Sunday, August 14, 2005

Nick Cohen to the left: Smell You Later!

Smart people are leaving that leftist collection of fetishes and its’ attendant terminal anger for the sake of pacifism behind.
Via Tim BleeyahGuardian columnist Nick Cohen leaves the hive mind of the left behind, for good, and with his dignity intact:

«As in the 1930s, there's little doubt that few apart from George Galloway and others in the gruesome leadership of the anti-war movement were keen on saluting Saddam Hussein. The reason why one million people marched through London without one mounting a platform to express solidarity with the victims of fascism was that it never occurred to them that there were people in Iraq who shared their values.

On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism - Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar - and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can't hide its authenticity.

The result of this inversion of principles has been that liberals can't form alliances with the victims of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Iraq any more than the Auden generation could form alliances with the victims of Stalinism.

If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to suggest [that those who renounce Islam should be executed…] the same treatment for renegade Christians all hell would break loose. But as the bigotry comes from 'the other' there is silence.

the London bombs have added a practical reason for breaking with the consensus: now they're trying to kill us. Even if people think that the Iraq war has made Britain a bigger target, they are still confronted with a fascistic cult of murder and self-murder which allows no compromise.

The thing to watch for with fellow travellers is what shocks them into pulling the emergency cord and jumping off the train. I know some will stay on to the terminus, and when the man with the rucksack explodes his bomb their dying words will be: 'It's not your fault. I blame Tony Blair.

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