it is the democracy movement within Iran that is supported, not theocracy.
The answer Cohen gives to his question about why the liberal left supports militant Islm is that there is a confusion on the left following the collapse of socialism and the poverty of social democracy as to what the left stands for or means:
A part of the answer is that it isn't at all clear what it means to be on the left at the moment. I doubt if anyone can tell you what a society significantly more left wing than ours would look like and how its economy and government would work (let alone whether a majority of their fellow citizens would want to live there). Socialism, which provided the definition of what it meant to be on the left from the 1880s to the 1980s, is gone. Disgraced by the communists' atrocities and floored by the success of market-based economies, it no longer exists as a coherent programme for government. Even the modest and humane social democratic systems of Europe are under strain and look dreadfully vulnerable.
Surely socialism in the Soviet Union and social democracy in the UK or Australia are different kinds of regimes and resulted in a conflict and antagonism between these differnt strands of the Left Secondly, it is difficult to see how the rethinking of social democracy and the welfare state after the intervention of neo-liberalism leads to Anti-Americanism, support for fascist regimes, or siding with militant Islam. Cohen says:
My argument is that its failure has brought a dark liberation to people who consider themselves to be on the liberal left. It has freed them to go along with any movement however far to the right it may be, as long as it is against the status quo in general and, specifically, America. I hate to repeat the overused quote that 'when a man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything', but there is no escaping it. Because it is very hard to imagine a radical leftwing alternative, or even mildly radical alternative, intellectuals in particular are ready to excuse the movements of the far right as long as they are anti-Western.
So the left is anti-American, anti-western and, by implication, anti Enlightenment, even it is still a part of the liberal tradition. It's a strange thesis given that many of the left are critical of American foreign policy-- as they have been since the 1970s. One can be critical of American foreign policy in the Middle East and critical of Iran, Syria and fundamentalist Islam. One does not necessarily follow from the other. Differences are being collapsed all over the place in this text.
One can accept the collapse of socialism at the end of the twentieth century without accepting Cohen's thesis of a dark night of moral nothingness. Four options come to mind: oblivion and transvaluation that entail a historical break with socialism; mutation in the sense of historical continuity in the form of memory and tradition that is handed down to latter generations; or redemption in the sense that at the nadir of its existence socialism is reborn, purged of its flaws and enriched by borrowings from other traditions.
Nor do I accept Cohen's claim that 'intellectuals in particular are ready to excuse the movements of the far right as long as they are anti-Western'. The Bali bombings by Jemiah Islamiyah were condemned in Australia not condoned or excused.
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Gary, I would argue that what we are seeing is a congruence of those who are embedded in the Newtonian clockwork world-view. Nick has much in common with John Kay in your post re his article in the Oz.
They both worship at the "religion" of one dimensional "reason".
A "religion" which doesnt allow for paradox, multiple "points of view", shades of grey, or the fact that we now live in a quantum world where everything is quite literally inter-related.
And a world where it is impossible to do one thing, or put in another way, every major action on the world stage inevitably has multiple unintended consequences.
Leunig's cartoon summed up the world situation brilliantly. Are you for the "culture" of death, wherever and by whomever it manifests, or are you taking steps to grow and cultivate the Tree (and culture)of Life.
This reference contains a unique understanding of the relationship between trees, human beings and culture.
www.fearnomorezoo.org/trees/main.php