A Friendly Drink in a Time of War
Berman, Paul
AFRIEND LEANED across a bar and said, "You call the war in Iraq an antifascist war. You even call it a left-wing war—a war of liberation. That language of yours! And yet, on the left, not...
...And even less is said about the Arab liberals—our own comrades, who have been pretty much abandoned...
...You do have to see that...
...I answered, "The United Nations and international law are fine by me, and more than fine...
...We have had to choose between supporting the war, or opposing it— supporting the war in the name of antifascism, or opposing it in the name of some kind of concept of international law...
...Today, people say, out of a spirit of egalitarian tolerance: Social democracy for Swedes...
...but, in the second rank, by the prime minister of Britain, who is a socialist, sort of...
...But isn't George Bush himself a fascist, more or less...
...There's a name for that, a systematic distortion—what we Marxists, when we were Marxists, used to call ideology...
...Thump...
...I mean, look at the discussions that go on even among people who call themselves the democratic left, the good left—a relentless harping on the sins of Israel, an obsessive harping, with very little said about the fascist-influenced movements that have caused hundreds of thousands and even millions of deaths in other parts of the Muslim world...
...Thump...
...Another reason: a lot of people suppose that any sort of anticolonial movement must be admirable or, at least, acceptable...
...Not true...
...You haven't the foggiest idea what fascism is," I said...
...The traitor to the left is you, my friend . . ." But this made not the slightest sense to him, and there was nothing left to do but to hit each other over the head with our respective drinks...
...The left, the real left, used to be the champion of minority populations—of people like the Kurds...
...But my druthers don't count for much...
...Not for the first time, my friend...
...The coalition is led by a Texas rightwinger, which is a pity...
...I said, "I'm for overthrowing tyrants, and since when did overthrowing fascism become treason to the left...
...I'll give you six reasons...
...I said...
...And yet," I insisted, "if good-hearted people like you would only open your left-wing eyes, you would see clearly enough that the Baath Party is very nearly a classic fascist movement, and so is the radical Islamist movement, in a somewhat different fashion—two strands of a single impulse, which happens to be Europe's fascist and totalitarian legacy to the modern Muslim world...
...He said, "And so, the United Nations and international law mean nothing to you, not a thing...
...His incredulity drove me to continue...
...Apart from X, Y, and Z, whose left-wing names you know very well, what do you think of Adam Michnik in Poland...
...Thump...
...Antifascism without international law...
...Jacques Chirac?—a conservative, I hate to tell you...
...Which is to say, a lot of people have succumbed to anti-Semitic fantasies about the cosmic quality of Jewish crime and cannot get their minds to think about anything else...
...Or, rather, would like to support them...
...The left doesn't see because a lot of people, in their good-hearted effort to respect cultural differences, have concluded that Arabs must for inscrutable reasons of their own like to live under grotesque dictatorships and are not really capable of anything else, or won't be ready to do so for another five hundred years, and Arab liberals should be regarded as somehow inauthentic...
...and, in the third rank, by the president of Poland—a Communist...
...My friend looked incredulous...
...And so, people simply cannot detect the fascist nature of all kinds of mass movements and political parties...
...You think it's all right for America to go do whatever it wants, and ignore the rest of the world...
...Better for the purpose of expressing the liberal principles at stake...
...Except for the ones who do...
...What do you make of that, my friend...
...The left doesn't see because a lot of people are, in any case, willfully blind to anti-Semitism in other cultures...
...A miserable choice—but one does have to choose, unfortunately" My friend said, "I'm for the UN and international law, and I think you've become a traitor to the left...
...This is a modern, television-age example of what used to be called 'false consciousness...
...The left doesn't see because —" thump!— "George W. Bush is an unusually repulsive poli56 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 tician, except to his own followers, and people are blinded by the revulsion they feel...
...Better for the precedents that would be set...
...My friend's eyes widened, maybe in astonDISSENT / Winter 2004 n 57 IRAQ AS A LEFT-WING WAR ishment, maybe in pity...
...By the way, you don't hear much from the left about the non-Arabs in countries like Iraq, do you...
...Leftism is supposed to be a reality principle...
...And doesn't Vaclav Havel count for something in your eyes...
...And yet, if the left all over the world took up this particular struggle as its own, the whole nature of events in Iraq and throughout the region could be influenced in a very useful way, and Bush's many blunders could be rectified, and the struggle could be advanced...
...Still, most people don't seem to agree with you...
...They peer at Iraq and see the smirking face of George W. Bush...
...Tyranny for Arabs...
...I mean—admit it...
...But no more...
...In 1943, no less...
...My own eyes widened...
...They cannot get themselves to recognize the degree to which Nazi-like doctrines about the supernatural quality of Jewish evil have influenced mass political movements across large swaths of the world...
...Anyway, these categories, right and left, are disintegrating by the minute...
...Mass graves, three hundred thousand missing Iraqis, a population crushed by thirty-five years of Baathist boots stomping on their faces—that is what fascism means...
...I was done...
...If I had my druthers, that is how we would have gone about fighting the war...
...Leftism is supposed to embody an ability to take in the big picture...
...Or they think that, at minimum, we shouldn't do more than tut-tut—even in the case of a movement that, like the Baath Party, was founded under a Nazi influence...
...And who do you regard as the leader of the worldwide left...
...And yet, on the left, not too many people agree with you...
...I am their supporter...
...And, in their blindness, they cannot identify the main contours of reality right now...
...What a tragedy that you don't see this...
...These are among the heroes of our time...
...It would be better to fight with the approving sanction of international law— better in a million ways...
...or international law without antifascism...
...No more...
...My friend persisted...
...They even feel a kind of schadenfreude or satisfaction at his errors and failures...
...Why don't people on the left see it my way...
...They thought this was especially true for people IRAQ AS A LEFT -WING WAR in reasonably modern societies with universities, industries, and a sophisticated bureaucracy— societies like the one in Iraq...
...It is 1943 right now in huge portions of the world—and people don't see it...
...THUMP...
...That was an aggressive question...
...It's a tragedy for the Afghanis and the Iraqis, who need more help than they are receiving...
...Look at some of our big, influential liberal magazines—one article after another about Israeli crimes and stupidities, and even a few statements in favor of abolishing Israel, and hardly anything about the sufferings of the Arabs in the rest of the world...
...Anyway, who is fighting in Iraq right now...
...An exCommunist, anyway...
...From a politics of slaughter...
...And I answered in kind...
...The left doesn't see because a lot of otherwise intelligent people have decided, a priori, that all the big problems around the world stem from America...
...The left, my friend, has abandoned the values of the left— except for a few of us, of course...
...It would be better to fight an antifascist war with more than a begrudging UN approval...
...HE OLD-FASHIONED LEFT used to be universalist—used to think that everyone, all over the world, would some day want to live according to the same fundamental values, and ought to be helped to do so...
...The distortions are wild, if you stop to think about them...
...PAUL BERMAN is the author of Terror and Liberalism...
...And you think that a few corrupt insider contracts with Bush's cronies at Halliburton and a bit of retrograde Bible-thumping and Bush's ridiculous tax cuts and his bonanzas for the super-rich are indistinguishable from that?—indistinguishable from fascism...
...People on the left have been unable to see the antifascist nature of the war because . . . "—and my hand hovered over the bar, ready to thump six times, demonstrating the powerful force of my argument...
...What a tragedy for the left—the worldwide left, this left of ours which, in failing to play much of a role in the antifascism of our own era, is right now committing a gigantic historic error...
...And why do you suppose that is...
...One Texas right-winger and two Europeans who are more or less on the left...
...58 n DISSENT / Winter 2004...
...His book The Passion of Joschka Fischer will come out in the spring...
...Even the problems that don't...
...Better politically, therefore militarily...
...I always figured that a keen awareness of extreme oppression was the deepest trait of a left-wing heart...
...I grew still more heated...
...If only people like you would wake up, you would see that war against the radical Islamist and Baathist movements, in Afghanistan exactly as in Iraq, is war against fascism...
...And this is supposed to be a left-wing attitude...
...This is an attitude that, sixty years ago, would have prevented those same people from making sense of the fascists of Europe, too...
...A tragedy for the genuine liberals all over the Muslim world...
...ANOTHER REASON: A lot of people honestly believe that Israel's problems with the Palestinians represent something more than a miserable dispute over borders and recognition—that Israel's problems represent something huger, a uniquely diabolical aspect of Zionism, which explains the rage and humiliation felt by Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia...
...Six thumps...
...In the Muslim world, especially...
...Which is to say, a lot of people, swept along by their own high-minded principles of cultural tolerance, have ended up clinging to attitudes that can only be regarded as racist against Arabs...
...A neocon...
...Thump...
...A tragedy for the American soldiers, the British, the Poles and every one else who has gone to Iraq lately, the nongovernmental organization volunteers and the occupying forces from abroad, who have to struggle on bitterly against the worst kind of nihilists, and have been getting damn little support or even moral solidarity from people who describe themselves as antifascists in the world's richest and fattest neighborhoods...
Vol. 51 • January 2004 • No. 1
