This would be wankeriffic if it wasn’t so pathetic – Peter Rosse Range, the editor of the official Democratic Leadership Council rag uses the Euston manifesto as evidence for the purported “resurgence of an intelligent left in Europe”:http://www.dlc.org/print.cfm?contentid=253865. It starts with generalities about the rejection of anti-Americanism among European lefties.
bq. It is, of course, an article of faith among Europe’s lefties that America is a cultural and intellectual wasteland. But this, too, is beginning to change. A stream of Europeans passing through Washington this spring expressed surprise at the quality and variety of the debate in the city’s dynamic think tanks.
And exactly which debate is it that enjoys such remarkable “quality” and “variety”?
bq. Whereas there’s basically one opinion about the Iraq war in Paris and Berlin — “Everybody already knows it’s bad, so they don’t discuss it,” grouses Der Spiegel’s Claus Christian Malzahn — Washington is a hotbed of disagreement and discussion. Even London’s _Economist_ noted the thriving battles of ideas: “Look at the world of public policy today and it is America that is the land of the intellectuals and Europe that is the intellect-free zone.” Words I never thought I would read in a European publication.
Even apart from the rather dishonest implication that the _Economist_ is a reliable barometer of what the European left is thinking, this is nonsense. The Washington debate over the Iraq war is anything but a “thriving battle of ideas” (in fairness, the _Economist_ “article”:http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5660806 which Range cites as support doesn’t say this, although it’s very stinky in many other ways). It’s a retreat from Moscow, in which those who signed onto the war are trying desperately to salvage the few scraps of credibility that they have remaining to them. Range’s article doesn’t herald a resurgence of anything at all – it’s an attempt to conjure up allies for an exploded policy position out of thin air. Scott McLemee “puts his finger on what’s wrong”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/24/mclemee:
bq. But in the final analysis, there was something else bothersome about the manifesto — something I couldn’t quite put a finger on, for a while. A vague dissatisfaction, a feeling of blurry inconsequentiality…. Then it suddenly came into focus: The manifesto did not seem like the product of a real movement, nor the founding document of a new organization – nor anything, really, but a proclamation of dissatisfaction by people in an Internet-based transatlantic social network. … Something better might yet emerge … You never know. But for now, with only the text to go by, it is hard to shake a suspicion that the Euston Manifesto owes less to Marx than to MySpace.
Range would like to pretend that there’s an emerging European left that supports the rather contorted position that prominent DLCers have taken on Iraq. This is a politically convenient fiction; some blokes in a pub, a few op-ed columnists and a bunch of signatures on an Internet petition does not a widely-based movement make. But when you’re short of friends at home, the temptation to come up with quasi-imaginary friends elsewhere must be close to overwhelming.
(via “Politicaltheory.info”:http://www.politicaltheory.info/)
{ 30 comments }
abb1 05.25.06 at 7:26 am
It is, of course, an article of faith among Europe’s lefties that America is a cultural and intellectual wasteland.
In my experience it’s an article of faith among Europe’s people. You know, the common stereotype “from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between” is at least a century old.
Ray 05.25.06 at 7:34 am
Isn’t praising America for being a hotbed of debate over the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, compared to the boring and rigid consensus of Europe, rather like praising er, America, for being a hotbed of debate over evolution and ‘Intelligent Design’, compared to the etc etc…
abb1 05.25.06 at 7:34 am
Although, to be fair, from DLC’s pov an average European probably is pretty much a ‘leftie’, so it’s all right.
Barry 05.25.06 at 8:20 am
This is the sort of thing which leads Democrats to hate the DLC – the DLC seems to have problems with being Democrats.
Brendan 05.25.06 at 8:35 am
I’m still waiting for the Eustonites to start praising Vladimir Putin’s great work in spreading democracy throughout Chechnya. A grand and wonderful achievment notable mainly for not being quite such a clusterfuck as Bush’s Iraq.
Uncle Kvetch 05.25.06 at 8:52 am
I, for one, am damn proud to be a citizen of a country where the PC thought police haven’t yet shut down all political debate, and where one can still sincerely discuss the truly difficult questions of our time, like “Is torture still bad when it’s the Good Guys who are doing it?”
Chris Bertram 05.25.06 at 9:01 am
their elders, who often exercise iron control — and sometimes enforce ideological unanimity — over certain key media like … the BBC.
Hmm. I see to have had a number of dreams or maybe drug-induced hallucinations where I imagined episodes of Newsnight on which the pros and cons of the Iraq war, Guantanamo etc were vigourously debated. I now realize that this never happened and that I should seek immediate psychiatric help.
Stephen 05.25.06 at 9:40 am
This is a politically convenient fiction; some blokes in a pub, a few op-ed columnists and a bunch of signatures on an Internet petition does not a widely-based movement make. But when you’re short of friends at home, the temptation to come up with quasi-imaginary friends elsewhere must be close to overwhelming.
Maybe you should ignore it then if it’s so irrelevant.
neil 05.25.06 at 9:57 am
Is it just me, or is the term ‘lefty’ way too rude and dismissive for a supposedly Democratic organization to be using?
Brendan 05.25.06 at 9:59 am
Perusing the extraordinarily tedious and (one would guess) short lived ‘Blueprint’ one finds, incidentally, that it is in fact the mouthpiece for the Democratic Leadership Council a faction associated with the Hilary Clinton wing of the Democrats. ‘Blueprint’ also contains an article by that great anti-establishment rebel of our era, Tony Blair, which argues (as most of his articles do) that he is right about everything.
Despite the rhetoric of Geras, the fact is that the ‘muscular’ ‘drink soaked’ and ‘decent’ left is simply the Blairite wing of the Labour Party (plus fellow travellers), and those (like Clinton) who aim to turn the Democrats into an political party as much like New Labour as possible.
soru 05.25.06 at 10:08 am
You mean one that could win an election?
Ray 05.25.06 at 10:34 am
Yes, the Iraq war has been such a good vote-getter.
Kevin Donoghue 05.25.06 at 10:47 am
I like the idea of a thriving battle, preferably waged by octopuses in molten jackboots singing a swan-song. Is there a special school where they teach people to write this kind of thing?
Minerva 05.25.06 at 10:49 am
Interesting how he never mentions how this free and open exchange of speculative ideas–if it did exist– has no hope whatsoever of influencing the government or the centers of power in any way. There are a few dogmatic positions we are entirely ruled by. But I guess it’s nice they still let us talk amongst ourselves sometimes.
roger 05.25.06 at 10:50 am
My favorite line of the day is: “quality and variety of the debate in the city’s dynamic think tanks.” It is almost like Renaissance Italy in D.C. today! The Krystals, the Ledeens, the Beinharts — shall we marvel at their breadth or at their depth? These intellectual bling-meisters bring to mind nothing so much as Leonardo Da Vinci, Ficino, and Al Pacino, siting around Florentine villas discussing civilization.
We can only be grateful that they grace our time.
Brendan 05.25.06 at 11:00 am
Oh sorry I thought that when people won elections (like in Venezuela, or Bolivia) that was actually a bad thing, and showed that they were ‘populist’ (a term of abuse, apparently) and not to be trusted. My mistake.
Backword Dave 05.25.06 at 11:13 am
KCinDC, I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive — when used as you say. I think there are several fine journalists who support one party or another. However, I don’t think DeLay’s people are making the mistake TP have ascribed to them — that they’ve confused satire with fact. What they’re saying is that Greenwald admits to making propaganda, not journalism. Having an opinion is a good thing; knowing your conclusion before you begin your research isn’t.
I subscribe to the TP RSS feed, and I read the site. But I fear it, and other Democrat supporting sites see conservative stupidity where there is none. There’s plenty of the real stuff. This isn’t an example of that. (IMO.)
Kevin Donoghue 05.25.06 at 11:16 am
Backward Dave: you’ve got your threads tangled.
Anatoly 05.25.06 at 11:25 am
Henry,
1) What are quasi-imaginary friends – seemingly imaginary, but actually real friends?
2) How is Range’s “There are cracks in the façade… the most noticeable fissure in the masonry of group-think… signs of new thinking” disproved by Henry’s “some blokes in a pub, a few op-ed columnists and a bunch of signatures on an Internet petition does not a widely-based movement make.”?
Are obviously bogus strawmen wankerrific, or are they more in the pathetic line, would you say?
nick s 05.25.06 at 12:21 pm
Is it just me, or is the term ‘lefty’ way too rude and dismissive for a supposedly Democratic organization to be using?
Not if it’s the DLC, an organisation that represents neither Democrats nor leadership nor a council.
engels 05.25.06 at 12:36 pm
Can anyone who talks about the “enforce[d] ideological uniformity” of mainstream European media and the “masonry of groupthink” of the European left really be of the moderate left, or even the moderate right? In more normal times this wacko true believer mentality would be seen as the marker of extremist politics.
Bro. Bartleby 05.25.06 at 12:48 pm
This is of interest, for Bro. Clarence, a recent guest in residence at the monastery, had in recent years been a visiting guest in several monasteries in Europe, and in all his years there, the ‘around the dining table’ debates were, as he says, “Es ist zum Einschlafen” … and in contrast, our American custom of “debate with biscuits” excites him so much that, as he says, “Ich bekam eine Gänsehaut!”
Kevin Donoghue 05.25.06 at 1:09 pm
Anatoly,
Range is seeing more than just a few cracks in the brickwork. He cites “the sudden success of the British initiative†as evidence that “there is an untapped vein of rational progressivism in Europeâ€; the manifesto provides “an intellectual and ideological home for many disillusioned European leftists who are looking for a sensible progressive movement to joinâ€.
That’s a lot of mileage to get out of a website, but maybe no more than we should expect from a “rising generation … willing to wake up and rethink some of the received rigiditiesâ€.
Ben Alpers 05.25.06 at 1:10 pm
…those (like Clinton) who aim to turn the Democrats into an political party as much like New Labour as possible.
I think this has it backwards. It’s the Blairites who turned Labour into a political party as much like the Democrats as possible.
Backword Dave 05.25.06 at 1:10 pm
Oops, that went on the wrong thread somehow.
Ben Alpers 05.25.06 at 1:11 pm
Yikes….sorry about that faulty html, and a few dropped words. Let me try that again….
…those (like Clinton) who aim to turn the Democrats into an political party as much like New Labour as possible.
I think this has it backwards. It’s the Blairites who turned Labour into a political party as much like the Democrats under Clinton as possible.
Louis Proyect 05.25.06 at 2:01 pm
I think that Scott McLemee’s characterization of the Eustonites as “anti-antiwar” is critical to understand what they are about, especially in light of Geras’s coy denial that they are pro-war in the Guardian:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1782422,00.html
Of course, I have always thought of the “anti-antiwar” crowd in much the same terms as Lillian Hellman’s discussion of the “anti-antifascists” in “Scoundrel Time”. Some things don’t change at all. New times–new scoundrels.
john c. halasz 05.26.06 at 6:16 am
So is there now a new specter haunting Europe… “infantile centrism”?
DC 05.26.06 at 10:15 am
Regarding “anti-antiwar†and “anti-antifascistsâ€, one should point out that “anti-anticommunism” was once a necessary antidote to Cold War hysteria. Presumably Eustonites would say that the anti-war reaction to the war in Iraq, or much thereof, was similarly hysterical.
Steve LaBonne 05.26.06 at 10:34 am
On to Iran! Where Charles Krauthammer leads, the DLC shall follow!
Couldn’t the Democratic National Committe sue these losers for trademark infringement to force them to remove “Democratic” from their name?
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