Political writers have discussed the death of socialism and the triumph of market liberalism at length, but few have noticed a morbid consequence.
In the twentieth century, many on the Left were willing to support or minimize the crimes of the communists. To condemn Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, say, but ignore the victims of the Soviet Union and its satellite states was one characteristic double standard. To demand that the West scrap its nuclear weapons while implying that the Soviet arsenal was purely defensive was a second. In a usually ill-defined manner, they did not believe that communism was wholly rotten and that the progressive rhetoric in communist propaganda was all lies. Bar a few exceptions we discussed, however, they were resolute in their opposition to the fascist tradition.
In the twenty-first century, with socialism gone, the main threat to the status quo comes from Islamists whose attitudes towards women, Jews, homosexuals and free thought do not even pretend to be progressive. Indeed, in Iran, Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip and everywhere else they take power, they persecute leftists. Yet people who call themselves left wing cannot bring themselves to oppose them.
Far leftists go further and are open in their support for jihadis. The apologias from some liberals are so comprehensive that they must also support radical Islam in their hearts. Far leftists have to head to the far right because there is simply nowhere else for them to go now that the revolutionary guerrillas and communist regimes of the twentieth century are history. A love of violence and hatred of their own societies - well merited or otherwise - leads them to conclude that any killer of Americans is better than none.
To explain the catastrophic collapse of their hopes they have revived the false consciousness conspiracy theory, which has been present in socialist thought since the early defeats at the turn of the twentieth century, and given it an astonishing prominence. They hold that the masses rejected the Left because brainwashing media corporations 'manufactured consent' for globalization. Democracy is a sham, the political parties are all the same and human rights are meaningless. What fools call freedom is a smokescreen to hide the machinations of the real rulers of the world. The theory of false consciousness is very close to the antisemitic conspiracy theory of classic Nazism. Indeed its adherents often topple over into the antisemitic conspiracy theory of classic Nazism.
These may seem like fringe developments but the new ideology that emerged in dark, barely noticed corners of the Left fitted the consumer society well. Because there was no coherent left-wing political programme the most unlikely people could affect a leftish posture...
Modern leftists do not have to risk alienating readers with proposals that might be uncomfortable. They rarely have proposals for a new ordering of society. They are merely against the West in general or America in particular, both of which, God knows, provide reasons aplenty for opposition. The collapse in ideology also explains the general inability to support feminists, democrats and leftists in the poor world. If you do not have a positive programme yourself, how can you see strangers as comrades who must be supported? These betrayals may be scandalous but they chime with the psychology of consumerism. Shoppers have little time for Auden's flat ephemeral pamphlets and boring meetings. They are commitment-phobes, with no appetite for the hard slog and the long haul.
Even leftish conspiracy theories do not feel as absurd as they once might have done. In the age of globalization, people who are prosperous and free can still feel that vast powers beyond democratic control run the world.
The result is that almost anyone can strike a leftish pose now. When I go into the homes of the richest people I know, I see Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore on their shelves and think, 'Why am I surprised? Of course, they read them. The Left is no threat to them any longer. Being a leftist carries no costs.'
Not only does being a leftist carry no costs, it is in fact the default ideology of the new establishment in this country. The Gramscian programme of cultural subversion which we tend these days to call "political correctness" has made the political climate uncomfortable even for those on the left such as Cohen himself who have blown the whistle. For it is not only the political left which has been subverted: the culture wars of the last forty years have also left the political centre and right divided, exhausted and confused. A new liberal reformation is required to lead the fightback for Enlightenment values, before a new Dark Age dawns.
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