The new fascists

Cette étrange synthèse entre un faux socialisme et un vrai nationalisme - sans oublier le racisme, le sexisme et l’homophobie - porte un nom : fascisme.

Les ennemis de nos ennemis ne sont pas forcément nos amis, par Fatiha Kaoues et Pierre Tévanian Réflexions sur le cas Alain Soral (Deuxième partie) ===

Establishing free institutions in Iraq was the best reason to support the war -- now it is the only reason -- and for that very reason democracy there has ceased to be a respectable cause. The administration's ideologues ... have managed the nearly impossible: to turn democracy itself into a disreputable slogan. Liberals can't bring themselves to support freedom in Iraq lest they seem to collude with neoconservative bombast. Meanwhile, antiwar ideologues can't support the Iraqis because that would require admitting that positive outcomes can result from bad policies and worse intentions. Finally there are the ideological fools in the Arab world and even a few here at home who think the ''insurgents'' are fighting a just war against American imperialism. All this makes you wonder when the left forgot the proper name for people who bomb polling stations, kill election workers and assassinate candidates. The right name for such people is fascists.

What may also be silencing voices in support of Iraqi democracy is the conventional wisdom that has been thrown over the debate on Iraq like a fire blanket -- everyone believes that Iraq is a disaster: hence elections are doomed. As I was told by one suave European observer, with a look of self-satisfaction on his face, all that remains is the final act. We are waiting, he said, for the helicopters to lift off the last Americans from the roofs of the green zone in Baghdad. For its part, the administration sometimes seems to support the elections less to give the Iraqis a chance at freedom than to provide what Henry Kissinger, speaking of Vietnam, called ''a decent interval'' before inevitable collapse

... Those who were against [the war] tell us that democracy can't be imposed at gunpoint, when the actual issue is whether it can survive being hijacked at gunpoint.

'The Uncommitted', Michael Ignatieff in The New York Times Magazine, January 30, 2005.

For Iran, Iraq etc ......... LIAISON COMMITTEE - THE PRIME MINISTER - Tuesday 8 February 2005 - RT HON TONY BLAIR MP (Uncorrected Evidence 318)

Update (10 Feb): the substance of Ignatieff's article was also printed in The Observer, apparently.