As the poisonous dust of the destruction of the World Trade Center began to settle, what seemed to be a new and unfamiliar political landscape began to coalesce before us. Many began to appreciate that the familiar political landmarks of the Left – support for secularism over religious politics, the preference of democracy to tyranny, solidarity with progressives world-wide, a concern for the principles of anti-racism and gender equality – now had rather fuzzy edges.
Over the next few years, principles which once appeared to define what it meant to consider yourself “Left wing” seemed now to be expendable and optional. Lindsey German, the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, famously described gay rights as a “shibboleth”, and went on to defend its coalition partner in RESPECT and the STWC, the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned “Muslim Association of Britain”, by comparing attacks on an organisation whose politics were once accurately described by the SWP founder, Tony Cliff, as “clerical fascist” to the Nazi “scapegoating” of “gays, trade unionists, Gypsies, socialists and, above all, Jews”. The outrage at the murder of the heroic Iraqi trade unionist, Hadi Saleh, by Baathists was dismissed as a ““hullabaloo” by the SWP’s leading intellectual. Over at the Guardian – Britain’s leading liberal daily – the Comment editor, Seumus Milne commissioned article after article from Muslim Brotherhood activists, including one urging the creation of a new Caliphate. Ken Livingstone famously embraced the homophobic theocratic Muslim Brotherhood cleric, Qaradawi, and then worked overtime to eviscerate the coalition of minority groups which were deeply worried by Qaradawi’s bigotry. When challenged, he compared the theologian who advocated terrorist attacks on civilians to a reformist Pope. The Guardian’s Madeleine Bunting – who had previously been best known for her excellent book on the conduct of the Channel Islanders under Nazi occupation – produced a soft-soaping interview of this nasty bigot. At a rally to oppose Israel’s campaign against Hizbollah, George Galloway gave a speech in which he explicitly “glorified” Hizbollah, while protesters waved posters bearing the image of Ayatollah Khomeni and posters declaring “We are all Hizbollah”.
Content from our partners
