Nick Cohen

[Officer Dibble]

I see arch-leftie, Nick Cohen, has just published a book expressing dismay that his fellow ?comrades? have all gone crackers. He suggests that nowadays middleclass lefties are so crazed, zealous, and irrational in their hatred of America, that they are supporting (or tuning a blind eye to) murder, torture, and the oppression of women and gays in many third world societies. Now they?re denouncing him (with all the vitriol of the crazed zealot) for suggesting to them that a reality check might be in order. Hmmm, looks like he could be heading for the gulag.

Here?s a review of his book by Martin Ivens that recently appeared in a Sunday supplement.



?You?ve lost it, Guardianistas

Martin Ivens meets Nick Cohen

Nick Cohen, a journalist with impeccable left-wing credentials, has written a book about the latest moral disorder afflicting his brothers and sisters in the struggle. Fashionable anti-Americanism and hatred of the Bush administration and Tony Blair has so warped opponents of the war in Iraq, he argues, that they want the Islamic terrorists to win.
In What?s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way, Cohen asks, ?Why do leftist papers publish defences of suicide bombers?? and answers that the failure of socialism has freed them to go along with any movement, however far right it may be, ?as long as it is against the status quo and America?.
The triumph of liberal-left social agenda in the West, and Britain in particular (human rights, gay rights, women?s emancipation, etc) left a gaping black hole to be filled. But these causes are, apparently, not for export. ?They could all be for the emancipation of women in London, Paris and New York while indifferent to the misogynies of the Middle East, Africa and Asia,? he writes. Supporting these values in the Second or Third World is moral imperialism, don?t you know.
What?s Left? has created havoc among the Guardian-reading classes.
At Cohen?s invitation we meet in a pub in Islington where George Orwell, his intellectual hero and forerunner, once lived. It?s not exactly his imaginary perfect prole boozer, the Moon under Water. Tall, gangly and a voluble, entertaining talker, Cohen fires machinegun rounds of invective when I ask him about the reaction from his tribe. ?Serious people on the left I have no trouble with. They may not agree with me but they know something is going wrong. An Oxford don has told me, ?I?m against the war but I hate going on a demo with anti-semites and Trotskyites?.
?I support the BBC but I think our problem is the concentration of media in London. When there is an absolute liberal consensus, everyone they meet, eat or sleep with thinks the same damn thing.? So in Iraq?s case this groupthink didn?t come in the hard questions they asked the other side, but the soft questions they asked their own side. ?For years,? he writes, ?the BBC?s attack dog presenters couldn?t manage to give one opponent of the war a tough interview. Not even George Galloway.?
The Guardian also came up with a novel way of pigeonholing Cohen?s politics as unworthy of serious discussion. ?The Guardian online talkboards carried a discussion with me and another supporter of the war from the left with a Jewish name, which was entitled: ?David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen Are Enough to Make a Good Man Anti-Semitic?.? Not funny, not clever. Bloody disgusting in my opinion. There it is, that surname (he isn?t Jewish) seems to be enough to damn him in some quarters.
It was consistent hatred of Saddam Hussein?s ?fascist? regime over decades that led Cohen to support the invasion. It was the plight of Iraqi asylum seekers and left-wing exiles living in Britain that taught him to loathe the regime. ?There is a delegation of Iraqi trade unionists coming to my launch party. They (their families and friends) have been slaughtered by fascists. The idea that liberals would want Iraq to fail to give Bush and Blair bloody noses appals me. They just don?t care about the consequences for the people.?
Cohen?s diagnosis of the left-wing pathology is brutal. ?This is rage without a programme.
So what?s left of your personal leftiness, comrade? The answer is apparently solidarity with the oppressed, environmentalism and fighting Islamism. ?I don?t have all the answers, I am writing a book, not filling in a questionnaire.?
Once upon a time every teenager curious about politics and recent history would have Orwell?s Homage to Catalonia on his or her bedside table. (I also had Down and Out in Paris and London) As part of the author?s unsentimental education in the realities of political struggle, Orwell watches as the communists savage other leftist parties in the Spanish civil war. They attack his own outfit, the POUM militia. Perhaps the book is no longer read today. Its message about the danger of embracing all leftists, even totalitarian ones, as part of the progressive ?tribe? still needs to be hammered home.
And how is he getting the message across? ?I went to the George Orwell society in Eton, where he was a King?s scholar. They looked at me as if I was spouting ancient Greek when I talked about helping the Iraqi people. Orwell would have said ?little brutes?.? I rather hope Cohen did too.?




Officer Dibble

[redbob24]

another review of the book by Chris Hitchens
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 293509.ece

[mart]

Gee Dibble, I wonder if he is a middleclass university graduate?
Btw, why didn't you tell us where the article was published?

Mart

[Officer Dibble]

"Gee Dibble, I wonder if he is a middleclass university graduate?
Btw, why didn't you tell us where the article was published?"


Yo, mart!

Well, yes. I would think it a fairly safe assumption that he is. I base this on the fact that there weren't many budding authors or revolutionary socialists amongst my pals at "Chav Street High'. Neither was there amongst my blue-collar work-mates on construction sites and the shop floor.

But let me allay your concerns as to the provenance of the article. It was sourced from a perfectly respectable organ - namely, The Sunday Times Culture supplement. Why do you ask? Were you rather hoping I had sourced it from 'Waffen-SS Weekly' or 'Reich Marshall Review??




Officer Dibble

[middle_aged_dutchman]

On 15 February 2003 I happened to be in London. In the early evening I made my way from my hotel to a restaurant and suddenly found myself among a crowd of people going home after a demonstration against the war in Iraq.
I felt quite uncomfortable and hoped with all of my heart that no one would think I had taken part in that demonstration. Of course, I was against the war too. But I did not want to be associated with the antisemites, islamofascists and Saddam supporters who had been demonstrating that day.
Just like Cohen's Oxford don: 'I?m against the war but I hate going on a demo with anti-semites and Trotskyites.'

I do not fully understand what's wrong with Trotskyites, by the way. The few Dutch Trotskyites I know are quite friendly. Perhaps the British Trotskyites are soreheads?

It is an interesting fact, however, that George Owell, praised to the skies in this article, was a Trotskyite himself. I am not sure if he still was a Trotskyite at the end of his life, but he certainly was a Trotskyite when he wrote 'Homage to Catalonia'. One of the major characters in '1984' is called Goldstein. Goldstein is an alias for Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein.

middle_class_twat

[Lizard]

MAD wrote....middle_class_twat.

Made me laugh a lot, you can really tell when someone swears and means it, I,m still laughing.

[Bob Nutcher]

I agree with MDM.I was from the start against this disasterous war.The demo he speaks of was I think the largest in British history. Over 1m strong

Why didnt it work?

Because the speakers/marchers were all from the left side of the spectrum and or muslims.There were also many activists from all over Europe there.

But people from all over the political spectrum were and are against this war.

When the anti-war movement, to borrow a phrase, starts to look like Britain (all of Britain), the politicians will start to pay attention.

[zoomraker]

In my view the middle class pseudo intellectual left are nothing but a bunch of self serving tossers with nothing but contempt for the working class.

[Officer Dibble]

?In my view the middle class pseudo intellectual left are nothing but a bunch of self serving tossers with nothing but contempt for the working class.?

Nice work, zoomraker. You?ve elegantly summed up in one clear, concise, and succinct sentence my whole case. I wish I were possessed of your Zen like calm. But I?m so fucking angry at these twats that if I don?t vent my spleen in a tirade of modulated vitriol once in a while, I fear I might just burst.




Officer Dibble

[mart]

Such cogent, rational, well phrased sentiments.
They could only emanate from some middle class university type.....lol
Mart