The Orwellian Doublethink of Ken Livingstone.

Liberal Democrats were represented only by their London Assembly leader Mike Tuffrey, whose definition of a "progressive" politician does not include Ken. Politics in a global city should be outward-looking, but discussions about Gaza, Afghanistan or the impossibility of a "progressive imperialism" belong somewhere else, and offer easy potential targets.
Sunny Hundal, another of Saturday's panellists, reflects that, "The problem, many have said, is that Ken is too loyal to people who have become a liability. The left needs new blood, fresh ideas and new direction. That won't come from some of the people (including from New Labour) who were there."

Reported the Guardian on 3rd February 2010.
Ken Livingstone could have been a better Mayor but it not possible to feel contempt for what is often the meaningless buzzword "progressive politics". He knew a city such as London could not be run wholly on unfettered free market lines and restored London as a political entity in the elections of 2000.
Regrettably, his loathing for Thatcher in the 1980s when she closed down the GLC and abolished any form of government for London, meant he would always come back with a vengeance and he never quite lost the old "hard left" ideological allies who he had made in the year he came to prominance back in 1968.
The problem was and remains that he uses his radical charisma in London to make statements about global politics because, as Clive Bloom remarks in Violent London, it is in this global city where the modern world was born certainly politically, but also, of course, socially and economically.
The Congestion Charge was a good idea but Livingstone treated London as his own fiefdom and the wisdom of allying with Chavez, his attempt to gab votes in inner city London by inviting Qaradawi and general misuse of "Islamophobia" as a buzzword to deflect legitimate criticism of politicised Islam alienated lots of people
"Identity politics" is dangerous and divisive. What is really of concern about 'Red Ken' is the way he has always used his position to indulge in radical causes of those politically enthusiastic about issues that have little direct relevance to actually governing London in order to shore up political support.
The turnout for the London mayoral elections is so low that he can exploit the vote of a section of alienated Muslims by sponsoring speaking events for militant Islamists such as al-Qaradawi the spiritual mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood.
This is the man man who was feted by Livingstone as "truly welcomed" to London is blatantly anti-semitic, detests 'infidels' and calls suicide bombing and "martyrdom".
Now ,unless you think that by placating and genuflecting before militant Islamist grievances that it is possible to avoid them being transferred to London, then perhaps Livingstone could justify why he identifies in such a blatantly partisan way with causes that really have nothing directly to do with London.
Clearly, Livingstone has always been one to play "PR stunts" just for votes by flirting with those who rationalise terrorism
There isn't a difference between cosmopolitanism and a world city of many cultures and one of multiculturalism as a flexible and midlessly deployed buzzword that promotes the separate development of cultures and collective groups defined by race, ethnicity and religion.
Multiculturalism is not sacrosanct shibboleth but an idea that Livingstone promotes because it fits his power agenda of brokering among these groups and pandering to a crude and simplistic anti-imperialist agenda when Britain is not an imperial power any more, except as a craven and subservient supplicant of troops and material for US led resource wars.
But what good comes of sharing the platform with those who believe that the root of all evil in their community is merely the reflex response only to Western imperial power both within Britain and in the Middle East. This is a highly simplistic and psychopathological interpretation of politics.
Clearly, Muslim Association of Britain ideologues such as Anas al-Tikriti and Dr Daud Abdullah, for whom Livingstone held a press conference in February 2006, believe this is so. It is going to reconcile the Jews and Muslims of London when he is indulges people who support Hamas
Those who believe the 7/7 bombings were simply a reaction against foreign policy and not a result of those with resentments and hatreds that transcend the country they happen to be resident in but not active citizens within. US and UK foreign plays an important key role but it does provide a total explanation. The reality is bleaker and more complex.
If Livingstone was serious about racism then he should challenge the conflation of race and religion that promotes radical dogmatism or often downright bigotry in the name of Islam. Islamo-Bolshevism is the new ideology of those who posit the ummah somewhat as the Third World secular Marxist-Leninist nationalists saw colonial subjects as agents of revolution.
Yet Livingstone has, as Clive Bloom suggests, has a very authoritarian streak in him. He makes jibes about Nazis and Fascists like a student but, as Anne Applebaum in the introduction to Gulag: a History pointed out, he also still romanticises the Russian Revolution and thinks it was 'deformed' and not a mass democide from the moment Lenin took power.
The only complaint Livingstone has is that Lenin's tactical mistakes were those of the economy. Not the fact that democracy has been crushed by January 1918 and alternative socialist rivals removed to Solovetsky island for "re-reducation". Such pro-communist sympathies go towards explaining how he can easily praise China.
The proof that Livingstone is past it was shown in his Orwellian statement comparing the police response to the Poll Tax Riots of 1990 to the Tianiamen Square massacre of 1989, a comment that was complained about for its facile and callous stupidity at the time but not also the craven sucking up to China and omitting China's appalling human rights record.
Anti-Americanism, 'identity politics' and allying with hard left ideologues like Calvin Tucker who supported the USSR's continued existence and who has rebranded himself into Chavez's main propagandist in Britain is hardly wise too. Few have read the interview he gave for the webzine 21st Century Socialism.

When Lenin took power in Russia, the only economic transactions people made was that they brought the food they would eat that day, and a couple of times a year they would buy an item of clothing. I remember my grandmother saying 'you could leave your front door open', we are talking about pre-WW1 London. You could leave your front door open, everyone said, but that's because no one had anything to steal.
And as someone like Lenin could see, you could organise supply and demand around the very simple needs that people had. But nowadays, even people living on state benefits make dozens of economic transactions a week. It is a huge complexity, and there is no way a centrally planned economy is going to be able to manage the scale of economic activity we now have.
The tragedy is, a lot of people on the left have moved from accepting, that as a means of distribution and exchange, the market can?t be bettered- to assuming that therefore the market can do everything else in society. And really it can't. It's a very good mechanism for the distribution and exchange of goods. Full stop.
Fidel pre-dates the recognition of all this, and Raul has got to allow the most dramatic economic growth in human history has been China, where they kept control of the commanding heights of the economy, but allowed a service and light industrial sector to grow up around it.
But still the majority of the economy in China was in the hands of the Party. When I was discussing where should I open an office in China - Shanghai was clearly the parallel city, but we also had to be in Beijing because that is where the decisions finally get taken.

There is no mention of China's concentration camps, the largest number of executions in the world and it's policy of "no strings attached" colonialism in Africa because "identity politics" means white Europeans are to blame. The myth that only whites can be racist as racism is connected to Lenin's dictum of kto-kogo, which dominant group is oppressing which, holds.

Whatever the big corporations are doing there, it requires the backing of the Party. And what the Chinese have done is, they have become totally predominant in a whole series of products

Livingstone is only anti-corporatist when it's US corporations and his none too secret admiration for Chinese superpower is a misguided one that puts him in the same category as "realists" like Rupert Murdoch and others sucking up to China like the doddering halfwit Lord Rees Mogg.
There is no mention of democracy in Cuba, the political repressions, the jailing of dissidents or the effective policy of whites only beaches and promotion of covert sex tourism as Cuba is trendy ( think of those Latin American bars in Fulham like Havana ) and Ken always wants to be "with it".
The Politics of Livingstone as a "global figure" detracts from his need to address mundane issues in London which he showed great skill at times
Yet looking at those views as expressed in 21st Century Socialism gives people an insight into the fact he would use London to promote an "alternative" to Tory Britain.
In 21st Century Socialism "Red Ken" still buys into the romanticism of the Russian Revolution as a "deformed" revolution is there to please the London radicals ( Trotskyist types and SWP fanatics who are terminally incapable of getting it that Lenin hijacked the Revolution and set up a totalitarian state almost immediately and intentionally. )
Livingstone absurdly omits all mention of his crimes, his terror his collective punishments and restoration of the death penalty after the Provisional government had abolished it in 1917. The reason is he wants to curry the favour of the StWC types, a motley band of power hungry ex-CPGB members.

The biggest beneficiaries of the Russian Revolution were actually people in Europe and America who were given the welfare state. The terror of Stalin... none of this was conceded out of generosity, it was a fear of Stalin's legions.

Tell that to the London Poles, either the new transient migrants or the older generation of political exiles and it would be treated with utter contempt. Post-war reforms were conceded because it was Labour reformism which built on the limited liberal legislation and grassroots unionism.
The anti-Americanism and talk about the US role in Larin America also reflects double standards: Venezuela has the right to be free and have real self-determination but not Tibet. This doublethink might reflect a degree of reality but to call it "socialism" is as absurd as the USSR or CCP's brand.

It is ridiculous. Also, when people talk about China's attitude towards Tibet; the simple reality is: no Chinese government, communist or capitalist, would ever let Tibet go - because they know that within a year there would be a huge American military base there, they would be surrounded on that side, and this is just the reality of big power politics.

In which case, there is no need to single out the USA as uniquely malign. Though it's little to do with the actual governance of London beyond grabbing the votes of Chavez fans in antinomian radical London, the votes of ageing anti-Vietnam types who must be approaching 60 and will be dying or dead in the next decade or so. Those like the pathetic Vanessa Redgrave.
In any case, Livingstones' connections with Chavez and the "anti-war' movement conceal the fact it's merely against the USA's "war on terror", human rights and its cynical alliances with unpleasant regimes are attacked but the double standard means that never gets extended to Chavez's allies like Iran or Zimbabwe

Written Wednesday, 3 February 2010