Smart people are leaving that leftist collection of fetishes and its’ attendant terminal anger for the sake of pacifism behind.
Via Tim Bleeyah – Guardian 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.
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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.'»
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Nick Cohen to the left: Smell You Later!
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