An excellent article today in The Guardian, of all places. The Lede:
The writer Andrew Anthony was a committed member of the liberal left – until the attacks of 11 September, 2001. A veteran of CND and Nicaraguan solidarity campaigns, he was astonished at the liberal left’s anti-American reaction. And so he began to question other basic assumptions about race, crime and terror – a political journey he charts here, in these exclusive extracts from his compelling new book
Some clips of the long article to give you a taste:
Drinking in the devastation, numbed and intoxicated by the scale of what had taken place, I struggled, like everyone else, to make sense of it all. And in my case, as with many people from the liberal-left side of the political spectrum, that job was made more difficult by the fact that the United States was the victim. From where I came from, the United States was always the culprit. There was Vietnam, Chile and the dreadful support for repressive and often debauched regimes right across Latin America, Africa and Asia. I was a veteran of CND anti-cruise missile marches in the 1980s. I had gone to Nicaragua to defend the Sandinista cause against American imperialism. America was the bad guy, right? America was always the bad guy.
Clearly some basic moral calculations needed to be performed. Which vision of the world represented more closely my own liberal outlook? The cosmopolitan city of New York, a multi-racial city of opportunity, a town where anyone on earth could arrive and thrive, exuberant, cultured, diverse, a place I had visited and loved for its liberty and energy and excitement? Or the people who attacked it, those arid minds who wanted to remove women from sight, kill homosexuals, banish music, destroy art, the demolishers of the Bamiyan Buddhas who aimed to terrorise everyone they could into submission to the will of their vengeful God? It was, as they say, a no-brainer, or should have been.
This stuff ought to be required reading at the Democratic National Convention. Then again, since when does the truth have any sway with that organization… (Sigh) And liberal organizations and the rest of the world, as well.
I have stated several times that what we have been dealing with on the part of the left, is a self the trade, the likes of which the world has not yet seen. Here it is in what ever the author describes as the most Liberal paper in Britain:
In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true? I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a ‘liberal’. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn’t question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn’t try to understand myself.
Personally, I wonder if the remainder of the left in the world has the courage to face that reality. I doubt it. The reason that they don’t have that courage, is because they will find, like the author did, that will force them into a complete ground up recalculation of their world view and their self identity. One that falls more into line with the reality of the situation, and not their fantasy.
He goes on to describe the situation that happened a couple of weeks after the July 7 bombings in London, where an individual was stabbed over a relatively minor incident on a London bus… and it goes directly to the heart of what I’ve been talking about with regards to individual responsibility versus government services… that after a while, individuals take on the idea that they shouldn’t do anything, it’s the government’s responsibility.
The murder took place just a few weeks after the 7 July bombings, when most commuters were still very nervous about travelling on public transport, still restively aware of potential danger. In those weeks there had been plenty of time to think about what to do in life-and-death moments, how to come together to combat murderous aggression. Certainly Whelan would have had opportunity to think about such matters, as his close friend Ciaran Cassidy had been murdered by one of the Islamist bombs on 7 July. There was also the 21 July failed bombing campaign, when all of the perpetrators were able to escape from packed tube trains. Some brave individuals gave chase, but the vast majority of passengers ran away.
Only a couple of passengers came to Whelan’s aid. Most left the bus, and a mere five bothered to give a statement to the police that evening. As Whelan bled to death, male onlookers refused to give up their jackets to cover the shivering and sweating man. Apparently they didn’t want to get blood on their clothes. Perhaps that was a job for the police and the emergency services as well. It had nothing to do with them.
Here again, some very basic challenges were drawn against the authors established leftist non-thought. With this experience, he came to the conclusion that I did years ago, that if the government is solely charged with the responsibility of everything, everything doesn’t get done.
The article is revealing depressing and heartening all look the same time.
I urge you to RTWT.
Tags: BitsBlog
