From the much-loved, witty and excoriating voice of
journalist Nick Cohen, a powerful and irreverent
dissection of the agonies, idiocies and compromises of
mainstream liberal thought. Nick Cohen comes from the
Left. While growing up, his mother would search the
supermarket shelves for politically reputable citrus
fruit and despair. When, at the age of 13, he found out
that his kind and thoughtful English teacher voted
Conservative, he nearly fell off his chair: 'To be good,
you had to be on the Left.' Today he's no less confused.
When he looks around him, in the aftermath of the
invasion of Iraq, he sees a community of Left-leaning
liberals standing on their heads. Why is it that
apologies for a militant Islam that stands for
everything the liberal-Left is against come from a
section of the Left? After the American and British wars
in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic
cleansers, why were men and women of the Left denying
the existence of Serb concentration camps? Why is
Palestine a cause for the liberal-Left, but not, for
instance, China, the Sudan, Zimbabwe or North Korea?Why
can't those who say they support the Palestinian cause
tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see?
After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington why
were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of
Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a
liberal literary journal as in a neo-Nazi rag? It's easy
to know what the Left is fighting against - the evils of
Bush and corporations - but what and, more to the point,
who are they fighting for? As he tours the follies of
the Left, Nick Cohen asks us to reconsider what it means
to be liberal in this confused and topsy-turvy time.
With the angry satire of Swift, he reclaims the values
of democracy and solidarity that united the movement
against fascism, and asks: What's Left? |
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