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Torben Bech Dyrberg Dept. of Social Science and Business Roskilde University Building 24.1 Universitetsvej 1 DK-4000 Roskilde Denmark dyrberg@ruc.dk

Left goes Right: The Multiculturalist Dislocation of the Left

Contents:

PART I: THE LEFT GOES RIGHT 2

THE EPOCHAL BREAKDOWN OF THE LEFT 2 LEFTIST IDENTITY POLITICS AFTER THE FATWA AGAINST RUSHDIE 5

PART II: FREE SPEECH AND HOW LEFTISTS ARGUE AGAINST RACISM 10

FELLOW TRAVELLERS AND SELECTIVE ANTIPATHY 10 FREE SPEECH 1: SPENCER VS. HAMZE 12 FREE SPEECH 2: THE CARTOON CONTROVERSY 14 ROOT CAUSES 1: ANTI-RACISM TRUMPS ANTI-SEXISM 18 ROOT CAUSES 2: BOKO HARAM AND ISIS 20

PART III: WHAT’S IN IT FOR THE LEFT? 21

REFERENCES 25

10.250 words

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Part I: The Left goes Right

The epochal breakdown of the Left

To be radical back in the 1970s meant to support secularism and rationality, progress and emancipation, socialism and universalism. Those of, say, Middle Eastern or North African descend – who today are labelled “Muslims” – were no exception to this rule. A radical was ”someone who was militantly secular, self-consciously Western and avowedly left-wing”.1 Today, by contrast, it means the opposite: aggressive religious fundamentalism gets an air of respectability among leftists who align it with critical trends in social theory and the humanities.2 Hostility to “Western values”, notably modernity and democracy, has become a trademark of Third World authenticity, anti-racism and anti-imperialism.

It is no exaggeration to speak of a dislocation of the Left: leftist values have for the last quarter of a century metamorphosed into something that in important respects used to characterise the reactionary Right.3 We are dealing with a fundamental inversion of political orientation that can be led back to the culturalist and religious agendas, which can be seen in the light of a confluence of three trends: postmodernism from the late 1970s had the effect of dismantling the tradition of the enlightenment ethos; multiculturalism from the 1980s had the same effect by essentialising non-Western cultures as the site of authenticity; and the spread of radical Islamism, especially from the late 1980s, tapped into the image of Third World anti-imperialism and anti-racism.

The reactionary bias of the post Left can tentatively be described in these terms:

1. The critique of capitalism has been supplemented by a critique of modernity, which is seen as fragmenting communities and eroding social cohesion thereby producing rootlessness and misery.

2. The critique of imperialism has mutated into a critique of not only Western hegemony but also of Western values, which includes the former ideational luggage of the Left.

1 Malik 2009: xii. 2 Buck-Mors 2003: vii, 49, 52 3 Bronner 2004: 17; Furedi 2005: 66.

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3. There are deep-seated differences between human beings as they are framed by their culture. Hence the emphasis on community as opposed to the individual and even social class.

4. Cultural relativism implies defending hierarchy and domination inasmuch as they are genuine expressions of culture and tradition, which implies redefining equality.

5. Conservative sub-cultural elites in the West are praised as the real representatives of their groups thereby enforcing an image of cultural homogeneity.

6. Non-Western autocratic regimes and Islamist terror are not condemned as long as they are against the West in general and the United States in particular.

Among broad segments of the Left, and particularly radical leftists, non-Western cultures – the Third World and ethnic minorities in the West – are seen as essential frames, which ought to be protected in order to safeguard them from Western hegemonic globalisation. This is a marked difference compared to the former critique of and resistance against capitalism and imperialism, which was conducted in the name of universal values of Emancipation. For the last quarter of a century these values have themselves increasingly become the target of condemnation, which has gone hand in hand with the cultural turn. Culture has largely replaced social class as an overarching and politicising concept, which can function as a vehicle of resistance against globalisation and racism. This has gained political momentum due to the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the massive immigration to Europe and North America of people from the Middle East and North Africa.

We witness a drive towards cultural relativism, which finds expression in critiques of Western ethnocentrism in all kinds of contexts. Postmodern trends have undermined core leftist beliefs such as universalism, rationality and truth, and they have excelled in scepticism and risk adverse attitudes towards economic growth, progress and change in general.4 Multicultural trends have legitimised indifference towards massive repression in Third World regimes and civil societies; they have often refused to condemn Islamist terrorism by looking for the “root causes” in the West; they have turned the blind eye to sexism and racism in minority cultures and they have appeased and cooperated with radical Islamists whom they prefer to see as the true interpreters of Islam and as representative of their communities. 4 Bronner 2004: 19, 23, 28; Lukes 2003: 611; Malik 2008a: 5.

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The postmodern buzzwords among academic leftists in the 1980s into the 1990s such as the emphases on difference and that everything is context have played into the multiculturalist agenda, which is a much broader trend often populated with people with an agenda leftists used to abhor. The outcome of these two trends has been a mutation of the twin values of freedom and equality. I will deal with this below. Here it will suffice to say that the earlier emancipatory visions ingrained in these values have boiled down to a conservative defence of freedom from Western influence and values and an insistence upon the equality of cultures. What goes on ‘inside’ cultures is today a restricted area. In arguing for her “multipolar perspective” Mouffe speaks in favour of “an international system of law based on the idea of regional poles and cultural identities federated among themselves in the recognition of their full autonomy.”5

So, the Left has turned to the Right as the roles have been reversed to the point where it does not make much sense to uphold the distinction. This is above all because the Left has turned against the enlightenment ethos and has confirmed the conservative anti-enlightenment axiom that individuals are bound by their culture and cannot and ought not to attempt to transcend it. This is a culturalist agenda, which radical leftist like to apply to non-Western parts of the world. What is left of the Left is its relentless desire to boost its status of being opposed to the establishment, and if this means to line up with reactionary and sexist religious zealots, so be it. As Cohen aptly remarks, “[a]ll that the left has opposed since the Enlightenment become acceptable, as long as the obscurantists, theocrats and fascists are anti-Americans and as long as their victims aren't Western liberals.”6

5 Mouffe 2005: 86-7, 117. 6 Cohen 2005.

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The enlightenment tradition of the Left vs. The classical Right and the multicultural Left The multicultural Left The enlightenment Left The classical Right Cultural relativism: Multiculturalism has replaced universalism and the individual is defined by its cultural belonging

Universalism: Freedom and equality as a vision that individuals are not bound by their culture or class but is able to transcend them

Cultural relativism: Individuals are bound by their upbringing and culture which define their conditions of existence and life-forms

Freedom is repression: Freedom of expression is a means to suppress the other and it is part of Western ethnocentrism and imperialism

Civil and political liberties: Freedom and equality for all regardless of social status, race, gender, etc. irrespective of who is the oppressor

Roots: Pre-political relations as traditions and customs (culture) make up social cohesion and defend status quo

Recognition: focus on difference, equal status among cultures, critique of individualism and Western ethnocentrism, focus on social cohesion

Progress: Common human condition across cultures, overcome subordination and achieving common human aspirations

Reactionary: Essential differences between classes and cultures, races and gender, ”human beings do not exist” (de Maistre)

Critique of progress: Reactive and risk adverse attitude towards change, development, economic growth, new technologies

Emancipation: practices that challenge repressive social arrangements that aim at liberation from subordination

The establishment: Inequality due to natural distinctions and privileges related to nationality, social status, gender, race, etc.

Rationality and reason as domination: power and knowledge are two sides of the same thing, which are determined by contexts and strategies

Reason and truth: aiming for a willed community trumps tradition and commonsense, politics as the factor of cohesion

Experience and tradition: Culture as the factor of cohesion trumps discourses of rationality, reason, truth and rights

Defeatism: Oppression should only be criticized if it is conducted by the establishment in the West

Opposition: Critique of natural hierarchies and their defenders and unconditional defence for those who are down and out

Establishment: Defence of power elites and status quo insofar as they do not undermine the cultural frame

Leftist identity politics after the fatwa against Rushdie

To get at the Left’s identity politics it will be interesting to look at the reactions to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie 14. February 1989. One

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should have thought the Left would have supported Rushdie. He was himself a leftist and had on several occasions voiced his anti-racism; the segment he was part of (the art institution) was by far more liberal and left-leaning than it was authoritarian and right-wing and leftists could praise themselves for fighting for free speech against power. In addition, there had been a number of conservative journalists, writers and politicians in the UK and the USA who had highly critical of Rushdie.7 Yet, these arguments were not convincing. There are at least three reasons the Left did not have much on offer, or rather why it remained and still remains silent. They concern the consequences of the abstract forms of critique nurtured in universities in more or less isolation from political reality and the desire for anything or anybody that could upset the order of things: the other, the heterogeneous, the multitude, etc.8 These two reasons are about detachment and futility, which form the background for how leftist have dealt with assaults on civil and political liberties. The last one is probably the most decisive one, namely how to deal with fear.

First, university Marxism and its offspring had over four decenniums indulged in highly abstract forms of critique, which had very little if any impact on realpolitik. All kinds of critique associated with the New Left from the 1960s onwards had focussed on alienation in late capitalist societies marked by materialism, consumerism and instrumental reason. They had attempted to explain the survival of capitalism against all odds by means of endogenously generated false consciousness and the ideological manipulation generated by the culture industry and major media corporations, all of which blurred exploitation and kept the masses in a state of apathy. Moreover, the apocalyptic nature of this type of critique had led to an Orwellian impasse where many of those distinctions that matter in the real world imploded. Totalitarianism and manipulation could be deduced from liberalism and the enlightenment tradition, what was progressive and modern generated the regressive and barbaric, and democracy led to fascism.9 It is hardly surprising that leftists raised in this tradition were ill-equipped to deal with a situation where the freedom of expression of artists and others was threatened from the outside, as it were, that is, by the theocratic regime of Iran, which was manifestly hostile to the West. In addition, leftists as well as anybody else, were accustomed to a political culture in Western Europe and North America where free speech on the whole was taken for granted. 7 Cohen 2012: 33-42; Malik 2009: 32-35. 8 On the desire to cultivate oppositional identities, see Anthony 2007: 116-17; Cohen 2007: 302, 307; Furedi 2005: 156-7; Green 2006: 14, 22-3. 9 Bronner 2004: 109-110; Malik 2008a: 156.

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Second, the New Left’s isolation from the working class and its frustration with its lack of revolutionary will enabled attention and political goodwill to anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements and regimes in the Third World in the attempt to find revolutionary agents fighting imperialism.10 The fact that these new agencies quickly degenerated into autocratic and corrupt regimes did not arouse criticism, at least not as long as they were hostile to the West. With the cultural turn these regimes were further immunized from critique from the outside as universal standards did no longer hold sway, but were themselves part of the problem. This trend was underpinned by the Left’s desire of otherness and insurrection combined with its anti-Western self-loathing.11 Leftist Third Worldism illustrates that culture is the prerogative of the others and that it is something that should be protected against Western encroachment. The implication is that Western leftists implicitly speak from the privileged universal position they otherwise speak up against.12 This position of enunciation is enforced by the ever-present aversion of speaking about Western culture, which is readily equated with ethnocentrism, imperialism and racism, and, more specifically, with right-wing nationalism and populism.

To return to Rushdie and why leftists remained silent and increasingly condone, implicitly or explicitly, assaults on free speech, three points should be mentioned. First, the Left has immunized the other’s culture from critique insofar as this other is the enemy of the enemy (the West), and this makes it problematic to draw attention to, say, human rights violations and political repression, partly because it violates the axiom of cultural relativism and partly because the Left thereby runs the risk of siding with the West against the oppressed other.13 The consequence of this us/them political logic is a de facto sacralisation of culture and hence structures of domination, which leftists would otherwise be the first to attack. Second, Marxists had always been sceptical of liberal democracy and civil liberties as they were only the first step towards Emancipation, but were eventually a means for bourgeois class-rule. However, with the cultural turn democracy and rights were not only insufficient from an Emancipatory viewpoint; they were a Western invention threatening the authenticity of Third World cultures. This scepticism was intensified in the years to come as when free speech more and more came to be seen as assaults on the weak and the minorities by the strong and the majority.

10 Markovits 2005. 11 Bruckner 2010: Ch. 1-2. 12 Zizek mentions this paradox, or rather performative contradiction. Reference missing. 13 Mouffe’s arguments of human rights in a multipolar world are rooted in culturalist relativism. See Mouffe 2008; 2013: Ch. 2. For a critique, see Dyrberg 2016.

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The Danish cartoon-crisis in 2005/6 illustrates this new logic of political action.14 Third, the condescending idea of culture as something belonging to the other, which ought not to be criticized, went hand in hand with hate-speech legislation and self-censorship. This implied a no less patronising attitude of infantilizing those minorities leftists claimed to speak on behalf of,15 just as the strong/weak framing of politics partook in emotionalizing and privatizing public debate. Gone is the logic of right/left, which thrives on contestation. In its place we get victimization ideology where the right to criticise is determined by who says what and where one is located in the hierarchy of power/powerlessness.

Finally the third point dealing with fear. The fatwa against Rushdie announced a new type of threat against freedom of speech, which should prove powerful in the years to come. Violence and the fear it fosters is a classical repressive form of power and it has had the effect of intimidating a public political culture by facilitating censorship (hate-speech legislation) and self-censorship. Both form of censorship have had an effect on the arts, such as literature, theatre, film, art exhibitions, satirical cartoons, and so on, where people became increasingly aware of the risks of offending radical Islamists.16 There are numerous examples of threats, harassment, murder and arson against artists’ and their families, and in the decades after Rushdie’s death sentence it was no longer necessary to issue fatwas, as the mere suspicion that something could be interpreted as an affront to Muslims was enough for publishers, art galleries and others to withdraw books and close down exhibitions.

The fatwa became internalised not only by the art institution but also to a large extent in the political culture.17 This implied at least three things, which are relevant in relation to leftist identity politics. First, it gave way for hypocrisy, because self-censorship and political correctness were launched in the name of tolerance, respect and recognition of the other in the attempt to combat “Islamophobia”, which was the new buzzword promoted by OIC and adopted by leftist fellow-travellers. What we see here is self-censorship, which is all the more efficient as it is re-described in terms of anti-racism, equality and tolerance, which appeal to liberals and

14 There are interesting parallels between leftist ways of arguing against racism, on the one hand, and the strategies launched by the theocratic regime in Iran and later by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) who appeal to a liberal/leftist audience in the West, on the other. See Cohen 2012: 29-32. 15 Bruckner 2010: 42-3. 16 See e.g. John Cleese’s comments on making politically incorrect jokes about Muslims, Cleese 2014. 17 Malik 2008b.

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leftists. Second, we have witnessed the development of a “Stockholm syndrome” on a mass-scale as leftists have re-formulated those who attacked free speech – and who were, according to old-fashioned leftist standards, reactionary and authoritarian fanatics – as representatives of an authentic Islamic culture. ”They treated Muslims as a homogeneous bloc, and allowed the reactionaries to set the cultural agenda.”18 This is in accord with the cultural turn, which leads to the third point, namely that leftists have forged alliances with the most reactionary and radical Islamists and have shown no interest in reaching out for liberal, leftist and democratic Muslims although these still make up the majority among those living in Western countries. The logic of this move seems to be to seek alliances with the most pronounced enemies of everything associated with the West, which is a means to cultivate a leftist oppositional identity.

Summarizing these three points, we can say that the postmodernist and multiculturalist trends combined with the threats of radical Islamism have posed an extraordinary challenge to leftists of how to deal with civil and political liberties in an increasingly multicultural society. This situation draws attention to the ideology of the New Left and its epigones today. Leftist identity politics, which has orbited around racism and sexism, has on the whole been a peaceful affair. That is, leftists have not been the target of violence and terror. They have engaged in all kinds of criticism of governments and ruling classes as well as against reactionary and fundamentalist Christians without fearing for their lives. There are, of course, exceptions, but the New Left’s political involvement have on the whole been a free lunch in the West. But when the struggle concerns freedom of expression, and the enemies are certified victims of racism according to leftist ideology, leftists would run the risk of being bullied by “Islamo-fascist” hooligans, which would jeopardise their oppositional identity.19 Cohen’s remarks on the Left are to the point here:

”a campaign for free speech would involve them running a slight risk of becoming the target of violence themselves. They soon found high-minded reasons to avoid it, and redefined their failure to take on militant religion as a virtuous act. Their preferred tactic was to extend arguments against racism to cover criticism of religion.”20

18 Cohen 2012: 51. 19 On the notion of “Islamo-fascism”, see Berman 2008. 20 Cohen 2012: 45. The last part of the sentence is particularly interesting as it show the close link between the strategy of OIC, which has defined Islamophobia as a form of racism, and leftists.

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What we have witnessed in the post-cold war era is a cultural turn, which is especially visible in the rise of both populist right-wing parties in Europe and the multiculturalist Left, which are two sides of the same coin.21 In the wake of this turn we have seen a disinclination on the part of the Left to embrace the enlightenment tradition, which used to form the backbone of the ethos of the Left. This is the major chance in leftist orientation, which has led the Left down the trail of what it until recently would characterize as a reactionary and authoritarian outlook.

Part II: Free speech and how leftists argue against racism

Fellow travellers and selective antipathy

There are several ways in which radical leftists de facto defend Islamists – be that regimes, organisations, terror groups, and so forth. The most widespread defence is probably silence: it is significant that radical leftists are not filled with anger over terrorist actions, policies, traditions, statements, etc., which they would not hesitate to condemn in the strongest possible ways if the perpetrators were not the enemies of the enemy, and there was no risk of being accused of Islamophobia. So, we are witness to a widespread reluctance among leftist to condemn terrorist actions carried out by Islamists, such as 9/11, the major terrorist attacks in Europe such as Madrid, London and Paris, the terror regime of ISIS or terrorist organization like Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas and Hezbollah. Inasmuch as leftists do criticize these actions and organizations, it is typically with the proviso that they have to be seen as responses to Western imperialism and racist oppression of Muslims. There are two reasons why the Left is hesitant to condemn Islamism and even seeks alliances with Islamists.22

21 Adamson 2016. 22 As Glazov (2009: 2) argues there does not have to be “any formal ‘alliance’ between radical Islam and the Left, but simply … that the radical Left consistently takes the side of Islamist terrorists in their jihad against the United States.” Tibi (2009: 8) speaks similarly of

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The first one has to do with the fascination with the ideology of Third Worldism as a potent force against Western imperialism and ways of living, which date back to the tradition of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, Islamism is viewed as being the most radical and comprehensive force against the West and modernity (or Western modernity), and Islam is, moreover, seen as an oppressed religion, globally as well as in the West. This has given way for a confluence between two kinds of struggle against inequality, which, traditionally, has been the defining feature of the Left: there is one against global capitalism and imperialism, which is equated with the hegemony of the West, and another one against the oppression of minorities in the West, which is mainly conducted under the banner of antiracism. These types of critique and struggle make up the major reason for the alliance between leftists and Islamists.

There is also another reason, which has facilitated the development where leftists in the West line up with radical political Islam and the cultural heritage of reactionary Muslim clerics. I am thinking of the dislocation, or collapse rather, of what used to form the outlook of the Left for two centuries. Prior to the postmodern avalanche the Left had endorsed what multiculturalist leftists refer to as “Western values”,23 notably rationality, progress, universality, freedom and rights. Within a very short span of time these values were contested, problematized, deconstructed and exposed to critique and condemnation, and they were seen as complicit in the Eurocentric, racist, imperialist and repressive built-up of Western world hegemony.24

On this background it is interesting to discuss the nature of freedom of expression and especially the numerous assaults on this freedom whether in the form of hate-speech legislation, self-censorship, prohibition or threats of violence and harassment. One often comes across two types of arguments, which are closely connected. The first asserts that freedom of expression is a means to prevent those wielding power – defined as the elites or the establishment in the West – from abusing their power to manipulate, injure or force people in general and disadvantaged segments of the population in particular. The second emphasises that freedom of expression ought to be framed by moderatism thereby suggesting that it is a means to overcome stark differences via dialogue and to enhance consensus and social cohesion. Whilst the former defines freedom of “[t]he love affair of the contemporary left with Islamism derives from the earlier new left romanticism about the ‘third world’”. For a list over the networks and agendas of the political Left see http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/ 23 Mouffe 2005b; 2013: Ch. 2; Buck-Morss: 2. 24 Berman 2010: 176-81; Bruce 2001: 13; Buck-Morss: 44-7.

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expression as speaking truth to power, the latter defines the legitimate range of free speech by opposing it to hate-speech, which, so the argument goes, aggravates conflicts and leads to extremism on both sides. Free speech is, when seen in this light, underpinned by hate-speech legislation.

Both assertions might at first glance appear as lenient and democratic assurances against abuses of power and repression, on the one hand, and radicalisation, extremism and violence, on the other. People’s liberties to express themselves in ways others dislike are legitimate only if these others obtain positions of power. If they do not, one is not exercising one’s constitutionally guaranteed rights but is, on the contrary, engaging in defamation of vulnerable groups that stigmatizes them through hate-speech and weakens the cohesiveness of the community.

Following this normative and functionalist take on freedom – free speech ≠ hate-speech – it follows that those who speak their mind, and possibly hurt the feelings of those who are categorized as weak, are perverting free speech by twisting it for their own purposes, which are typically motivated by stupidity, egoism, sexism, racism and imperialist aggression. Those who stubbornly insist on their right to, for instance, draw cartoons that ridicule religion deliberately offend others and this implies, on the one side, that their intentions are mean, and on the other, that their “enlightenment fundamentalism”25 is extremist and detrimental for society. Let me give a few examples to illustrate what I have in mind.

Free speech 1: Spencer vs. Hamze Free speech 2: The cartoon controversy Root causes 1: Anti-racism trumps anti-sexism Root causes 2: Boko Haram and ISIS

Free speech 1: Spencer vs. Hamze

In a debate between Robert Spencer (the director of Jihad Watch) and Nezar Hamze (regional operations director for Council of American-Islamic Relations, Florida) in May 2015, a couple of interesting points came up, which illustrate so-called anti-racist types of arguments. The occasion was a competition to draw cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, which was

25 In commenting on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Timothy Garton Ash (2006) condescendingly described her as a “slightly simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist”.

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organized by Spencer and his associates, and which was attacked by armed Muslim extremists.

Hamze advances an argument that is typical for representatives of Muslim organisations and leftists when he says that those who promote free speech and go to the excesses of insulting Muslims are likely to provoke Muslim extremists to resort to violent means. Following this diagnosis the solution is quite simple: if the most extreme promoters of free speech stop insulting Muslims, the problem of harassment, violent assaults, murders, etc. will automatically stop. This goes both ways: Islamists will not feel provoked just as it will tend to prevent racists and islamophobes from harassing Muslims. Two points are important here, which are also found among numerous other defenders hate-speech laws.

First, Hamze implicitly assumes, as does many leftists and advocates of hate-speech legislation, that expression and violence are equivalent: to state a provocative and possibly insulting point of view orally or in written form, to draw cartoons, making films, theatre, art exhibitions and so forth, are on par with bullying and murdering human beings. There is, in other words, no moral difference between the cartoonists at, say, Charlie Hebdo and those who killed them. They are two sides of the same coin, that is, both are extremists or fundamentalists. From this vantage-point the defence of freedom of expression cannot avoid being rather half-hearted to say the least. For Islamists and radical leftists free speech is defended instrumentally, that is to say, as long as it can be used to support their political religion and ideology of anti-racism, respectively. The logic of this type of argument is, as mentioned, that freedom of expression is okay if and only if it targets those in power. As we will see below, this argument was also widely used in the Danish cartoon controversy.

Second, Hamze indicates, as does many leftist fellow travellers, that those Islamists who resort to terror do not, strictly speaking, act, and this means that they cannot be held accountable for what they do. They react, partly because the real actors are those who provoke them, and partly because they live under ghastly conditions marked by stigmatization and repression. The root-cause of the violence and the killings are, in other words, to be found among those who are labelled fanatic free-speech fighters such as Charlie Hebdo, Jyllands-Posten and many others whose racist cartoons tap into the general sentiments of Western racism. Seen from this perspective, the murder victims are, at the end of the day, their own assassins. They had it coming, as it were, which means that the real victims are those who, apparently, had no other choice than to seek recourse in terror.

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There is a supplementary argument at work here, namely that of moral accountancy, which Hamze does not enlist, but which can be found among several leftists setting out to explain terrorist actions. In commenting on 9/11 Chomsky starts out by asserting that it was a criminal act, but having said that he turns to the issue, which concerns him the most. The United States was itself responsible for the terrorist attack. It was a response for the evil the USA has inflicted on people all over the world, which has killed infinitely more people than the 3000 who were killed in the 9/11 attack.26 Against this incarnation of evil, no reprisal will ever make things even. To argue on those lines has a double function: it concocts a story about the authentic rage among the oppressed and it legitimizes whatever they do to resist this oppression. As a result, leftists are either not outraged or they actually support terror by re-describing it as resistance, which is impressive as the Islamic terrorists are willing to die for what they believe in. By indulging the death cult, radical leftists immunize the perpetrators who are, ultimately, not responsible for their actions and who are, moreover, envisioned as the medium which expresses the rage among their people, which is an implicit characterization of what they do as authentic and heroic. In addition, leftists can praise themselves for being more insightful by getting the bigger picture in contrast to ordinary people who are manipulated by the media. Finally, one should not forget the Left’s soft spot for revolutionary violence, which is necessary to destruct the old order.27

Free speech 2: The cartoon controversy

In commenting on the Danish cartoon controversy 2005/6, which was triggered by the newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s 12 “Muhammad cartoons” in September 2005, Deepa Kumar complained that the Left did not respond properly to these alleged racist cartoons. She accepts without further ado that they are racist and that we are dealing with yet another stigmatization of Muslims.28 She then goes on stating that we are not in a situation of “equal-opportunity humor”, because “you are talking about oppressed and 26 Bérubé 2009: 56-8. See also Bruckner 2010: 13-5, 76-7. 27 This has a long history. The glorification or deification of Stalin and Mao by Western communists is an obvious case. See Glazov 2009: Ch. 3-4. More recently, Zizek’s admiration for revolutionary violence illustrates what Johnson 2015 refers to as “Linksfaschismus”, which is also a term Zizek (2008: 159) uses to describe himself. 28 Kumar 2006b.

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disempowered people, who do not have equal access to the mass media.”29 Denmark is, Kumar wants us to believe, increasingly marked by a racist political culture and anti-immigration laws, which forms the context of the cartoons. The emphasis on this context also figured prominently in the Danish debate where it served the function of taking the heat off the hate-campaign against Denmark conducted by radical imams living in Denmark. There is no neutral point, Kumar continues, “in a world characterized by racism, wars, and imperialism – you are either on the side of the oppressed or the oppressor. One may have criticisms of how sections of the oppressed have chosen to resist, but you still have to take a side.”30 This is a clear statement of a global friend/enemy antagonism, which depicts the West as the imperialist and racist aggressor and asserts that if one is against this evil; one has to be in favour of whatever the wretched of the earth do as they are acquitted of all charges a priori.

To argue on those lines resonates with the argumentative logic advanced by several Danish writers commenting on the cartoon crisis. The Left’s critique of free speech and its defence of hate-speech legislation and self-censorship are governed by one’s position in the global hierarchy of power: powerful/disempowered, majority/minority, strong/weak, abuser/victim, and so forth. A few examples illustrate this. Five writers all agreed that the sole function of freedom of expression is to be able to criticize those in power without retaliations. “Freedom of expression was born in a showdown with those in power with the help of the power of the word and reason”, says Carsten Jensen.31 But today, he continues, we experience that “freedom of expression suddenly has the opposite function. Now it is the majority’s right to annoy, ridicule and haunt the minority. It is the freedom of the bullies; it is the freedom of the war mongers and the majority over the minority.” Kirsten Thorup goes on in the same way by asserting that “freedom of expression is meant as a right to criticize those in power without ending up in prison. Free speech is not a right for different groups in society to be allowed to mock one another.”32 Mette Winge is on to the same thing when she claims that freedom of expression “was instituted to protect the citizens against the state – the idea was not

29 Kumar 2006a. 30 Kumar 2006a. This type of argument is used frequently, e.g. in relation to Iraqi “resistance” against the US led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. One example will suffice here. In a 2004 interview Arundhati Roy said: “The Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle against Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle.” Quoted in Bérubé 2009: 31. 31 Jensen 2006. 32 Thorup 2006.

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that citizens should go out and harm each other.33 According to Bent Vinn Nielsen, “if you want to challenge free speech, you should do it in another way than challenge a minority, which is already harassed.”34 “Freedom of expression is about to become a deity”, says Ib Michael, “which we shall worship, but they abuse it by mocking and insulting other human beings.” In this way, the powerful abuse tolerance to their own advantage by bullying those who are already stigmatized.

These writers treat free speech as a function of the oppressor/oppressed code. This is the reason they favour censorship – self censorship and hate-speech legislation – although they seldom phrase it this way. Ib Michael is one of the exceptions when he reformulates self-censorship as a way to get along with others, being respectful, decent, etc. “We should, all of us, every day impose on ourselves the necessary self-censorship so we do not insult other people and other religions – this is what the laws say.”35 For Thorup the cartoon crisis is not about free speech at all. What is really going on is that “an ethnic minority – Muslims – should get used to being in the receiving end of scorn, disdain and ridicule”;36 and Nielsen “refuses to acknowledge that this case has anything to do with freedom of expression. If it has, it is the perverted freedom called the right to scorn.”37

The question is which criteria should be used when setting up restrictions on civil liberties in general and free speech in particular. The fundamental issue is what is off-limits: is it injurious slander and threats or is it the presumed intentions by those who draw cartoons and the presumed feelings of those who look at them? The writers quoted above together with several other leftist pundits and lawyers went unanimously for the latter. Even when the cartoonists were threatened on their life and when Jyllands-Posten received bomb threats and its employees were under severe pressure, freedom of expression remained a non-issue. Instead, the basic problem and hence the reason for the escalation of the crisis was seen as lying in the rise of xenophobia and intolerance in Danish society, which was symbolised by the electoral success of the Danish People’s Party.38 So, leftists bypass and reverse the threats: they do not accept that

33 Winge 2006. 34 Nielsen 2006. 35 Michael 2006. 36 Thorup 2006. 37 Nielsen 2006. 38 This is amongst others Zizek’s line of argument (2008: 91) on the cartoon crisis in his brief and incorrect account of how the crisis developed. For a similar argument, see Kumar 2006a. However, the assumption that intolerance, xenophobia and racism should have assumed alarming proportions in Denmark is not supported by empirical data. On the

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the crisis has anything to do with freedom of expression, and they do not think radical Islamists pose a threat, as it is instead the establishment that harasses and provokes a stigmatized minority.

Intellectual leftists like Zizek, Butler, Hardt/Negri and Buck-Morss take a more general turn when choosing to see Islamism as a way for the impoverished masses of the Third World to express resentment against global inequality, racism and imperialism, which the West has imposed on the rest of the world. It is designed to provide prima facie goodwill: here we have victims who in reality have carte blanche to do and say what they want, because they are oppressed by the West, which makes their rage authentic and hence legitimate. They are beyond responsibility as they answer to higher powers, which imply that it is not okay to question the legitimacy of what they are doing.39 Although leftist do not answer to divine providence, the ethos of Islamism taps into the sentiment of those leftists who consider themselves revolutionary. For the latter also answer to higher powers except that they are not divine but metaphysical be that the historical necessity of class struggle in Marxism or the imperatives of the death-cult, the authenticity of rage or the ethics of the event in postmodern jargon. Leftists also see the individual as enacting a mission outlined by a vanguard of those who know better; they consider individual responsibility to be a Western or bourgeois hoax and the West is itself the cause of what happens to it, which is in any case defendable as the West has imposed infinitely more evil than the other way around.

“We in the West are the Last Men,” says Zizek, “immersed in stupid daily pleasures, while the Muslim radicals are ready to risk everything, engaged in the nihilist struggle up to the point of self-destruction”.40 Here we have an antagonism between inauthenticity and authenticity: the complacent, dull and materialist life in the West vs. the death-cult of Islamic radicalism. Islam is, he goes on, “the rage of the victims of capitalist globalization”, and in speaking about the cartoon controversy he indulges in the typical leftist displacement of the issue by claiming that the “protest were not really about the specific cartoons, but about the humiliations and frustrations associated with the West’s entire imperialist attitude.41

Judith Butler holds that “understanding Hamas [and] Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a

contrary, Danes are among the least intolerant/xenophobic/racist people in the EU. See Andersen 2006 and Nielsen 2004. 39 Paul Berman 2010: 195-6. 40 Zizek 2008: 25. 41 Zizek 2008: 159 and 91.

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global left, is extremely important.”42 From this it naturally follows that one should not criticize the comrades in Hamas and Hezbollah as this would benefit their enemies, that is, the West in general and the Zionist enemy in particular. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri make an explicit link between Islamism and anti-modernity/West. They see Islamism as a postmodern project as if in this way to appeal to trendy leftists in the West: “The postmodernity of fundamentalism has to be recognized primarily in its refusal of modernity as a weapon of Euro-American hegemony.”43 Susan Buck-Morss is on to the same anti-modernity trail by arguing that “Islamism as a political discourse can be considered together with Critical Theory as critiques of modernity in its Western-developed form.” And, she continues, “Islamism is a creative space for political articulations of protest against present inequalities.”44

Root causes 1: Anti-racism trumps anti-sexism

In 2004 Lindsey German (convenor of the Stop the War Coalition (StWC)) said that to criticise the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) for condoning sexism “was really an attack on all Muslims in Britain”,45 which implies that MAB represents British Muslims, but does it? Similar arguments are launched by Anas al-Tikriti as well as Andrew Murray and Lindsey German: to criticise fundamentalists such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi for condoning violence against women and gays are, in fact, a sign of Islamophobia and “part of a rise in racism and anti-Muslim sentiments.”46 Another example that anti-racism is more important than anti-sexism can be found in German’s evasion of dealing with sexual inequality. Sexism and homophobia are not, she says, practiced exclusively by Muslims. So why pick on them only? Here we move, almost imperceptibly, from a fact to an allegation of racism. She says: “For any socialist, the defence of sexual equality and freedom must be unconditional. But we cannot, in the

42 Quoted in Walzer 2015. 43 Quoted in Walzer 2015. According to Tibi (2009: 13): “The suggestion that cultural modernity and European humanism ought not be reduced to European political hegemony is discarded by Islamists as a ‘Jewish idea’.” It is noteworthy that Mouffe pursues a similar line of argument (without the anti-Semitism though) when she argues against the spreading of “Western values” as does Buck-Morss. 44 Buck-Morss 2003: vii and 52. See also Tibi’s critique of her argument, Tibi 2009: 7-8. 45 Miller 2013: 16. 46 Miller 2013: 24.

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process, join in the attacks on those very Muslims who are at the sharp end of racist attacks and Islamophobia in Britain.”47 What does that mean: is sexism okay when done by the victims of racism; is sexism the lesser evil of the two or should one stick to one’s “unconditional” defence of sexual equality but keep quiet about it?

Murray and German’s way of arguing that racism is an issue here is to insist that there are others in the UK who are sexist and they are not excluded. This differential treatment qualifies as racism. They say, “there is sexism and homophobia in the British trade union movement, and since this does not disqualify the trade unions from joining the anti-war movement, criticism of their alliance with the MAB ‘indicates a form of racism’.”48 This way of arguing is similar to those feeling uncomfortable about the massive sexist assaults against women in Cologne New Year’s Eve 2015/16 – uncomfortable not because women were harassed but because it put asylum seekers in a bad light. They too held that sexism and rape are by far restricted to men from the Middle East and North Africa. This is, obviously, true, but the point is that it was the first time since the end of World War Two that women had been subdued to systematic sexual harassment on a mass scale. It is the systematic subordination/oppression of women in Islamic sharia law that is the issue here as opposed to finding examples of sexism and homophobia in British trade unions and elsewhere.

We find a parallel way of arguing with regard to the issue of anti-Semitism voiced by Muslims. But when we go to the root of the problem it turns out that it is a “European Christian reaction”. So here again, the root cause and hence the responsibility for anti-Semitism cannot, by definition, have anything to do with Muslims, because Islam is, as Buck-Morss claims, a religion of tolerance.49 As StWC states reassuringly, “there can be no scope for complacency at any revival of this evil, or any concession to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which, even if mouthed occasionally by young Muslims, are rooted in European Christian reaction.”50

47 Miller 2013: 16. 48 Miller 2013: 18. See also Namazie 2013 in Miller 2013: 58-9. 49 Buck-Morss 2003: 50. 50 StWC statement quoted in Miller 2013: 19.

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Root causes 2: Boko Haram and ISIS

It is common to defend or at least not to condemn the enemies of one’s enemy, for example ISIS and Islamist terror, by changing the focus from ISIS and terrorism to what brought them to life. To pursue this strategy gives two argumentative advantages: it takes the heat off one’s de facto friends and it blames one’s enemy for being the real culprit. In addition, it shows that the one launching this type of critique is deeper, more thorough and less prejudiced than are the mainstream media, which are superficial, manipulating and governed by corporate interests.51

In taking a stance on Boko Haram’s abduction of 276 school girls in Nigeria 14-15 April 2014, Lindsey German of StWC saw a chance to get at the bottom of this case and come up with a bold answer as to who is responsible, who are the real devils, for it cannot, by definition, be those who are actually doing what they do. So the focus and hence the direction of indignation is displaced to those who ‘made’ Boko Haram. Here German gets at the root-cause of things, which, not surprisingly, means to point out the West as the real perpetrator. “Boko Haram’s emergence”, she says,52 “has much to do with Western oppression, corruption and economic inequalities which have historically plagued Nigeria.” Margaret Kimberley writing for AlterNet is on to the same thing: “the kidnappings of the past two years are a direct result of the government’s mistreatment of its people and its failed efforts to fight Boko Haram.”53 It is not clear what “direct result” means except that the government’s mistreatment and failure is somehow directly responsible for the kidnappings – but how? Less direct perhaps, but definitely getting at the root-cause, Dan Murphy, writing for Christian Science Monitor, suggests we should “go back to the British colonialists in northern Nigeria. In their aggressive push for modern secular schooling – and the resistance from Muslims – lies the spark for Boko Haram's murderous rampages against "Western" education.”

German, Kimberly and Murphy’s stance on Boko Haram illustrate that the most significant factors responsible for ‘making’ the organization have nothing to do with religion. Religion is off the hook and Boko Haram is sanctified as victims of poverty, corruption, oppression and, of course, the hegemonic power of British and American imperialism. Another way to displace the atrocities of, for example, terror groups and Islamist regimes is to downplay the role played by religion by focussing instead on socio-

51 Bérubé 2009: Ch. 2. 52 Kozloff 2014. 53 Kimberly 2014.

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economic and political factors. Thus Parvez Ahmed argues, “much of the violence in the name of Islam is less motivated by faith and more so by poverty and desperation.”54 Similarly, Kathleen Cavanaugh says “that ‘the violent and oppressive actions [of ISIS] have little to do with religion per se’, but rather are ‘underpinned’ by material interests.”55 Finally, David Swanson claims in an article on ISIS that the US led invasion in Iraq paved the way for the rise of ISIS. “Start by recognizing where ISIS came from”, he begins his article, and then goes on listing how the “U.S. and its junior partners destroyed Iraq, left a sectarian division, poverty, desperation, and an illegitimate government in Baghdad that did not represent Sunnis or other groups. Then the U.S. armed and trained ISIS and allied groups in Syria…”56 The argument has an affinity to how leftists explained the terror regime of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, which was responsible for the killings of around two million people – a quarter of the population of “Democratic Kampuchea”. The root cause was, needless to say, the United States’ war in Indochina.

To make this kind of move has three advantages for present-day leftists. First, and most important from a political point of view, it dissociates the Left from allegations of Islamophobia, which is, according to OIC and its leftist allies in the West, a form of racism.57 Second, it immunizes religious values and traditions some of which are, or at least used to be, repulsive for leftists. But when they are taken off the agenda, alliances with Islamists might appear less burdensome. Third, to downplay religion taps into the default leftist position that religion is a superstructural phenomenon and hence that there are more important causes for why Islamists do what they do – causes which link up with domestic and global poverty and repression.

Part III: What’s in it for the Left?

The reversals and mutations of leftist politics have been a mixed blessing for the Left. The New Left, which took off in the early 1960s, changed the political scene by politicizing virtually everything, which had either been ignored or repressed by the traditional Right and Left (gender, life-style,

54 Parvez 2014. 55 Quoted in Walzer 2015. 56 Swanson 2014. 57 Walzer 2015a.

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sexuality, environment, etc.). But the New Left middleclass radicalism did not have much on offer when it came to ‘ordinary’ politics, which was the major concern for the vast majority. On top of that it alienated the traditional constituency of the Left (the working class) by its identity politics and its middleclass elitism, which turned out to have the effect of strengthening right-wing populist trends.58 So, while the New Left won the ”culture war” related to the first post-wave it also alienated itself. With the second post-wave two decenniums later, and mainly with the rise of multiculturalism, alienation was supplemented by a fundamental disorientation, which brought an end to the Left’s affiliation with the enlightenment tradition. This erosion has gone hand in hand with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, which radical leftists today see as partners in their rage against imperialism, capitalism and racism. The Left has adopted a vicious blend of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-modernity and anti-Islamophobia, which has given it a sense of direction after the collapse of the socialist utopia, but this new oppositional identity politics has undermined its historical basis and mission. What really matters for the radical Left is to nurture its oppositional image vis-à-vis friend/enemy antagonisms, and if that means to forge alliances with reactionary political forces and turn against everything it used to believe in, then, apparently, it is a price worth paying.59

Five points are important concerning the Left’s adoption of what used to be the hallmark of the most reactionary Right:

1. From the post-trends’ insistence upon difference and that everything is context, it was just a small step to assert that everything is culture as this was the political context that cropped up with great intensity after the cold war and the fatwa against Rushdie. This has pushed in the direction of cultural relativism, which either praises or silently accepts the cohesive force of cultures as a framing of everything that goes on within these cultures, which also implies ignoring relations of domination/subordination. This in turn implies that equality takes on a new meaning: it is no longer a struggle against hierarchy but a matter of recognizing the equality of cultures.

58 Eagleton 1996: 69-70; Lindsey 2007: 147, 192-3, 217-8, 234-5. 59 The Left’s de facto defence of Saddam Hussein’s fascist-like dictatorship in Iraq as well as its eager to demonstrate its hatred against The United States can be illustrated by the “Not in My Name” slogans of the mass demonstrations leading up to the second Gulf war. “This popular phrase suggests”, says West 2004: 39, “that anti-war protesting is no longer about stopping wars but registering one’s personal disapproval of it.” See also West 2004: 2, 23, 43-4, 47; Cohen 2007: 282-4, 307-8.

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2. It would suffice to put ‘the others’ culture’ before racist and sexist oppression to make it invisible for a politically correct Left as it would then fall under the radar of attention, which is systematically biased. This has gone hand in hand with a widespread use of double standards governed by a primitive and prejudiced view of a global hierarchy of power, which operates according to a single logic and does not take ‘internal’ power relations into account such as socio-economic inequalities, generational and gender conflicts. Hence the legitimacy of actions and statements do not depend on what is said and done, but solely where one is positioned in this hierarchy.

3. The fatwa against Rushdie, the cartoon controversy and numerous other incidents of assaults on artistic freedom and free speech highlight that if civil liberties are construed to offend ‘the other’, it is our duty to apologize and intensify hate-speech legislation and self-censorship. This way of governing one self and others have been facilitated by the academic trend of recognition/misrecognition, where leftist organizations and academics are ever so keen to spot abuse, racism, etc. Here there is an affinity with right-wing populism, which pretends to speak on behalf of the silent majority, which cannot speak for itself. The same goes for multicultural leftists who indulge in speaking on behalf of selected minorities whom they infantilise.

4. Condemning capitalism is still the business of the Left, of course, but it has lost momentum and has gradually mutated into a sceptical attitude towards modernity. The same holds for anti-imperialism, which has turned into criticism of the West, especially The United States and Israel. Both types of criticism have paved the way for alliances with radical Islamists and condemnation of all aspects of the West: civil liberties which license attacks on Muslims, crusades against Islam and Zionism. This type of critique is not new, but it has taken on new dimensions and it testifies to the inspiration fascism has had on the formation of radical Islam from the 1920s to the end of World War Two.60

5. Just as radical leftists during the cold war took a liking for everything that smacked of anti-imperialism, regardless of whether those who were labelled progressive in the Third World degenerated into corrupt, authoritarian and reactionary police states; radical leftists today have no problems with appeasing and appraising reactionary and violent Islamism. The reason is that they see the Islamist revival

60 Bruckner 2010: 74-80: Lévy 2008: 127.

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as the most potent anti-American political force today. This is caused, partly, by the development of the Left itself, and partly by the clever strategies of the OIC who appeals to leftists in the West by propagating the equivalence: critique of ‘Muslims’ ≡ Islamophobia ≡ racism. The Left has bought this logic of equivalence without hesitation.

The radical Left and the reactionary Right have three common themes: culturalism, anti-modernity and victimization. Culturalism speaks from within an identity politics discourse, which, in contrast to a nationalist based culturalism, idolizes otherness, because it highlights opposition to the establishment, conformity, and so forth. This implies that ‘the other’ becomes a figure of resistance. Anti-modernity signals scepticism towards modernity, progress, individualism, rationality, etc., which is attractive as an icon of opposition and resistance given that radical leftists no longer adhere to the old paradigm of universal emancipation as they have taken over a reactive and sceptical agenda, which used to characterize conservatives.61 Victimization implies to speak on behalf of those who cannot themselves speak up, because they are repressed and stigmatized. Whereas right-wing populists speak for the silent majority, radical leftists want to represent those who are weak. Hence the stress on the code of strong/weak in which weakness is equated with exclusion and authenticity.

These themes have tapped into leftist discourses as they facilitate the friend/enemy matrix, which structures its orientation and frames political intensity, and which orbits around collectivism, solidarity and exclusion as necessary means for building strong group identity. This is decisive and it matters, accordingly, less that the values leftists defend by and large have been replaced by their opposite. What matters is to be able to condemn Western values and the rootless, tedious and mediocre lifestyle of ordinary people, which goes well together with anti-Americanism and political correctness. What we get is a sectarian and elitist Left discourse, which the vast majority of the population in general and the working class in particular, which used to be the constituency of the Left, do not identify with.

61 Furedi 2005: Ch. 3.

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