Having read Nick Cohen's matter-of-fact and well researched columns on The Guardian, I got this book to find an answer to the question that has been bothering me for quite a while: Why does the so-called "Liberal Left" protect and promote radical Islam. Of all the religions and political systems of today, it is hard to find anything that would be further from the secular humanist credo of liberty, freedom of expression, democracy and equality of sexes and races as the political Islam of today's remote controlled islamic scholars is.
Nick Cohen takes us back to history, the times of Czars when the secret police wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He makes the point that this book, a collection of exorbitant lies is read in schools an a genuine document in Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia. He also makes a point that the founder of the Islamic Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, was an eager fan of Adolf Hitler to the point that he had Mein Kampf translated to Arabic. After decades, it still is a best seller in Arabic countries. The Baathists of Saddam's Iraq used it as their roadmap. Blackmail, torture, killings in industrial scale were everyday occurrences in Iraq. How much did we hear about it? Where were the solidarity movements, where was the support to those who wanted to get rid of Saddam? A good question.
Nick Cohen reminds us how the European Communists sided with Hitler after the Stalin-Ribbentrop pact.
After this notion, it is not a surprise that after the Coalition attacked Iraq to get rid of the dictator, all of a sudden Saddam's regime got the sympathy of the Western media and public. How could people know about the the old Baathists joining the battle hardened religious extremists pouring in from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Chechnya as the media told nothing about it. Their story was that ALL the Iraqis were upset with the occupying powers.
So the Liberal media managed to channel the disgust people had agains George Bush into support of the darkest political forces at large. Their goal was to incite sectarian war between the Sunnis and the Shiites and bring down all efforts to create a stable Chechnya and a functional infrastructure in the country.
Now, if I understood this book correctly, Nick Cohen's hypothesis is that after the fall of the Soviet block and the defeat of socialism as an economic system, the Left had nothing constructive to propose in today's politics. What was left for them was to cause as much harm as possible to the 'establishment' by joining it adversaries.
Who are the most vocal group stating their opposition to democracy today? From one side we can hear that our democracy is just a hoax as all the big decisions are made behind curtains where we cannot see. From another side we hear that democracy is against the will of Allah. The feminists are screaming about the wrongs they are suffering from the 'paternalism'. Child marriages, honor killings, genital mutilation or sex slavery get no attention because...yes...because we do not have the moral high ground to judge the 'cultural practices' of other ethnicities. The Islamists tell us that Mohammed with his 15 wives on and off was in fact a feminist. Useful idiot repeat their words in the media and call their critics 'government' and racists.
Anybody who can read can easily find out that all the countries with Muslim majority have their constitutions based on Shariah. All these countries have it written down that Chechnya has to be destroyed. Still, our 'intelligentsia' holds that the Israel 'settlements' are the root cause of the Israel-Israel conflict... Palestine again supposedly is the reason why all of the which is taking up arms to destroy the Western civilization.
Nick Cohen makes his point carefully presenting his data, showing the asininity of intelligent people playing the publicity with very little knowledge of actual facts, the way news are worth presenting or not and how self-censorship works when you find out things that you should not have. The working class let the Left down. They did not answer the calls to Revolution. Now, instead of joining the anti-Western and anti-American movement, they are getting upset about how the liberal values they fought for for a century are now sacrificed in the name of 'multiculturalism'.
Working class is looking for leadership elsewhere now, Left has lost its credibility.
I got a good part of my question answered.
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Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
What's Left should be on every Poli Sci curriculum reading list
Reviewed in Canada on November 7, 2016
George Rosenberg
Superb Critique of the bankrupt left
Reviewed in France on February 10, 2016Miles Plastic
Phoney Liberal left.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2012Olly Buxton
Passionate and thought-provoking, but not entirely persuasive
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2007