Leaving the Left behind

A really pointed article in today's The Australian newspaper titled Leaving the Left behind by Richard King.

To those of us on the liberal Left already concerned with the nature and direction of much left-wing and liberal thought, 9/11 was the final straw. Even before the dust had settled, some on the Left had come to the conclusion that the suicide hijackers were anti-imperialists attempting to avenge the wretched of the earth, all of whose woes were self-evidently reducible to the US's support for Israel.

Bin Ladenists, it was said, were the fish that swim in the sea of Islamic discontent, while the planes that felled the twin towers were chickens coming home to roost. The metaphors were mixed but the argument was clear: the US -- the capital of capital -- only had itself to blame.

These were the usual arguments put about by the usual suspects (Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, John Pilger), but the remarkable thing was how quickly they spread from the radical Left to the Left in general.

...

The Left, it seems, is happy to criticise US atrocities in Abu Ghraib but not to raise its voice in support of those on the Iraqi secular Left attempting to build a workable democracy in the face of a depraved campaign of violence and intimidation.

The article really demonstrates that it's not just Islam that has to undergo a reformation and drag itself into the modern world - it's the Left as well.

(H/T: Tim Blair)