The psychology of such accommodations
Jonathan Derbyshire’s interview with Nick Cohen is very good.
‘I realised that people on the left who had once supported Iraqi socialists were going to dump them. That’s when the iron entered the soul. That’s when I thought something is going very badly wrong and that I need to write about it.’Instead of supporting socialists and trade unionists in Iraq once Saddam had been overthrown, some on the left went so far as to romanticise the insurgency launched by Baathist irregulars and radical Islamists, declaring it to be a movement of ‘national liberation’…‘To say it’s left-wing to turn your back on Kurdish and Iraqi socialists is to throw the best traditions of left solidarity out of the window. What kind of left is it that betrays its comrades?’
A very confused one, at any rate.
‘What’s Left?’ is not a book about the rights and wrongs of the war in Iraq but rather an attempt to answer the question of betrayal…[H]e compares the strenuous act of historical forgetting involved in seeing Islamism as authentically ‘anti-imperialist’ with the mental gymnastics demanded of Communists and their fellow-travellers in 1939 when the Nazi-Soviet pact was sealed. Cohen is interested in the psychology of such accommodations.
Yeah. So am I. I always have been, for some reason – I spent most of my twenties reading about the mental gymnastics of the left in the 30s. I’m very interested in the psychology of such accomodations. And the weird gymnastics of today are indeed reminiscent of those of the 30s – Nick and I did some muttering about that while he was writing the book.
Obviously I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the substance of his argument – but that quote is a little off. It has a no true Scotsman ring to it, and slides from “some on the left” to “What kind of left is it that betrays its comrades?”.
I’m very struck by the former leftists, many still calling themselves leftists, that found that once they had backed the Iraq war somehow felt they had to become the cheerleaders for its every misguided aspect, while virulently criticising opponents of the war.
Only NC’s opponents have psychology. He has no psychology. He’s so out of it nowadays that I can’t be arsed to waste any more of my time reading him.
PM: Not sure if that is typical of the whole “pro-war Left” faction, though. Hitchens who went as far as to support the official WMD story long after it was as dead as the druids nevertheless drew the line at Abu Ghraib and the usage of torture. Johan Hari pretty much reversed his earlier pro-Iraq war position. Mind you, I think both of them are wrong more often than not. Don’t know much about Nick Cohen.
Then again, I’m tempted to regard the whole political phenomenon as some kind of extension of the leftist babyboomer-turned-warhawk phenomenon during the Yugoslavia wars. With Joschka Fischer, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Susan Sontag etc. suddenly cheering on NATO aerial bombardments. I think it’s some kind of father complex. Getting tired of hearing daddy or granddaddy talk about storming the beach at Normandy, they’re constantly looking for their own Fascist menaces to fight… Then again, I respect the likes of Nick Cohen, since they at least had the guts to back a war that is unpopular, rather than popular, with the politically correct Left. They zigged while the rest of ’em zagged and suddenly re-discovered the evils of US imperialism – but at least they are consistent. Also, they’re a lot more sympathetic than the *spit* pro-Hizbollah left represented by the British SWP and co-thinkers.
Thank God for Nick Cohen like Hitchens he finds it dificult to stomach that section of the left that think that the U.S and Israel are greater threats than islamic facism.
Frankly, the whole lot of them disgust me. Pro-war, anti-war, all in a nauseous tailspin of righteous hysteria, clawing their way across the web in search of the next verbal or pyrotechnic atrocity to blame each other for. None of them apparently able to realise that their cheerleading for one side or the other in fact changes nothing. They are all a case-study in the psychology of the groupuscule.
One does not need to look for fascists to fight.
They are here already, and across half the planet.
They are called (now) Hezbollah, and “Khalifah” and similar names.
They claim there was no Holocaust, and want to make a “real” (= another) one, they want women’s roles to constrained to Kinder, Kirche, Küche, and they want a Lebensraum from Spain to Indonesia, with unbelievers in that area either killed, persecuted, driven out, or dhimmified.
My father’s generation spent all their money and a great deal of blood squashing this evil idea, and now, 60 years later, it comes crawling out of the rotting woodwork.
“After a defeat, and a respite, the Shadow takes on another form, and grows again.”
I was not aware there were any geographical limitations a la “Spain to Indonesia” for Islam (as there are, for example, for the most extreme Jewish nationalists, who lay no claims to anything not bounded by the Med. and the Euphrates). Was it just a figure of speech, or is there some place a limitation has been set for Islamic territorial ambitions?
I agree with fsdaga…
Chris Whiley is working for the other side.
Chris, for all we know, by agreeing with fsdaga you may have legally converted to Islam, from which, as we know, there is no return.
Only semi-joking; isn’t it in Malaysia that you can divorce your wife by SMS?
The advocates of Khalifa want the return of “all the muslim lands” – meaning those where islamic rule once pertained.
So, in Europe: Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, possibly Slovenia …and clear across to the whole area once under the Mughals, etc ….
Scary, and quite insane, but then they are political religious believers, aren’t they?
GT interesting – I was at NATO HQ for a day with fellow politics students in April 95, and went to a number of briefings on NATO structure & strategy.
One of the arguments we heard, and it was put quite strongly, for going into Bosnia earlier and much harder instead of messing about with useless no-fly zones and – as shortly became apparent – pointless safe zones such as Srebrenica was this: If we – UK, US and other Nato powers didn’t go to the aid of Muslems in Bosnia with much more vigour, they would end up, within a generation, despising ‘the West’.
There were a few raised eyebrows around the room when Steve Sturm, (latterly Nato’s head of defence policy) actually warned the room of the potential for jihadist movement to grow in middle Europe out of the ruthless abandonment and resentment they would feel. (I think he knew Mujahadeen were already training in the region, but it was not politic to mention this)
Merlijn – I think this is one of the alternative cases for the later (too late) interventions against Milosevic, even if they were carried out disastrously by air, and not by ground. But then Clinton would never have got ground troops sanctioned by Congress… Milosevic was a neighbourhood bully, not any sort of international ‘threat’.
“Milosevic was a neighbourhood bully, not any sort of international ‘threat’.”
I could have phrased that better. he was perceived as such in Washington. He was of course, a genocidal b@stard.
I have only read the extract in the Observer but I am with Chris Williams on this one. The interview with Ted Honderich in the New Statesman was my “jump the shark” moment with Mr Cohen. In fact I had assumed that the links to his work on this site were as examples of irrationality. I have of course no idea what is going on in his head, but he seems to draw a distinction between war and the consequences of war. It is as though he is in favour of dropping a bomb on a city while disapproving of what happens when the bomb hits the ground. This sort of thing is too incoherent for effective counter-argument. Perhaps the book as a whole makes more sense than the extracts do.
The responses Cohen receives on Comment is Free seem to consist of sloganeering and/or calling Cohen a Neo-Con b@stard and little else.
By criticising militant Islam and its apologists in the SWP, Respect and parts of the SNP and Labour, one automatically qualifies to be called a war-mongerer. The simplistic sloganeering of his critics often miss the point, or worse deliberately misleads.
I thought he nailed Blair well in Really Straight Guys. None of his critics read it, as you could often readily tell.
Actually Nick S it is being in favour of war that gets a chap labelled as being in favour of war.
Just to clarify for those who have never been on or near a large protest march in the UK; the SWP always manage to involve themselves somehow. Indeed helping organise such things is the only thing this small political grouping is actually good at. When they manage to hitch themselves to a popular cause, such as not raining explosives on innocent people, they can find themselves in quite large crowds. This can go to their heads, but one of the minor pleasures in taking part in such a demo is looking at the baffled faces of SWP members trying to distribute their literature and recruit from the assembled masses, and failing miserably for reasons they seem unable to understand. Oddly enough it is as if they had the same view as Nick Cohen, that anyone who goes on such a march must agree with their party line in every particular. Personally when I feel moved to join a march (three times in my life so far – I’m not what you’d call politically active) I generally stick with the Quakers. They’re decent people and it is quite amusing to hear counter-demonstrators shriek inappropriate abuse at them out of ignorance. By Nick Cohen’s lights that makes me pro-fascist, in much the same way that Alan Bennett must be by the same criteria.
Political “marches” are a complete waste of time and effort.
Gives you a nice warm feeling – but no-one notices.
With the possible exception of the “security” services, with their cameras.
When TonyB/GordonB introduce ID-cards, it won’t be brought down by protest marches, and people burning their “passes”, but by the jails being 250% overfull with people who point-blank refuse to have anything to do with it, and by complete non-cooperation.
And it will probably get that bad …..
I find Cohen slips very easily from criticism of the SWP (barely representative of the Trots, let alone the anti-war left) into generalising about the rest of the left, and even those that opposed the war (not necessarily leftists). So those that opposed the war are pro-fascist, and every pronouncement by the STWC-rump after the war somehow retroactively tainted all those that had opposed the war before it began. Oh, and he does that annoying ‘I know what the real Iraqis think’ thing, which is supposd to bypass argument. The problem with him seems to be the very black and white worldview he seems to hold, which is supposed to be a characteristic of many of these ex-leftist types (Cohen, Hitchens etc.)
I think his surprise at parts of the far left getting into bed with less savoury elements is somewhat feigned – it has long been a characteristic of both the left and right to play down the crimes of those on ‘our side’, it is basic human nature, you try asking an SWPer what they think of Lenin or Trotsky’s purges, or Thatcher’s cabinet what they think of Pinochet.
Johann Hari on the other hand I have a lot of respect for. He was good on the moral maze on weds about the catholic adoption agency thing too.
“it has long been a characteristic of both the left and right to play down the crimes of those on ‘our side’,”
Well he goes into that in considerable detail in the book, and he certainly doesn’t let himself off the hook in that department. On the contrary.
“So those that opposed the war are pro-fascist”
Does he actually say that anywhere?
Got to go out, but off the top of my head:
“Not only the Stop the War Coalition but the bulk of liberal-left opinion in the country and on the planet, is at best indifferent to the fight to stop the return of tyranny and at worse wants to spite the Americans by having the bombers stop elections.”
Although I disagreed strongly with his support for the Iraq war, I have always found Cohen’s analysis of how ‘the left’ have reached an accomodation with clerical facists to be persuasive and have long held him in high regard. However his equivocation on torture has greatly reduced that regard.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1939959,00.html
Well he characterises anyone who thought that a war was a bad idea and expressed that in public as “protesting against the overthrow of a fascist regime”. I got that out of an article you linked to. Is this close enough? The implication seems pretty clear. Are you asking whether he uses the same words that somebody attempting a precis of his ideas might use? Surely if he had expressed himself that succintly there would no need for summaries?
PM: no good. You said ‘those that’: the quotation you provided said ‘the bulk of’. There is a difference. No, it’s not a minor difference, it’s an all-important one. The difference between a qualified assertion and an unqualified one is a difference that matters. It is not legitimate to claim that someone made a claim about all Xs when that someone explicitly said ‘some of’ or ‘most’ or ‘the bulk of’.
Ken,
Well that claim is strictly factually accurate, isn’t it (if one agrees that Saddam’s regime was fascist)? It’s true that anyone who thought that a war was a bad idea and expressed that in public was “protesting against the overthrow of a fascist regime”. But again, that is not the same thing as being pro-fascist – in fact it’s quite different. I’d have thought that was blindingly obvious – wasn’t that exactly why a lot of people were so thoroughly conflicted about the whole thing? It’s logically and also factually perfectly possible that both were true: the war was a terrible idea, illegal, a bad precedent, a mistake, a war crime, etc, and also that if it succeeded it would overthrow a fascist regime.
“Is this close enough?”
No.
Distinctions matter, dammit.
On the other hand, to be fair, there are places in (for instance) the excerpt in the Observer where some qualifications are (in my view) needed. For instance…
“Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left?”
That doesn’t actually mean that the whole of the liberal left apologizes for reactionary Islam, but it leaves that impression. And there are similar items. But that’s still not the same as saying ‘those that opposed the war are pro-fascist’.
But as for not copping to his own mistakes, changes of mind and psychology – here –
‘At the time, I didn’t think about where the left was going. I could denounce the hypocrisy of a West which made excuses for Saddam one minute and called him a ‘new Hitler’ the next, but I didn’t dwell on the equal and opposite hypocrisy of a left which called Saddam a ‘new Hitler’ one minute and excused him the next. All liberals and leftists remained good people in my mind. Asking hard questions about any of them risked giving aid and comfort to the Conservative enemy and disturbing my own certainties.’
Heh – we crossed, Ken. Fair enough.
Nick Cohen:
>…but I didn’t dwell on the equal and opposite hypocrisy of a left which called Saddam a ‘new Hitler’ one minute and excused him the next.< Can anyone cite someone on the ‘left’ (in the sense meant by Cohen) who did call Saddam a “new Hitler”? Incidentally, other than that they ran brutal dicatorships, I don’t see in what sense Saddam’s aims were comparable to Hitler’s. Nor (while I’m on the subject) do I like the tendency to label a brutal dictatorship as “fascist”, a word which (when not applied specifically to Mussolini’s Italy) has become almost devoid of meaning.
Nick does spell out the reasons for saying ‘fascist’ in the excerpt –
“Not the authoritarianism of a tinpot dictator, but real fascism: a messianic one-party state; a Great Leader, whose statue was in every town centre and picture on every news bulletin; armies that swept out in unprovoked wars of foreign aggrandisement; and secret policemen who organised the gassing of ‘impure’ races.”
Yes but he doesn’t say that is why they were gassed – he says ‘secret policemen who organised the gassing of ‘impure’ races.”‘ The races were already impure, but Saddam’s regime included secret policemen who organised their gassing. That doesn’t make Saddam identical to Hitler, but it seems to me to be not a million miles away from Hitlerism, either.
I don’t understand that, Ophelia. The Kurds were gassed because they rose up against Saddam. It has nothing to do with their being “impure”, and Cohen’s introduction of the word “impure” in that context is tendentiously contrived (so he can make the connection to fascism/Nazism).
But why did they rise up against Saddam in the first place? Because they were an outgroup – an impure race. It wasn’t Saddam who decided they were impure, as far as I know (which is not far), but the connection of impurity and outgroup status and rebellion is not all that far-fetched, I’d have thought.
Ken taking the quacker posiition does not make you pro facist it makes you naive,let me quote you Winston Churchill on the subject.(All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing).I would also refer you to G.tingey,s exellent first post on the recurence of facism.
“the quotation you provided said ‘the bulk of’. There is a difference. No, it’s not a minor difference, it’s an all-important one.”
Actually I think that in the context the distinction is quite irrelevant. And he is still wrong about the bulk of left liberal opinion. I say he calls opponents of the war pro-fascist, the best defence you can come up with is that he only says most are pro-fascist.
Guess who?
“The bombing of Afghanistan must stop. To say so isn’t to appease mass murderers by pretending they are misunderstood fighters against imperialism.
You can think, as I do, that the sum of human happiness would inflate exponentially if the Taliban and their Arab allies were driven from power. You can believe that the atrocities of 11 September changed the world and made hitherto unthinkable expedients necessary.
…
You can hold all these views simultaneously and still argue that this war is a moral and political disaster. Its worthwhile ends are unattainable. Its means are self-defeating.”
“Well that claim is strictly factually accurate, isn’t it…? It’s true that anyone who thought that a war was a bad idea and expressed that in public was “protesting against the overthrow of a fascist regime”.”
Mr Cohen’s use of the line “The disgrace of the anti-war movement…about a million liberal-minded people marched through London to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime.” is tendentious in the extreme – just as my characterising the pro-war side as wanting to kill hundreds of brown people would be.
PM
“Actually I think that in the context the distinction is quite irrelevant.”
No. It is not irrelevant. You made an inclusive claim, I pointed out that it explicitly was not inclusive; that’s not irrelevant. Distinctions of this kind are never irrelevant. Thinking they are is one reason so many people argue so sloppily.
“And he is still wrong about the bulk of left liberal opinion.”
By all means say that then. But that’s not what you said.
“I say he calls opponents of the war pro-fascist, the best defence you can come up with is that he only says most are pro-fascist.”
It’s not a defence, it’s a dislike of and impatience with sloppy mushy inaccurate argument.
Did you not notice that I said there are places where (in my view) some qualification is needed?
What is the point of the Afghanistan quote? Did you not notice the passage I quoted that copped to past oversimplifications and to changes of mind?
I didn’t say the line wasn’t tendentious; I said it was factually accurate; it can be both. In fact it was my point that it can be both. The same would apply to your hypothetical about killing hundreds of brown people. You would be absolutely correct to point out as a matter of fact that an invasion of Iraq would inevitably (barring a delusional belief in the possibility of winning a war via surgical air strikes that destroy buildings and do not so much as ruffle the hair on a baby’s head) cause the deaths of hundreds of brown people. You could phrase it in a tendentious way, but all the same, you would be stating the facts correctly.
‘…about a million liberal-minded people marched through London to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime.’
No.That’s wrong. I didn’t go on any marches, but my daughter did (borrowing my 70’s badges) and she was not opposing the overthrow of a facist regime. She, and many others, were opposing the exercise of raw power for a transparently economic end. There are many regimes that deserve that title just as much and are pampered by our rulers; this was never a principled war.
I supported the war in Afghanistan; there were the resources, the will and the concensus to actually succeed. Cohen was wrong on that.
I opposed the war in Iraq for the countervailing reasons. He was very wrong on that.
But it’s not wrong. The point is that the marchers didn’t own up to that aspect. The point is not that they marched because they wanted to protect a fascist regime, but that they failed to acknowledge that what they were opposing would have as one consequence the overthrow of a fascist regime. I opposed the war in Iraq too, albeit squeamishly, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the goal of the war was, centrally, the overthrow of a particular fascist regime. That does not rule out opposing the war; retaining a fascist regime could well be seen as the lesser of two evils (or, by fascists, as a positive good); but it does mean that anti-fascists would do better to acknowledge the problem.
Okay, but I think Nick also has a point, that the horrors of Saddamism got downplayed, also (of course) for rhetorical purposes. That’s psychologically understandable – who wants to drive around with a bumpersticker that says ‘Attack Iraq? No!’ if fully aware that Saddam’s regime was murderous? One would want a more nuanced bumpersticker, which would cause traffic accidents because it would take too long to read it. But however psychologically understandable, it’s politically and epistemologically undesirable.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m sure that much of it hits its target. The failure of the left – meaning, the broad opinion which was mobilised against the Iraq war, let’s say – to actually build solidarity with trade unions, women’s organisations, etc in Iraq is shocking.
For sure, some have tried. (Among other campaigns, Iraq Union Solidarity. The TUC has run a campaign in support of Iraqi unions, and so on).
But Cohen’s account of the anti-war movement (in 2003, I mean, the million marching) is surely tendentious in the extreme. I was against the war, and for a *different* method of overthrowing the dictatorship. You can argue if you want that no other method would work. But to claim that war is the *only* method of overthrowing dictatorships, and to oppose war is necessarily to leave dictatorships in place, is surely to advocate, pretty much, world war.
I was involved in campaigning against the Iraqi Ba’th in the early eighties. It literally did not occur to anyone to call for *war* to remove Saddam. Nor did it in other similar campaigns against foul regimes.
‘But to claim that war is the *only* method of overthrowing dictatorships, and to oppose war is necessarily to leave dictatorships in place, is surely to advocate, pretty much, world war.’
Sure – but does he actually claim that war is the only method of overthrowing dictatorships?
Mind you – to be fair – it’s true that to oppose that war at that time was to advocate leaving that particular dictatorship in place at least for the immediate future. To repeat, that is still (emphatically) not necessarily to say that therefore the war must not be opposed. I mean – hell – just to pull something out of the air, I certainly don’t think the US ought to charge off (with Bush strutting around in his flightsuit in the background) to invade Zimbabwe; that necessarily means I think Mugabe’s staying in power is the least worst option of those two, therefore I am necessarily implicitly advocating leaving Mugabe in place (pending better ways of getting him out of place).
“The point is that the marchers didn’t own up to that aspect. The point is not that they marched because they wanted to protect a fascist regime, but that they failed to acknowledge that what they were opposing would have as one consequence the overthrow of a fascist regime.”
Did they fail to acknowledge it? Do you have any evidence for that generalisation.
“No. It is not irrelevant. You made an inclusive claim, I pointed out that it explicitly was not inclusive; that’s not irrelevant.”
Well I suppose it depends what my point was, but my point was that he was wrong in his characterisation of the anti-war movement – rather than whether there exists an anti-war protester that Nick Cohen regards as not pro-fascist.
“I didn’t say the line wasn’t tendentious; I said it was factually accurate; it can be both. In fact it was my point that it can be both. The same would apply to your hypothetical about killing hundreds of brown people.”
But why did you point out that it was factually accurate, rather than acknowledging its tendentious nature? This is an argument about rhetoric, we’re not just analysing the truth value of propositions. For instance, in response to a bomb by Iraqi insurgents I may say, ‘well the Americans have killed thousands of Iraqis’ – which may well be true, but somehow I doubt you’d regard that as an acceptable response. Just as my hypothetical about killing brown people would be a shit, tendentious, misleading argument against the war.
OB: “that necessarily means I think Mugabe’s staying in power is the least worst option of those two, therefore I am necessarily implicitly advocating leaving Mugabe in place (pending better ways of getting him out of place).”
True in a sort of flatly logical way. But if you are also arguing for, say, solidarity with opponents of Mugabe, it would be – surely – illegitimate to berate you for the ‘leaving in place’ part. In principle that becomes an argument about timescales, costs and benefits, or something, rather than whether or not you REALLY oppose Mugabe.
I think Cohen’s point is fair against some opponents of the war, but not all. (Not me, for instance).
Pardon the pig-ignorance, but from where I was sitting it seems pretty blinkered to view the current invasion detached from the context of “Desert Storm” and Kuwait (and finishing the job Daddy didn’t, etc). That says nothing about reasons to oppose the current war, but that background doesn’t get mentioned much anymore and it is certainly part of the story.
“Do you have any evidence for that generalisation.”
First hand evidence, no, but the testimony of various people who observed the march, yes. There are accounts that say anti-Saddam signs were conspicuous for their absence (and I don’t know of any that say otherwise).
“Well I suppose it depends what my point was”
No, PM, it doesn’t depend what your point was; you made an inaccurate statement. You can’t just say ‘Cohen said X’ when Cohen didn’t say X and then say it depends what your point was.
“This is an argument about rhetoric, we’re not just analysing the truth value of propositions.”
No good, sorry. If that’s what you meant you needed to say that – as in ‘So, rhetorically, those that opposed the war are pro-fascist’ instead of just ‘So those that opposed the war are pro-fascist.’ I took you to be making a factual claim, and that’s your doing, not mine. You don’t get to make sloppy inaccurate factual claims and then say you’re talking about rhetoric.
That’s why I pointed out that it was factually accurate – because I dislike slop.
Clive,
‘I think Cohen’s point is fair against some opponents of the war, but not all.’
Agreed – that’s all I’m saying, I think. I also think he usually says he’s talking about some not all, but there are times when clarification would come in handy.
Stewart, “it seems pretty blinkered to view the current invasion detached from the context of “Desert Storm” and Kuwait”
Yes – such facts evade the argumant as the UN Security Council, not just Washington and Downing Street being convinced of a continued WMD threat (hence the “UN” sanctions in the 1990s, – they weren’t “US” Sanctions as some would like us to have it). And military strategy analysts across the piece were convinced Sadam’s ambitions on invading Kuwait in 1990 were to press further south into Saudi. His combination of secrecy, brutality and bluffing annoyed and alarmed the leaders of the world, not just a few Neocon plotters on the US.
The bigger picture was ignored in much anti-war cant in 2003. The invasion itself was wrong in as much as there was no robust plan for regime change nor an exit strategy, but many of the arguments against the invasion at the time were utterly spurious. Sanctions hadn’t worked. Invasion was unlikely to work if just based on some mindless vendetta. But doing nothing didn’t work for the thousands subject to murder and torture under a regime that our parents and grandparents had supported.
For me it’s about your view on interventionism as much as anything else. For example, and some contecxt, we should have gone into the Balkans much earlier to police the regime changes inevitable following the hasty and ill-conceived recognition of Croatia (which itself was led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and bargained into existence by he and John Major, in return for the UK’s opt out on the Social Charter).
We recognised Croatia for disgraceful political expediency under a Tory govt, and we failed the peoples of the Balkans utterly in consequence – until Bill Clinton finally got Washington agree the case for intervention (rigorously oppsed under Newt Gingrich’s reign), and he and Blair finally got involved, to the great relief of many.
We had some success in protecting Kosovans in 1999, and belated success in deposing Milosevic. The mess that’s left now is testament to too many years of doing nothing, not the bombing Milosevic out of power.
We also succeeded in preventing mass slaughter in Sierra Leone. It actually seemed possible in a brief window at the close of the last century to intervene overseas, in areas of conflict, for just, compassionate humanitarian reasons. And after the barbaric hideousness of just watching Rwanda on TV, and the sour, fetid complacency permeating Whitehall during the serial Balkans wars, there was an air of optimism about our role in this post-Thatcher and Major, post Bush and cold-war world. Many like myself on the ‘left’ found this encouraging, as exemplified by the vast majority of Labour supporters and the likes of Hitchens in favour of purging the Serb war machine from Kosovo.
A few, on the hard left, who had barely concealed their sympathy and support for the likes of Milosevic and Saddam and other leaders of brutal regimes, would forever cast any overseas mission, in any capacity, as mere rampant colonialism. Any enemy of Washington is my friend… this is the very disappointing phenomena which Cohen has picked up on in certain currently influential leftists, and where I have sympathy with him.
That Blair distorted dangerously and permanently London’s post-WW2 role in areas of global security as a solid bridge between Brussels and Washington by going ahead with an invasion without planning will be subject to much better scrutiny once he’s gone.
OB is correct about the absence of anti-Saddam signs on anti-war marches. Clearly the assumption that he was so obviously awful that this didn’t actually still need to be pointed out was incorrect. I can see this being a generic problem of protest – if you don’t explicitly lay out your views on every topic relevant to the matter in hand then lazy commentators will feel free to invent a set of beliefs and ascribe them to you. The pundit logic goes like this: I believe proposition A.
Some people do not believe in A. They are therefore evil. They must therefore believe arbitrary foolish propositions B,C,D and so on through the alphabet. Many of the reviews of “The God Delusion” took this form. People who agree with A then read the pundit’s work and call it “scrupulous”, “acerbic”, “well-argued”, etc. This is an easy trap to fall into on every side of every question, but is easier to get away with in the political arena.
Note to Richard – I don’t see how standing next to a Quaker counts as “taking the Quaker position” in any but the most literal of senses.
“No good, sorry. If that’s what you meant you needed to say that – as in ‘So, rhetorically, those that opposed the war are pro-fascist’ instead of just ‘So those that opposed the war are pro-fascist.'”
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying here. I meant we are analysing Cohen’s rhetoric, rather than just his truth claims.
“First hand evidence, no, but the testimony of various people who observed the march, yes.”
What Ken said.
I know what you meant, PM, but who’s we? What do you mean ‘we are analysing Cohen’s rhetoric, rather than just his truth claims’? I thought people were indeed disputing his truth claims. Your first comment (and subsequent ones) certainly sounded that way to me.
“What Ken said.”
“They must therefore believe arbitrary foolish propositions B,C,D and so on through the alphabet.”
Won’t wash. Consider – imagine an anti-war march in September 1939, full of placards saying ‘Attack Germany? No!’ and ‘Not in our Name.’ Would it really have been unfair or unreasonable to wonder what about Hitler then?
Really: I just don’t buy it. I don’t buy it because this isn’t and wasn’t some side issue, it was the whole problem – protesting the war did feel like saying ‘hands off Saddam’, and that was a problem. It seems bizarre to me to pretend it wasn’t. Nick may implicate too much of the left in the problem, but denying the existence of the problem is also wrong.
I think you aren’t following PM’s sentence structure – the sentence you quote seems to mean that he is looking at rhetoric and truth claims, not just one or the other.
Yes, PM has a clarity problem; I realize that; that’s my point. ‘Seems to mean’ is just it: he fails to make his meaning clear.
I didn’t say he had a clarity problem OB – I would always use “seems” in a sentence like that out of the general humility we all ought to have about our ability to understand other people’s statements.
I know you didn’t, Ken, but I chose to read it that way. Veiled rebuke very good, but I think it’s a little silly to claim humility while interpreting someone else’s confused comments. You’re not being humble, you’re claiming I’m wrong. Maybe I am, but that’s because PM is all over the map.
“Won’t wash. Consider – imagine an anti-war march in September 1939, full of placards saying ‘Attack Germany? No!’ and ‘Not in our Name.’ Would it really have been unfair or unreasonable to wonder what about Hitler then?”
But we don’t have to divine their beliefs based purely on placards, there was plenty of debate at the time, both in the press and amongst people in general – very many people found the moral argument a difficult one and explicitly acknowledged Saddam’s generally nastiness as part of weighing up the pros and cons of it.
I marched behind a banner saying ‘No to war, no to Saddam’. And I was involved in trying to get support for a statement put out by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (in the US) calling for opposition to war and to the dictatorship. In France, I believe (where the demos were smaller) there were banners against ‘war and dictatorship’.
I think it was a problem that the anti-war movement didn’t, and doesn’t, see campaigning for solidarity with democratic opponents of Saddam (or, now, with the labour movement and so on) as equally important to opposing war. But that was/is a political failure of the anti-war movement, not a consequence of opposing the war as such.
So when I said “Cohen slips very easily from criticism of the SWP…into generalising about the rest of the left, and even those that opposed the war (not necessarily leftists). So those that opposed the war are pro-fascist…” I don’t think the distinction between whether he says every single last war-opposer is pro-fascist, or he says that most are pro-fascist is central to the point I’m trying to make. But perhaps enough about that now.
I’m still trying to imagine that demo in 1939 – what day in September would that be exactly? You can’t mean one in Berlin because the signs you describe are in English, so we’re talking either London or somewhere in the US. The attack on Poland happened on the 1st, and the US declared itself neutral on the fifth, and the 2nd was a Saturday, but the UK didn’t actually attack until the 4th. Would it have been possible to arrange a demo at that short notice? Perhaps if the Daily Mail took a lead, which wouldn’t have been too inconsistent with the line it took around that time. I’m not clear how the war goes after this – most alternative histories I’m familiar with have the divergence point well before or after this point. Does Dunkirk still happen? I’m assuming here that the demo is ineffective as the other one was, so Britain does in fact still declare war. But if Hitler doesn’t invade France (and if he is to be analogous to Saddam he has to have far fewer resources, no air force to speak of and a crumbling economy, which would make it difficult)then D-Day’s character changes completely. I suppose the Iran surrogate in the analogy must be the Soviet Union, except that in our world they were friends with Hitler in 1939 and didn’t fall out with him for another couple of years, so I suppose that might be hard to make work. Would the Madagascar plan have been implemented? Can any history buffs help me out here? After all we know that the Hitler/Saddam comparison works because it is used by some very eminent people, so it must be possible to create a version of history that fixes the details. Is Philip Roth’s novel “The Plot Against America” anything like what you had in mind?
I’m still trying to imagine that demo in 1939 – what day in September would that be exactly? You can’t mean one in Berlin because the signs you describe are in English, so we’re talking either London or somewhere in the US. The attack on Poland happened on the 1st, and the US declared itself neutral on the fifth, and the 2nd was a Saturday, but the UK didn’t actually attack until the 4th. Would it have been possible to arrange a demo at that short notice? Perhaps if the Daily Mail took a lead, which wouldn’t have been too inconsistent with the line it took around that time. I’m not clear how the war goes after this – most alternative histories I’m familiar with have the divergence point well before or after this point. Does Dunkirk still happen? I’m assuming here that the demo is ineffective as the other one was, so Britain does in fact still declare war. But if Hitler doesn’t invade France (and if he is to be analogous to Saddam he has to have far fewer resources, no air force to speak of and a crumbling economy, which would make it difficult)then D-Day’s character changes completely. I suppose the Iran surrogate in the analogy must be the Soviet Union, except that in our world they were friends with Hitler in 1939 and didn’t fall out with him for another couple of years, so I suppose that might be hard to make work. Would the Madagascar plan have been implemented? Can any history buffs help me out here? After all we know that the Hitler/Saddam comparison works because it is used by some very eminent people, so it must be possible to create a version of history that fixes the details. Is Philip Roth’s novel “The Plot Against America” anything like what you had in mind?
Arrgh – double post. Sorry. Serves me right for suggesting OB could be wrong.
Thanks, PM, that’s clear!
Fair point about the placards. That demonstration seems to have scarred a lot of people, and they focus on it. Still…demonstrations do matter: they get a particular kind of attention. Those ‘We are all Hizbollah’ demonstrations mattered too.
But I agree with you about the ‘bulk of’ comment (as I’ve said) – though I can’t say I know the actual figures. But even without figures, I’m not convinced that the bulk of liberal-left opinion is at best indifferent to tyranny. A big chunk, yes; the bulk…I doubt it.
Nick perhaps would have done well to substitute ‘too many’ for all the bulk or majority claims. I think ‘too many’ is way less disputable. I think it is too many.
Incidentally, taking a more anthropological view, anyone actually move in these Islington circles that the likes of Mr Cohen inhabit? Are the liberal left in those circles really as insipid as he describes?
Spot on OB. I think we could all agree on your amendment to Nick C’s thesis.
One thing I have been wondering, when I consider how I reacted to Nick’s work, was why I care what he says when Madeline Bunting can say much worse nonsense and I can just ignore it. Her mischaracterisations of the enlightenment do after all strike much closer to home for me than Nick’s thoughts on “the left”. The usual cliche would be to say that he touched a nerve, and this was in some way significant. But what nerve? After all his support for the war didn’t make it happen any more than my oppostion prevented it, and he is hardly an influential thinker to anyone more sophisticated than say, Michael Gove. So why the heat? I just don’t know.
Always interesting to try to figure out exactly what nerve it is that’s been touched. Bunting is guaranteed to make me go all steamy about the collar – she’s at it again today. ‘All this progress, what good is it, how I wish I lived in a pile of dung.’
I always assumed it was because Bunting wrote vapid lightweight drivel that epitomised the ‘I’ve got a column in the Guardian therefore you have to hear what I think however ill informed I am’ mindset, whereas Cohen is sometimes insightful and can at least string an argument together. Of course it could just be subconscious sexism.
Bunting is a terrible test for any kind of sexism. She really does write vapid lightweight drivel, therefore to think so can’t be sexism (even though sexists can of course think that that’s what she writes). A proper test has to be a woman who does better than that.
But I think gender is one reason she makes me so cross: she drags us all down! Absurd, when silly men don’t drag men down, but there you go.
Actually, OPhelia, almost right: Bunty IS vapid, lightweight drivel …..
I suspect the religion is rotting what’s left of her brain.
Ah, but the whole “nerve touching” idea is a cliche of the web. If someones says 2 + 2 = 5 on a web log and a commenter disagrees then the perpetrator of the mistake will often say “touched a nerve there I see”, as though the idea that 2 + 2 = 4 was some kind of psychological quirk.
A discussion on NC’s views is obviously going to be more exacting than one on MB’s because Nick commands respect where Maddy doesn’t.
However, I distinctly remember the shift in rhetoric from WMD to a moral obligation to oppose dictators and the sense of outrage I felt that the bastards who had disregarded decades of protest and pressure from people who loathed the way the US/UK had supported Saddam had blandly decided that they were now conveniently filled with outrage at the crimes uncovered. They always bloody knew, it was never about that. Maybe, just maybe, even now I’ll concede the possibility that Blair had that as part of his motive.I would like to think so. But Bush and Rummy et al?
‘A proper test has to be a woman who does better than that.’
Now where would we find one of those? (ducks for cover).
Don I didn’t really buy the WMD bit, (certainly not the 45 minutes thing)but I did actually believe for a while it was ok to help right the wrongs of earlier British Govts. The opposite argument always felt false – Thatcher and Conservative leaders before her supported X therefore it’s hypocritical of us now to denounce or help remove X, even though we hated this country’s government’s support for X during their time…
Naivety surrounding the effectiveness of a policy of interventionism following Kosovo coupled with a somewhat moralising ego go some way (but not all the way) to explain Blair’s actions. Well, better than Liar ! Liar ! etc.
(But I agree it has cast a shadow over this generation of Britons, whatever.)
“But Bush and Rummy et al?”
Actually, much as I hate to say so, I have to admit I think it’s possible in the case of Bush. He’s not really implicated in the disregarding of decades of protest, because he was busy drinking and pretending to be a bidness man then. Rummy and Cheney and the rest are thoroughly implicated, but he’s not, merely because he was such a zero before. I don’t think it was his main motivation, because there is a lot of testimony that Iraq was for the high jump from day one, but I think it’s possible that it was a small part of his – ‘thinking’.
Conjecture on why I find Cohen more irritating that Bunting: for Bunting to be right whole sections of western philosophy have to be wrong – Hume has to be mistaken and Mill has to be a dunderdead. This is external to me, and their arguments are rather stronger than hers. (This is not an argument from authority – she would have to counter their arguments which she just isn’t up to). Cohen on the other hand has theories about what is going on inside my head (assuming that I am part of the nebulous “left”, which I may or may not be)which feels more personal. For Bunting I believe X and X is wrong. For Cohen I just think I believe X, but he knows better and actually I believe Y.
“I just think I believe X, but he knows better and actually I believe Y.”
Well whether or not that’s why Cohen is more irritating, it certainly is part of why Freud is.
Mind you – I do know better and everyone is thinking Y; but that’s different, because I do know better.
“I marched behind a banner saying ‘No to war, no to Saddam’. “
Me too. I also helped to make sure that WCPI members who took that position got onto public platforms on the demos that I had anything to do with, and I pointed out my opposition to the Ba’athists on the radio and even once on TV. What more could I have done?
That some people are advancing bollocks arguments in favour of proposition X does not automatically invalidate proposition X. Some antiwar arguments were indeed ridiculous or pernicious – as were some of the pro-war ones. This didn’t stop the important antiwar arguments, notably “This is not going to fucking work, especially given the people who are running it” from being bang on.
http://www.red-star-research.org.uk/rpm/maxingun.html
“This is not going to fucking work, especially given the people who are running it”
Hindsight being a wonderful thing – that’s the best slogan I’ve come accross.
Nick S – true. My remarks are based solely on the extract from the book that was in the Observer. Mind you the author has now published a page on the Guardian web site in which he says that the extract isn’t representative of the whole, which he claims is more nuanced. Just an unlucky choice by his publishers perhaps.
Ken… surely… you don’t mean… they would deliberately court controversy ???
Sorry, PM.
Accidental or my potty mouth?
Read the whole thing, Nick – I deal with that point to my satifaction, though probably not, I’d surmise, to yours.
PM, neither, just incidental to necessary housekeeping.
I’m not sure that we’re that _far_ apart on this one, although I am sure that we don’t agree.
Anyhow, it wasn’t me in the NLR – I’ve never written for that.
Yeah, it the sort of thing I enjoy a good rant about over a few pints, the devil being in the detail !