What's wrong with the left?
UPDATE:
Bloggers4Labour has picked this up:
Fairly banal post this one, but a more interesting one on Labour activism will follow, time permitting.Anyway, as you can see in the picture, courtesy of Dissident Voice ("A Radical Newsletter in the Struggle for Peace and Social Justice"), and via Bob from Brockley (though I don't take his point that it shows there's something wrong with the Left as a whole), George W. Bush's America is equivalent to Hitler's Germany, the Stars and Stripes having the same connotations as theswastika.So, I guess I should clarify. I don't think this shows there is something wrong with the left as a whole, but I do think it is a symptom of a sickness that has spread through the left: paranoia, conspiracy theorising, pathological anti-Americanism, moral equivalence.
Large numbers of American and British leftist really think that America is more or less a fascist state. I agree that the American government is increasingly authoritarian, and indeed that all states are inherently oppressive. But that doesn't mean that Bush's government is fascist. The amount of freedom of speech Americans have to attack Bush - and not just in marginal corners of the internet, but in massive media events like Michael Moore's books and films - is proof enough that America has a long way to go before it becomes fascist. If you call America today fascist, what words do you have left to talk about truly totalitarian regimes? If you think the Republican party is fascist, what words do you have left to talk about the like of David Duke and David Irving?
The doctrine of moral equivalence is a cancer doing huge damage to the left.
Tags: left, fascism, anti-americanism, bush, War on Terror
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