This quote is just utterly sick-making.
What's Left? - How the left lost its way.
- Thread starter Mr BoShambles
- Start date
This quote is just utterly sick-making.
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Yeah, breaking all bounds of enunciated credibility, I had to re-check this more than once, but there it is. And as always with Mr Demiurge, his Freudian slips dispense with all cult-stud notions of such symptoms being mere random semiotic material:
"Here we are, fat cats in the snow," said Bono at the start of the launch, only to correct himself: "I should say winners in the snow" ... "I really, really hate losing," Bono said, adding that he had turned to corporate winners so that the Global Fund could make money "in the slipstream, in the wake of these companies".
Semiologists have all just died of asphyxiation.
N
nomadologist
Guest
Not just semiologists!
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Red, the perfect color for liberal communists like Bono
Maybe congealed blood-red instead: in the case of the liberal communists their philanthropy and charity-giving serves as a masquerade, a humanitarian fiction that serves to mask, redeem and legitimize their underlying 'hard commerce' and pursuit of profit, whereas with the latest breed of Bono clones, no need anymore for charity. Consumerism now is itself always-already humanitarian. The loaded ideological message: just keep on consuming as it itself will solve all poverty, disease, conflict, and inequality; how could there be anything the matter with consuming if it can achieve all of that too, shouldn't we be consuming much harder, exploiting much smarter, if we want to do even more Good in the world? ... no need for politics anymore. This, the ultimate core of the neo-liberal ideology which has replaced traditional philanthropic capitalism ('liberal communism').
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Red, the perfect color for liberal communists like Bono
Red in tooth and claw, hey just like hard commerce!
vimothy
yurp
What does "moving to the right" mean in this context? Does it mean supporting the Iraq war? Yes, pretty much. Even in those instances were the people in question have always been consistent in their support for liberal intervention and their opposition to Islamism (Berman or Kouchner, e.g.)? Yes, so it would seem. And even when they remain stated leftists (all except Hitchens, AFAIK)? Yes to that too, because, like the "Zionist" thing, apparently you don't have to know that you're ideologically committed to a cause to be committed to it.
But do tell in what sense Berman is on the right. Or Cohen. Or Kouchner ...
N
nomadologist
Guest
You'd have to move the center back to the "proper" center, Gek, before Vimothy would be able to see how these "leftists" of his are in fact center-right leaning.
He's got his center mark firmly planted somewhere in Rush Limbaugh's studio.
He's got his center mark firmly planted somewhere in Rush Limbaugh's studio.
vimothy
yurp
Just explain how, nomadologist, I'm prepared to accept that I'm wrong, if you can demonstrate that leftists like Kamm or Kouchner are in fact rightists -- you know, why and how.
N
nomadologist
Guest
First, Kamm supported the war in Iraq. This immediately DQs him from being anywhere near what I consider far leftism. This puts him firmly in the center with right-leaning tendencies. He has been openly criticized for this and the sincerity of his leftism challenged by many for this reason (Peter Wilby among his critics...)
Kouchner has been called a "political enigma" even by conservatives!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/10/13/kouchner_ed3_.php
Kouchner has been called a "political enigma" even by conservatives!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/10/13/kouchner_ed3_.php
vimothy
yurp
N
nomadologist
Guest
What do you mean you rest your case? You saying I'm right *grin*
I am not the only one, not by a long shot, who thinks these guys politically fall closer to the center-right than the left. I can find tons of links about it.
I am not the only one, not by a long shot, who thinks these guys politically fall closer to the center-right than the left. I can find tons of links about it.
vimothy
yurp
Your explanation:
Kamm supported the war in Iraq (and in your opinion that makes him a rightist not a hard leftist, which I doubt he has ever claimed to be)
Kouchner has been called an enigma
is not an explanation at all. Don't post links, post some content.Kouchner has been called an enigma
N
nomadologist
Guest
Of course it's an explanation.
Anyone who supports the current war is not traditionally "leftist"--they are one of the new centrists that make up probably 75% of people on the political spectrum.
The leftist values that are supposed to drive the left are: a concern for limiting foreign interventions in the form of war or violence, a concern for domestic issues including one's own poor, one's own educational problems, one's own crime, a concern for keeping the first amendment intact even in the face of idiocy like the Patriot Act, etc.
Do I really need to go through the traditional "leftist" values? Do I really need to explain how the FoxNewsification of American political discourse has lead to the lunacy you're spouting?
Anyone who supports the current war is not traditionally "leftist"--they are one of the new centrists that make up probably 75% of people on the political spectrum.
The leftist values that are supposed to drive the left are: a concern for limiting foreign interventions in the form of war or violence, a concern for domestic issues including one's own poor, one's own educational problems, one's own crime, a concern for keeping the first amendment intact even in the face of idiocy like the Patriot Act, etc.
Do I really need to go through the traditional "leftist" values? Do I really need to explain how the FoxNewsification of American political discourse has lead to the lunacy you're spouting?
N
nomadologist
Guest
Why should I not post links? You do it all the time. Why should I not refer to political discourse?
The problem is you don't WANT to hear the truth, you're going to hold your hands over your ears and/or refuse to read it when you know it's there.
So what's the point?
The problem is you don't WANT to hear the truth, you're going to hold your hands over your ears and/or refuse to read it when you know it's there.
So what's the point?
N
nomadologist
Guest
There! The Socialists are uncomfortable with Kouchner. THEY don't think he reps their values!
vimothy
yurp
No it isn't. It's just a statement of two facts:
1. Kamm supported intervention in Iraq
2. Some people have called Kouchner an enigma
2. Some people have called Kouchner an enigma
An explanation would try to explain why being called an enigma makes Kouchner a rightist, rather than just proclaiming it.
It would be like me saying:
You're not a leftist because you didn't support the liberation of Iraq from a murderous dictatorial fascist
without explaining how this is inconsistent with leftism (which, of course, it is not).
So supporting liberal intervention makes Kamm a centrist? Or a centre rightist? And this is true for everyone, with any liberal intervention (Kosovo, etc)?
So you are saying that you can't support military intervention and be a leftist? So any supporting the Allies in WWII couldn't be a leftist? So one could be a nominal Marxist, like Makiya, and support intervention in Iraq (for which even you would surely be hard pushed to condemn him), and yet the one must cancel out the other? Even if you remain comitted to Marxism?
Please -- these are your concerns, but they are the same concerns that everyone has, be they leftists, rightists or fascist anarchists, what defines the political spectrum is how these concerns are to be answered.
I have never seen Fox News and am completely uninterested in it.
What you should do is demonstrate they ways in which the so-called "cruise war left" (i.e. the writers mentioned above) are not actually leftists, i.e. the ways that leftism is incompatable with support for liberal interventionism (Kamm for instance, has written a book making the leftist case for a muscular foreign policy -- you might like to briefly address some of his arguments), and, equally importantly the ways that their politics which are not related to foreign policy are not leftist, but are in fact rightist.
vimothy
yurp
I just want you to explain in what ways and how Berman, Kamm, Cohen et al are not leftists. Refer to other people, by all means, but please add some content of your own.
N
nomadologist
Guest
I JUST TOLD YOU WHY I THINK THEY ARE NOT "LEFT" ENOUGH. You didn't seem to like that answer, but it's still why I (and MANY MANY OTHER LEFTISTS) would say about these people and their lack of sufficient leftism.
If you don't like my ideas, feel free to search google, you will find ample ideas of others on the same topic.
If you don't like my ideas, feel free to search google, you will find ample ideas of others on the same topic.
N
nomadologist
Guest
Writing inane and irritatingly LONG posts does not necessarily mean you have "more" to say, Vim.