The Enough Already! Manifesto
I suppose I’ve ignored it long enough.
Last night, I went to see Christopher Hitchens give a lecture in Brighton as part of the currently ongoing Festival. He gave a inspiring, if rather rambling, talk about Thomas Paine and then a Q&A session where, with wearingly, stultifying inevitably, he accused those who criticised the war on Iraq of anti-Americanism (”I notice you’re not clapping that“, he growled). He steadfastly refused to address questions of America’s conduct, his answers veering erratically, though whether this was down to pigheadedness or a congenital inability to stay on the point, I’m not sure.
Anyway. Whenever I attend one of these things, I like to buy the speaker’s book in the foyer and have them autograph it at the signing afterwards. As I stood in the queue with my companion, she asked me if I was going to ask the great man a question. Casting around, “I might ask him if he’s going to sign the Euston Manifesto,” I said.
Now, my friend is a local journalist, fingers in all manner of pies. Oxford educated, did an MA in Foreign Policy at the London School of Economics, went to the Sudan to research her dissertation, did a stint as a researcher at the International Crisis Group, has a contact book like the bible, is switched on, sharp and informed. An enviable young woman, in other words, with enviable talents. You’ll have heard of her in a year or two.
“What’s the Euston Manifesto?” she asked.
Which just about sums it up for me. My parents, I’m sure, don’t know what the Euston Manifesto is. Neither does my partner or my friends. I’ve read it and I still don’t know what the Euston Manifesto is and I doubt I’m the only one. As Morrissey once said, it says nothing to me about my life. And yet it’s the talk of the internet. At least in the corner where left-wingers gather to fret. At The Sharpener, an admirable blog of which I’m a member, of the four articles posted in the last two days, three are about the manifesto.
Maybe I’ve read the wrong books or go to the wrong parties. As far as I can tell, the Manifesto is a way of identifying those on the Left who are either pro- or anti- war. Or to use the nuanced language of the Eustonites, pro- or anti- suicide bomber. It’s a bit like those books you read as a kid where you got different options and followed a different adventure each time. So, you read the Manifesto and if you’ve reached the correct conclusion at the end, you get to sign up to it.
It’s a for us or against us proposition. To not sign up marks you as the enemy. I was against the war in Iraq so naturally I’m an appeaser of terrorism and a supporter of suicide bombers, according to the Eustonites. A Stopper*. I worship at the altar of George Galloway. Not approving of current US foreign policy, I’m also anti-American apparently. It has yet to be explained by those who control this debate whether not approving of UK foreign policy makes me anti-British. It probably does. It’s a simple, irrefutable argument painted with a broad brush and yet with irresistible intellectual honesty and respect.
Millions and millions of words have been wasted agreeing or disagreeing with the Manifesto and of course this is me wasting mine backing the wrong horse. The Iraq war and it’s as yet untold ramifications for world politics and they way we live our lives has been merely a side show. It’s boring, the political equivalent of being into Showaddywaddy - people, I’m told, turn the electronic page at the very mention of it. What I should be doing is obsessing over the tired musings of a bunch of self-styled
intellectuals gathered in a North London pub that have managed to attract all of 1500 supporters and want to tell me how to think. The fact that they’ve effectively been calling me and the likes of me a cunt** for the last three years is all water under the bridge apparently. I’m now supposed to swallow my pride and share a tent with someone as fundamentally unpleasant as a bully like Harry Hatchet.
Anyway, this my last and only word on the subject. A lot of people who I know read this blog and are not bloggers themselves will be utterly bored and bemused by all this. A position I suddenly find myself in and I wonder if I should have bothered. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.
I wonder if I don’t have the requisite intellectual machinery and as such I’m not invited to the party. I do have a theory, however, that the Manifesto was actually produced in Tory Central office as a distraction to the easily distracted and ever-fragmenting Left. The plan is that when both those who are for and against the Manifesto, stop calling each other childish names, stop indulging is dishonest, insulting arguments among themselves and finally look up from their dog-eared copies there’ll be a Conservative Government in place.
* A Stopper, as coined by the fragrant souls at the popular Harry’s Place blog, is supposed to be pronounced through gritted teeth much like someone in Alabama in 1968 would have said “nigger”.
** Nick Cohen is actually a very nice man. When I was training to be a journalist I wrote to him for advice and he invited me out for a drink. We were unable to arrange a meet but I will never forget his kind and generous offer. On Iraq and so-called humanitarian intervention, however, he remains, in my view, a smearing, generalising bully.
Posted on May 26th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
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Filed under Pooterism, UK politics |
A small section of the left splits off to the right, supposedly over principles. It portentously issues a “manifesto” over its supposedly principled reasons for doing so. A few months later it no longer exists as a group (if it ever did), its “members” having gone their individual opportunist way. No-one remembers any “manifesto”. No trace exists.
Wipe your arse on it while you still have the chance. Tomorrow it gets flushed down the toilet pan of history.
Ah, the Useless Manifesto.
It used to be said that you start your life left wing, and if you don’t become right wing as you get older, you’ve learnt nothing. I must confess, this has been somewhat true for myself, apart from one thing- being right wing in Britain seems to mean that you automatically become pro-American and anti Europe. This is my beef with the manifesto. I am not, and never will bes pro-US. Why the fuck should I be? Why on earth should I be pro a country that is not only arrogant, but so keen to listen to homegrown religious nuts (Behold! they’re not all Muslims!!) that in 100 years time they will have all the global financial and political clout of Armenia.
I’m with Grouchy, self important toilet paper
“… there’ll be a Conservative Government in place.”
Please god. They can’t be worse than the current lot.
Luckily, having been designated as being of the Right, I don’t have any kind of conflict over the Euston Manifesto. I think that the whole thing is bollocks and I couldn’t give two shits if they don’t like my view.
I think that the whole thing is faintly ludicrous - desperately pompous - isn’t it?
DK
“What’s the Euston Manifesto?†she asked.
I had a similar conversation the other day.
Other Half (spotting a copy of Discourses of Extremity): “Oh, you’ve got a book by Norman Geras.”
Me: “H’mph.”
OH: “He’s Adele Geras’s husband, isn’t he. Lives in Manchester.”
About Norm’s other life she neither knew nor cared. I don’t think she’s the one who’s got things out of proportion.
Who’s Adele Geras? Other than the Wife of the Norm, I mean?
Google is your friend - more than usually in this case, as the top hit is http://www.adelegeras.com.
It is sad that so much of the commentary on the EM does not refer to what the EM actually says, but rather to some vague imagining of what it might say, or generalised assumption based on something one or two of the authors may have said in the past.
For example:
I was against the war in Iraq so naturally I’m an appeaser of terrorism and a supporter of suicide bombers, according to the Eustonites
and
Not approving of current US foreign policy, I’m also anti-American apparently
Can either of these two assertions be backed up with quotes from the EM itself?
DavidM: No, of course, they can’t. I thought it was perfectly obvious that I’m paraphrasing the slurry that’s come out of the mouths of the Manifesto’s leading lights over the past three years.
“Vague imaginings”? I can quote you chapter and verse, mate. See the Cohen article I linked to. Read some of the hysterical ranting about “Stoppers” over at Harry’s Place. Still, if you want to carry on misreprenting you go ahead. As I said, I’m leaving this parochial nonsense alone for good very shortly. I’ve already devoted more time to this cul-de-sac than it deserves.
Still, I’ve spelled it out now. I’m not amenable to joining a club populated by those who’ve taken great delight in misrepresenting, smearing and lying about the position I and many like me took. If I went around spreading lies about you, I’m sure you’d feel same.
Maybe if a big, fat abject apology was issued by Cohen or Geras…
Whooboy, I’m loving the accusations of ’smearing’ alongside the Alabama/nigger thing. But I guess you’d not be excluding yourself from the childish name calling dishonest insulting argumentation camp in any case (where would you be without that, right?)
Butseriouslythough, are you sure you haven’t misrepresented the Eustonites yourself? Like DavidM, I don’t recognise them from your description. Norm wrote something recently about if the cap doesn’t fit, don’t wear it. Maybe you and people like you were never their target? You think they’ve effectively been calling you a cunt for three years? (does that mean that you’ve effectively been calling them cunts too? - no wonder tempers are frayed). I hope (and this is because I have one foot in the Eustonite camp) that they were never talking about you or people like you.
You might have thought the invasion was bound to end in distaster, abhored the lies leading up to it, and had any number of other, sensible, objections - but unless you have ignored the horror of life under Saddam, dismissed the democractic aspirations of Iraqis, painted terrorism as “an understandable response to the oppression of Muslims around the world” or otherwise reduced the whole thing to fit in your anti-American, anti-imperialist fantasy, then they weren’t talking to you, were they? I hate that stupid word ’stopper’, but surely it was never meant apply to the majority of the many millions who opposed the war.
I suspect I’m not going to change your mind on this one - and like most people you’re evidently heartily sick of the subject - so I’ll stop here.
I thought it was perfectly obvious that I’m paraphrasing the slurry that’s come out of the mouths of the Manifesto’s leading lights over the past three years.
Since the assertions I quoted came from a paragraph beginning with the sentence “It’s a for or against us proposition”, in an article ostensibly about the EM, perhaps you will forgive my assumption that you were talking about the EM itself. I can assure you it wasn’t “perfectly obvious” that you weren’t.
As I said, it’s sad that so much of the commentary about the EM doesn’t actually address what it says.
Norm wrote something recently about if the cap doesn’t fit, don’t wear it.
On CIF Norm wrote of the Eustonites: We express our opposition to terrorism and to indulgently “understanding†(where this means condoning) it because it is thought to be motivated by legitimate grievances.
To make sense of this, we have a choice. Either (a) the EM-ists really are just trying to delineate themselves from genuine terrorist sympathizers. This is hardly a necessary or interesting move, or one which justifies starting a political movement, and I don’t believe it for a second. (If this is the case then one might wonder how they’ve managed to proceed so ineptly as to leave 99.9% of the Left behind.)
or (b) they’re seeking to delineate themselves from a far larger section of the Left, and are doing so with smears, straw-men, and insults. (Or perhaps you don’t think that to accuse your opponents of “condoning” terrorism is any of these?) This is my view, and a quick look at the names of the most prominent signatories strongly reinforces it.
BTW, did you ask Hitchens if he was going to sign it in the end?
Larry,
Perhaps there’s some middle ground between your a) or b). The Eustonites are, I think, trying to delineate themselves from a certain response to terrorism that has been evident in some sections of the left, (more than 0.1% but I would hope a minority still). I think their arguments on this topic have more to recommend them than smears, insults and straw-men. I don’t particularly like the sentence you quote from Norm – you’re right, he makes it sound too much like those who professed understanding are akin to “genuine terrorist sympathisers†as you put it – but that’s not what he means. To condone does not mean to support, it just means to excuse without condemnation. There was many an article printed that came closer to condoning than condemning and I think that’s the response the Eustonites want to set themselves apart from. But I’ll do everyone a favour and not rehearse those arguments again here.
DavidM, I didn’t get the opportunity in the end. He launched into a tirade, apologising profanely that his publisher hadn’t supplied copies of his new book, so I left it.
Luis,
I’m afraid I see it differently. There are plenty on the left who believe that some understanding of the causes of terrorism is urgently required. But “understand” here does not mean “condone”, or anything remotely like it. It means “comprehend”. It has no moral connotations whatsoever.
I see the EM the latest in a long line of attempts (by largely the same gang of people) to misrepresent these voices as “condoning terrorism”. Remember “moral determinism”?
A dispassionate discussion of the root-causes of terrorism may lead to some nasty home truths about the effects of US/UK foreign policy. But to say this does not even come close to suggesting that 9/11 was “America’s deserved comeuppance” to quote from the manifesto - again this is nothing more than an insult, and an attempt to kill an argument they would prefer simply not to have.
Larry
It’s in everybody’s interest to understand causes of terrorism, and no sensible person would have an issue with seeking to do so. If you have interpreted the Euston lot as having a problem with seeking to understand in the of sense comprehend, well there’s a straw man of your own making, no? They say something different - that certain responses puporting to understand moved beyond just seeking to comprehend towards condoning. There’s room for disagreement on that, for sure, and we’d need to look at examples (let’s not though eh?). I’m pretty sure I read a few “America had it coming” responses, though.
Then it sounds very much like the manifesto is designed to marginalise knuckleheads like Galloway and the stalinists and fundamentalists at the top of the Stop The War coalition, no? I’m confused. They don’t represent me and yet, “Lions led by donkeys” seems to be the kindest thing the likes of Nick Cohen can bring himself to say about the people who marched against the war.
And as Larry says, I’d argue the debate about American (and by extension our) foreign policy is being strangled. Fifteen years ago the Left were united in condemnation of American foreign policy in places like South and Central America. Now, it seems, we’re to embrace it as the Trojan horse in which we’re to smuggle progressive values into places like Iraq. Anybody putting their hand in the air and saying, “er, I’m not sure about cluster weapons as harbingers of democracy,” risk the anti-American and supporter of the “resistance” tag.
Luis,
I’m pretty sure I read a few “America had it coming†responses, though.
Let’s say “deserved it” rather than “had it coming” to avoid any ambiguity. I’d say such extremist opinions were few and far between, and not worth engaging with, let alone setting up a political movement in opposition to.
If you have interpreted the Euston lot as having a problem with seeking to understand in the of sense comprehend, well there’s a straw man of your own making, no?
Well, no. From the manifesto:
We repudiate the way of thinking according to which the events of September 11, 2001 were America’s deserved comeuppance, or “understandable” in the light of legitimate grievances resulting from US foreign policy. What was done on that day was an act of mass murder, motivated by odious fundamentalist beliefs and redeemed by nothing whatsoever. No evasive formula can hide that.
Why do they use the highly ambiguous word “understandable” in quotes? Why not “forgiveable” or “defensible” if that’s what they mean? Because it would sound silly. It would only serve to set them apart from a handful of scumbags not worth talking to. They also wish to tar with the same brush anyone who thinks that 9/11 is to any extent explicable in the light of legitimate grievances resulting from US foreign policy - a foreign policy that EM-ites almost all support. “Understand” provides a convenient means to equivocate between “explain” and “justify”.
It’s in everybody’s interest to understand causes of terrorism, and no sensible person would have an issue with seeking to do so.
Of course I agree. However after 7/7 when it was suggested that the Iraq war might have been a contributing factor, we were treated to the sophistry that it couldn’t have been in principle, and the insult that to suggest such a thing was to be a terrorist-apologist. With all the same faces involved, I can’t help but see the EM as continuing in the same tradition.
Sorry didn’t see Justin’s comment before I posted mine - unsurprisingly I agree with it.
Well, I think you can take the ‘understanding’ thing a different way (i.e. my way!) - I think they used that word rather than forgivable or whatever, because the responses they had in mind puported to ‘understand’. And I also hope that Eustonites would regard objections like “cluster weapons [not being] harbingers of democracy,†as good arguments that need engaging with not deriding. Maybe I have focussed on different passages and taken a more generous interpretation of what I’ve read, I dunno. Because for sure the manifesto is designed to marginalise knuckleheads like Galloway, but also, to my mind at least, there was a worrying strain of knuckleheadedness making itself felt in more mainstream left wing opinion (i.e. the Guardian, people on telly and in the pub) that I think Harry’s Place, Euston etc. is trying to argue against. And it’s in that sense that I agree with them -I heard and read plenty of things from the left, under the auspices of the anti-war movement, that I objected to, just like that lot.
Here’s more from Nick Cohen in the Evening Standard:
The other day I went to the vast Union Chapel in Islington for the launch of the Euston Manifesto, which is an attempt to shake the Left out of its blind anti-Americanism.
Clearly, if he were a surgeon, he’d make the incision with a chain saw. Pathetic.
If Cohen is simply conflating anti-war with anti-American, then he’s a fool. But maybe he’s saying something else.
There is a lot of anti-Americanism about, no? I’d like to see that shaken out of the left, but in the context of the EM, he’s got to mean more than that. If Cohen thinks that anti-Americanism lies behind the knuckleheadedness that the EM sees itself as campaigning against, then he’s making a tenuous argument that needs a lot of backing up. It’s one thing to say that anti-Americanism plays a part in the general mix of faux anti-imperialist-capitalist hogwash that EM might wish to distance the left from, but it’s another thing to reduce it to that. (And another thing again to reduce anti-war sentiment to that, but as I said, I hope he’s not dumb enough to be doing that).
But of course if you just see the EM as the pro-war minority flogging the dead donkey of self-justification, then none of this is going to wash with you.
If it this subject wasn’t so long past its sell by date, I’d like to try and talk you round to a more generous view on the EM crowd, but life’s too short and that’s probably right up there with eating wasps on your to do list. I’ve just got too much time on my hands right now, hence me hanging round here like a bad smell. Chin up, only one month until I’ve worked my notice ..
The thing is Luis, while it’s very sweet of you to parse Cohen’s shorthand, we can only guess at the intention behind it.
I’m not even sure there is a lot of anti-Americanism around. It seems to me it gets talked up like the BNP threat at local election. There’s certainly none of it on the blogs I frequent and the conversations I have down the pub invariably follow the pattern of “I love that American book/comedian/TV show but the Bush administration are a bunch of bastards”.
I’d argue/guess Cohen’s being deliberately provocative (and with an added edge seeing as his remark is printed in a right-wing rag like the Standard) - not exactly a bridge builder. Why not say “…which is an attempt to find a new consensus for left-wing politics…” instead? It certainly would have made a more tempting proposition, I’d have said, instead of giving the wedge another push.
Is that sweet as in California surfer (dude … sweet!) or as in talking down to a five year old? While I can only guess at the intention behind it … ah whatever. Fuck it.