What’s Left?
Terry Glavin has written a feature on Nick Cohen, “one of Britain’s most consistently caustic and passionate left-wing writers,” on The Tyee observing that Cohen’s new book, What’s Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way, points out some uncomfortable problems many on the left might prefer not to face. “What’s Left? immediately set off a raucous hullabaloo on both sides of the Atlantic. Cohen’s publisher, Fourth Estate, hasn’t been able to keep up. The book was sent back for a second printing the week it came off the presses.”
Much of the controversy centres on Cohen’s views on the Iraq war. Glavin says Cohen has angered many on the left by asserting that
American imperialism was entrenched in the left consciousness as the fount of all evil in the world, and by Sept. 11, 2001, the left had lost its capacity to imagine any other enemy. So it chose to go “berserk.”
….
Cohen delves into the dank circumstances that were capable of producing the spectacle of avowed progressives apologizing for, making excuses for, and ultimately fellow-travelling with the far right, in the form of Islamists and dictators.
Cohen does acknowledge that many people opposed the invasion for the “right reasons,” including being unconvinced of American motives and competence, but Glavin notes that Cohen has perhaps not reached out sufficiently to those people.
In a broader view, Cohen told Glavin that the left protests without charting a new course for the future:
“The outcome of all this protest on the left would seem likely (in Britain) to be a Tory government. And you’ve got a Tory prime minister in Canada right now. This is not productive,” Cohen said. “As it is, it’s not producing ideas that can inspire people to left-wing politics…I don’t understand where these people think they’re going to end up. They’re all going to end up negating themselves, I think.”
Quite the ray of sunshine, that Cohen. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that some climate disaster will unite everyone’s efforts….
Cohen is spot on as is Glavin.