Thursday, August 26, 2010

A tribute to "activists with impeccable credentials on the European left."

. . .When these intellectuals see the word Islamo-fascism, they do not rail about the abuse of language, denounce George Bush, or make furious comments about misplaced historical analogies. On the contrary, they place themselves, and belong, squarely in the progressive European tradition.

This is a significant development in the intellectual and political history of German-speaking Central Europe and perhaps for Europe as a whole. It has parallels to the “Euston Manifesto” from London, and to its American cousin, published in Washington, DC in 2006. Now it’s one thing for British leftists or American liberals to revive the language of anti-fascism of the 1940s. Churchill and Roosevelt, after all, still reign for us as icons. Although anti-fascism was also a Central European tradition, it had been drowned out, even trumped, by anti-imperialism and Third Worldism since the 1960s. But in recent years liberal and social democratic variations of the anti-fascism of the 1940s and 1950s have made common cause with a distinctive brand of left-liberalism that emerged first in Germany and then in Austria.

That's from an important essay by Jeffrey Herf in The New Republic. Do note the reference to the Euston Manifesto, to which I lent my own name straight out the blocks (I explained my reasons in this 2006 essay in the Globe and Mail). The manifesto grew out of what the Guardian's Keith Kahn-Harris last October called "the most serious split within the left since the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956," which is a reasonable assessment in an otherwise unreasonable speculation that the split is healing.

Three years ago, in his Atlantic magazine essay Whither The Antitotalitarian Left?, James Kirchick accurately predicted the retreat of the U.S. Democratic Party into an isolationist posture that he likened to "a feral crouch from which it is more suspicious of what the Western democracies do to protect themselves than it is with the plight of oppressed people abroad." A suitable description of Canada's New Democratic Party, that.

But a truly progressive politics keeps on erupting from the ashes of the old. See, for instance: Though Cowards Flinch And Traitors Sneer. Directly related: Antifaschismus: Shifting the Paradigm, In for The Long Haul. You'll find more adumbration than you will likely need in this conversation in Platypus Review: Afghanistan, Internationalism and The Left.

11 Comments:

Blogger dmurrell said...

Terry's last two posts concentrate the Left's support for Islamo-fascism -- and the lack of any criticism of the Taliban announcement that they would murder unarmed humanitarian workers (this time doing work helping Pakistan flood victims). Books could be written describing the links between the the activist Left and right-wing pro-Islamism.

I would like to digress a bit and discuss the advocacy of Canada's centre-left and the lack of human rights in China. Example #1: Jason Kenney, as opposition spokesman in the Conservative party when the Jean Chretien's Liberals were in power, in 2005 visited the family of the late Zhao Ziyang -- a pro-democracy Communist party head -- when Paul Martin was visiting China.

Then Prime Minister Paul Martin angrily slammed Kenney for the visit. And on the CBC National Peter Mansbridge -- there in China to cover the Martin visit -- interviewed CBC China station chief Patrick Martin about Kenney. The goteed Paul Martin regurgitated the Prime Minister's statements, with Mansbridge head nodding in agreement. One could argue that the moment followed the standard CBC practice of supporting Liberals, and attacking Conservatives. But what does this say about the CBC's support for human rights in China?

Anecdote #2 was the pro-China lobby, in 2008 and 2009, attacking Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his pro-human rights views in China, and the Globe and Mail. During this period the Globe ran story after story attacking Harper for his pro-human rights views. On its editorial page, the Globe had columnists Jeffrey Simpson and Lawrence Martin attack Harper for supporting democracy in China.

Four such columns were written. Following each column, I wrote a short, pithy letter-to-the-editor criticizing the anti-democracy views of Simpson and Martin. Each time the editor refused to print my letter. So the Globe and Mail carried on its anti-human rights crusade without any opposing viewpoints -- undoubtedly to support the Liberals (who were lobbying for a change in Canada's posture). In time, Prime Minister Harper caved in to the China Lobby and the Globe and Mail. These days Harper receives muted support for his closer links to communist Chinna.

Now the Globe and Mail is a centre-left national paper, one that strongly supports the federal Liberal party. But it's also a business paper with corproate advertisers, all of whom support Chinese totalitarianism.

So there you go. It is true that most of the socialist Left no longer supports human rights. But the milder center-Left -- as these anecdotes show -- do likewise. And they get support from the pro-business China lobby.
-- David Murrell
Fredericton, NB
dmurrell@unb.ca

5:04 AM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

"Terry's last two posts concentrate the Left's support for Islamo-fascism . . .It is true that most of the socialist Left no longer supports human rights. But the milder center-Left -- as these anecdotes show -- do likewise."

Viz China, see:

http://propagandistmag.com/2010/08/22/rise-china-great-power-comes-great-responsibility

http://harveyoberfeld.ca/blog/vancouver-sun-when-propaganda-imitates-news/

Not to qibble, but my last posts are a) A tribute to my comrades on the left who have not forgotten their historic mission, b) The eerie confluence of lunatic right-wing propaganda emanating from the Pakistani bourgeoisie and the crazy polemics that pass for "left-wing" critiques in the west, and c) A similar eruption of right-wing reactionary idiocy that is indistinguishable from allegedly "left-wing, anti-war" histrionics.

Unreconstructed right-wing reactionaires should not be expected to support human rights and democracy in China because that's not what they're for, and they never have. The only reason I rarely bother pointing this out, and tend to notice the creeping reactionary dementia on the liberal-left, is because it is not especially remarkable. But it is a fact of "right wing" politics nonetheless.

12:17 PM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

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10:35 PM  
Blogger vildechaye said...

Attention villages: If you're missing your idiot, we have found him here.

7:56 AM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

Too late. Ran him out of town on a rail.

11:21 AM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

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12:42 AM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

"We are mostly on the same side."

No we're not, and it wouldn't matter anyway. Your persistent graffiti about hordes of Muzzies is revolting. They are not my enemy. You are.

9:53 AM  
Blogger kudukid7 said...

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10:40 AM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

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10:59 AM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

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11:16 AM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

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11:25 AM  

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