Eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage, there is an active
civil resistance in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the torture regime
it protects, and the jihadi and Ba'athist 'resistance' alike.
Submitted by BobFromBrockley (not verified) on Wed, 02/20/2008 - 06:33.
Fascinating comment thread! I like the comments on the idiot left. I empathise with your loneliness, Bill. And thanks, NC, for the plug.
Ron Paul is an excellent litmus test for levels of idiocy on the left: those that were taken in by him represent very high levels of idiocy, but it was shocking (even for someone as jaded as me) how many people were taken in by him.
I guess I'm positioned somewhere between Bill and NC on these questions. I still think capitalism is the greatest evil, and that the working class is ultimately the only political subject that can help the world escape capitalism, so that puts me in the ranks of the "left" in Bill and NC's terms. As NC says, there have always been plenty of idiots on the left who have gone along with reactionaries and totalitarians. I guess in the good old days, they justified it by some complicated false logic that had to do with the working class, whereas now conspiracy theory, hatred of Bush and America, and support of anything that challenges America has replaced any semblance of logic for most of the idiot left.
On the anti-Stalinist left tradition you both point to - Bookchin, Dolgoff, Orwell, Goldman, etc: I'm not sure it helps to claim EITHER that it was so totally marginal as to be the exception that proves the rule of the left's accomodation to totalitarianism OR that it was a big and robust enough movement to absolve the left of this charge (to stereotype both your views). Rather, the left has always been a site of struggle; there have always been both democrats and authoritarians in it.
I've decided that I don't want to spend time either attacking the left or trying to rescue it, but instead try and articulate the values I think we need to defend whether they are leftist or not: cosmopolitanism, solidarity, workers' rights, social justice, freedom. (But then I come across another example of idiot-leftism and I find myself launching another attack, and never get round to the articulation of positive values...)
These points relate to why I don't like it when "the war" is used as the correct arbiter of someone's worth (talking as someone deeply ambivalent about "the war"). For a start, "the" war is not the only one going on in the world... But more importantly, I believe that values like democracy, women's rights, a secular public sphere, a free market in ideas, the right to dissent, etc are too important to jettison, just because Bush advocates for them too.
Some posts where I discuss these issues:
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2007/10/folk-music-folk-music-trad-jazz-and.html
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2007/09/lefts-old-neighbourhood-or-new.html
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2008/02/conservatism-of-anti-war-radicals.html
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2008/02/conservatism-realism-and-anti-war.html
And, of course, the post where I struggle to spell rococco:
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2007/08/lexicon-for-our-times.html
By the way, the F-test makes me a liberal airhead. More disturbingly, the Nolan quiz put me in the left/liberal quadrant (which is fine), but exactly half-way up in the libertarian/statist axis. I think I ought to be a few dots higher, where left, libertarian and centrist meet. The questions are flawed, or rather there are too few to get a good picture. I like the chart above better, except for the way it puts all socialism in the top half, even democratic socialism, which I would say is in the libertarian half of the circle. (I'm certainly more anarchist than fascist, but I'd rather call myself a democratic socialist than an interest group opportunist or a syndicalist!)
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Fascinating discussion
Fascinating comment thread! I like the comments on the idiot left. I empathise with your loneliness, Bill. And thanks, NC, for the plug.
Ron Paul is an excellent litmus test for levels of idiocy on the left: those that were taken in by him represent very high levels of idiocy, but it was shocking (even for someone as jaded as me) how many people were taken in by him.
I guess I'm positioned somewhere between Bill and NC on these questions. I still think capitalism is the greatest evil, and that the working class is ultimately the only political subject that can help the world escape capitalism, so that puts me in the ranks of the "left" in Bill and NC's terms. As NC says, there have always been plenty of idiots on the left who have gone along with reactionaries and totalitarians. I guess in the good old days, they justified it by some complicated false logic that had to do with the working class, whereas now conspiracy theory, hatred of Bush and America, and support of anything that challenges America has replaced any semblance of logic for most of the idiot left.
On the anti-Stalinist left tradition you both point to - Bookchin, Dolgoff, Orwell, Goldman, etc: I'm not sure it helps to claim EITHER that it was so totally marginal as to be the exception that proves the rule of the left's accomodation to totalitarianism OR that it was a big and robust enough movement to absolve the left of this charge (to stereotype both your views). Rather, the left has always been a site of struggle; there have always been both democrats and authoritarians in it.
I've decided that I don't want to spend time either attacking the left or trying to rescue it, but instead try and articulate the values I think we need to defend whether they are leftist or not: cosmopolitanism, solidarity, workers' rights, social justice, freedom. (But then I come across another example of idiot-leftism and I find myself launching another attack, and never get round to the articulation of positive values...)
These points relate to why I don't like it when "the war" is used as the correct arbiter of someone's worth (talking as someone deeply ambivalent about "the war"). For a start, "the" war is not the only one going on in the world... But more importantly, I believe that values like democracy, women's rights, a secular public sphere, a free market in ideas, the right to dissent, etc are too important to jettison, just because Bush advocates for them too.
Some posts where I discuss these issues:
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2007/10/folk-music-folk-music-trad-jazz-and.html
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2007/09/lefts-old-neighbourhood-or-new.html
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2008/02/conservatism-of-anti-war-radicals.html
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2008/02/conservatism-realism-and-anti-war.html
And, of course, the post where I struggle to spell rococco:
http://brockley.blogspot.com/2007/08/lexicon-for-our-times.html
By the way, the F-test makes me a liberal airhead. More disturbingly, the Nolan quiz put me in the left/liberal quadrant (which is fine), but exactly half-way up in the libertarian/statist axis. I think I ought to be a few dots higher, where left, libertarian and centrist meet. The questions are flawed, or rather there are too few to get a good picture. I like the chart above better, except for the way it puts all socialism in the top half, even democratic socialism, which I would say is in the libertarian half of the circle. (I'm certainly more anarchist than fascist, but I'd rather call myself a democratic socialist than an interest group opportunist or a syndicalist!)