Nick Cohen
Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:15 am
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
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