The ideas meme: Sackcloth and Ashes

A guest post by Sackcloth and Ashes


[Bob: This is taken, with permission, from the comment thread at Sarah's responses to my "influential ideas" meme. I've taken the liberty to add a couple of hyperlinks. Posts on the one state solution, mutualism and some other issues thrown up by this meme to follow. Non-bloggers, feel free to e-mail me your lists and I'll consider publishing them if I have time.]


Bad influences

(1) Kneejerk occidentalism (namely, the automatic assumption that any act of US and British policy is automatically evil, and also the concurrent belief that any opponent of the West – no matter how malevolent or barbaric – should be supported on the grounds that they are ‘anti-imperialism’. This disease could well be described as Pilgeritis.

(2) Anti-Semitism, thinly disguised as ‘anti-Zionism’. Then as now, the socialism of fools.

(3) Moral relativism – namely the idea that gender equality, anti-racism, gay rights, human rights etc cease to matter in non-Western countries, unless their violation can somehow be blamed on those closer to home (see point 1). This sentiment can be called Gopalism, in ‘honour’ of the Cambridge professor of ‘post-colonial’ studies who could condemn ‘Time’ magazine for putting a mutilated Afghan girl on the front cover, while not saying a word against the thugs who maimed her.

(4) Pandering to theocracy – a trend which (in the form of apologias for Iran and for radical Islamist movements) is partly due to (1), but also a reaction by the far left to the failure of Marxism-Leninism since the late 1980s (see Shameless Milne, Maddy of the Sorrows et al). The far-left’s apologias for religious extremism is motivated by a desperate search for any ‘ideology’ – no matter how reactionary and twisted – that can provide an ‘alternative’ to liberal democracy.

(5) Whataboutery – the stock reaction of certain far-leftists when exposed as charlatans, hypocrites, and outright scumbags.

Not influential enough ideas

(1) Internationalism – The idea that you stand behind anyone fighting for the same rights as you in any part of the world. Honourable exceptions include HOPI – which has incurred the wrath of the STWC by being both opposed to any US attack on Iran AND the theocratic regime in Tehran – and also Mick Rix – who broke ranks with the STWC when they excused the murder of Iraqi trade unionists as the killing of ‘quislings’.

(2) Anti-Communism – this should have the same honourable pedigree as anti-Fascism/anti-Nazism, but for some reason the idea that ‘left can speak to left’ exists like some undead ghoul. Repeated examples from the Bolshevik revolution to the Khmer Rouge demonstrate that once in power the far-left have shown the same characteristics associated with the far-right (genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, militaristic aggression), but the myth exists that Marxist-Leninists can be misguided but essentially honourable people (e.g. the deification of Trotsky). Once this notion is abandoned, the real left can break ranks with the totalitarian left, leaving the latter to wither and die away. The continuation of the discredited notion that leftist movements of all stripes are part of the same family also provides ammunition for those on the right who argue that ’socialism’ involves an automatic journey to the gulag and to ‘Year Zero’ (e.g. Jonah Goldberg on ‘liberal fascism’, enemies of Obamacare etc).