The Left: Is It All Bad?

In 1793, inspired by Georges Danton, the French revolutionary Camille Desmoulins began a newspaper called the Vieux Cordelier - the Old Cordelier. The title was suggestive. The Cordeliers were one of the clubs of revolutionaries that had been a feature of the Parisian scene in the early 1790s - the most famous was the Jacobin club, and the Old Cordelier was a reference to the likes of Danton, who had been supporters of the Revolution from the outset and who stood for the traditional values of the left - The Rights of Man, Internationalism, Dodgy Historical Analogies (Issue three purported to be a translation of Tacitus' account of the reigns of Nero and Caligula with unsubtle modern parallels, well, it makes a change from the Third Reich or Vietnam) against indecent leftists like Robespierre who stood for monotheism, head-chopping and the new puritanism. So, sort of like Democratiya, only with more readers. The Parisians, who were well ticked off with the Terror, picked it off the news stands with alacrity. Robespierre who was, to put it politely, a bit on the sensitive side took umbrage with this, among other things and Desmoulins and Danton ended up under the national chopper, although not before assuring themselves of immortality. Show my head to the people it is worth seeing, said Danton and indeed it was.

This demonstrates, I think, that the crisis on the left is as old as the left. The left is not perfect. The left has often supported dodgy regimes. The left has often been guilty of naivety and has always been divided against itself. This is not, of course, of itself a vindication of the left - not being as bad as the days of the Jacobin Terror is hardly a glowing encomium. Still, the notion that the left went bad in 2003 when Noam Chomsky and George Galloway signed up is, perhaps, a tad unhistorical.*

So, the charge sheet against the left. Firstly the left has made common cause with fascism.

This is set out by Nick Cohen in 'What's Left':

On 15 February 2003 , about a million liberal-minded people marched through London to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime. It was the biggest protest in British history, but it was dwarfed by the march to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime in Mussolini’s old capital of Rome, where about three million Italians joined what the Guinness Book of Records said was the largest anti-war rally ever. In Madrid, about 650,000 marched to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime in the biggest demonstration in Spain since the death of General Franco in 1975. In Berlin, the call to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime brought demonstrators from 300 German towns and cities, some of them old enough to remember when Adolf Hitler ruled from the Reich Chancellery […] On a memorable day, American scientists at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica produced another entry for the record books. Historians will tell how the continent’s first political demonstration was a protest against the overthrow of a fascist regime.

(Via: it seems to have vanished from the Observer website)

I think most of the other items on the charge sheet are rather more substantive. I thought I would get this one out of the way as it is trivial and dishonest. Imagine a court case where the police essentially cook up the evidence against someone who they have good reason, but no solid evidence, to believe is a criminal. The judge throws it out. Is the judge a defender of criminality or, possibly, might it be the case that the ends do not justify the means, particularly if the ends are uncertain (the police might be wrong). In the same way one could deplore Saddam's regime without being convinced of the case for the Iraq war. Used universally Cohen's worst case style could be cast in other directions. It can be quite accurately claimed that in September 1939 the British government went to war in defence of an anti-Semitic dictatorship which had gladly acquiesced in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia but it would be misleading to do so.

Next up (when I get round to it): Is the left anti-Semitic?