Douglas Murray on an even more indecent left . . .

Douglas Murray
Wikipedia

Douglas Murray, writing for The Spectator (November 27, 2015), says "It's all over for the 'decent left', and they have only themselves to blame" when their Labour Party finally speaks its mind on attacking the Islamic State (aka ISIS):

Two weeks after Paris we finally have some clarity from the political left. The current stance of their leadership (as expressed in the Parliamentary Labour party) is that while there is no justification for bombing ISIS, there are many reasons to bomb London.

How so? Because:

On the same evening that [Labour Leader] Jeremy Corbyn told his party that he could not support airstrikes on ISIS his old comrade (and head of the Labour party's new 'defence review') Ken Livingstone shared his view on Question Time that the 7/7 bombers 'gave their lives' in an act of supremely selfless objection to the 2nd Iraq War.

Why should Livingstone stop with the four terrorists' supreme sacrifice? Surely he ought to include the 52 civilians who also "gave their lives" in a sacrifice even more supreme!

But what I'd like to know is why the British neglect to insert perfectly defensible commas, i.e., after "Paris" and after the second mention of "ISIS."

Kirstallnacht Commemoration: Jews not Invited?

Synagogue on Fire During Kristallnacht
Wikimedia Commons

Tova Dvorin reports on a "Scandal: Jews not invited to Swedish Kristallnacht commemoration" (Arutz Sheva 9, Israel National News, November 11, 2015):

[O]rganizers of an anti-Nazi event in Sweden face controversy . . . after declining to invite the Jewish community . . . . "Umeå against Nazism" will run in the city of Umeå, . . . . commemorating Kirstallnacht, or the "Night of Broken Glass," the massive 1938 pogrom against Austrian and German Jews . . . seen as marking the start of the holocaust . . . . Jews will not be invited . . . . [because] inviting the Jewish community presents a security risk, . . . citing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel protests present at past events . . . . "[We've] had a lot of Palestinian flags at these rallies, and even one banner where the Israeli flag was equated with a swastika," organizer and local Workers' Party member Jan Hägglund told locals. "The Jewish community wasn't invited because . . . they might be uncomfortable around that sort of thing" . . . . Hägglund's omission must be due to the crowd he invited to the event, implying that it could only be far-left or anti-Israel - thus creating . . . the "security risk."

Workers' Party? Oh. I see. Well what can one expect of such an old left. It's dying ideologically and is being proactive by inviting only its undertakers . . .

The Left: Willy-Nilly Favors Free-Market Democracy?

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Writing for The Point, Daniel Luban argues in "Forward with Fukuyama" that the 'End of History' is still among us, with the democratic, free market system the only real solution to humanity's problems, so much so that even the Left agrees:

The point was driven home with great clarity in a recent speech by Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, the darling of the left since Syriza's electoral victory. The experience of recent decades, he argued, demonstrates the futility of hoping that crisis would inevitably lead to something better. "The left must admit that we are just not ready to plug the chasm that a collapse of European capitalism would open up with a functioning socialist system." As a result, Varoufakis suggested, Syriza finds itself in the unlikely position of trying "to save European capitalism from itself," however ambivalently it might approach this task.

Well . . . perhaps Varoufakis can see this clearly, but much of the Left does not. Nor does a little snag called Islamism . . .

British Left Begins to See the Light . . .

Kurdish Defender Against Islamic State

Photo: Fabio Bucciarelli/Getty
The Spectator

The Left has been very conspicuously silent about Islamism for many years now, but some Leftists appear to be waking up to the danger, now that the Islamic State has made Islamism's genocidal, misogynistic, theocratic imperialism all but impossible to ignore. Still, one can't but be surprised to hear this critique from the Left.

Nick Cohen's headline in The Spectator says it all: "Solidarity for the Kurds from - er - the British left. This is is not a misprint" (November 1, 2014).

Cohen then quotes Gary Kent - of the Labour Friends of Iraq - who simply admits:

The Labour movement has been behind the curve in getting behind the Kurds and our grassroots plea for practical action now aims to galvanise solidarity to avert further genocide and horrific crimes against women by Isis.

The Labour Friends of Iraq then get down to nitty-gritty:

We, non-Kurdish members of the British Labour Party and Trade Unions, are calling for an urgent and significant increase in the support from Britain and other countries to the people defending the world against the onslaught of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). The Kurds of Kobani, Rojava and the Kurdistan Region, including Yezidis, Christians and other minorities, are on the front line of a global battle against the vilest fascism of our age. We must help them, we must call on the world to help them, and this help must be given by whatever means necessary. The Labour movement is an internationalist movement which understands deeply the plight of those who suffer under tyranny. We must now stand united in our efforts to secure changes to current UK government policy in this conflict.

The images of grandmothers and grandfathers fighting, and often dying, alongside their younger families is something almost impossible for us in Britain to comprehend. The tales of beheadings, the abandoned dead bodies of women with their breasts cut off, men with their eyes gouged out, sex slavery, genocides and mass executions, and reports of the burning skin of possible acid attacks are too horrific for the British Left to give a half hearted response, or worse.

We in Britain are privileged to live in a peaceful, liberal, secular and democratic society, and we must never forgot that such a society had to be fought for, won and defended. It did not happen through some passive progressive evolution, but was won and preserved through progressive politics, through agitation, and most recently through war against Nazism. Now, a powerful horror is being unleashed into the world by ISIS, who believe they are carrying out divine work. They will not give up, they will not stop. They have to be taken on, and defeated, and this has to be done intellectually, spiritually, and practically. The Labour Party does not turn away from those in need. We help. And we must do so with great urgency now.

Maybe the British Left will also learn to look at the Islamists at home in Britain and realize that critics of radical Islam are not suffering from some illness called "Islamophobia." If the Left now is going to support the fight against Islamism abroad, they'll also need to take the fight to the homefront. Too often, the Muslim leaders they talk to and listen to are not genuine moderates, but Islamists posing as moderates. The Left needs to listen to what these 'moderates' say in their own languages, for they often turn out to immoderates . . .

The 'Evil' of Material Inequality . . .

Amazon

I owe my friend Bill Vallicella a hat tip for this entry, for he blogged on it first, and I'm borrowing the Dennis Prager quotes from him. According to Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (Broadside Books, 2012), there's a reason that the Left has so often entangled itself with totalitarian (and would-be totalitarian) regimes over the past hundred years or so:

The Left's great fight is with material inequality, not with evil as normally understood. Thus, the Left has always been less interested in fighting tyranny than in fighting inequality. That is why Leftist dictators -- from Lenin to Mao to Pol Pot to Ho Chi Minh to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez -- have had so much support from Leftists around the world . . . . (page 29)

This explains the Left's relative disinterest in creating wealth. The enormous and unsustainable debts facing the individual American states and the United States as a country from 2009 on have disturbed the American Right far more than the American Left . . . . The reason is that the Left is not nearly as interested in creating wealth as it is in erasing inequality. (page 29)

I wouldn't say that this understanding of evil as primarily material inequality characterizes all those on the Left, nor all liberals, but it captures well the Left's tendency toward judging the world this way and is thus a useful rule of thumb by which to evaluate Leftist statements. It definitely takes the measure of many Leftist arguments that I read here in South Korea when the 'Progressives' are defending North Korea. Indeed, they at times seem to worry more about inequality emerging from the small markets now permitted in the North than about the people's need for such markets in order to survive. Only yesterday, I proofread an article written by a scholar on the left who actually voiced this concern about rising material inequality if the North truly initiates reforms.

Anyway, as for the rest of Prager's book, I haven't read it and therefore have no opinion to offer . . .