James Bloodworth is the editor of the leftwing blog, Left Foot Forward. However, writing for the Independent, it is the backwardness of his fellow lefties that is his subject:
The 'far-right' he has in mind is the Islamist far-right. Whether labels of left and right usefully apply to militant fundamentalism is debatable, but whatever you call it, the conventional left has been getting into bed with it. The question is why?
Bloodworth is not alone in feeling that the left is betraying its values. The likes of Nick Cohen and Martin Bright have written extensively and persuasively on this issue. Where they sometimes go wrong, however, is to give the impression that this betrayal is something new – when in fact it goes back all the way.
In an insightful piece for the Daily Beast, Adam Kirsch looks at the legacy of Jean-Paul Sartre – the founding father of the contemporary left.
The left of old was a collectivist movement, uninterested in, or hostile to, ideas of personal liberty. Sartre, though, fused Marxism with the philosophy of Existentialism:
Sartre's ideas were an inspiration to a new generation of leftwingers – at least as interested in rebelling against traditional social norms as in bringing down the established economic order.
But there was a glaring contradiction in Sartre’s thought:
What made Sartre’s betrayal of liberty all the more disgraceful was that he was aware of it:
Then, in 1968, came the crushing of the Prague Spring. This was too much even for Sartre:
Yet, instead of fundamentally rethinking his politics, he transferred his affections to a new source of tyranny – the revolutionary movements and governments of the Third World:
The cosseted lefties of the First World followed suit, holding up Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh and Yasser Arafat as their new heroes. But, of course, these too would prove a disappointment – not so much in the terrible things they did to their own people – but in failing to provide a viable challenge to the West.
The fact that the left is now making common cause with Islamists is straight out of the Sartre playbook. It doesn’t matter if these new allies veil women and hang gays in their own lands, just as long as they also stick it to Uncle Sam.