Nick Cohen (1) (1961–)

Writer for the New Observer, the New Statesman, and the Evening Standard, the British journalist Nick Cohen is also a militant leftist well-known for his sharp criticism of... the Left. As far as he is concerned indeed, the Left in Britain has betrayed itself.

Published in 2007, one of the focal point here is obviously radical Islam and its terrorists actions. First thing indeed, the Left seemed then very shy to defend Western values under attack, preferring instead to turn its eyes towards show more denouncing Capitalism, Globalization, American foreign policies or what not... In a word, everything to minimise the urgency of failing cultural relativism, the need to confront extremist ideologies, and fight totalitarian ideologies. How on earth did it get there? How such 'progressive' movements, who, by many aspects, had been the flag bearers of minorities and the oppressed, managed to become, in less than a couple of decades, the pawns (even if unwillingly) of fascisms of all kinds and colours? Here's a polemic that won't fail to hit targets after targets - if you are willing to look beyond partisan politics (the Right gets also bashed, even though it's not the main topic in here...).

So there you go: from the ideological vacuum left after the death of the socialo-communist model to a victimisation culture, from the rubbish post-modern philosophies now creeping in all sorts of discourses to the failures of cultural relativism, and all the way through its anti-interventionism and anti-capitalism (more often than not fuelling a noxious anti-Americanism) he dresses here a list of various symptoms then affecting to various degrees the multiple leftists movements (because, of course, he doesn't treat it as a whole unified block!). Focusing on the most symbolic examples (eg. Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, Kosovo, Iraq, Israel...) he thus demonstrates that if leftists don't support totalitarianism, they nevertheless end up by being their useful idiots.

His outlook is sad, shocking, revolting, sickening at times (eg. this was a decade before Corbyn, and yet, because of his opinions, he was already among the victims of vile personal anti-Semitic attacks...) but, despite it all, such book makes you feel actually quite optimistic. If the Left still contains such intellectuals, perfectly able to see through all the divisive and non-sensical cr@p it has sold itself to, then surely there is hope for our political landscape! Will this be enough to provoke a rude awakening among many? More than ten years on, the far-left was vanquished mercilessly during the 2019 electoral campaign, so, maybe there is still hope... Meanwhile, here's a good list of what has gone wrong with the British Left! Razor-sharp! show less

Britain has been governed by the Tories for so long now (I am typing this review in 2021) that we tend to forget how things were back under New Labour. Don't get me wrong: I fully agree with whose claiming that the Conservatives have seriously damaged the country; but, we would be silly to think the Left had been any better in ruling it. Re-reading Nick Cohen makes for a compelling task. A Leftist himself, he nevertheless was clued on enough to picture how the ship was already sinking back show more before 'the Etonians' indeed took over (that's actually why they took over!
Duh!).

Political journalist who has contributed to the 'Observer', 'New Statesman' and 'The Evening Standard', here's a best of his chronicles. Bitter, gloomy, this is, in fact, a damning portrait of a Great Britain left exhausted by more than a decade of Labour in charge.

From the financial crisis rooted in a looney capitalism fed by New Labour policies (we tend to forget that, but the Left had then nothing to envy to the most radical Thatcherism...) to the brainwashing of 'spin doctors' propaganda, from a management culture gone mad to bonkers PC and cultural relativism having plunged the country into communitarianism (opening it thus to fanaticism) Nick Cohen, brilliantly, spits his revolt and anger against what he considers a betrayal of everything the Left should have stood for.

Leftist himself (back in 2006 he participated to the redaction of the 'Euston Manifesto', an act which, itself alone, said a lot about how fed up he was with it all) as the title of this book makes it clear, he had then no more illusion about where this would all lead to come the next elections -the taking over by the 'nasty party', the Tories.

Absolutely merciless, punchy yet refreshing, here's the portrait of a whole country completely tired both economically and culturally. Beyond Right vs Left, this book will be more than a reminder of how bad things were even before the Conservatives. It will delight everybody sick and tired of liberal ideals (economical and cultural) being dragged into the mud in the name of cowards self-centred political careerism. Oh! And for whose thinking things would have been better had Corbyn won... Nick Cohen even back then had been victim of anti-Semitic slurs for his writing and criticism. The writing was on the wall; but then again, here's history, and as things go in politics: lessons never get learnt... for some! show less

This is a polemical work and as such, the tone is a little shrill in places. Its central argument however is very sound and well made. This is that too many people on the liberal-left in the last decade and a half or so in particular have allowed hatred of the West and in particular of America, to distort their political judgement and lead them into unholy alliances and making excuses for appalling reactionaries and mass murderers such as Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin show more Laden and other nihilist Islamists. In particular he recounts in great detail how so many leftists rightly supported Saddam's victims in Iraq as they were oppressed and murdered in the 70s and 80s, but withdrew much of their criticism during the first Gulf war in 1991 and even more so in the lead up to and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The author does not argue that they should necessarily have suspended their criticism of the 2003 invasion simply because Saddam was a fascist monster who deserved to be overthrown (though that seems a pretty good reason for overthrowing him to me), but argues that they were utterly wrong, after the fall of Saddam, to oppose the efforts of the Iraqi people to try to build a new more democratic society in the following years. The Stop the War coalition has made excuses for the Baathist and Al Qaeda militants who have blown up and killed so many of their fellow Muslims, calling them "the resistance", while denying support to Iraqi trade unionists trying to organise in the admittedly shaky but still real new democracy the country is trying to forge.

The phenomenon of some members of the liberal left excusing the actions of dictators as long as they are anti-Western democracy is not new and the author recalls the excuses made for Stalin during the 1930s and denial of the reality of the purges and show trials. However, the more recent excuse-making is, he says, less understandable as these modern critics do not seem to be motivated in favour of a positive liberal or socialist vision for society, but merely by all-consuming hatred of their own Western governments and political systems. The actions of the latter, whether good, bad or somewhere in between, are invariably portrayed as worse than even the most appalling atrocities carried out in modern dictatorships, including now for example Sudan, Zimbabwe and North Korea - regimes who are very rarely publicly criticised by liberals or leftists outside government. The best these critics will concede is that there is no difference between their Western governments and these tyrannies and they will frequently distort facts to "prove" this, e.g. by claiming that the US and UK were primarily responsible for arming Saddam in earlier years, whereas far more weapons were given by the Soviet Union, China and France (see the table on p366 of this edition); or by asserting that any admittedly horrible act committed by an individual member of the US armed forces show that they are no better than a mass murdering nihilist like Bin Laden.

The arguments in this book have helped me to crystallise my own feelings about the misjudgements so many on the left of British politics have been making, especially since 9/11, when thinking on foreign policy has so often come to mean "find out the US view and then take the opposite one". So, overall, a very welcome book, the more impactful as it comes from someone who himself has many criticisms of Western governments but also clearly possesses what his critics lack - a sense of proportion and a healthy respect for liberal democracy as a concept in itself. show less

"What's Left" is a crie de coeur from a man of the left who has come to believe that the principles have abandoned his position, and from that perspective it positively zings. Nick Cohen writes well - brutally - but fairly: he is still prepared, as he goes, to confront and acknowledge potential criticisms of his argument, valid alternative perspectives, and I think he realises that with this work he may have cooked his goose with a number of hitherto supportive readers. A valuable document, show more too, because Cohen still has left-wing credibility (but for how much longer, it remains to be seen) and so is sparking much needed debate in a way that a neo-con screed might not if it came from the pen of a traditional supporter of the moral right (pun intended).

That said, I think "What's Left" will find support in all the places, and with all the people, Nick Cohen would least like it to: for the most part, they won't be on the political left. Though he doesn't say it explicitly, this does represent something of a conversion on the road to Damascus: I think after this work Cohen will be generally considered a neo-conservative: he expresses unqualified support for Paul Wolfowitz and is far less distressed by Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair or George Bush than one would expect from a child of the far left.

What I think it boils down to is the subjectivism/objectivism debate. Cohen is an objectivist: he is prepared to say what he thinks is morally unacceptable, and is prepared to advocate whatever action or force is required to defeat the morally unacceptable.

By contrast, many on the left are "under the evil spell" (as Cohen sees it) of cultural relativism and are not prepared to make that judgment about the regime in Iraq, but are perfectly prepared to make it about the political elite in Britain and the United States. Cohen cites Ian McEwen's recent novel, Saturday, which remarks about anti-war protesters:

"... people are hugging themselves, it seems, as well as each other. If they think - and they could be right - that continued torture and summary executions, ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide are preferable to an invasion, they should be sombre in their view." (p. 69)

While I have a great deal of respect for his book and the passion with which he argues his case, I'm (unusually for me) with the lefties on this one.

For a start I don't feel qualified, either in terms of facts at my disposal nor the necessary cultural, social or political understanding, and nor do I consider it my business, to judge the situation in Iraq. On the other hand I *do* feel qualified, as a participant in the political process, to express a view about my own government. Furthermore, the resources of my government, contributed by people like me through taxation, are limited, and I can see more productive uses to which they could be put: before we sort out Iraq's mess, there is plenty of our own we could be fixing. But more to the point - and this is a point that Cohen glosses over entirely - the government's case for war had nothing whatsoever to do with alleviating the Iraqi people from torture or summary execution: this was not a humanitarian intervention at all. It couldn't be - since to take on Iraq would provoke obvious follow on questions: if Saddam, why not Mugabe? How about Kim Jong Il? The war was sold to the electorate as a pre-emptive measure against a credible military threat to the west (either directly or through the encouragement and cultivation of terrorists). That case was not properly made at the time (hence, in large part, the anti-war demonstrations), and has transpired to have been erroneous.

Nor has the war, which was prosecuted in spite of clear opposition in the electorate, been much of a success. Again, Cohen glosses over prescient warnings issued at the time that Iraq risked becoming another Vietnam, bogging the US army down in a close-quartered conflict with no obvious means of resolution. This, it seems to me, is exactly what happened, and the threat of terrorism and level of "Muslim angst" in western communities - which is surely fertile ground for new terrorists - is no lower than it has been since 9/11.

For all that I really enjoyed this book, and found it challenging and thought provoking.

John Mueller's Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them is an interesting counterpoint to "What's Left" - the two do not intersect on subject matter (Mueller restricts himself to terrorist threat; Cohen to the brutal governmental regime, and arguably the two are unrelated), but Mueller's skeptical view presents an interesting prism through which to consider Cohen's arguments. show less