[egb_hibs]

Thanks are due to Henry for directing me to this book.

incidentally, if that's not created some pre-judgements on the rest of this already, i'll be surprised
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and yes, this book will not be comfortable reading for those on the left, but i would commend it as being near to essential.

it's not without it's shortcomings - occasionally cohen is a bit incoherent, apparently recognising conservative 'truths' yet still wanting to bash conservatives for recognising them. he also - and i confess this a partial position on my part - flinchs from seeing some trains of thought through to the final station which would reveal them not as having 'gone wrong' but as being fundamentally misconceived from the get go. however, this is nit picking as he is a man of the left, and constrained by that, but nevertheless is remarkably honest with himself about contemporary problems with the left. i'll be honest and say that many of the things he realises track my own earlier realisations that have caused the collapse of any realistic claim on my own part to be a man of the left; something i would have in the past, which may surprise gareth for example. if nick's experience is like mine, he won't be able to keep intact for long the remaining stones he has stopped short of turning over.

anyway this is turning into navel gazing, back to the point - the book is a crunching taking to task of contemporary leftism which cohen charges to have lost any purpose, direction and moral authority and instead having shrunken into a blind and nihilistic anti-western contrariness. he contrasts the historical left's long record of nefarious flirtations with despots and monsters, but alleges that today's left lacks even the tissue of defensability it's ancestors did, as it is driven by nothing more than oppositionalism. i also think he skewers the reason behind it, that the left are desperately afraid that western society is pretty much what you end up with once a people are 'liberated'. anything and everything is clung to and mobilised to defend against that fear.

i'd recommend this book to both the lefties on hear and those who aren't. it's a salutory state of the nation report that has wider implications for our democracies full stop, not least because of the left's dominant position in the media and arts, which he charts, while noting it's own paranoia that the opposite is the case.

and as a bonus he calls out the left on some of the same bases i do; their increasing adoption of far right positions, and the fact it's all a webellion against proxy father figures
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