My old friend Ian Buruma had a bracing essay in the Financial Times over the weekend. He baldly states something that is, to my mind, indisputable: the biggest force for conservatism in world affairs right now is the Western left. You only have to listen to what pass for their arguments about the remarakable experiment now being attempted in Iraq to witness the sheer Tory pessimism of them all. Their “anti-Orientalist” stance has robbed them of any means to criticize Arab or Islamist societies, or to support reform of them, even if it means temporary armed intervention. Their support for “peace” is really an argument for complete Western disengagement from societies and cultures where tyranny, genocide, terror and theocracy abide. How is it that one can scour the pages of, say, the Nation and not find a single essay marveling at the new freedoms in Iraq – of the press, of free speech, of religious diversity? Even when they do see the good side of, say, greater freedom for women in Afghanistan, their loathing of the Bush administration dampens much of their liberal conviction. Surveying the curdling of left-liberalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Buruma goes in for the kill:
The socialist debacle, then, contributed to the resentment of American triumphs. But something else happened at the same time. In a curious way left and right began to change places. The expansion of global capitalism, which is not without negative consequences, to be sure, turned leftists into champions of cultural and political nationalism. When Marxism was still a potent ideology, the left sought universal solutions for the ills of the world. Now globalisation has become another word for what Heidegger meant by Americanism: an assault on native culture and identity. So the old left has turned conservative.
Buruma is particularly acute in observing the parallels between old Tory bigotry about what those ‘colored people’ were capable of, and current leftist disdain for the whole idea of democratization in Arab countries.
PAT BUCHANAN MEET ARUNDATHI ROY: There is indeed a wonderful confluence of racist-right and racist-left in the attitude toward the liberation of Iraq. Both sides are desperately eager for the project to fail; they want it to fail so as to keep America – and its dangerous, universalizing ideas – at bay. That’s why Gore Vidal and Pat Buchanan are now indistinguishable in many ways; ditto Norman Mailer. Buruma again:
The conservative right (I’m not talking of fascists), traditionally, was not internationalist and certainly not revolutionary. Business, stability, national interests, and political realism (“our bastards”, and so on), were the order of the day. Democracy, to conservative realists, was fine for us but not for strange people with exotic names. It was the left that wanted to change the world, no matter where. Left-wing internationalism did not wish to recognise cultural or national barriers. To them, liberation was a universal project. Yet now that the “Bush-Cheney junta” talks about a democratic revolution, regardless of culture, colour or creed, Gore Vidal claims it is not our business, and others cry “racism”… In the case of Gore Vidal, there has always been an old-fashioned isolationist screaming to be let out of the great man’s bulky frame. But Tariq Ali, and many of his readers, would surely consider themselves to be internationalists. They profess to care about oppressed peoples in faraway countries. That is why they set themselves morally above the right. So why do they appear to be so much keener to denounce the US than to find ways to liberate Iraqis and others from their murderous Fuhrers? And how can anybody, knowing the brutal costs of political violence, especially in poor countries split by religious and ethnic divisions, be so insouciant as to call for more aggression? Perhaps it is a kind of provincialism after all.
Yes, it is provincialism; and self-hatred; and a kind of intellectual blindness. I’m not speaking of legitimate liberal critiques of Bush’s foreign policy. I’m talking about the left’s desire to keep the developing world in thrall to its demons, because they view the West as no better – or worse. It is a form of nihilism, masked as moralism. That’s why so much is at stake in Iraq. It isn’t just the front line in the war on terror; its successful emergence from tyranny is vital if we are to keep the universal human value of freedom alive.
The Dish 