What's Left by Nick Cohen

[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

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

[ELWisty]

Originally Posted by 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

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

I read this the other week. I've always had a lot of admiration for Cohen as a journalist, and although I agree with a lot of what he says about the left his book is essentially him lashing out about the fact he's been proved wrong on Iraq - that's why he turned against the left, he said, because they were "appeasing fascism".

There's nothing unique about lefties lashing out at other lefties - the left has always been like cats in a sack because of sectarianism. Just re-read Homage To Catalonia. And while I think Cohen is right that much of the left has fallen into the "second campist" trap of supporting anyone who opposes American hegemony - and as a result ended up on the same side as a lot of very nasty characters indeed - he doesn't address the more sensible anti-Iraq war arguments, i.e. that it was always doomed to failure, that it has made the west more at risk, and that life is now worse for ordinary Iraqis, not better. That's not even necessarily a left wing argument but Cohen completely ducks it.

He spends pages and pages on the WRP and the RCP who, while they were pretty unpleasant cults, were also more or less insignificant and considered laughable by everyone else even at the height of their popularity.

The cynical BNP-mirror-image of RESPECT, the sneering elitism of the Guardianista class, the Trots and Stalinists who descended into nihilism and moral relativism after the collapse of the USSR, all deserve exposing. Everyone who's ever been active on the left knows that. But for all his talk about lefties appeasing fascism, he never deals with the fact that the invasion he supported has bombed Iraq into the stone age and turned its people into sectarian bloodshed that will last generations.

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by ELWisty

The cynical BNP-mirror-image of RESPECT, the sneering elitism of the Guardianista class, the Trots and Stalinists who descended into nihilism and moral relativism after the collapse of the USSR, all deserve exposing. Everyone who's ever been active on the left knows that. But for all his talk about lefties appeasing fascism, he never deals with the fact that the invasion he supported has bombed Iraq into the stone age and turned its people into sectarian bloodshed that will last generations.

Not quite sure I agree with that. He consistently attacks people not for failing to support the war, but once it was over, failing to support those in iraq who would like to see a more secular open society. I do agree though that he skirts the issue of whether iraq was ever achievable.

One point he might have made about the modern left though is there willingness to celebrate bloodshed in the past, but not confront it in their own time. An extension of your argument would be that noone should have fought in spain, perhaps even that noone should have fought hitler.

[HenryLB]

I found myself nodding along to most of it, but I tend to agree to some extent with EL. I think the book's main flaw is Cohen's willingness to lump "The Left" into one big group. This may be impossible to avoid in such a broad critique, but it ignores those (for example) who had more sophisticated reasons for opposing the Iraq war, and it sometimes makes rather extreme and marginal views seem as though they were at some point part of mainstream left-wing thought.

That said I think the stuff about the postmodern apathy and nihilism of large parts of the left is bang on. I see it here an awful lot.