What's Left?

by Nick Cohen

From the witty and excoriating voice of journalist Nick Cohen, a powerful and irreverent dissection of the agonies, idiocies and compromises of mainstream liberal thought. He comes from the Left. When he was a child, his mother would search supermarket shelves for politically reputable citrus fruit, and despair. Aged 13, when he learned 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 do apologies for a militant Islam standing for everything the liberal-Left is against come from a section of it? After the US/UK wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Milosevic's ethnic cleansers, why were some on 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'd like to see? After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC, why were you as likely to read that a conspiracy of Jews controlled US or UK 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 who are they fighting for? As he tours the follies of the Left, he asks us to reconsider what it means to be liberal today. With the angry satire of Swift, he reclaims the values of democracy and solidarity that united the movement against fascism, asking: What's Left?.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Society, War, Sociology

405 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2007

About the author

Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author, and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and TV critic for Standpoint magazine. He formerly wrote for the London Evening Standard and the New Statesman. Cohen has written four books: Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous (1999), a collection of his journalism; Pretty Straight Guys (2003), a highly critical account of the New Labour project; What's Left? (2007), which he describes as the story of how the liberal left of the 20th century came to support the far right of the 21st; and Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England (2009). The Orwell Prize for political writing shortlisted What's Left? in 2008.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This brave and (for me personally) difficult book begins with the following observation:

On 15 February 2003 about a million liberal-minded people marched through London to oppose the overthrow of a fascist regime. It was the biggest protest in British history. The scene was replicated throughout Europe as millions of liberals marched to oppose the overthrow of a fascist dictator called Saddam Hussain. To state the obvious : aren't liberals supposed to be against fascist dictators?

So Cohen begins the gruesome story of the failure of the Left in Britain, and by extension, the West in general. He pulls few punches and says a lot of unsayable things. For instance:

It isn't at all clear what it means to be on the Left at the moment. I doubt if anyone can tell you what a society significantly more left wing than ours would look like and how its economy and government would work.

Wow. And further :

It is not novel to say that socialism is dead. The argument of this book is that its failure has brought dark liberation to people who consider themselves to be on the liberal-left. It has freed them to go along with any movement, however far to the right it may be, as long as it is against the status quo in general, and specifically, America.

The old saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a profound pernicious and universal belief which works as a political nerve gas. It leads to the embrace of repulsive dictators by the right (Pinochet, Mobutu, Suharto, Saddam, how long have you got) and by the left (Stalin, Mao, Hizbollah, how long have you got). I note that certainly in Britain, one thing that will make you popular is to say that human rights have got out of control and need to be scaled back. Politics has become strange.

One of the obvious tragedies of the 20th century was the utter failure of any alternative to the dog-eat-dog ferocious pitiless cannibalistic forms of organisation we in our anodyne ways describe as capitalism. Sad to say, the main phalanx of opposers of capitalism, the communists, were rapidly exposed as gangsters, grotesque intellectual buffoons who would discuss the subtleties of the theory of surplus value as they ordered another mass grave to be dug.

A SAD COMMUNIST JOKE

Lenin is riding a train through the Soviet Union. The train breaks down. Lenin orders everyone off the train and organises all the passengers including his fellow politburo comrades to push the train down the track until they reach their destination.

Stalin is riding a train through the Soviet Union. The train breaks down. Stalin orders the train driver and his mate to be shot and their families deported to Siberia. The passengers tramp through the snow to their destination. Most of them die.

Brezhnev is riding a train through the Soviet Union. The train breaks down. Brezhnev pulls down the shutter in his compartment and says to his fellow politburo comrades, "Gentlemen, let us assume that the train is still in motion."

BACK TO THE BOOK


Nick Cohen takes those of us who have been part of the British left (that would be me) down many of the twisted roads we stumbled along. Why would a sensible leftie end up saying “We’re all Hizbollah now” or defending the right of jihadis to enter Britain? Well, the Left always starts with a good solid truth. For instance - wealth is unjustly distributed. Inarguable. Or let us take the Palestinians. They were driven out of their own lands between 1946 and 1948. This is surely true – one year they were there, another year they weren’t there. The Left then proceed to wreck their own arguments by applying selective morality to the entire Middle East, so that the crimes and follies of the Palestinians can never be denounced as they are the eternal Victims. Bertrand Russell in the 1940s had already got this phenomenon pegged in a lecture called "The Fallacy of the Superior Virtue of the Oppressed". If this bad thinking isn’t bad enough, the collapse of belief in socialism as a viable alternative drove many intellectuals into the maze of post-modernism, from which various confusions have sprung such as multiculturalism. The rejection of the West as any kind of moral arbiter (how can we white people have the gall to say anything to black people? seems to be the idea) means that most on the left will never confront difficulties like, say, the disappearance of wholesale numbers of Asian girls from British schools when they reach the age of 14, or, say, the apartheid which exists in some Northern British cities like Leeds and Bradford. Because if you do, you're clearly now a right-wing git.

The Left ends up as really good haters - haters of capitalism, haters of the betrayers of socialism and the failures of their own dreams, never further from fulfilment as now, and haters of the status quo.

GREAT DREAMS OF HEAVEN

We can see the great dream of the Left when we observe the economic anarchy of the present time. If socialism failed, what then must we say about capitalism? Governments, not excluding the one in Washington, are like boats tossed about in a storm. No one is in control, no one knows what will happen. And this was exactly the great dream of the left – to take control of all this human madness - since we are not talking about tsunamis caused by the shifting of techtonic plates here, we're talking about tsunamis of credit risk, created by human beings; but imagine being able to still all these storms, to get control and to begin to do good where good is needed - to distribute food and water where it was needed, to save the destitute, to house the homeless, to pluck the patie de foie gras from the fingers of the billionaire; and this control never more needed than now as we begin to understand the rigours we or our children will face from dwindling resources and climate change, which lie waiting even if we The west takes over every last oil-producing country.

In greater detail, with fine controlled fury, Nick Cohen demonstrates these themes, so his book kind of chooses its own audience. Tories and Republicans won’t want to know because they thought we were deluded fools to begin with. Those on the left who do not recognise reality will steer clear too, except to heap abuse on Cohen’s head (one fellow journalist after reading this book in manuscript said to Cohen “you won’t believe the antisemitism you’re going to experience now” – Cohen dismissed the comment with “People aren’t like that anymore” and then he opened his email after the book was published – “I didn’t believe the antisemitism I was experiencing”). That leaves me then. It was a painful look in the mirror.

I rewrote this review because it didn't make too much sense to begin with and I still don't think it does. Nick Cohen helped me throw out a lot of stuff, and now I really don't know what's left.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was thrilled to read this book, discovering there are writers who feel like me about the moral rottenness of the post-modern left. I supported the war by President Bush and Minister Blair to free the Iraqi people from the genocidal Saddam Hussein's blood-soaked tyranny, a cruel despot who had killed with chemical weapons thousands of Kurds and Shia Marsh Arabs. I was incredulous and angry that millions marched around the world to protect this modern day Hitler claiming they were the custodians of human rights and peace-how are marches in favour of a genocidal Fascist tyrant peace marches? as they called them.
Now I am not in my own estimation a conservative and support rather the values of the old social democrats and social liberals of the 50s, 60s and 70s such as Harold Wilson and the old Labour Party and John F Kennedy and Henry Scoop Jackson and the creators of the social market economy such as Ludwig Erhardt in West Germany. I still believe in a more caring economy and reject free market laissez faire libertarian extremism. At the same time I despise the hypocrisy and nihlism of the post modern left which dont care about class equity in it's real sense, or human rights or gender rights. but simply support anyhting nihilistic and anti-Western Cohen explains in this book.

The leftists who opposed the Iraq War simply refused to talk to the actual Iraqis as the author illustrates, those who suffered, and were jailed and tortured and saw their friends and family murdered by the Baathist regime. After the war these same leftists refused to help build a new democratic Iraq or to have anything to do with Iraqis building their new country. They refused to speak out against the Baathist and Al Qaeda terrorists who were murdering tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians after the liberation of Iraq. Indeed the likes of the loathsome Noam Chomsky and the vile Michael Moore praised these terrorists , Moore comparing them to America's founding fathers and the minute-men of the American War of Independence. "They didnt think again when thousands of Iraqis were murdered by insurgents from the Baath Party which wanted to re-establish the dictatorship or from Al Qaeda who wanted godly global empire to repress the rights of democrats , the independent minded , women and homosexuals " Cohen points out "They didn't think against when Iraqis defied the death threats and went to vote on new constitutions and governments. Eventually I grew tired of waiting for a change that was never going to come and to find out what had happened to a left whose benevolence I had taken for granted".

This book is Nick Cohen's erudite, well researched, witty and penetratingly insightful work and a MUST READ for anyone who wants to understand the anomaly of the modern left and human rights.
He asks how the progressive left and liberals can align themselves with a far right Fascist movement , the Islamists who execute thousands of women for 'sexual immorality' as well as homosexuals, who have forced theocratic dictatorships on their people and run their country as massive concentration camps. Who allow no basic freedoms or human rights. And why 'progressives' and leftists enthusiastically and loudly condemn Israel with a passionate hatred , but not of those suffering under the regimes of China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Syria to name a few.
They refer to those who oppose Fascism such as the dissidents against Saddam or against the regimes of Iran or Syria as 'quislings'. The author points out the sick irony in this when quisling collaborated with Fascism but nthose the pro-Islamist left are demonizing are those fighting against Fascism. they cannot bring themselves to recognize that people with brown skins are as capable of people with white skins of forming fascist movements and murdering others.
Of course there has always been a double standard on most of the left with regards in the 70s and 80s for example to condemn Apartheid
South Africa, Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal and the Greece and Argentina ruled by military juntas, while remaining silent about massive atrocities by countries in the Communist bloc and the Third World. but at least the left of yesteryear stood for a system , no matter how flawed and had an alternative society-socialism or Marxism-that they wanted to build. The left of today have no alternative vision they believe in except to destroy Western civilization and everything Judeo-Christian.

As a result they will throw their support with enthusiasm behind ANY terrorist organization or mass murdering tyranny that is anti-Western and anti-Israel no matter how ruthless including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist regimes of Iran and Sudan, Red China, North Korea and Mugabe's Zimbabwe with no compassion or even a passing thought for its victims who they demonize and whose suffering they sweep under the carpet. In fact the worse the excesses of these regimes the more vigorously the modern left support them!
There is simply no depths to which these regimes can sink which the modern left can bring itself to condemn.

While the old left had some virtues such as supporting economic and gender equality, now their programme is one of total nihilism as Cohen illustrates whereby they 'could break the old taboos that had stopped them supporting the ideas and movements of the extreme right and endorse any foreign force as long as it was an enemy of Western democracy".

They oppose the white far right movements of Europe but reject the idea that Fascists with brown skins can exist and therefore embrace the Fascist regimes of Islamic and Third world countries as progressive providing they are anti-Western and anti-Israel.
He also completely disproves and deflates the fashionable post-modern theory (one of my personal bugbears) that people's hatred is always greater for the alien other (again the people accused of this prejudice are always Western or Israeli) £ More often people hate what they know" he explains "British left-wingers were likely to have a deepr loathing for Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il because they have known them all their lives..."
"Because of their parochialism however the anti-globalizers could not see large parts of the planet. Communist China should have been a nightmare for the principled left but because it was not a Western power,leftists didnt storm Chinese embassies as the one-party state sent the leaders of free trade unions to be 'reformed' through Labour, while giving corporations the freedom to exploit workers that they could never enjoy in the allegedly 'capitalist' West. nor was the movement's commitment to ending poverty as high minded as it seemed. It's supporters could think only of the 'capitalism' of the World Trade Organization and the 'International Monetary Fund' They sobbed and sighed for Africa and then shamefully refused to demonstrate against the massacre of the Islamist Sudanese government or the rape of Zimbabwe by Robert Mugabe".

In fact they object to these people being freed and I was shocked to see the demonic Workers World Party of North America refer to the independence of South Sudan, that has lost over a million of it's people to Arab genocide, as a shameful colonialist plot to 'balkanize Sudan'.

He refers to the contempt of the Leftwing elites for Britain's white working class who the middle class left loathe for not having supported their revolution and adopted 'reactionary' values. he privileged left and liberal elite are no longer interested in class equity or the basic rights of the British working class but only in 'non racism' which is a farcical label for favouring the third world exotic brown immigrants and persecuting and demonizing the local white working class who they label as chavs-not worthy in the eyes of the left/liberal toffs of having their suffering, feelings or rights considered. The British working class suffered as much in the Industrial Revolution as the Blacks did under slavery but are still suffering with the privileged elite classes using pc propaganda and favouring of the third world exotic browns against them.
Britain's indigenous working classes are put last in line for employment, council housing, health care, education and bank loans in favour of the exotic Third world immigrants (especially Muslims) favoured by the pc left elites.
. Those who are flabbergasted at discrimination based on race, gender, sexuality of religion (unless of course you attack Jews for being 'Zionists' or attack Israelis-that is acceptable among the chattering classes) think nothing of attacking the British working class and lumpenproletriat as chavs. This also translates to a politically correct anti-white racism. White British young people who suffer as a result of social problems such as juvenile crime, drug addiction , and teenage pregnancy, as well as child prostitution, and come from broken homes no longer elicit sympathy from the liberal and left elites who consider the white underclass the lowest of the low, not worth saving or empathizing with, whereas they would have the utmost sympathy and support for Third world immigrant youth under the same circumstances.
The liberal and left elites now use the race card against he white under classes and point out since the latter are supposedly 'racist' and 'bigoted' they must be punished for this and are the unworthy poor as compared to the impoverished people of colour who are deemed worthy of empathy and upliftment.
This amounts to an inverse racism whereby the classes that have so long suffered since the Industrial Revolution and who came under sustained attack under Thatcher are now being made victims again at the hands of the leftist and liberal elites now in charge of Britain, including the media, local councils and the courts. I would have preferred the author to cover this prejudice by the British middle class left in more detail as , in addition to my anger at leftwing racism and genocidal loathing of Israel and everything that that entails, is one of my personal blood boilers. Therefore the author is not quite correct when he says that middle class British leftwing intellectuals would not tolerate the abuses of women they condone by their silence in Islamic countries where the victims white and in the West as today these very people protect Muslims who rape white children in Britain and force them into prostitution.

He also discusses the hatred of Israel by the post modern left who because Israel is a Western democracy they join the Islamists in denouncing Israel as the world's worst human rights abuser and responsible for all the problems of the world. He ties this in with insane anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.
This book is highly recommended as a penetrating analysis of modern politics, an absolute must read. Other works which expalint eh demonic and seemingly insane support of the left for the Islamic far right are Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror and World Turned Upside Down.

Merged review:

I was thrilled to read this book, discovering there are writers who feel like me about the moral rottenness of the post-modern left. I supported the war by President Bush and Minister Blair to free the Iraqi people from the genocidal Saddam Hussein's blood-soaked tyranny, a cruel despot who had killed with chemical weapons thousands of Kurds and Shia Marsh Arabs. I was incredulous and angry that millions marched around the world to protect this modern day Hitler claiming they were the custodians of human rights and peace-how are marches in favour of a genocidal Fascist tyrant peace marches? as they called them.
Now I am not in my own estimation a conservative and support rather the values of the old social democrats and social liberals of the 50s, 60s and 70s such as Harold Wilson and the old Labour Party and John F Kennedy and Henry Scoop Jackson and the creators of the social market economy such as Ludwig Erhardt in West Germany. I still believe in a more caring economy and reject free market laissez faire libertarian extremism. At the same time I despise the hypocrisy and nihlism of the post modern left which dont care about class equity in it's real sense, or human rights or gender rights. but simply support anyhting nihilistic and anti-Western Cohen explains in this book.

The leftists who opposed the Iraq War simply refused to talk to the actual Iraqis as the author illustrates, those who suffered, and were jailed and tortured and saw their friends and family murdered by the Baathist regime. After the war these same leftists refused to help build a new democratic Iraq or to have anything to do with Iraqis building their new country. They refused to speak out against the Baathist and Al Qaeda terrorists who were murdering tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians after the liberation of Iraq. Indeed the likes of the loathsome Noam Chomsky and the vile Michael Moore praised these terrorists , Moore comparing them to America's founding fathers and the minute-men of the American War of Independence. "They didnt think again when thousands of Iraqis were murdered by insurgents from the Baath Party which wanted to re-establish the dictatorship or from Al Qaeda who wanted godly global empire to repress the rights of democrats , the independent minded , women and homosexuals " Cohen points out "They didn't think against when Iraqis defied the death threats and went to vote on new constitutions and governments. Eventually I grew tired of waiting for a change that was never going to come and to find out what had happened to a left whose benevolence I had taken for granted".

This book is Nick Cohen's erudite, well researched, witty and penetratingly insightful work and a MUST READ for anyone who wants to understand the anomaly of the modern left and human rights.
He asks how the progressive left and liberals can align themselves with a far right Fascist movement , the Islamists who execute thousands of women for 'sexual immorality' as well as homosexuals, who have forced theocratic dictatorships on their people and run their country as massive concentration camps. Who allow no basic freedoms or human rights. And why 'progressives' and leftists enthusiastically and loudly condemn Israel with a passionate hatred , but not of those suffering under the regimes of China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Syria to name a few.
They refer to those who oppose Fascism such as the dissidents against Saddam or against the regimes of Iran or Syria as 'quislings'. The author points out the sick irony in this when quisling collaborated with Fascism but nthose the pro-Islamist left are demonizing are those fighting against Fascism. they cannot bring themselves to recognize that people with brown skins are as capable of people with white skins of forming fascist movements and murdering others.
Of course there has always been a double standard on most of the left with regards in the 70s and 80s for example to condemn Apartheid
South Africa, Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal and the Greece and Argentina ruled by military juntas, while remaining silent about massive atrocities by countries in the Communist bloc and the Third World. but at least the left of yesteryear stood for a system , no matter how flawed and had an alternative society-socialism or Marxism-that they wanted to build. The left of today have no alternative vision they believe in except to destroy Western civilization and everything Judeo-Christian.

As a result they will throw their support with enthusiasm behind ANY terrorist organization or mass murdering tyranny that is anti-Western and anti-Israel no matter how ruthless including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist regimes of Iran and Sudan, Red China, North Korea and Mugabe's Zimbabwe with no compassion or even a passing thought for its victims who they demonize and whose suffering they sweep under the carpet. In fact the worse the excesses of these regimes the more vigorously the modern left support them!
There is simply no depths to which these regimes can sink which the modern left can bring itself to condemn.

While the old left had some virtues such as supporting economic and gender equality, now their programme is one of total nihilism as Cohen illustrates whereby they 'could break the old taboos that had stopped them supporting the ideas and movements of the extreme right and endorse any foreign force as long as it was an enemy of Western democracy".

They oppose the white far right movements of Europe but reject the idea that Fascists with brown skins can exist and therefore embrace the Fascist regimes of Islamic and Third world countries as progressive providing they are anti-Western and anti-Israel.
He also completely disproves and deflates the fashionable post-modern theory (one of my personal bugbears) that people's hatred is always greater for the alien other (again the people accused of this prejudice are always Western or Israeli) £ More often people hate what they know" he explains "British left-wingers were likely to have a deepr loathing for Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong-Il because they have known them all their lives..."
"Because of their parochialism however the anti-globalizers could not see large parts of the planet. Communist China should have been a nightmare for the principled left but because it was not a Western power,leftists didnt storm Chinese embassies as the one-party state sent the leaders of free trade unions to be 'reformed' through Labour, while giving corporations the freedom to exploit workers that they could never enjoy in the allegedly 'capitalist' West. nor was the movement's commitment to ending poverty as high minded as it seemed. It's supporters could think only of the 'capitalism' of the World Trade Organization and the 'International Monetary Fund' They sobbed and sighed for Africa and then shamefully refused to demonstrate against the massacre of the Islamist Sudanese government or the rape of Zimbabwe by Robert Mugabe".

In fact they object to these people being freed and I was shocked to see the demonic Workers World Party of North America refer to the independence of South Sudan, that has lost over a million of it's people to Arab genocide, as a shameful colonialist plot to 'balkanize Sudan'.

He refers to the contempt of the Leftwing elites for Britain's white working class who the middle class left loathe for not having supported their revolution and adopted 'reactionary' values. he privileged left and liberal elite are no longer interested in class equity or the basic rights of the British working class but only in 'non racism' which is a farcical label for favouring the third world exotic brown immigrants and persecuting and demonizing the local white working class who they label as chavs-not worthy in the eyes of the left/liberal toffs of having their suffering, feelings or rights considered. The British working class suffered as much in the Industrial Revolution as the Blacks did under slavery but are still suffering with the privileged elite classes using pc propaganda and favouring of the third world exotic browns against them.
Britain's indigenous working classes are put last in line for employment, council housing, health care, education and bank loans in favour of the exotic Third world immigrants (especially Muslims) favoured by the pc left elites.
. Those who are flabbergasted at discrimination based on race, gender, sexuality of religion (unless of course you attack Jews for being 'Zionists' or attack Israelis-that is acceptable among the chattering classes) think nothing of attacking the British working class and lumpenproletriat as chavs. This also translates to a politically correct anti-white racism. White British young people who suffer as a resu

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

In What's Left, Nick Cohen takes the view that in the early twenty-first century 'the left' has lost its way. The main reason behind this, he argues, is that unbridled capitalism has won, market economies have proved themselves to be the best form of economic government and 'the left' is now consumed with hatred and bitterness over the death of socialism. As a reaction to this, 'the left' has now reshaped itself as fundamentally anti-American. Anything that America supports 'the left' must hate and this, he concludes, is what led to the mass opposition to the second Gulf war in 2003.

Cohen embellishes this theory by picking out 'lefties' whose actions seem to back up his theories and presenting them as representatives of everyone who ever expressed doubts about the Iraq War. It is these massive generalisations that stretch Cohen's argument to the very limits of credibility – George Galloway's visit to Iraq to kiss the shoes of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s is taken as irrefutable proof of millions of anti-war activists' support for the Baathist regime. For Cohen, those who oppose the war are not anti-war, anti-death, anti-use of chemical weapons, they are pro-fascist, they “oppose the toppling of a fascist regime”, they are “apologists” for the barbarism of the Saddam years.

This is Cohen's position and it's a very black and white one, not dissimilar from the “with us or against us” rhetoric of the Bush doctrine. If you oppose Saddam then you support his removal by any means possible, if you don't agree with the war then it means you tacitly support Saddam and his brutal oppression of the Iraqi population. This, personally speaking, is the problem I have with vociferous pro-war voices such as Cohen and Christopher Hitchens. They talk with immense power and passion about the suffering of Iraqis under Saddam but turn a blind eye to the suffering of Iraqis post-2003, as if it is somehow morally better for them to be bombed and napalmed by American and British troops in a quest to topple Saddam, than it is for the same events to happen under the Baathists.

Not one word of the 382 pages of What's Left is given over to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died as a result of the Western invasion. For a book that claims to be so appalled about the murder of Iraqis, this is a very major oversight. Someone reading the book in 100 years time, with no prior knowledge of the war, would be forgiven for thinking that British and American troops merely parachuted into Saddam's palace in 2003, grabbed the tyrant and were on their way again without a drop of blood being spilt, all the while being booed at home by a chorus of 'lefties' with a soft spot for totalitarianism.

At no point in the book is the opposition to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the course of removing Saddam ever mentioned as a legitimate reason for opposing war. Instead, the only conclusion deemed possible is that anti-war protesters are motivated only by hatred of America and everything that it does.

Similarly narrow conclusions are drawn about Islamist terrorism. Islamists kill because they are fascists and therefore hate everyone, to attribute any deeper meaning outside of this vacuum is to make apologies for their actions, according to Cohen. He dismisses claims that the Madrid train bombings were motivated by the Iraq war by reasoning that if that was the case then the bombers would have targeted government buildings instead of civilians.

Cohen's argument does not confine itself to Iraq, however. Along the way there are some baffling diversions that take in the British Trotskyite Gerry Healy, pre-World War Two appeasers of Nazi Germany and an unconvincing section that attributes a common intellectual snobbery and bloody-minded refusal to admit wrong-headedness to unlikely bedfellows Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind and Noam Chomsky.

At times it can feel as though Cohen's writing is driven by an intense irritation towards left-leaning intellectuals. Nowhere is this more present than in the dismissive way he handles any women offering an opinion he doesn't agree with. Cohen gives a certain amount of leeway to male 'lefties' such as Chomsky, even though he disagrees with them, but female left-wing voices are consistently dismissed throughout the book as intellectual inferiors.

For instance, Naomi Klein's criticism of the advertising world creeping into every public space possible in No Logo is dismissed because she is too silly to realise it doesn't matter. “The idea that, with the exception of impressionable children, most self-confident citizens in a free society can cope with advertising was beyond her” Cohen sneers.

Elsewhere, when Cambridge don Mary Beard tries to find reason behind terrorist attacks deeper than Cohen's analysis of 'killing people is what fascists do', she is characterised as being “incapable of grasping that people with brown skin were as capable as people with white skin of forming a fascistic movement and murdering and oppressing others”.

Similarly, Cohen appears to bare an intense dislike for Virginia Woolf that, in my opinion, borders on the irrelevant in the context of his argument, but is heartily pursued nonetheless. An observation made by Woolf about the “sordid” drunks she saw on Armistice Day in 1918 which made her “hopeless of the human race”, and another about working class people being uneasy over Woolf's female friend smoking a pipe are, again, broadened out, generalised and presented as proof that the intellectual left has always treated the working classes with disdain.

Woolf crops up again and again throughout the book, at one point Cohen asserts “if she were alive today she would be comparing America to Nazi Germany on Radio 4 and anti-terror laws to Sharia in her column in the Independent”. Cohen's image of Woolf as a hysterical left-wing over-reactionary is repeated later on when he describes her “bursting into tears” and being unable to “calm down” when Ernest Bevin accuses George Lansbury of betraying the Labour NEC at a party conference in 1935. This bizarre, unattributed anecdote seems to serve no purpose other than to demonstrate the author's dislike of Virginia Woolf and further show that, whereas Cohen treats his male intellectual targets with a grudging respect,their female counterparts are subject to mocking derision and depicted as silly irrational women.

Such is the level of debate throughout the book. If you were being generous you may say that Cohen has chosen too big a target. If he were more honest, he might have produced a book called 'Lefties Who Annoy Me' where these gripes with Woolf, Klein, Chomsky, Galloway et al, would have fit more neatly. As it is, by trying to create a one-size-fits-all theory and tar every single member of 'the left' as bitter anti-American losers, so utterly defeated by capitalist democracy that they would rather make apologies for fascism than face up to reality, he has produced a book that is unconvincing at best, insulting at worst.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Message for You Nicky

Below is a blog I wrote in February, 2007 in response to the publication of extracts from the book in the Murdoch press.

Guardian or Turncoat?

It's been both amusing and thought-provoking to read extracts from "What's Left? How the Liberals Lost Their Way", by Nick Cohen.
To be honest, I can't understand what his point is from the extracts that I've seen.
I assume he is saying that Western left-liberals have so disappointed and embarrassed him, that he's going to cease being a left-liberal himself.
I have to assume that he was once a left-liberal and now he is not.
There's no attempt in the extracts to salvage some personal left-liberal stance or to espouse an alternative left-liberal vision.
Instead, he seems to relish the experience of growing up and going over to the other (dark) side.
All sides of politics revel in the presence of an opponent who turns, even if it happens late in life.
Obviously, Conservatism will embrace Nick Cohen and publish his book and make him wealthy and important. Or presumably so he hopes.

Cohen's Arguments with the Left

So, what is the left-liberal philosophy he objects to?
Is it a reasonable objection?
What is to be done?
The extract is one great howl. But as far as I can make out, these are the strands of his argument:

·The human rights conventions and international criminal courts with which liberals sought to bind states offered unprecedented protection against crimes great and small.

·As democracy spread to South America and Asia, it seemed reasonable to believe that high standards of justice, which would have been impossible while the European empires and totalitarian systems of communism and fascism were alive, would become global norms.

·When asked why they…were opposing the war against Iraq, the liberal anti-war marchers protested that they didn't support totalitarianism and wanted nothing more than to uphold these exacting standards.

·They opposed George W. Bush and Tony Blair because they didn't believe that Saddam posed an imminent threat and they feared an upsurge in al-Qa'ida violence when the fighting began.

·They worried about how lopsided and dangerous a world with only one superpower would become when that superpower resorted to force without the support of a clear majority of the democratic nations.

·Saddam was against everything represented by Amnesty International and all the other admirable nongovernmental organisations. He was an embodiment of the mass terror and racism of the 20th century which they said they wanted to escape.

·When a war to overthrow him came, the liberals had two choices (assuming they were never going to support the war in the circumstances).

·The first was to oppose the war, remain hypercritical of aspects of the Bush administration's policy, but support Iraqis as they struggled to establish a democracy.

·The second choice for the liberals was to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. To look at the Iraqi civilians and the British and American troops who were dying in a war whose central premise had proved to be false, and to go berserk; to allow justifiable anger to propel them into "binges of posturing and ultra-radicalism" as the 1960s' liberals had done when they went off the rails.

·They would have to pretend that "the United States was the problem and Iraq was its problem".

·The liberal left had the power to deny America moral legitimacy by saying the war was "illegal".

·Logically, they should then have followed through and demanded that the Americans release Saddam from prison and restore him to the presidency that the invading forces had "illegally" stolen from him.

·The push for a democratic Iraq had American military and financial power behind it, but liberals the world over denied it moral support and legitimacy, which matter more.

·In the eyes of liberal opinion, the millions of Iraqis who voted for a new government were little better than the receivers of stolen goods.

·The idea that liberalism imposed the obligation to support others who shared liberal values was as beyond most liberals as it was beyond most of those who called themselves socialists.

·The liberals were unable and unwilling to find a way to oppose Bush while retaining (or discovering) the smallest concern for the victims of fascism.

·The refusal to think about a middle course sent the liberal organisations with the most to lose from a collapse of faith in universal human rights spinning off into the wasteland of moral relativism.

·They pretended that both sides were equally bad and the US and Britain were moral equivalents of totalitarian movements and states.

·In the liberal and social democratic movements of Europe, fear led to denial, as it did in the '30s, and every upsurge of Islamism was blamed on the root cause of Western provocation.

·As far as the Europeans were concerned, the unnecessary war had brought death into the Paradise of Fortress Europe, and that was the end of it.

Alternative Responses to the War in Iraq

It's interesting that Cohen never actually states that the left-liberals should have supported the war.
They only have two choices:

·To oppose the war, but support the efforts of Iraqis to establish democracy; and

·To go berserk.

Naturally, he argues that they chose the latter.
He complains that, by attacking Bush and his war, they appeased Saddam.
Instead, he suggests that they should "accept" the war and support the efforts to establish democracy.
In a way, he thinks it would have been better to attack Saddam and appease Bush. Presumably because Bush is one of us.

Democracy and the Rule of Law

At the heart of this debate is a conflict between two values: democracy and the rule of law.
By the rule of law, I mean the institutions that have been established to achieve justice and avoid or resolve conflict between nations and between nations and their peoples.
Within the rule of law, I include the United Nations and international law.
It seems that Cohen's main gripe is that, when faced with a choice between the two values, the left chose the rule of law.
This doesn't mean that they condoned what Saddam was doing.
It just means that they considered that there was a better way to deal with it than starting a war without the sanction of the UN.

Justifying the War

Remember that at the time the stated reason for the war was not "regime change" but self-defence against "weapons of mass destruction".
There was no suggestion that the establishment of democracy was the motive behind the war.
This justification only arose when it became clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction.
Regime change and the establishment of democracy was a rationalisation for a war that couldn't be reversed.
Now, in other words, the end was supposed to justify the means.

Restraints on War

I think this is what motivates the left (to the extent that there is any one view).
If the establishment of democracy had been advanced as a legitimate reason for starting a war (without the sanction of the UN), nobody in the international community would have supported it.
It would have expressly contravened international law and the UN Charter, which restricts territorial aggression to self-defence.
Perhaps, the lack of support in the UN for some sort of action against Saddam would have maintained the status quo, no matter how oppressive it might have been.
Perhaps, the UN might have acted, if a majority of members thought there was no reasonable alternative.
However, all political parties have to recognise that there are restraints on the right to start a war against another nation, no matter how good the cause or how undemocratic the nation is.

Recognising Your Own Powerlessness

Here, the plight the left finds itself in is that it has been forced to recognise its own powerlessness: it opposes the conduct of an oppressive regime, it monitors it and reports it, but ultimately it cannot overturn the government and establish a new order, except through UN action or democratic action from within the nation.
Sometimes we just have to accept our own powerlessness, no matter how offensive our opponent is, at least until it attacks us or self-defence is justified.
Unfortunately, this has been the plight of social democrats for decades.
Unless they could overturn oppression through democratic means, they had to put up, even if they did not shut up.

Embracing Violence as a Means to a Political End

The only alternative was revolution, which communism advocated, but social democracy opposed.
Communism endorsed the use of force and disobedience to the rule of law in the name of a higher cause: communism.
Bush does the same in the name of the higher cause of democracy.
Cohen seems to accuse the left of siding with totalitarianism or fascism. However, it depends on how you define fascism.
You have to wonder whether fascism is really defined by the state's attitude to the use of force, whether internally or externally.
It's this dilemma, this choice between two supreme but conflicting values, which has created the plight that the left finds itself in.
The dilemma didn't present itself for a government that was determined to go to war, with or without the sanction of the UN.
The Bush government was driven by pragmatism, not niceties or values.

Bush's National Security Policy

OK, this is not totally true when it comes to values.
George Bush's National Security Policy from 2002 is enlightening.
Here are ten points that summarise it:

1.There is a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise;

2.The values of freedom are right and true for every person in every society;

3.The duty of protecting these values against the enemies is the common calling of freedom-loving people across the globe and across the ages;

4.The US should use its unparallelled military strength and great economic influence to create a balance of power that favours human freedom and conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty;

5.The US should defend the peace by fighting terrorists and tyrants;

6.The US should preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers;

7.The US should extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent;

8.The US should actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world;

9.The US should hold to account all nations that are compromised by terror (including those who harbor terrorists), because the allies of terror are the enemies of civilisation;

10.As a matter of common sense and self-defence, the US should act against emerging threats before they are fully formed.

Using Violence to Promote Freedom, Democracy and Free Enterprise

These points leave no doubt that Bush regards it as his right and obligation to use its "unparallelled military strength and great economic influence" to promote freedom, democracy and free enterprise.
There is no implication that this right is subject to any greater authority or principle.
The US is to be its own judge, jury and executioner.
You can see why, for the left to attack Saddam and appease Bush, it believes that it will undermine the rule of law in favour of the unilateral right to exercise force in the promotion of US values.
This leaves the left powerless in the face of "unparallelled military strength and great economic influence" and a President who has shown he is prepared to exercise it.
Manouvred into a corner, it's no wonder that some on the left went "berserk".

Waiting for the Judgement of History

Too powerless to achieve anything concrete, they could only hope that time and history vindicated them.
Ironically, they have to wait out two four year terms to see how US democracy will deal with Bush.
The President won't leave the scene with his tail between his legs, and the Conservatives will be there to sing his fanfare.
Now it seems that Cohen will be there as well.
Given the choice between the rule of law and "unparallelled military strength and great economic influence", he has chosen the latter.
He has elected to be pragmatic rather than principled and patient, and now, like the left he attacks, he has to live with his choice.
Perhaps, this is why I couldn't work out what he believes in any more.
Unless the highest value for him is now pragmatism.

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nick Cohen evinces the perspectives of Christopher Hitchens without his skill as a writer. While Hitchens primarily writes with a focus on the United States, his current residence, Cohen works primarily from the British standpoint.

Briefly stated, Cohen'a argument is that some persons and groups identified with liberalism and the left seem to have moved towards agreement with some persons and groups on the right over the last decade or so, particularly as regards foreign policy matters and especially as regards the Middle East and fundamentalist Islamicist movements. The fields of their agreement are primarily in terms of effectively opposing both political and economic democracy as well as traditional civil liberties--at least so far as "others" are concerned. In terms of contemporary events, this effective opposition is primarily directed towards the democratization and liberation of the peoples of Iraq. Cohen, like Hitchens, critically supports the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

Other than naming some names, he hardly makes a case for his broad generalizations about the left. His arguments are anecdotal. No sociological studies are cited to support them. While his points about some few particular persons and groups may be correct and are, in fact, substantiated, their extension to vague movements is dubious.

Other than giving me some more sense of how politics looks from a British perspective, I found this book useful only in so far as it made me think about the ethics of intervention beyond the bounds of community, convention and law. Certainly, the invasion of Iraq was illegal under the U.N. Charter and, so, under U.S. law. Cohen and I are in agreement that the legalistic pretexts for it were, at best, mistaken. But, although he doesn't mention it, mightn't the principles of nonintervention maintained by international law be themselves open to reconsideration given the changed geopolitical circumstances since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact? I think so. Next, of course, is the question of legitimate agency. What agent ought have the right to make a decision for intervention, under what conditions and by what means to implement it? Here, again, he does not discuss the issue which I think would have to entail some reconsideration of a United Nations organization. Instead, he simply argues for the principle of intervention in extreme cases (the definition of extremity not being presented) and then more-or-less applauds the U.S.A. and U.K. for having intervened in Iraq. Here I am not prepared to agree, not having much faith in the humanity of U.S. motives in the more muscular aspects of its foreign policy.

Where I do agree and where I do appreciate having his reminders is in his repeated emphasis on the moral equality, the equal value, of every person on the planet. Unlike him, however, I do not imagine that a general principle, such as liberty, is clearly the same for all persons. Should all cultures allow breast feeding in public, circumcision of infant males, consensual sex at eighteen, drinking at twenty-one, supreme executive power at thirty-five? Should all cultures allow nudism, the spanking of children, private ownership of one or two ton internal combustion vehicles, private ownership of automatic weapons, first cousin marriage, heroin use, cocaine use? What does he mean by "liberty" anyway? Should its rights and limits be set by democratic decision-making as he suggests should have happened as regards abortion rights in the United States?--only by democratic decision-making? And what does he mean by "democracy" when he allows that appellation to the United States of America's "two-party system" with its very restrictive ballot access laws and does not allow it to Iran which has its own, different ways of restricting ballot access, but otherwise "free" elections?

In sum, What's Left? is little more than an extended opinion piece. It raises some important and interesting points, but gives little evidence of much preparation.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

For some years now Nick Cohen has been tracking the troubling rise of a breed of notionally left leaning people, harbouring views which are incoherent and sit somewhere on the spectrum between offensive and repulsive. His Observer column has articulated this phenomenon more eloquently than I could hope to. Many is the article I have read and thought "that neatly encapsulates my own beliefs." Except whenever I try to express the viewpoint it comes out as "Nnngh", whereas Cohen has the gift of concisely summarising things a little more fluently than that.

The book brings together different, related strands of his newspaper articles and develops them in to a consistent, reasoned line of argument. The author manages to restrain himself from the temptation of lapsing in to polemical rants. The result is a demolition job of right on lefties.

For me, the most interesting point raised in the book is the suggestion that there may be some moral dilemmas where there is no right action: whatever you do or don't do will be wrong. Not perhaps novel. The phrase "you're damned if you do, damned if you don't" is a rather flippant summary of that philosophy. But philosophy proper, at least from my dim and distant recollection, is quite thin on the ground when it comes to this notion. Ethics is all about absolute truths which is fine on paper. However, when it comes to deciding whether to intervene in a foreign country or leave a tyrant to subjugate his people perhaps the right answer is that there is no right answer. This might explain why both impassioned poles of the debate can snipe away at each other all decade long without getting any closer to agreement. Or even understanding the other side of the argument.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-blowing! What’s Left is a scathing criticism of today’s far left, the growing and increasingly mainstream faction of political activists who have gone so far left to come full circle and end up back on the right, supporting and apologizing for fascist regimes or any policy, individual or fanaticism as long as it is anti-Democratic and specifically anti-American. As someone with a strong liberal, left-wing identity (although I’ve never been politically active, just had lots of (in hindsight, uninformed) opinions), I instantly identified with this book and its basic thesis. For instance:
-On Moynihan’s Law: As an Israeli Jew, when I read this following section, it was like a light bulb went on over my head. I’ve been perplexed by this for years – how Israel can constantly be called out for human rights abuses in total disproportion to their magnitude and frequency, while the world stays overwhelmingly silent about many worse perpetrators.
“Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, came up with ‘Moynihan’s Law’ to encapsulate the distorted vision that follows. It holds that the number of complaints about a nation’s violation of human rights is in inverse proportion to its actual violation of them. To put it another way, you can find out what is happening in America’s prison cells in Guantanamo Bay if you work very hard, but not in Kim Il-Sung’s prison cells in Pyongyang.” P.40

-On supporting anti-Western fascists and mainstream anti-Americanism:
“Leftish intellectuals said the attacks were really about Palestine, although none of the hijackers was Palestinian, or an inchoate protest against global capitalism, even though al-Qaeda received the petro-dollars of Saudi plutocrats. All shared an instant reaction to the 9/11 atrocities that they must have been the fault of the United States or the West.” P.275
“Sexist judges used to say that women who went out in mini-skirts were ‘asking for it.’ Their provocative dress was the ‘root cause’ of their rape. So it was with the intellectual left after 9/11. We ‘had it coming’; we were the root cause of our own murder. In mitigation, you could say that if women wore veils or never went out then the incidence of rape would fall. Equally if Western powers had left East Timor under Indonesian rule, promised not to oppose Islamists if they attempted to take over Saudi Arabia or any other state, ended their efforts to promote democracy and women’s rights and imposed Sharia law on their Muslim minorities, they would have been on the receiving end of fewer assaults. The old sexist judge and the modern literary intellectual are not entirely wrong. The fault with their victim-blaming reasoning is that the victimizers disappear behind the wall of excuses. Just as judges once removed responsibility from rapists and didn’t want to know why some men raped and others did not, so intellectual leftists made mass murder appear a natural response to external provocation and didn’t ask themselves if any free society could remain free if it didn’t provoke Islamists.” P.275
“Rather than listening to what bin Laden was saying, leftish intellectuals adopted a stance for which I can find no precedent: they urged the appeasement of demands that hadn’t been made. They used bin Laden as an ally to promote their own wish list and called for a limit to globalization, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank or a rerun of the disputed 2000 American Presidential election. The contrast with the Thirties isn’t flattering. Say what you like about the appeasers of Munich, but they studied Hitler, even if they got him wrong. Their successors didn’t know what the Islamists wanted and didn’t want to find out.” P.275

-On concealed racism:
“If the dictatorial leaders of a foreign state or radical movement, or the usual unelected leaders of a ‘community’ or religious group said that their culture demanded the oppression of women and homosexuals, for example, twenty-first century liberals were tripped over by the thought that it was racist to oppose them. They could be all for the emancipation of women in London, Paris and New York while indifferent to the misogynies of the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The reverse side of the debased coinage of modern leftish thinking is a poignant spectacle. Democrats, feminists and socialists in the poor world, who are suffering at the hands of the extreme right, turn for support to the home of democracy, feminism and socialism in the West, only to find that the democrats, socialists and feminists of the rich world won’t help them or acknowledge their existence.” P. 12

-On anti-Semitism and blaming Israel for everything: although only the second to last chapter is dedicated to this topic, I felt like this was a common thread running throughout the book, and a very scary one indeed. Cohen repeatedly pointed out how much of the blame for Islamist governments actions was defected from the perpetrators themselves by Western apologists claiming that all evils were a response to Palestinian occupation. Although condemnation of Israel’s occupation is valid and not anti-Semitic in itself, the mainstream readiness to blame large evils on a small and generally well-meaning community, is a scary throwback to earlier times, and the historical connotations of these accusations should not be overlooked. Or in Cohen’s words:
“As a result of this rationalization of the irrational, a dirty little war in a patch of land smaller than Wales acquired huge explanatory power. Palestine became the justification for everything that was going wrong with Europe’s Muslim minority. To say that the ‘root cause’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict explained Islamism was to make a very large assumption about a very small war...” P.347

- And finally, for the inability or unwillingness to assign blame and support appropriate consequences for the world’s evils, history will judge our generation harshly…
“I’ve been very hard on today’s liberal-left, so I will end with the hope that it is right. A just settlement for the Palestinians is a good thing in itself and should be pursued regardless of whether fanatics want it or not. Everyone knows what it is – a return to the 1967 borders, the tearing down of walls, a confrontation with the maniacs from all religions who regard the holy land as the exclusive preserve of their god. Maybe if the international community were to deploy troops to safeguard Israel’s borders, it will happen. If it does, we will see if a settlement vindicates the current liberal view. Perhaps it will. Perhaps it will satisfy all the Islamists who are currently saying that their wars in Chechnya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Kashmir and Somalia, and their terrorist campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Britain, France, Spain, the United States, Denmark, Holland, Canada and Australia are a part of a unified war against paganism and for a Caliphate. Maybe they will shake themselves and say ‘fair enough, we realize that now you’ve addressed our ‘root cause’, we don’t want a theocratic empire after all and will return to civilian life.’
If the liberals and leftists are wrong, and there are good grounds for thinking that they are horribly wrong, history will judge them harshly. For they will have gazed on the face of a global fascist movement and shrugged and turned away, not only from an enemy that would happily have killed them but from an enemy which already was killing those who had every reason to expect their support.” P.353-354

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writer for the New Observer, the New Statesman, and the Evening Standard, the British journalist Nick Cohen is also a militant leftist well-known for his sharp criticism of... the Left. As far as he is concerned indeed, the Left in Britain has betrayed itself.

Published in 2007, one of the focal point here is obviously radical Islam and its terrorists actions. First thing indeed, the Left seemed then very shy to defend Western values under attack, preferring instead to turn its eyes towards denouncing Capitalism, Globalization, American foreign policies or what not... In a word, everything to minimise the urgency of failing cultural relativism, the need to confront extremist ideologies, and fight totalitarian ideologies. How on earth did it get there? How such 'progressive' movements, who, by many aspects, had been the flag bearers of minorities and the oppressed, managed to become, in less than a couple of decades, the pawns (even if unwillingly) of fascisms of all kinds and colours? Here's a polemic that won't fail to hit targets after targets - if you are willing to look beyond partisan politics (the Right gets also bashed, even though it's not the main topic in here...).

So there you go: from the ideological vacuum left after the death of the socialo-communist model to a victimisation culture, from the rubbish post-modern philosophies now creeping in all sorts of discourses to the failures of cultural relativism, and all the way through its anti-interventionism and anti-capitalism (more often than not fuelling a noxious anti-Americanism) he dresses here a list of various symptoms then affecting to various degrees the multiple leftists movements (because, of course, he doesn't treat it as a whole unified block!). Focusing on the most symbolic examples (eg. Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, Kosovo, Iraq, Israel...) he thus demonstrates that if leftists don't support totalitarianism, they nevertheless end up by being their useful idiots.

His outlook is sad, shocking, revolting, sickening at times (eg. this was a decade before Corbyn, and yet, because of his opinions, he was already among the victims of vile personal anti-Semitic attacks...) but, despite it all, such book makes you feel actually quite optimistic. If the Left still contains such intellectuals, perfectly able to see through all the divisive and non-sensical cr@p it has sold itself to, then surely there is hope for our political landscape! Will this be enough to provoke a rude awakening among many? More than ten years on, the far-left was vanquished mercilessly during the 2019 electoral campaign, so, maybe there is still hope... Meanwhile, here's a good list of what has gone wrong with the British Left! Razor-sharp!

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

MyGod, but this is a remarkable book - a polemic in favour of a consistent, secular and humane left-liberalism which takes as its starting point the disarray of the Western left in the face of Islamist terrorism and the 2003 Iraq war. Cohen - dry, witty, impassioned - forensically examines the confusion of his fellow Leftists faced with the monumental bad behaviour of people they had been conditioned to consider oppressed.

The absurdity of self-proclaimed Leftists - nominally supporters of human rights, feminism and gay equality - abasing themselves before ultra-conservative, violent patriarchal religious fanatics in the name of 'solidarity' is not only pointed up but placed in an historical context, referencing some of the bad old habits Cohen's (and my) natural allies developed during the days of Stalin and the Cold War. It is a dismal tale.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing to note is that it was first published eight years ago, before the death of Osama Bin Laden, which only recently a contender for the UK Labour Party leadership declared "a tragedy", and before the rise of 'Islamic State', whose cruelty and ideological blindness many of Cohen's (and my) left-liberal associates persist in attempting to attribute to the malign influence of 'US imperialism' and that other more ancient casus belli, 'Zionism'.

It is to Nick Cohen's tremendous credit that he still manages to sound hopeful that our colleagues may regain their sense of perspective, intellectual rigour, and respect for the concept of universal human rights. At least, he did in 2007. I must confess, given the idiocies and prevarications which have proliferated on the Left since then, I'm no longer so convinced. But I'd recommend this book to anyone.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing terribly surprising here. Cohen has three main themes:

1) The far left are nut jobs.
2) Be critical of your fellow lefties because you really aren't all on the same page.
3) If you're going to criticize someone don't look for moral equivalences

These are all things I already knew.

Besides that Cohen overplays his hand in a number of places, at one point saying that the Baathists were fascist right from the word go (they were nationalist/independent way back when and the fascism sprouted later). He also ignores the weaknesses in his own position, such as how historically offensive invasions for peacemaking have mostly failed. And for all his railing against moral equivalences he's guilty of the same offence comparing Guantanamo Bay to the mass murder of innocents in Iraqi prisons as a way to downplay criticisms of American torture.

[E.T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Left has done admirably well in terms of social “liberalism” fighting racism, imperialism, economic exploitation, narrow nationalism and gender inequality. Now that these have been largely achieved, whats left ? And where have they gone wrong especially recently ?
In my opinion they have taken up the term liberal instead of egalitarian for themselves by sleight of hand. Any fight for equality is bound to be illiberal but yeah screw logic.
To make its arguments, the book details the history of the leftist movement in the 20th century and provides references to earlier times too. And in doing so shows how 2 contradictory things have simultaneously been held to be true by the “rational” Left. And in doing so it has become a lefto-fascist force itself.
I wish though that it had been a little less focused on the Iraq War in 2003. Also, it required a deeper knowledge of British history to get some of the arguments.

[Igor Veloso · Rating 4 out of 5]

What’s Left? looks at how: the Left picked up and then dropped the opponents of Saddam Hussein; the European Union stood by and allowed Slobodan Milosevic to ethnically cleanse the Balkans; the reasons for the liberal middle class’s disillusion with democracy and free speech; the instant willingness of respectable writers to excuse Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks; the inability of the British Liberal Democrats and European Social Democrats to oppose George W. Bush while supporting a free Iraq; the growth of polite antisemitism; and the propensity of liberals everywhere to portray a global clerical fascist movement as a rational response to Western provocation. – Nick Cohen

This book took me almost a year to finally dedicate myself to reading, if not more. It was recommended to me at the same time that progressive American Democrats, and their anti-fascist allies, decided that censoring everything that did not align with their agenda was the most effective, and correct, way of dealing with the country’s problems, and bring justice to same groups they boast about protecting. The book attracted me for two very simple reasons: the first was the fact that the author was, or had been most of his life, on the left, and brought an inside perspective that aimed to criticize this new revolutionary spirit that had much in common with the regimes they criticize; the second reason is in my shared confusion that this phenomenon creates in my head, and I genuinely want to understand the left, although the conclusion I draw today is that even they do not understand each other, but they are still gaining influence and some elections.

We have the freedom to vote, lobby, protest, write and speak, and the Left itself makes full use of these same freedoms, yet they never seem to be grateful for it, and they want more and more, not taking advantage of its benefits due to their mentality of constant ‘no pasarán’, an infinite state of revolution. They painted liberalism as an authoritarian ideology where responsibility is seen as an interventionist, and they assume that it has already failed, not wanting to continue the process. They have taken over institutions, to the point that the media, private companies, and the academy give them shelter and support, yet they still believe to be against the system, even when in certain countries the government itself is left-wing. It seems that we are finally witnessing a resurgence of the socialist antechamber towards communism.

He uses a certain terminology. Nick Cohen uses the Left as a generalization: far-left means the remaining Leninists, who think they can gain power through coercion. There are few, but significant, infiltrated in larger groups including the academy. Sometimes he calls them “Chomskyans”, sometimes nihilists, because his program is never positive but cynical. There is an enormous divide between the totalitarian and democratic left. Between the working class and the middle class, there is this same cleavage, where the first struggle for better wages and conditions, and the second for social and sexual liberalism. Unions are called by the author as the old left.

Liberals – not the deregatory term Americans use – from the left middle class are Liberal Democrats, Liberal Christian Democrats, European Gaulists and Democrats in the US, and there is still a supportive working class and Democratic middle class. Cohen fails to classify the New Left (New Labor) well, and classifies the Left-Liberal as the entire left. Take note that the book is from 2007 and Cohen is British, son of a Jewish father – something important due to the strong positions described in his book, especially when there is a part of the left, neo-racist, that manages to be anti-Semitic “for equality. ” Any mention of ‘cancellation’ or ‘left today’, or something more recent, will be more based on my reflections that I transpired from 2007 to 2021, so they are not from the author.

Apparently it was well received, but it seems that the criticism I maintain today is similar to many critics of the time. Could it be that all the situations described in this book were catalysts for the state of the left today? Did he simply point out some situations that favored his thesis, even if they were true and had some impact on the intellectual circle where they occurred, but at the end of the day did they spill over? However, my position is not the same as most of these critics. Their logic comes from thinking that these examples are from the fringe and from crazy people who speak very loudly but don’t make a dent in politics. It is a position similar to former Lincoln Project members, like Tom Nichols, who spent time ignoring Democratic progressives and radicals, with “stupid” ideas (withdrawing funding from the police, racial quotas, etc.) in order to support Democratic candidates on a mission to remove Donald Trump from power, and it turns out that these movements have now helped President Joe Biden win the elections and he, in the midst of his moderate virtue, is paying them favors through Executive Orders. And in response, Republicans embraced groups like Qanon, and the nostalgia of pre-Civil Rights times, and joined an orgy of madmen.

It is always worth remembering that many of the decisions that change the game and affect the direction of the world, do not always originate in the Senate or in Parliament, but outside of it, through think-tanks and party headquarters. The human factor is of immense importance. There will certainly be cases, such as a diplomatic visit, where the visit ends suddenly but apparently everything went smoothly, and the media doesn’t really care about that, when in reality someone in the delegation said something he shouldn’t and the local representative was upset and ended right there the conversation, kicking everyone out. The people who are in politics today come from a small and familiar world, a great chance that almost everyone knows everyone to some degree. It would not be improbable to know that a type of the right-wing portuguese Marialva who goes on television can be the cousin of a TV presenter on another channel; great chance that today’s most influential youth in Portuguese politics, is largely from around Cascais; It will not be surprising that decision makers in Lisbon, London and Washington, whether in politics or in the media, study, eat and sleep in the same blocks. It is therefore not surprising that a kind of “collective thinking” is formed where any deviation equals loss of status and confidence, and it will be very difficult for the ideology behind a decision to be as different as the original, and with some investigation, the intellectual party or even the cuplrit is identified with proceeding with a decision, but those who have already paid for it have lost the elections. Lost the election, or lost his position, or is doing everything to divert attention to a sex scandal, or UFOs, and is doing it successfully.

In this case, Nick Cohen would be the man on the ground who experienced the cultural and ideological change on the left, and came to tell the story. He met, criticized and wrote during his life about the people around this change. Without any shadow of a doubt, there are always uncontrollable variables, and events that shape the political landscape, but all the issues he touches on have consequences that are still in sight today, whose characters are still heard about today, good or bad things. The most striking was perhaps the story about a left that led its life to hate fascist regimes, to the point of supporting any intervention to break them, only to later, in February 2003, Cohen becomes disappointed with the marches organized by those against the war in Iraq.

To say that the Iraq Invasion was controversial would be underestimating it, and when we question its legality, sirens go off. It is not to say that the concerns were not legitimate, and certainly the millions of people who took to the streets to protest the war drank from sources that made a good case, especially when the “oil invasion” narrative took on gas. Taxpayers were exhausted from having to endure decades of military intervention resulting in crises abroad and at home. But Cohen describes Saddam Hussein’s regime as fascist in every way, or at least, as the left of the time described fascism. Saddam was known to the children as Baba Saddam Hussein – Father – and the next generation would come to recognize their country’s leader as a father figure. The Baathists used a secret police inspired by Stasi, a former German secret police during the Cold War, in which even the hairdressers worked as informants, reporting everything women told each other while drying their hair, convinced that they were not heard. Sooner or later the husbands would disappear, or the whole family would be punished. This took root in the regime in such a way that it made a coup d’état, or a root support revolution, impossible, and the only solution, according to Iraqi intellectuals who survived or escaped the clutches of the Baathists, would be an invasion by another power.

Like a Borat film, Saddam Hussein himself approved of the anti-war marches and the regime took advantage of the images to strengthen its cause, creating propaganda in favor of the Baathists with indirect support from the West. Years earlier they had opposed the use of force to expel Saddam’s forces outside Kuwait, and ignored the threats made to the Kurds in the north – who ended up displaced and still suffer today throughout the Middle East, namely by the Baathist regime from Bashar Al -Assad, in Syria. Regardless of the solidity of the reasons that inspired the protests across Europe and the USA, it is a fact that all the participants, namely the left, were trying to prevent the fall of a dictatorial regime.

But they had a good point: both the US and the Soviet Union armed and sculpted Iraq during the Cold War, making it a stabilizing weapon for the region whose main target was Iran. The prodigal child of the great powers was eventually abandoned by them, and in response, he revolted against his tutors. Suspicion fell on his support for al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks, and on the possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, such weapons that were later proven not to exist, but something that seemed to elude many of the war’s supporters is that such weapons, if found, were there because the great powers put them there, and when the invasion took place, they would have been sold or dismantled in the decades before. The subsequent benefits of controlling crude exports quickly surfaced, and the left argued that the invasion of Iraq was an imperialist and corporate coup, and memes about America and Oil are still part of the culture today, no matter which way look at.

After the First World War, British Liberals and Conservatives gave the working class (men) who came from the trenches, the right to vote; FDR guaranteed work and good education to soldiers returning from World War II (Serviceman’s Readjustment Act); On the other hand, however, the neoconservative Republicans of the 90s wanted to cut the feeding off the “beast”, while filling the pockets of the rich (and the beast – the government – has been growing ever since), and the post 9/11 Republican priority was to cut taxes on the rich and fill pockets of Generals and decision-makers who were not in combat.

It is also worth noting that in 2003 the majority of Americans and British supported the war, and years later, the global majority would come to disapprove of the way the United States handled the invasion.

Once again, I say the left had good arguments to oppose the war. However, the intellectual left until the 1990s supported Stalinism-Leninism, and this remains a stain to this day, especially in the United Kingdom. Today it is willing to forgive or forget its past of support for Stalinism-Leninism, but it has no intention of doing the same to its own more nationalistic past, and they open wounds from colonial times in order to “deconstruct” the right-wing thinking , whose most “hard” thinking is considered “fascist”. The left has the superpower of Repressive Tolerance, where they are immune from critics, for their support - direct or indirect -, of their own totalitarian vein, but any point of order coming from the right must be put down immediately. As in 2003, the left would indirectly support Saddam’s regime, knowing perfectly well how effective its iron pulse was, how impossible it was for the people to revolt, and how much minorities like the Kurds were being slaughtered.

Nick Cohen identifies four culprits for this confusion on the left:
1 - Socialism for consumers
2 - Multiculturalism showing some flaws
3 - Liberal Desillusion
4 - Fear

More details on this link to blog.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cohen's thesis: the Western left has lost its center in the foreign policy arena and is now merely oppositional. We oppose anything the US does, and we support, or make excuses for, any regime that's "anti-Western", even if that regime is totalitarian, theocratic, or reactionary. He's correct. At present, for example, one can hear lots of apologies and excuses from the "radical" left for the regime in Iran, even though they're privatizing the oil industry, allowing (if not participating in) violence against trade unionists, and systematically humiliating women with god on their side. (And of course, they are pyschopathic in their anti-semitism.) Cohen's overall point is that my enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend.

He buttresses this central argument with sharp critiques of post modern cultural analysis which are also on point. Further, he argues effectively that socialists have historically been at the forefront of fighting fascism, and due to a creeping pacifism and the previously mentioned anti-Westernism, we've abandoned that high ground. Also worthwile is his linking of anti-semitism to the current anti-Israeli hysteria. And finally, he spends a whole chapter ripping Noam Chomsky a new one -- these arguments are obvious and well worn, but it's always fun to read about Chomsky's failings.

But here's the problem: He makes takes those points and makes a tremendous leap toward supporting the war in Iraq. His ultimate point is that Saddam was a fascist and genuine Iraqi democrats and leftists supported our invastion. I won't go into the anti war arguments. Frankly, he would have done himself a favor had he used Afghanistan as his barometer. That situation fit his arguments better than Iraq, in my opinion.

Another troubling part of the book is that he claims the mantle of being a true leftist, but makes sweeping comments about the victory of market economics in the west. He intimates an "end of history" type philosophy. It's really bizarre and leads one to believe that Cohen is less a principled leftist and more a lefist creeping toward conservatism. This fact alone made the book less interesting to me, because I was hoping for a genuine left-wing appeal to support the war.

On balance, I recommend this book because it challenges many of the arguments floating around the left wing echo chamber. That's always healthy.

[Mars Cheung · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The contempt for universal standards of judgement suited the liberalism of the late twentieth century which placed an inordinate emphasis on respecting cultural difference and opposing integration even if the culture in question was anti-liberal and integration would bring new freedoms and prosperity. It fitted neatly with a form of postcolonial guilt that held that not only were we 'wrong to force western rationality or western science down other people's throats, but that their rationality or their science was every bit as good as ours'.

I read this book in hopes of achieving a better level of understanding of the problems inherent with today's Left. For the most part, this book did the job, partially describing the problems with the modern-day left coming from a retrospective of the past crimes of Western Imperialism and 'white guilt' leading to an overcompensation to right past wrongs and resulting in a refusal by modern day leftists to look at the whole historical/cultural picture of world events, thus prompting western 'liberals' to ignore the liberals of other countries/cultures. As someone who considers himself just left of center, it was an informative, though disappointing/depressing read on the genesis of what is known today as the 'Regressive Left', and how the illiberalism circles into the ideology of the far-right.

This was a slow read if you're don't have more than a passing familiarity with the events of the past few decades (both Iraq wars, the Bosnian Genocide...) or have a general understanding of Marxist ideology. In order to put the author's points into context, I found myself having to use Google on the side to look into those events and see how they illustrated the point he was trying to make. I intend to re-read it as there was some material I didn't quite understand. Overall, it was a good read that fell in line with George Will's work "The System of Liberty" which described Classical Liberalism in contrast with what passes as 'liberal' today.

[Krishan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cohen says everything I wanted to say, but didn't have the guts at the time. The real pleasure here is to see a man turning his sights against his 'own' political comrades over a matter of principle.
Cohen lays out a sickening litany of symptoms that add up to a depressing tendency of left-wingers to abandon all principles just when they matter most.

A must read for any who think that American/Western power is the worst of all possible worlds.

[Edmole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting to go back to this, which covers a large swathe of the left's disgusting moral double standards during George W's time in office. I hit the wall with engaging with the madness of supporting jihadis and blaming small-town Americans for all the ills of the world about two years ago. I worried while reading the book that I was reading it to merely reinforce my existing prejudices, but Cohen is clear and rational enough that this doesn't become an indulgent polemic.

[Elena]

I thought it was a different kind of book and, as a leftist person as I think of me, I read the first 20pgs totally disbelieving what Cohen was saying. Just as an example, at pg17 he wrote: "why will students hear a leftish post-modern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but nothing a crusty conservative don?"
Why he wrote so, when femminists lobbies put President Clinton under pressure to stop courting the talebans and go fight them in 1992?

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very incisive account of the failure of some on the left to extend their solidarity to peoples oppressed by anti-Western tyrants. But also very obviously designed to cover New Labour over mistakes in Iraq—but it does at least make a persuasive case that non-intervention is not always the morally superior option.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those books where you put it down and look around at a world that makes several shades more sense than it used to. And you feel amazed that you didn't realise all of this sooner, and you wonder how you ever coped when you were too naïve and innocent to know the truth of Cohen's words.

[Daniel Laskowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's now a good few years old, this book, but the problems with the Left so presciently identified here have gone only from bad to worse. It's an essential read for anybody who still scratches their head over what the hell has gone wrong in the politics of the Western world.

[Joshua]

An excellent read for those disillusioned with the lunacy of the political Left.

[Niels Frid-Nielsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relevant & argued reflections on what happens to the Left after 9/11.
The book shows us how the Left has failed to find a new way after socialism died in 1989.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a polemic for sure, but a convincing one, from a left-leaning Brit about the errors and betrayals of the Left, mostly in GB. It is kind of the British version of Paul Berman's Terror and LIberalism, and it shows how the War on Terror altered and probably worsened the liberal-left split. HOwever, the book is a little too long and at times unfocused, and I didn't agree with Cohen's analysis of the IRaq War.

Cohen lands a few big points against the Left in this book (thinking about people like Chomsky, Moore, Said, and Galloway and associated progressive or leftish wings of the Labor and Democratic Parties as well as academia). First, he shows that they had largely abandoned their ethos of solidarity with the oppressed in places like Baathist Iraq (or communist anywhere) in favor of reflexible anti-Americanism. This led them to focus so much on what America was doing and to exaggerate its mistakes and misdeeds as well as to downplay its successes, like the actions against the Serbian regime in the 1990s. Thus you had the spectacle of people like Chomsky defending or apologizing for the Khmer Rouge and Slobodan MIlosevic as long as they were anti-US.

Second, during the War on Terror, Cohen argues that this mentality led leftists to blame America for being attacked on 9/11 and to borderline alliances with (or defenses of) Islamists. Either the Islamists were opposing U.S. imperialism or they were sort of the "wretched of the earth" who had chosen violence in response to specific acts of U.S. foreign policy (as opposed to a general loathing of liberal modernity and a desire to impose their own form of totalitarianism on the world). Third, Cohen argues that the Left after the fall of communism totally lost any semblance of a realistic plan for improving society and settled for a totally oppositional identity with the US as its bete noir. Thus it failed the test of democratic politics, which is that the people can trust you with power. I think with the rise of Bernie Sanders in the US that this has changed somewhat, although I still think the Left constantly undercuts itself in the 'will the people throw us the keys" question.

I found Cohen's attack on the leftist explanation of terrorism's root causes quite effective, and overall, as a liberal who firmly doesn't identify as "left" and spends a lot of time arguing with "the Left," I agreed with most of this book. Where I jumped off was his analysis of the Iraq War. Cohen has a fervently moral, even moralistic argument about the war. Saddam was a horrific, genocidal oppressor and needed to be overthrown, and liberals should support this in solidarity with the Iraqi people. Cohen's hero is the Iraqi activist and scholar Kanan Makiya, who rightfully called out ARab-American like Edward Said for their lack of outrage about the crimes of ARab regimes (in comparison to Israel and the US).

But Cohen fails to adopt an ethos of practicality and responsibility in his argument. Iraq had not attacked the US, and efforts to hype up his WMD program and connections to terrorism were vastly exaggerated. The US cannot go around simply toppling regimes it doesn't like, especially when the worst behavior of those regimes was more than a decade in the past. People like Cohen and Makiya drastically overstated how prepared Iraq was to become a modern democracy while downplaying the difficulties of nation-building. In short, Cohen lets his ethics overshadow his strategic and practical side, which prompted him and many liberals to support an unnecessary and disastrous war. This argument is worth taking seriously, but I do not find it persuasive.

This is a useful book if you are working on liberal/left debates in the late 20th and early 21st centuries or just the intellectual history of the War on Terror. It's a bit dated and long, but interesting as both commentary and a slice of history in itself.

[Antony · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not "into politics" - I've never seen the point of listing politics as a hobby or an interest. It's all around us, affecting every part of our lives, whether we like it or not - having it as a hobby would be like calling breathing a hobby.

Possibly because of this, there is as much drivel written on politics as on any other subject around, across printed and social media, and let's not leave out academia - after all the problem with social science, is that it's not a science at all.

Trying to filter such a large quality of information, and of course, misinformation, makes it difficult to get to the bottom of things. It's no surprise that so many of us settle for a nicely-packaged viewpoint, no matter how contrary or irrational it may be. Sure, we all think we're rational, but taking a step back, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to show us that humanity is mostly quite the opposite Dan Ariely being a leading popular writer with books such as Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

I was drawn to this book, as I've never understood why the Left is so full of hypocrisy. Why a movement which ostensibly supports human rights, fairness, and equality, all of which are grea, is quite happy to turn a blind eye to, and even support, some of the ugliest, most backward, ideologies and totalitarian regimes on the planet today, is (or was) an utter mystery.

Nick Cohen's impeccably-researched book manages to shed some light on how this came to be, covering a great deal of ground, and leaving no stone unturned. Cohen has seen it from the inside, yet cites well-researched sources rather than arrograntly flouting his opinion. He comes across as honest, human, and meticulous. The prose is very readable, but not lightweight, nor should it be, if it has any meaningful value.

Thoroughly recommended, a great insight into one of the biggest political, and indeed social paradoxes of our time.

[Rhipsalis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has not aged well. It is principally a defence of Bush and Blair invading Iraq. This turned out to be a disaster, as many people in the Stop the War movement said it would. I find his characterisation of the march in 2003 a bit strange -- because it was a mass mobilisation followed by a crushing betrayal, the ramifications of which even David Cameron had to take seriously when he wanted to invade Syria. I understand Cohen's point: the left has become more anti-west than anti-Islamist (fascist, that is), which means defending people who hate democracy, queer people, women etc, on the basis of race, oppression, "resistance to imperialism". And this is a very troubling thing. I appreciated my thinking being challenged in this way (I am much more interested in the realities of military action, i.e, what internationalism can possibly mean without militarism) but reading this book fifteen years later means there's a lot he just couldn't foresee that undermines, or at least complicates, what he has said. The strength of this book is that it pinpoints knee jerk anti-Americanism / -capitalism / -globalism as a key, self-defeating, factor in the decline of the left, and this felt accurate. Yet even here, his arguments aren't as penetrating as they could be, and I was left hankering after some suggestions about where to go next. What's Left? is ultimately more axe-grinding than revelatory, though I do think it will make people on the left very uncomfortable, even now.

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this excellent hit piece, Nick Cohen unleashes his rages upon the liberal-left, pointing out how they moved from folly to folly. Beginning with how the leftists became a sycophantic supporters of Saddam Hussein’s murderous Baathists regime in Iraq, they bizarrely denounced US intervention in Bosnian-Serbian War, while ignoring Slobodan Milosevic’s genocides. Entering 21st century, the loony left walked hand in hand with radical right in putting forward 9/11 conspiracy theories, exporting antisemitism from continental europe to middle east, condemning Israel while sounding supports for regimes such as Iran and Palestinian Hamas. Citing cultural relativism, they ignored human rights violations in Middle East while throwing the exact accusations toward their own government. In the past, the more radical of the leftists even became supporters of German-Soviet alliance, until after their Moscow overlord ordered them otherwise after German broke the treaty.
While the argument may sounded pro-neoconservative in its support for Iraq interventions, the author reiterated his position in postscripts (supporting nationalization, and those sorts of things), making him a curious sort, at least for me. After all, his mom refused to buy oranges from Francoist Spain, so I expected him to be someone who put his faith in leftism.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A decimating critique of the illiberal Left by a passionate, and angry, actual liberal – who really knows how to write, and think. So, what’s left of the Left after Nick Cohen’s scathing analysis? Only the increasingly maligned principles (see http://eustonmanifesto.org/the-euston...) and Enlightenment values that the Left has forgotten it’s supposed to stand for. Much of the Left now hates these (and the people who still stand for them) almost as much as it hates white people, especially the working class, and the West, especially America, and loves or appeases the fascism it’s supposed to oppose – simply because it’s brown people’s Islamo-fascism rather than white people’s regular fascism. This book highlights how millions of well-meaning but ill-informed people, who are usually apathetic about politics, can be roused to get behind the most immoral politicians and policies. Everyone should read this book, especially those who aren't very politically committed but consider themselves as on the Left.

[Mari · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first 3 chapters were interesting. Then it turned into shambles. The rest of the book is spent rambling and insulting the left and the liberals and the liberal left (whatever that means) and any group or organisation you can think of. And because they were all wrong (in many ways, but mainly in their disregard for the many Iraqis Saddam killed) he must be right, which means the Iraq war was right in principle. This is all you get as an argument. Apart from the author’s own disregard for the people killed in the war, he doesn’t for a minute take into consideration that yes, something needed to be done, but maybe there was an alternative to war. So yeah, if you want actual arguments, don’t read it, if you enjoy reading rowdy, rambling insults against the left, go for it.

[Mark Farley · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a lot in this book, full of biting and acerbic with, that I could find myself relating to. In 'What's Left?', Cohen outlines the pitfalls, pratfalls and many frustrations and contradictions of being a leftie. An ingrained one from birth.

From world events to every day life, being left wing is a constantly challenging affair, because as much as you want to have a certain opinion, the practicalities often outweigh the logic or the fundamental message. I often find myself disagreeing with what should be my opinion but annoyingly, a lot of the times it isn't. And Nick Cohen certainly feels the same way too.

It's a strikingly well thought-out polemic and warning to all our heart and souls.

[Alistaire King · Rating 5 out of 5]

The problem of the Left

Nick Cohen dissects the mess the Left has got itself into. For too many on the left they seem to be full of self loathing of their own western values and a blind anti-Americanism. A belief in relativism which is used to negate universal rights which the Left is supposed to uphold. For some it's better to be supporting a dictator or reactionary theocratic regime just because they oppose the United States. I consider myself to be politically to the Left of centre so to see many of the Left going down those intellectual deafness is disheartening.