… some swing madly from the chandeliers

Nice piece by Foley and it sets out what I’ve been saying to folk for a while: that it is both natural and understandable that elements of the left and the neo-cons/Bush admin should see eye to eye as both are fundamentally interpreting the world the same (deeply flawed) way.
Or as Conor Foley puts it so nicely: “Reading Cohen is like listening to debates that I had over 20 years ago with people who simply could not understand why the real world was not like the one that they read about in obscure theoretical books”. It’s possible to subtititute 5-10 years ago for 20 and point that statement directly at the neo-cons.

I think Cohen forgot one thing: they start projecting like crazy.

It all shows the power of the internet too. I saw that Hari review of Cohen in the non-virtual Dissent weeks ago. It was only when Hari posted it electronically that the whole brouhaha erupted.

I’m not sure that Conor’s red-baiting attack on Cohen is his finest hour, frankly (and he has had many).

OT: Isn’t Conor Foley the guy who was famous in 1980’s UK student politics for putting together the “Sectarian Songbook”, a compliation of songs sung by left-wing groups slagging off other left-wing groups?

[Good times…]

Great Satan. Yes. [Blushes and retreats humming ‘One Trot faction meeting in a hall . . .’]

Hi Conor,

I suppose I was struck by the irony of an avowedly Blairite attack on Nick’s liberal-interventionism: Cohen, Geras, Aaro et al celebrate and defend the foreign policy of the Bush-Dubya era; why should historical Blairism get to congratulate itself in this affair?

But yes, I take your point on Decent-left utopianism and moral-grandstanding which doesn’t care to dwell upon unpleasantries such as the collateral dead.

As my own experience of the ultra-left was in Northern Ireland rather than GB, I don’t find their anathemas too disturbing relatively; as you’ll appreciate better than I.

I do not think it ought to be assumed that the “pro-war left” are any more indifferent to the carnage in Iraq (or not inclined to “dwell upon unpleasantries such as the collateral dead.”) than anybody else – if anything, supporters of the war ought to feel the pain more keenly than those that opposed it (as much of any of use can, sat safe and sound away from it all).

The pro-war crowd had its fair share of idiots, and you may make that accusation of them, but there was no shortage of idiots against the war who may be also be accused of indifference to the suffering in Iraq (it’s grist to their mill).

I don’t think anybody has any basis for slinging around slurs like that.

And, as I’m here, while I am no particular supporter for Cohen, who tends to undermine any reasonable points he may have by his somewhat demented rhetoric, it’s fair to say that his defenders have more bones to pick with Hari than merely his “treachery” – some of their objections to his review look sound, to little old me at least. But there’s such a lot of crap thrown around, I suppose it’s hard to say for sure.

there was no shortage of idiots against the war who may be also be accused of indifference to the suffering in Iraq

What utter horseshit. Anybody who knows anything about 1) the realities of the way modern warfare impacts civilians, and 2) the artificialty and fragility of the Iraqi state and the extreme likelihood of the country’s descent into violent chaos if that state were overthrown, could have predicted that unprecedented suffering would be unleashed by the war. And so it has been. The supposed human-rights arguments for the war were never anything other than a disgraceful sham.

I didn’t think Hari went far enough, really. For instance, accepting the idea that the true forebears of al qaeda are the ‘fascists’ seems totally and completely nonsensical – it is as if the one book these people ever read about Middle Eastern history was by Paul Berman, of all people. Al qaeda is pretty obviously inspired by a wahabi line that goes back to the 19th century in Arabia and had no need of Georges Sorel, Mussolini or Hitler to give it its underpinnings. Hari’s idea that, for instance, the Taliban’s banning of music was fascist shows not only no sense of what the Taliban was about, but even what European fascism was about (Hitler banning music?). It is stupid and sloppy to mischaracterize one’s enemy, but it is also telling: getting a blurred fix on Islamist groups like the Taliban and al qaeda was essential to pretending that they were of the same set as the Iraqi Ba’athists. This slipperiness was part of warmonger propaganda before the war. It is a shame Hari can’t give it up.

Hari also didn’t go after the most puzzling thing about Cohen and the other decents – this fetishizing of the left. Cohen uses ‘Left’ so often in his writings that he must have a macro key for it. I used to consider myself on the left , and associated with that crowd until, of course, the term – always rolled out with appropriate histrionics – began to sicken me. I wonder if the Shriners are always talking about Shrinerism? In any case, the only sane reply is: who cares? when the left was important, it was important not because it was the “Left” (the historic left, the left tradition, the left this and the left that) but because it was a good idea to unionize, to provide national health care, to agitate for peace, disarmament, human rights for gays, women, people of color, and all that other good stuff. Of course, now Left parties come to power to cut national health care, encourage de-unionization, and abridge civil rights for citizens (the New Labour agenda), so screw them. The typical radical Leftist in Latin America in the seventies is now the typical advocate of the Washington Consensus – like the slippery Jose Castaneda that friend of the PAN.

The ‘decent left’ is so whacky that they have – like all pro-war people – made up an imaginary Iraq in which the unions are all carrying photos of Bush and Blair to liberation rallies. Of course, the real Iraq was discussed yesterday by Oxfam in a report that was dropped by the U.S. media, much more interested in Clinton’s cleavage at the moment – but the report showed that, thanks to Iraq’s liberation, a third of the country has now slipped into a poverty level that is close to the humanitarian crisis point reached in Ethiopia in the seventies, and in Rwanda, and in the Cambodian refugee camps in the seventies.

there was no shortage of idiots against the war who may be also be accused of indifference to the suffering in Iraq

This is exactly right: they can be accused of indifference to the suffering in Iraq and they were accused of it, vociferously and almost continuously; it is just that these accusations were for the most part groundless slurs promulgated by the pro-war clamourers, who insisted on misrepresenting their opponents’ motivations rather than admitting the possibility that anyone might be motivated to reject the invasion by a principled opposition to or scepticism of aggressive wars, and that such a view might be grounded partly in a concern for the very people the “liberal interventionists” claimed to want to help, a concern which has been tragically vindicated by events.

Can somebody please explain what point, if any, is being made in #20?

Where have you seen it first-hand, Luis?

It seems to me that a very wide range of World War II memoirs testify to the opposite: that the American men who fought that war were frequently cynical about their leaders and about the propaganda, shunned starry-eyed hero worship, and nevertheless rolled up their sleeves to fight as ordinary men because, what the hell, it was a job that needed doing. Not to mention in many case, because they didn’t want to disappoint their buddies, which is still a basic part of small-unit cohesion in warfare.

I’m guessing that most of the “first-hand” examples of what you’re talking about are found in war movies and comic-books. This kind of heroic mythology might be what people on the home front need to believe in order to keep giving political support to a war: it isn’t often what the men and women in the trenches need.

As far as Byron, his main contribution to the Greeks was financial. He could have died anywhere from incompetent doctoring after coming down with a cold. Come to think of it, some of the keyboard brigades might yet manage to make a heroic contribution to the cause if this is the standard they have to meet.

Mr. Burke,

Manila, 1983.

Senator Aquino gave his life for liberty. That heroic example instantly generated a movement of millions, who risked “lives, fortunes and sacred honor”, in unprecedented defiance of the dictator, and kept it up in the face of all discouragement for three years, until victory. I was at Aquinos funeral, and the astounding experience of that gathering of a million people under such circumstances was a revelation.

I have also seen at first hand the Philippine NPA (communist rebels) who sustain themselves through myth, and have survived for forty years in a bad and hopeless cause.

The heroic myth is not limited to worthy endeavors, but no worthy endeavor can succeed without a heroic myth.

“This kind of heroic mythology might be what people on the home front need to believe in order to keep giving political support to a war”

Yes.

“As far as Byron, his main contribution to the Greeks was financial.”

Not so. His biggest contribution was to make the Greek cause popular in Britain and western Europe. What he died of is immaterial – he went there to risk his life, and he is rightly counted as a martyr.

“Great Satan. Yes. [Blushes and retreats humming ‘One Trot faction meeting in a hall . . .’]”

OMG!!! We’re not worthy!!!

I owe my copy of the “Sectarian Songbook” to Duncan Chappel, a former Socialist Organizer cadre who now owns his own equity research firm.

[“There is a town far away without a single Trot…”]

Conor said:
“I was thinking about that 1984 Labour student conference when Brown announced his new Cabinet and I remembered so many of its members from those days (it sounds like someone else here remembers them to). ”

It was a bit before my time to be honest: you were the legends we looked up to. I was more the Twiggy & Fitzsimmons & Jim Murphy generation: the Trots were on the wane then (though Dougie Blackstock was still knocking around).

Missed a crucial career-enhancing opportunity when, in 1991, Miliband, then at the IPPR gave me his card after being impressed with some questions I asked him and told me to give him a call as the IPPR were just getting going. Figuring that the IPPR didn’t have any money and being sick of student poverty, I never called him back. If I had, it’d be “Ambassador Sock Puppet” now.

Mademoiselle Alegria, please keep your hero-worship to yourself.

To everyone else, please don’t feed the trolls.

One thing I”m interested in – all that talk about Iraqi trade unions. How much have this lot had to say about the fact that the Iraqi government has recently declared the country’s oil unions illegal? Anybody?

Ben p, good point. There was an excellent article about the oil workers on the American Prospect site.
Here it is.

Luis, your point that great political movements need myths seems to me to say nothing about the worth of those movements. Myths, or a mythos, a narrative, are, in fact, what drives the anti-war movement. The narrative is a powerful one. It is about resisting the irresponsible usurpation of power by an entrenched elite that uses its position in the executive branch and in the media to create a misleading smokescreen behind which it can manipulate issues of war and peace. It is the kind of smokescreen that accomodates, at the same time, bogus charges about Iranian ‘interference’ in Iraq with selling the Saudis, longtime supporters of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, 30 billion dollars worth of WMD. It is about a small circle of ideologues who leveraged a sadly necessary war against the Taliban in Afghanistan into an unnecessary and terrible war in Iraq, and in the process both failed to achieve even the minimum aim that would justify the invasion of Afganistan – the destruction of the terrorists that attacked America – while creating the greatest humanitarian crisis in the Middle East since the Iran Iraq war. Unfortunately, this story is not supplied with heros – only villains so far.

#29: As Tina Turner observed, running out of heroes isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if all you want is a life beyond Thunderdome. Or as Bertolt Brecht more prosaically put it: “Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.”

In another response to #29: There’s a difference between having heroes, and worshipping them. I’d argue that it’s a crucial one.
In case Conor Foley is still reading this thread: well done sir.

Mr. Shanks,

Indeed, people need heroes when things aren’t going as well as they should. But then, few places are “beyond thunderdome”.

Mr. Sg,

I’m afraid I’m a bit short of maidenly delicacy, sad to say. Oh well, I do my best anyway.

Who said anything about literary heroes ? Real ones will do better. What I am saying is that there are such things as heroes, and they are important, significant, even critical.

If by “Johnny Got his Gun” you mean Dalton Trumbo, well, I suppose you could make him into a hero if you wish, blacklisted and all that. Perhaps it is because I am on the other side of the ideological line that I can’t see it. Trumbo was working for Stalin, in the case of “Johnny” in particular, in support of a “peace” line, which didn’t last long. He turned pacifism on and off at the behest of the Party, as it suited his masters. I read “Johnny” in a Vietnam-era reprint – re-published for a reason methinks.

I have no clue about Metallica, being too old for that. They don’t sound terribly heroic if you ask me, but I have no ear for that music.

Mr. Shanks,

You brought up a number of points that were off the topic under discussion, and I offered comments on these.

The rest of what I mentioned was in response to other tangential questions.

The point I was making was that Mr. Bertram was dismissing the role of the hero, the myth, and that if you want to insist that the prosaic defines your movement you have nothing. Your “public policy and foreign relations” are pointless and fatally weak without a genuine, live belief that is strong enough to drive bold action. The nebulous is real, although, ahem, hard to grasp.

Conservatives have traditionally accepted the importance of belief, myth, what have you. There is nothing more conservative than “the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods”.

The left merely substituted different fathers and different Gods.

Lord Byron was an example of a liberal crusader, who succeeded through martyrdom, and Aquino was another. Both achieved their ends through their “nebulous” influence.

To summarize terribly, people like Cohen, et. al. want the “left”, or whatever you fellows call yourselves, to act, to fight, to do something effective against the direct opposite of your ideology, your most natural enemies. The majority however prefers to dither, to blame their nearby political rivals (which are very little different from themselves) for this and that, to pretend to action while avoiding it. They want Byrons and Aquinos, your lot want to go to sleep.

Many thanks to Steve Labonne for that link.

Twiggy & Fitzsimmons & Jim Murphy

God, what a crew.

One of the above, by the way, despite being loyal to the Blair line to even more than the usual embarrassing degree, bas been noticeably quite on the question of the evil of drugs.

My brother reckons that this may be because he fears that people would remember him smoking cannabis at university. Which they would, because my brother shared at least one of the joints in question.

However, so as not to spoil the secret, I won’t tell you which one of the above three I am referring to…

Fuck Hillary, fuck Obama. I’ve had it with hawks.

(I have a bird feeder in my yard made from a 2-liter pitcher, with ports I carved and perches I made, kept full of sunflower seeds, to which flocks of finches throng, upon whom hawks periodically prey.)

There are good reasons to think that most Americans are not only tired of being afraid but learning to be suspicious when fear’s on the menu.

I wish I shared your optimism, bad jim. I think most ordinary Americans have been too thoroughly brainwashed to be able to grasp any time soon that the American Empire exists solely for the profit of their “betters”, and that all they get out of it is the shaft. And all it will take is a few dozen people blown up by some nitwit (who will slip through the net by “accident” when the powers that be decide it’s time for a booster inoculation) to bring the fear right back to fever pitch.

I never used to be anywhere near this cynical before our government was taken over by hardened criminals…

Allegra:

I think I understand your point as well as its inherent fuzziness permits. So you think Aquino is a “liberal hero” whom “the Left” should emulate? OK. But how has “the Left” failed to emulate him? Aquino did not lead an invasion. He didn’t call for an invasion. He was assassinated while returning to his country, presumably to lead the nonviolent, political opposition to Marcos. So Aquino is not a particularly apt example for how “the Left” should have addressed the situation in Iraq, is it? You do see that, right?

For that matter, if “the Left” lacks an Iraq hero, who is the hero of “the Right”? Is it Commander Codpiece, the boy king widely considered across the political spectrum to have lost the war through sheer indifference, incompetence, and ineptitude? It would seem that passion and conviction are counterproductive unless they’re married with a little sense and reason.

Of course, if you have a little sense and reason, then you don’t have to resort to hero worship. But I suppose those overly emotional conservatives can’t understand the logic of that proposition.

“One of the above, by the way, despite being loyal to the Blair line to even more than the usual embarrassing degree, bas been noticeably quite on the question of the evil of drugs.”

Well, it ain’t Fitzsimmons, and it probably ain’t Twiggy (whose main vice was trying to hump any bipedal primate with a Y chromosome), so it doesn’t take much to work out which one it is.

“It is my belief that most of the political ills Britain suffers from could be cured through the introduction of a law banning anybody who had ever held office in the National Union of Students from standing for public office.”

Well, speaking as someone who knew them from those days, it ain’t that surprising that they turned out the way they did.

Any student organization is going to have limited organization stability, and so very easy to get screwed up by disciplined Leninist factions. If NUS and NOLS would have been even more chaotic organizations than they were (and probably have went the way of LPYS or the SDS) if said Trots weren’t opposed by a similarly disciplined democratic left, how didn’t what to see an organization destroyed so soem cult-like political sects could recruit a few more newspaper sellers.

Unfortunately, it means a cadre of UK left politicians coming out of that who have it coded into their political DNA at a young age that unity and message discipline are everything, and everything gets fixed in smoked-filled rooms.

The most talented, sharpest person I knew in NOLS junked her political career a few years later ‘cos she hated what she was becoming, and went into a more spiritual bent. I won’t fault the trio above ‘cos of the sacrifices they made in terms of principles and their personal life. I wasn’t prepared to make them (not that I had the talent to be in that league anyway).

Well, it ain’t Fitzsimmons, and it probably ain’t Twiggy (whose main vice was trying to hump any bipedal primate with a Y chromosome), so it doesn’t take much to work out which one it is.

You may or may not be right, but I won’t be enlightening you as to which (although I wish I had not rendered quiet as quite).

everything gets fixed in smoked-filled rooms.

Surely not smoke-filled, these days?

By the way, Lorna Fitzsimmons = Madame Mao.

I’m reassured by the fact that this is a conclusion I came to long before he jumped ships over Iraq.

I don’t think he really needed to jump; just put on a lifejacket or something and float towards the surface.

I don’t think he really needed to jump; just put on a lifejacket or something and float towards the surface.

Have you seen Hari in the flesh? He doesn’t need a lifejacket to float.

This is exactly right: they can be accused of indifference to the suffering in Iraq and they were accused of it, vociferously and almost continuously; it is just that these accusations were for the most part groundless slurs promulgated by the pro-war clamourers, who insisted on misrepresenting their opponents’ motivations rather than admitting the possibility that anyone might be motivated to reject the invasion by a principled opposition to or scepticism of aggressive wars, and that such a view might be grounded partly in a concern for the very people the “liberal interventionists” claimed to want to help, a concern which has been tragically vindicated by events.

engels,

If I were to do a mea culpa over Iraq, it would probably involve an admission on my part – I don’t and won’t speak for anyone else – that I didn’t engage sufficiently with the principled opposition to the war. This is nowhere near the same thing that you allege – namely, that I/we failed to admit the exisitence of a principled opposition. We certainly did on our blog and there are numerous, principled oppositionists who will testify to this. But you would be correct to claim that we spent too long battling the apologists and not enough debating with mere objectors. One small defence would be that it’s not our fault that the formally organised opposition to the war in this country was an SWP front organisation with a steering committee that reads like a who’s who of the derelict rather than decent left.

If, as a result of my support for the war, I’m repeatedly asked to defend siding with Bush and Cheney, don’t expect me to ignore the fact that the speaking order at most anti-war rallies read “Galloway>Rees>German>Corbyn>Benn”.

Lastly, consider how you ended your last comment (my emphasis added):

…and that such a view might be grounded partly in a concern for the very people the “liberal interventionists” claimed to want to help, a concern which has been tragically vindicated by events.

“Claimed to want to help”? J’accuse. Isn’t this the flip side of your own argument? Namely, denying the possibility that support for the war *could* be motivated by genuine humanitarian concern? Seriously, what do you think motivated Vaclav Havel’s support? Or Jose Ramos Horta’s?

Mr. Walt,

As far as I am concerned I see the big picture going reasonably well, considering that it is a war. I am not impatient.

The idea behind the war was not in fact conservative at all – it is a policy that has carried over from US liberal ideas, Wilson Roosevelt, Truman, etc. It was born out of ideology but it has proven to be of great practical value. It has served the US well since WWII, and it will serve it still. The funny thing was that it was abandoned by its originators and found a niche among conservatives – sometimes an uncomfortable niche.

The US liberal-left is full of hero-worship; Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Cesar Chavez, etc., all legislated into public veneration and invoked as a secular sainthood. As a Catholic I have found it amusing how closely this resembles the cults of the saints. Among many these cults include people like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Huey Newton and these days Hugo Chavez.

The liberal-left has a problem – they decry the lack of strategy and planning, etc., but this is merely a mask for a lack of will – because there are no plans, no strategy. By their fruits shall you know them, as the saying goes.

The other indicator is the level of interest in non-governmental efforts. Where is the privately produced pro-west, anti-terrorist propaganda ? Where are the independent efforts to reform the Pakistani (or Palestinian) educational system ?

In my day we had US Congressmen marching in Manila, not in accord with official policy, by their presence deterring the regime from a crackdown – thank you, Stephen Solarz !
What Congressmen are marching with Pakistani democrats ?

Yet another indicator – countries opposed to US strategies are perfectly free to implement their own active if pacifistic strategies, often urged on the US. The level of effort put into these things seems to indicate a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

My conclusion is that the real problem is indeed a lack of will.

Brownie I will defer to you on that. I have also been living outside Britain for many years now and had never heard of half of these people (Hari, Kamm, et al) before I started contributing to Comment is Free. I studied at Manchester in the mid-80s where Norman Geras was Prof, incidentally, and I would definitely not put him in the same category as Cohen.

Two other ex-Manchester NOLSies, and now Govt Ministers, are John Mann and Phil Woolas (both of whom I have a soft spot for). Phil was candidate in the by-election I mentioned and one of his campaign leaflets described his Lib Dem opponent as ‘high on taxes, soft on drugs’, which showed a level of intolerance that many of us at the time felt to have been a little hypocritical. It was also the first by-election managed by Mandelson after his return to grace. The tactics used were universally regarded as very scary.

So who is the ‘talented NOLS woman’ who went spiritual? Surely not Vicky Philips? Jo Moore maybe!

Brownie:

Whatever your other talents, conor, you are clearly chronologically challenged. Since his descent from decency, Hari has made numerous assaults on what were his “former comrades”. These have gone way beyond the “I’ve changed my mind; I wish they would too” variety…

Funny, I must have missed these, can you provide any links?

luis, read the f’ing Nation article on widespread, vile and largely unpunished US troop mistreatment of Iraqi civilians to which I posted a link (@ #36), and let us know if that’s your idea of “going reasonably well”. Christ.

As far as I am concerned I see the big picture going reasonably well, considering that it is a war. I am not impatient.

How very Lord Farquar of you.

The loathsome brownie from HP:

Standards, Justin. Do you realise the damage that such crude directness does to the enigmatic, online identity you’ve spent years cultivating?

I seem to remember a lot more people than these being involved

You’re absolutely correct. I forgot to mention piss-poor non-comedians like Mark Steel and the sundry Muslim Brotherhood mouthpieces.

I would write more, but what is “more”? And if I write more here, then somewhere else there is less. Less, more, more or less. Who put the ram in ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?

Personally I’m finding it difficult to reconcile the terms “gifted” and “NOLS”….

I may be unusual in having smoked joints but never having had a legal cigarette. As I cough for weeks every time I’m ill (“bronchial hyperactivity”, apparently) I’m not sure why I bothered. Or didn’t bother.

Do you realise the damage that such crude directness does to the enigmatic, online identity you’ve spent years cultivating?

If anybody ever works out what this means, could they let me know?

bury your hatchet in the dustbin of history

Well, I never had any direct conflict with these people as I wasn’t ever really involved in student politics (never been anywhere near NUS Conference and I’m not sure I was ever in the SU offices when I was at Oxford). But as they all got the careers and salaries they were after and don’t seem to regret a thing, it’s not so straightforward to forgive and forget as one might anybody else.

Besides, my point is that while, for all I know, they may have individually combined the talents of Shane Warne, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Leonardo Da Vinci, they were very good at hiding it. Apparatchiks are like that.

Fitzsimons. The Madame Mao thing comes from some evening watching Newsnight when I had a déjà vu moment. Lorna was denouncing away like a good ‘un – I think another interviewee may have suggested that there was some small blemish on Mr Blair’s otherwise spotless record – and I knew I’d seen something like it before. It wasn’t until some time later, though, that I realised it was Mao’s old lady at her trial.

Horrid, horrid person.

I think in some ways that makes it very hard to look at the politics involved. I don’t stand where I used to stand (where I am now, I don’t know – 42 and abroad, I guess) but I still have an instinctive horror of people who pursue their careers by denouncing leftists.

“no enemies to the left” is just naive

It might well be, but it’s not what I said and not close to it.

Me, I’ve never heard of him.

He’s not related to Les Blackstock, I suppose? (British chessplayer, wrote books in the Seventies, rumoured to be on far left).

“Simon Buckby on my CiF piece yesterday.”

Absolutely scared the shite out of me.

“Dougie Blackstock was a gem though.”

‘L – he follows Ted Grant’s line, allll the time
Dougie, Dougie, Dougie’

Ah, the NOLS scum were giants in the earth in those days. Me, I had to put up with likes of Pakes, who jumped onto the conveyor belt just too late. Ha ha ha. Fitzsimmons once told me that ‘I spoke well’. I mumbled something indistinct, rather than say what I was thinking. Which I am now too polite to write. “I’ve got cancer and I wish you had it instead” was one part of it, but alas “My head really hurts – the sixth pint was a mistake” was another.