(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
An intellectual front has opened up in the left-wing part of the English-speaking world in recent years. That is, it has been there for a long time, but became evident in its new form sometime after September 11, 2001. Previously, the border between communists and socialists went through a more liberal taping. Today, some liberal and leftist writers, writers, scholars and journalists support the fight against what they perceive as fascist or fascist-like currents in the Arab world, while others see the fight against American imperialism as the most important.
Among the most prominent on the former wing are Christopher Hitchens, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Paul Berman. The latter's book Terror and liberalism came in Norwegian at Dinamo publishing house earlier this year – it was thought-provoking reading. These are flanked by more pure-haired liberals such as Thomas Friedman, Richard Rorty and Michael Ignatieff. In common, they have a fear of Islamic fundamentalism – they understood it as the totalitarian danger of our time, which in turn can justify the use of, among other things, military force in their eyes.
On the other side are people like John Fisk, George Monbiot, John Pilger and Noam Chomsky, flanked by pop and TV stars like Dixie Chicks, Barbra Straisand and Martin Sheen. These believe the liberals are part of an unholy alliance with imperialists and rulers in the west. They themselves are accused of having a unilateral view of international politics and of being unclear about the support of more or less dictatorial regimes.
Here the conflict has been going on for a long time, but now the latter has been assisted by Scott Lucas. With the book The Betrayal of Dissent – Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the new american century he attempts to counter what he perceives as hegemony in newspapers and magazines in the United States. A moral majority view he believes serves war-torn neoconservative forces.
Fraud from the sick bed?
It all begins with the hero of the humanist left – George Orwell. It is to this source that Scott Lucas goes to tear down the ground under the liberal left's view. Orwell – the uncrowned king of the humanist and libertarian left – was not worth the signing journey his books have been through since the author's early death in 1950, Lucas believes. The image of a fearless intellectual in the fight against three evils – imperialism, fascism and communism – which is drawn in everything from books such as 1984, Animal Farm og Homage to Catalonia to actually fight on the ground as a soldier and journalist during the Spanish Civil War, should be adjusted a good deal, he believes. George Orwell has become St. George for the liberal intellectuals, and a number of them use "What would George do?" as a guiding star in political and moral issues, despite the fact that both the time and the battles that must be fought are miles different from what they were during the Cold War, is the argument. The moral purity also disappears, Lucas believes, if one goes closer to Orwell's project and appearance.
From the hospital bed in a sanatorium for tuberculosis, Orwell is said to have, at the very end of his life, reported a total of 135 cultural figures – accused of tampering with communism – to the British intelligence. 38 of them were reportedly still alive in June 2003, which is why the names are still kept hidden by the British government. Exactly who it is, however, is not so important. For as Lucas writes: "The significance of" The List "is not what it says about the 38, but what it offers us about Orwell."
That Orwell, who would have turned one hundred years old last year, in his attack on the totalitarian left with knowledge and will went into the service of the British state is one thing. It turns out, however, that tankene he left behind in the books also had potential for the communist hunters in the US state. U.S. agents attached to a special unit called the Psychological Warfare Workshop are said to have approached Orwell's widow Sonia to obtain the film rights to animal farm shortly after the man's death. It ended with a cinema premiere in 1954 on an animated film produced by CIA contact Louis de Rochemonte. Manuscript help was obtained from the CIA-sponsored American Committee for Cultural Freedom, according to the feature film 1984 from two years later also did. But then: Animal Farm. The price Sonia had set for the rights – it was to be introduced to Clark Gable, something the Americans willingly agreed to.
No angel
But neither the list, nor the fact that Orwell's works proved to be very attractive to the information and cultural work of the anti-communists in the CIA, is enough to explain why Lucas is so concerned with tearing Orwell down from the moral pedestal. The man has been used politically by both the traditional left and the bone-chilling Thatcherism. Two examples of coping: John Pilger – Australian and critic of the neoliberal world order – used Orwell's 1984 in the book New Rulers of the World. Rupert Murdoch's tabloid the Sun reported in 1984: “As 1984 opens, we have been spared the Orwellian nightmare. We have liberty under Margareth Tatcher. We have hope of a better tomorrow. "To clarify Lucas' position, it should be noted here that John Pilger's use of Orwell is followed by this comment:" Even this use of the icon risks confusion and self-destruction. "
So it is not only the political function he plays today, but also the very core of Orwell's and his successors' project Lucas is looking for. In addition to the political support for the anti-communists, he finds ambiguity and inconsistency – not the defense of truth and freedom. The many and varied positions Orwell took in a relatively short time in relation to important contentious issues are important in this respect: “Orwell was far from a constant saint. Over the next five years he would joint he independent Labor Prty only to put it behind him, embrace pacifism only to condemn pacifists as accomplices of Fascism, place hope in enlightened intellectuals only to dismiss them as quislings, raise up the common people only to condemd them as stupid and indolent, and turn former allies into nemeses not only of Orwell but of England. ”
Another list
Orwell's list of the 38 is not the only list that occupies Scott Lucas. According to him, the fact that Christopher Hitchens after 19 September 2001 has hung out "the mad, bad and dangerous" in his columns represents a similar if not worse terror of opinion towards political and intellectual opponents than what Orwell stood for. Hitchens has tried to live up to Orwell's legacy, and is thus the clearest link Lucas could find between Orwell and today's liberal left and the focus on totalitarian tendencies in the Islamic world. Yes, talking about political wavering, Orwell was consistent with what Hitchens is, according to Lucas: “Orwell had positioned himself as a valiant opponent of both would be warriors and pacifists, but he had done so at different points in his career. Hitchens had achieved the impossible by assulting everyone at once. ”
In the aftermath of 11/XNUMX, Hitchens has also been in a heated debate with supporters of the traditional and anti-American left, represented by, among others, Noam Chomsky.
The choice
Orwell made his fundamental decision at the beginning of the Cold War: "If one were compelled to choose between Russia and America… I would always choose America," he wrote. Similarly, the core of the liberal intellectuals' attack on Islamic fundamentalism as well as on the traditional left is: short and society is dictated by religious laws and people in power who invoke divine authority, all Westerners with common sense will choose the former. " There is an intuitive appeal in this.
The problem for Scott Lucas is that liberal intellectuals miss out on nuances and other possible positions. They basically swear by the Bush doctrine "Either you are with us, and you are with the terrorists". Orwell left it "no ground between support of the freedom-loving West and the tyrants of Moscow." The resemblance is striking. It has spawned a laconic comment from Lucas' pen. He believes Orwell and Hitchens have in common that they ridicule and silence the views of others: "They stand on the shoulders of straw men," he writes. Also Paul Berman, who is the most influential of the liberal terrorist opponents in this country so far, gets to avoid: "Christopher Hitchens" the romantic "… Paul Berman" the idealist ", almost all who had written of others in the" Left "as unacceptable for questioning the War on Terror… ”
However, it is a question of whether Scott Lucas here is not affected by his own scourge. Perhaps he mirrors the slogan and claims: "Either you are with us or you are with the imperialists." Islamic fundamentalism is then reduced to a political and social bracket. Or, like "Serbian fascism" during the Kosovo crisis, a rhetorical and ideological tool that can replace the emptiness the red danger left behind after the fall of communism for the liberal intellectuals who have failed the right anti-imperialist line. In any case, it is not always taken seriously as a political and social reality. Shades and alternative positions do not have good conditions within this perspective either.
Whether the difference here is small or large, because it is up to the individual to judge, but one thing is certain: It should be possible to insist on a position that can criticize both fundamentalism within Islam og the conglomerate of business interests and imperial ambitions, which can condemn both terrorist attacks and bombings against civilians in the name of the fight against terrorism. Let's hope the moment when we have to make the final choice never comes.
