This last decade has arguably seen the most serious split within the left since the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. The term "decent left" was coined by the American social theorist Michael Walzer in 2002 to describe those who argued that Islamism constituted a greater threat than George Bush and that the "anti-imperialist" left were camouflaging a fascistic and oppressive Islamic fundamentalism.
Many of the "decents" went on to be supporters of the invasion of Iraq, justifying it as a noble attempt to rid the world of a repulsive dictator.
In the UK, the split within the left was crystallised in 2006 with the Euston Manifesto which attempted to place what it saw as pro-democratic action at the centre of leftist activity. Euston signatories such as Norman Geras have fought a continuous and often bitter battle against what they see as leftist apologists for tyranny, "Islamo-fasism" and anti-semitism disguised as anti-Zionism.
That was Keith Kahn Harris's take on the split within the left over the Afghanistan and Iraq War. something which can be seen as an epochal division within the left, a turning point in history instead of what is a largely tedious spat amongst 'leftists'
The very word 'leftist' is one that indicates a proclivity towards certain attitudes that can be defined as left as opposed to right wing and conservative but often adds up to little in the end but an argument over the direction global progress ought to take.
This is not to say there are not real issues at stake with regards the conflict within the West between the rival value systems posed between radical Islamism and the secular left with the rise of glabal Islamism as a 'revolutionary rival'.
But most of the controversy over Islam in the West has been refracted through the lens of foreign policy and claims of the West to represent universal values as against what is considered an irrevocably backward religion that has no place in 'progressive' politics.
The problem with this artificial dichotomy between the "decent left" and "anti-imperialists" is that few see what both have in common: a tendency to regard global politics according to an almost theological interpretation over the essential nature of rival empires.
The irony is that most "decent left" and anti-imperialists in Britain & the USA tend to look towards George Orwell as a prophet and inspiration, replacing the Soviet Union with the USA as the evil empire of choice or else the threat of 'theocratic fascism'.
For example both Christopher Hitchens and Pilger see Orwell as fighting against fascism and the collusion of supposed 'leftists' with it: both see Stalinism as corrupting some 'authentic' or real left wing radical politics and global projects of emancipation.
Much of this tedious debate rest less on fact but on interpreting facts in accordance with the prescriptions of their particular progressive creed. Both decents and some, though not all, "anti-imperialists" do so for a number of reasons.
Firstly, they suspend sceptical enquiry in favour of an almost theological obsession with being 'justified'. By that I mean 'being on the right side of History' and using that as proof of their righteousness. Gloating about how Hitchens was obviously wrong about Iraq proves nothing.
Mostly it consists of hack propagandists taking pro and anti war positions to gain the upper hand over one another, parly to bolster their 'credibility' as commentators but also to vent spleen in such a way that draws media attention to them. and advances their careers.
As with Hitchens and Galloway proving their critics were all craven and morally stunted grotesques or 'renegades' from the 'true cause' excites and etertains jaded Westerners who crave some kind of cause to fight for to escape the teduim of the banal consumerism of Blair's Britain.
In short, when it comes down to it, it is all about them, about what Freud termed rationalisation, a trend increased by the obvious powerlessness felt by leftists in the West following the perceived triumph, temporary or otherwise , of global capitalism
It's curious that Hitchens wrote about the tendency of anti-war activists to rationalise Islamist terrorism.
Some of them, in my view do, and Hitchens had a point about them as did Francis Wheen in his polemic How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, especially with regards Seumas Milne's article after 9/11 ( They just can't see why they are hated ).
However, using the rationalisation of terrorism by those who opposed war to prove a pro-war case that has, in practice backed up criminal and illegal actions such as the war in Iraq is stupid and failed to engage with the obvious fact it was about energy security.
It's no better than those Orwell criticised in Notes on Nationalism who refuse to look at facts first, those cocksure partisans who want to tell you the way the world process is inexorably working towards the ultimate triumph of their own worldview.
It isn't that the 'decent left or Hitchens unconditionally apologise for US or UK power unconditionally. It is that US or Uk power is judged according to whether it advances causes they think worthy. Ultimately it boils down to a rationalisation of their own powerlessness over events.
The same is true of crowing ideologues in the Stop the War Coalition who spout slogans to ramp up outrage, upgrade their own media profile and carrers folling the demise of their own favoured power unit in the Soviet Union. eg George Galloway & Andrew Murray.
Many people get pleasure from detesting hypocrisy and double standards of Western statesmen because ultimately it acts as a convenient way of avoiding the fact that their own living standards are propped up by the control over oil. Contructive alternatives are seldom advanced because it is a bit boring.
It is much better to pretend Afghanistan and Iraq are issues somewhat akin to the Spanish Civil war and to fake Orwell's moral stance without possesing his ability to grapple with inconvenient facts or to understand that not every conflict is a simplistic rerun of the 1930s and 1940s.
Much of this has to do with the parochial nature of global progressive politics that still takes it for granted that the West, for good or ill, has the ability to determine world politics. That leads 'decents' to fall in with the USA as the least worst choice for global hegemon.
In the case of Chomsky or Pilger it leads them to see any power that opposes the USA to be necessarily on the side of freedom, no matter whether such liberation movements from the NLF to Hizbollah contain a propensity towards repression and illiberalism through their faith in Rousseau's 'general will.'
None of this has been brought out by Kahn-Harris's article because it just passes on a superficial precis of the divisions between these polemicists who' lets face it, are going to be largely forgotten in the coming decades because they failed to understand the times they lived in.
Written in Krakow Poland on Monday, 19 October 2009
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