Ghosts Of Leftism Past

As I suggested a couple of posts ago, the project of leftist self-examination isn't even close to finished. In a recent issue of the Nation, Naomi Klein advocated, apparently literally, a jihad against Republicans. (For those who are unaware, Ms. Klein is the cream of the cream of the anti-globalization movement.) At the least, she has composed a qualified apology for Muqtada al-Sadr.

Marc Cooper notes that "Ayatollah Sistani...now outflanks Naomi Klein on the left." Cooper goes on to point out what should be obvious:

Klein should know better. All enemies of the U.S. occupation she opposes are not her friends. Or ours. Or those of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that Mullah Al Sadr, in any case, is much desirous of support issuing from secular Jewish feminist-socialists. And no one can provide any credible evidence that the Iraqis wish to trade the dictatorship of Saddam or the uncertainty of American Occupation for a religious dictatorship run by a black-shirt militia which has so far distinguished itself only for unbridled violence and its absolute contempt for civil society.

Klein, nevertheless, winds up demanding that the coming week’s peace marches bring “Najaf to New York.” What the hell does that mean? That peace marchers identify themselves as a domestic Mahdi Army resisting the forces of the American Empire? Should they also endorse Sharia – Islamic Law—while they’re at it?

Generatons ago, leftist apologetics for brutality and violence were at least ostensibly written on behalf of "progressive" causes. That Cooper's points are not obvious to the editors of the Nation, and that they would undertake to publish a defense of a barbarous theocrat suggests that whatever constituency the Nation represents has utterly failed to grasp the lessons of the left's history. Who needs Rupert Murdoch dominated media when the left is eager to make itself wholly irrelevant.