NP Left responses "disgraceful" says Hitchens

[jbor]

on 14/10/01 8:39 PM, Phil Wise at philwise at paradise.net.nz wrote:

> Sigh. That may be an accurate characterisation of Hitchens's view, but it
> doesn't make him right (and once again, the example of Hitchens is asserted
> and not demonstrated).  One point to make is that in any movement that has a
> high proportion of idealistic young people among its members, so that it
> will be reasonably easy to find silly statements from some people.  But my
> point in responding in the first place was that Mr Mc's piece was full of
> anti-this bluster, spitefulness, and clearly no dialogue with alternative
> views, since his audience apparently "knows" that the "left" is bankrupt
> without having to be told in what way, exactly.

The "Left consensus" that the article is talking about is against
globalisation and against the military campaign in Afghanistan. These are
the "alternative views" that the article addresses, as clearly stated in the
opening paragraph. The linked interview demonstrates the shift in Hitchens'
position.
 
> The "left bloc" has never responded to anything, as far as I can tell, with
> "if you don't agree, then you're a fascist" rhetoric.

Sometimes it's phrased: "if you're not with us you're agin' us". But it's to
the same purport.

> Maybe some individual
> voices that don't know what they are talking about.

Indeed.

> However, attacks from
> the "right" (and I don't mean you here, I refer to pundits who are
> publishing, and I'll take your word that you're not among any "conservative
> readership") have had a significant minority accusing the "left" and those
> who don't agree of hatred of America or some such, a similar rhetorical
> dishonesty.  It is bullshit, to be frank.

The point I draw from the article, and agree with, is that the Left has
offered no solutions, no practical alternatives, only antagonism and
diatribe.

> But if you said that they hated
> many of America's actions overseas, and that they don't trust the same
> corporations that put their money in after the Government's bulldozed
> striking Tanzanarian miners into a pit to suddenly become the savour of the
> workers and the poor, or after a CIA sponsored massacre of hundreds of
> thousands of Indonesian leftists, then you'd largely be right.  There's a
> huge and multifaceted difference between hating that sort of shit and hating
> "America".  To conflate the two is a cheap shot in this climate.

Isn't this exactly what bin Laden is doing? But while none of this is being
argued, it does strike me that all that the Left seem capable of, as far
you're characterising them here at least, is hate.

Saturday, October 13, 2001
    
OPINION  

The Left's thinkers abandon ship after it collides with reason

By Padraic P. McGuinness

In the wake of the terrorist atrocities in the United States, the crumbling
of the Left consensus continues. Thus while the usual suspects, especially
in the media, heaped blame upon the victim and claimed that fanaticism and
poverty in the Third World were the fault of the US and of globalisation,
there were sufficient voices from independent thinkers who consider
themselves of the Left to show that the centre of the Left consensus cannot
hold - things are falling apart.

[...]

[T]he crumbling of the Left consensus in intellectual terms ... has been
exemplified by the denunciation by Christopher Hitchens, a leading leftist
journalist, of the disgraceful responses to terrorism in Left circles.

[...]

[H]e is prepared to argue his views and does not show the kind of massive
ignorance, dogmatism and disrespect for either evidence or rational argument
which categorises most of the modern Left.

[...]

Full opinion at:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0110/13/opinion/opinion6.html

Interview with Christopher Hitchens in _Reason_ at:

http://reason.com/0111/fe.rs.free.html

best