Nick Cohen: In the past, conservatives made excuses for fascism. Now, overwhelmingly and everywhere, it is leftists
[Nick Cohen is the author of What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way, published in Britain by Fourth Estate.]
... I come from the left. I grew up in Manchester, England believing that to be good you had to be on the left, though I learned from my parents that modern history showed the fallacy of believing in the left’s superior virtue. But after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, you could at least rely on nearly all of the left — from nice liberals through to the most compromised Marxists — to oppose the tyrannies of the far right. For all the atrocities and follies committed in its name, the left possessed this virtue: It would stand firm against fascism. After the Iraq war, I don’t believe that any more.
In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein appalled the liberal left. At a leftish meeting, I heard that Iraq encapsulated all the loathsome hypocrisy of the West. Here was a blighted land ruled by a terrible regime that followed the example of the European dictatorships of the 1930s. And what did the supposed champions of democracy and human rights in Western governments do? Supported Saddam; sold him arms and covered up his crimes. Fiery socialist MPs denounced Baathism, while playwrights and poets stained the pages of the liberal press with their tears for his victims. Many quoted the words of a brave Iraqi exile called Kanan Makiya. He became a hero of the left because he broke through the impenetrable secrecy that covered totalitarian Iraq and described in awfulde tailhow an entire population was compelled to inform on their family and friends or face the consequences.
The apparently sincere commitment to help Iraqis vanished the moment Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and became America’s enemy. When the fighting began in 1991, the sight of Arabs walking around London with badges saying “Free Kuwait” stopped me from joining anti-war demonstrations. When they asked why it was right to allow Saddam to keep Kuwaitis as his subjects, a part of me conceded that they had a point.
I became a columnist for The Observer, and my pet topic was the treatment of refugees. Once again, I ran into Saddam Hussein. It was inevitable, because among the refugees were countless Iraqis whom the Baathists had driven to pack their bags and run for their lives.
I got to know members of the Iraqi opposition in London, particularly Kurds, whose compatriots were the targets of one of the last genocides of the 20th century. They were democratic socialists whose liberal-mindedness extended to opposing the death penalty, even for Saddam Hussein. They shared the same beliefs as the overwhelming majority of the rich world’s liberals and leftists, and deserved our support as they struggled against fascism. Not the authoritarianism of a tinpot dictator, but realfascism: a messianic oneparty state; a Great Leader, whose statue was in every town centre and picture on every news bulletin; armies that swept out in unprovoked wars of aggrandizement; and secret policemen who organized the gassing of “impure” races. The Iraqi leftists were our “comrades,” to use a word that was already archaic.
When the second war against Saddam Hussein came in 2003, they told me there was no other way to remove him. Kanan Makiya was on their side. He was saying the same things about the crimes against humanity of the Baath party he had said 20 years before. But although his arguments had barely changed, the political world around him was unrecognizable. American neoconservatives were his champions now, while the left that had once cheered him denounced him as a traitor.
Everyone I respected in public life was wildly anti-war, and I was struck by how their concern about Iraq didn’t extend to the common courtesy of talking to Iraqis. They seemed to have airbrushed from their memories all they had once known about Iraq and every principle of mutual respect they had once upheld.
I assumed that once the war was over they would back Iraqis trying to build a democracy. I waited for a majority of the liberal left to offer qualified support for a new Iraq, and I kept on waiting, because it never happened — not just in Britain, but also in the United States, in Europe, in India, in South America, in South Africa ... in every part of the world where there was a recognizable liberal left. ...
... I come from the left. I grew up in Manchester, England believing that to be good you had to be on the left, though I learned from my parents that modern history showed the fallacy of believing in the left’s superior virtue. But after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, you could at least rely on nearly all of the left — from nice liberals through to the most compromised Marxists — to oppose the tyrannies of the far right. For all the atrocities and follies committed in its name, the left possessed this virtue: It would stand firm against fascism. After the Iraq war, I don’t believe that any more.
In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein appalled the liberal left. At a leftish meeting, I heard that Iraq encapsulated all the loathsome hypocrisy of the West. Here was a blighted land ruled by a terrible regime that followed the example of the European dictatorships of the 1930s. And what did the supposed champions of democracy and human rights in Western governments do? Supported Saddam; sold him arms and covered up his crimes. Fiery socialist MPs denounced Baathism, while playwrights and poets stained the pages of the liberal press with their tears for his victims. Many quoted the words of a brave Iraqi exile called Kanan Makiya. He became a hero of the left because he broke through the impenetrable secrecy that covered totalitarian Iraq and described in awfulde tailhow an entire population was compelled to inform on their family and friends or face the consequences.
The apparently sincere commitment to help Iraqis vanished the moment Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 and became America’s enemy. When the fighting began in 1991, the sight of Arabs walking around London with badges saying “Free Kuwait” stopped me from joining anti-war demonstrations. When they asked why it was right to allow Saddam to keep Kuwaitis as his subjects, a part of me conceded that they had a point.
I became a columnist for The Observer, and my pet topic was the treatment of refugees. Once again, I ran into Saddam Hussein. It was inevitable, because among the refugees were countless Iraqis whom the Baathists had driven to pack their bags and run for their lives.
I got to know members of the Iraqi opposition in London, particularly Kurds, whose compatriots were the targets of one of the last genocides of the 20th century. They were democratic socialists whose liberal-mindedness extended to opposing the death penalty, even for Saddam Hussein. They shared the same beliefs as the overwhelming majority of the rich world’s liberals and leftists, and deserved our support as they struggled against fascism. Not the authoritarianism of a tinpot dictator, but realfascism: a messianic oneparty state; a Great Leader, whose statue was in every town centre and picture on every news bulletin; armies that swept out in unprovoked wars of aggrandizement; and secret policemen who organized the gassing of “impure” races. The Iraqi leftists were our “comrades,” to use a word that was already archaic.
When the second war against Saddam Hussein came in 2003, they told me there was no other way to remove him. Kanan Makiya was on their side. He was saying the same things about the crimes against humanity of the Baath party he had said 20 years before. But although his arguments had barely changed, the political world around him was unrecognizable. American neoconservatives were his champions now, while the left that had once cheered him denounced him as a traitor.
Everyone I respected in public life was wildly anti-war, and I was struck by how their concern about Iraq didn’t extend to the common courtesy of talking to Iraqis. They seemed to have airbrushed from their memories all they had once known about Iraq and every principle of mutual respect they had once upheld.
I assumed that once the war was over they would back Iraqis trying to build a democracy. I waited for a majority of the liberal left to offer qualified support for a new Iraq, and I kept on waiting, because it never happened — not just in Britain, but also in the United States, in Europe, in India, in South America, in South Africa ... in every part of the world where there was a recognizable liberal left. ...