Perhaps the left believes Muslims are being oppressed.

This seems to be the belief of those welcoming Muslims into Europe, and the need for immigration is written into the Quran.

"And as for those who emigrated for the Cause of Allah, after suffering oppression, We will certainly give them goodly residence in this world, but indeed the reward of the Hereafter will be greater, if they but knew!"

http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/nora/html/16-41.html

And the "reward of the Hereafter" is 72 virgins with rounded breasts.

http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/nora/html/78-33.html

I can't understand how leftist feminists can reconcile this.

I don't think many on the left understand what Marxism involves, but basically Marxism wants to destroy the old to create the new.

Unfortunately....seldom does Marxism get past destroying the old.

The old days had red plotters throwing Molotov cocktails. Bearded suicide bombers do a good job. Red and blue colour spectrum meets as red-blue mauve which explains everything.

I believe the full of assumptions article is based on a false premise? Inasmuch as anybody at odds with the rusted on positions of the extreme right are deemed to be left? Like the reviled Scandinavian socialists, too far to the left for the religious right or the tea party?

Me if I had a choice between America and Scandinavia as a place to eke out my final days, I'd choose Scandinavia, its health and aged care! And where tolerance for Muslim miscreants is wearing very thin? Sympathy for the persecuted or the poor comes from both sides of politics, progressive conservatives and most but not all socialists?

Even there, not very tolerant of biting the hand that feeds it, nor criminal organisations that prey on this tide of human misery! And in the face of that undeniable fact, any remaining sympathy for folks rich enough to afford criminal people traffickers, is virtually nonexistent, particularly when the documentation essential to travel to transit countries is deliberately destroyed! Why, if not to hide who you are and your real if unstated goal?

I believe any remaining sympathy lies in fellow Islamists, any family who have already forced a favorable outcome and dumb as dishwater dropkicks?
Alan B.

Islam and the Left are perfect partners. Both are are authoritarian, anti-democratic.

Some people note and wonder why the Left never chastises Islam for its attitude to homosexuals and womens' rights, while they are always slamming the West for slights, real or imagined, against homosexuals and women. Simple really. The Left does everything based on an agenda of hatred and power for control of society. What do a few homosexuals and 'rights' matter when it comes to power. They would all disappear under the brave new world ruled by comrades. It has to be understood that any cause taken up by the Left has an ulterior motive behind it.

It would be amazing if the totalitarian Left was NOT in league with Islam!

Hi Interactive,

This is a very interesting question. As a born-Marxist, I've puzzled over it ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In answer, one could point to the perennial naivete of the 'Left', that they usually read very little and understand less of any earlier Left movements.

But a more important factor may be that, with the fall of the Soviet Union and after the massacres in Tienanmen, they had nowhere to go, and so, as so often happens when a movement is shown to be bankrupt, drifted towards nihilism: 'what the use of anything, f--k it all, nothing's worth saving'. Some, after all, became Goths.

Gramscian cynicism also played a part: as Gramsci wrote bitterly from his jail cell in the thirties, the working classes had NOT risen up as they were supposed to, in support of their intellectual superiors in the various Communist Parties, so all that was left to do was to do whateber one could to destroy the institutions of bourgeois society: financial stability, marriage, democracy, equality, freedom, equal opportunity, etc.

This paired, of course, with a blanket anti-US stance, one so easy to maintain: I was appalled during the nineties when no other friend seemed willing to support the Bosnians and Kosovars against Serb fascism, sin e, after all, the Serbs were opposed by the US. Yes indeed. Similarly the gutlessness, or pure opportunism, of the 'Left', such as was left of it, in the support for the Timorese people against Indonesian brutality: the Yanks would probably support the Timorese, therefore we should oppose them or at least stay 'neutral', as someone advised me.

So expect nothing but 'Stick Up the Arse' politics from the opportunist 'Left': whatever works to bring down the 'system'. Hence their willingness to open the gates, and roll over for Islamists terrorists. After all, terrorism is being opposed by the Yanks, and therefore must be worth supporting, from their warped point of view. A bit like the last turkey on Christmas Eve.

Cheers,

Joe

The Green flag of Islam says it all.

Hi loudmouth,

While Karl Max is considered to be one of the greatest political and economic philosophers of all time, he never owned a company, he never ran a company, he never had a day job, and he was financially supported by Friedrich Engles for much of his life (and Friedrich Engles was the son of a wealthy capitalist).

Karl Max never did much except write manifestos and pamphlets and give speeches, and he was similar to many of our professional politicians in Parliament today.

Perhaps the most workable political system is a mixture of socialism and capitalism.

Australia did have such a system when many things were publicly owned, but the left-wing Labor party has been one of the worst political parties for privatization, and the Labor party privatized a number of Australian institutions including Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank.

And now they want to privatize the NBN (or perhaps the Labor party will not exist before the NBN is complete).

China would be part socialist, part capitalist and part authoritarian, and if they were to remove the authoritarian part they might be more successful.

Many European countries seem to be part socialist and part capitalist, and interestingly some of the former states of the USSR (such as Estonia) now seem to be doing quite well.

america is a total basket case and beyond help.

I doubt whether most Muslim countries will be successful if they don't have any oil.

Hi ttbn,

Our posts crossed :)

There was a time when the Left professed support for homosexuals and for women. Then, as you suggest, it discovered Islam, so now:

"Some people note and wonder why the Left never chastises Islam for its attitude to homosexuals and womens' rights, while they are always slamming the West for slights, real or imagined, against homosexuals and women. ..... The Left does everything based on an agenda of hatred and power for control of society. What do a few homosexuals and 'rights' matter when it comes to power. "

If the 'Left' had any principles, it would make up its tiny mind to support either homosexuals OR Islam, but it can't do both - and it would support women's rights OR Islam, but again it can't do both. But being unprincipled, it picks and chooses when and to whom it wants to suck up.

One way to do this is never to mention, say, throwing gays from tall buildings when sucking up to the homosexual lobby. It never mentions child marriage, inferior women's rights in Shari'a law, honor killings, stoning for adultery, when it sucks up to feminists, such as there are still any.

When I was a kid and my family was vaguely involved with the Communist Party, there was a sort of smugness about, not just the rightness and superiority of communism, but its inevitable success, regardless of the obvious, even to me, that there weren't all that many of 'us'.

Later, dimly but more strongly as time passed, I sensed a strange arrogance in relation to other groups, the workers, ethnic groups, etc., that 'we' would let them fight and die and win the struggle, basically for 'us', and then 'we' would simply take over and impose the Socialist Utopian Blueprint on society as a whole.

It struck me as

[TBC]

[continued]

It struck me as fatuous nonsense, especially after I went to work in factories in the mid-sixties and experienced the working class (vastly more multi-ethnic than any communists ever seemed to realise) and its aspirations to get on, get their kids on their feet, and strive for a comfortable life. Clearly, nobody was ever going to tell them what to do and surrender their lives for some minute bunch of ratbag dreamers. But it pissed me off until I came to realise that those aspirations were quite legitimate, that they weren't going to throw themselves on the battlements for their intellectual superiors - and why should they ?

Incredibly, some of that dreamer 'Left' is still around, or their children and grandchildren are, still with the same old arrogance. They seem to alternate between a sort of empty optimism, and a vicious nihilism. But even Marx would probably sniff and consign them to the Dustbin of History.

We know now (many knew it a long time ago, but hope springs eternal) that all Utopias degenerate very quickly into fascism: Pol Pot's Cambodia is the archetype for that in our times. ISIS' caliphate is another - after all, Utopias don't have to spring from only Left roots, there is nothing particularly Left about the notion of Utopia (cf. Plato's Republic) - and the Nazis' Reich was planned as a fascist Utopia from the outset.

Hopefully, some of the 'Left' will re-assess their aims and perhaps re-form into a genuinely progressive movement. But that's the rusted-on Marxist remnant in me, still day-dreaming :)

Cheers,

Joe

Simple:

For the rich brats of the Left the enemies of their imagined enemies are their friends.

The rich Leftist brats define their "independence and moral purity" by opposing Mummy and Daddy and Mummy-Daddy's values. The West is Mummy and Daddy in Leftist brats brains.

One of Mummy-Daddy's values is to object to women-hating, "revolutionary" Muslims.

Therefore rich Leftist brats feel allied with women-hating Muslims.

Joe,

You learned from history, and you are wise man, unlike the current drones who sneer at history and treat anyone who has been there and done that as silly old farts. Very wrong, but unstoppable, I think. People seem to learn only the hard way, unfortunately.

William from my perspective that pattern of disconnect from principle seems to be core to much of "Progressive" opinion.

On almost any topic you will find progressives generally being very selective about how those important principles are applied. Not suggesting that parts of the right are any better especially the "moral majority" types.

Talk abortion and child support with progressive and you will generally find that the males rights to choice stopped at the sex act but the womans rights are all important at all and every stage.

People who screamed blue murder about criticisms of Julia Gillard's looks, attire etc relished attacks on Amanda Vanstone's figure and Tony Abbots budgie smugglers (or Clive Palmers girth).

Progressives opposed to any attacks on burkini's joined in those earlier attacks on budgie smugglers.

Talk about police shootings in the USA and progressives won't engage with the higher proportion of white males shot by police compared to black males relative to involvement in violent crime (and if that's not a factor then the gender divide is massive).

The list could go on and on but I think there is enough there to make the point. My impression is that progressives are some of the most bigoted people I've come across, just pretending at a concern for facts and justice. Some are really nice people but in the main there is little willingness to see the "issues" from anything other than a very blinkered view based on some core assumptions.

R0bert

I found the essay to a load of simplistic rubbish. About par for the course for a right-wing propaganda hack.
Meanwhile this reference gives a very comprehensive window into the multi-faceted nature of left-wing politics.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com

Amazingly, both William Hill (the author) and most of the commenters have overlooked the fact that most people on the left aren't obsessively antiimperialist or antiAmerican. Quite a lot are anti war, but considering how recent wars have played out, perhaps that's not such a bad thing?

There's little sympathy among the left for antidemocratic islamists. But there is significant support for those who are democratically elected, even if they have islamist agendas. Trying to stop them by non democratic means can be deeply counterproductive.

Ortega and Chávez were both democratically elected, and actually made a great to improve conditions in their countries for ordinary people instead of governing for the rich. Both were unjustly destabilised by America. Instead of asking why the left supported them, it would be better to ask why the right opposed them, particularly in the early days. Of course Chávez is dead now, and the Venezuelan economy's ruined... ironically by the decision to fix the rate of the Bolivar against the US dollar!

Hi Aidan,

Funny, I don't recall many on the 'Left' opposing the chauvinist wars of the Serbs against the peace-loving Bosnians or Kosovars, or the brutal Indonesian suppression of the Timorese - or supporting those groups in their wars to defend themselves ?.

As for your comment: "There's little sympathy among the left for antidemocratic islamists. But there is significant support for those who are democratically elected, even if they have islamist agendas. Trying to stop them by non democratic means can be deeply counterproductive."

I also didn't know about the existence of democratic Islamists: where are they ?

As for democratically-elected Islamists, the only country that I know of in my limited understanding would be Erdogan's Turkey. Are you suggesting that the 'Left' is supporting Erdogan ?

Are here any other democratic Islamist countries on the face of the Earth ?

And which forces in the Middle East are using non-democratic means, apart from quite proper defensive wars, to get their way ? Are throwing gays off tall buildings, boiling people in vats of tar, burning young women in cages, raping thousands of Yazidi women, bombing women and children in market-places - which of these anti-democratic means, Aidan, do you mean ?

Joe

Excellent article. Well reasoned and spot on.

Speaking of false premises, Milosevic was earlier this year exonerated by the International Criminal Tribunal:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/01/the-exoneration-of-milosevic-the-ictys-surprise-ruling/

A very well written and thought out article, William Hill. I only disagree with your reasoning about Serbia and Tito. If you are interested in the history of Yugoslavia and what sort of person Tito really was, could I recommend to you that fascinating and very famous book by Fitzroy McLean. "Eastern Approaches".

Tito was a communist who had good reason to distrust the USSR. The British and Americans gave Tito's communist forces all of the military aid they could, when they realised that Tito and his partisans were holding down 13 German divisions in Yugoslavia, while in North Africa, the entire British Commonwealth army was flat out keeping Rommel with two German and two Italian divisions at bay.

After the war, Tito refused to allow Yugoslavia to join the Warsaw Pact. When the Russians prepared to invade, Tito flew direct to Moscow to meet Stalin. Marching straight up to Stalin he shouted in Russian "You invade my country and I will give you twenty years of war!" Stalin knew he meant it, and the USSR did not invade. A most remarkable man.

Tito heeded Churchill's advice not to nationalise the farms or to take state control of industry too far. He tried to be friendly with the West and the East, did not support terrorists movements anywhere, and created the Non Aligned Movement. He was first and foremost a nationalist who was ruthlessly determined to keep his religiously and culturally fractured country together as a single entity. I think he equates with Abraham Lincoln on that score. When he died, Yugoslavia fell apart, and a million people died with him.

Serbia is, and always has been, the front line of Europe against an invasive and expanding Islam. I am as pro American as you can get, but I shook my head in wonder at the US attacking Serbia just to suck up to the Muslims, who all hate the US anyway. The Muslims said "thank you" with 9/11.

With Muslim terrorism becoming an almost daily occurrence in Europe, the Serbs are laughing their heads off.

Hi LEGO,

Of course, Tito wasn't Serb but Slovenian-Croat, born on the border of the two. The brother of my grandmother's Hungarian Jewish partner fought with Tito's guerrillas/partisans in Bosnia.

Even though the Serbs are/were in the minority, Tito knew that, as the largest ethnic group, they would still dominate in a federal republic of a united Yugoslavia. After his death in 1979, the Serbs took the path of chauvinism, especially in relation to much smaller populations such as Kosovars, and more ethnically diverse republics such as Bosnia.

I don't think that Serbs were anti-Muslim for any particular progressive reasons, more for quite reactionary reasons of Orthodox Christian domination, if possible, over all of Yugoslavia and the crushing, squeezing out, of small groups. Hence the banning of Albanian-speaking Kosovar staff members from the University of Pristina and the purging of Kosovars from the public services, and eventually - does anybody remember now ? - driving the Kosovar population over the mountains, during winter, into Macedonia and Albania. Pure fascism. Good on NATO and the Yanks for bombing the daylights out of the Serbs.

As far as I can tell, the current independent Kosovar government isn't particularly Islamist, any more than, say, the Indonesian government. But I'll check it out :)

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,

Wars in East Timor and the former Yugoslavia generally weren't seen as a left v right issue, so it's not so surprising that support for action from the left went unnoticed.

I'm not surprised you didn't know about democratic Islamists, as these things generally end up in catastrophe. When Islamists won Algerian elections in the 1990s the result was not accepted and a civil war erupted. Eventually rival violent Islamist factions, spurred on by the government, annihilated each other, but many civilians had also been killed.

More recently Islamist governments in Palestine and Egypt have been elected democratically but then overthrown.

I'm sure I don't really need to tell you that everything ISIS has done is antidemocratic. But when America was trying to set up democracy in Iraq, their claim that they wouldn't let the Islamists win is one of the things that discredited them.

BTW the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia were ethnic not religious. Though Serbs are mostly Orthodox Christians, there are also Serbian Muslims who fought on the Serbian side.

Aidan,

You mean the Sanjak 'Turks' ? They may not have had much choice, as a small minority within Serbia-Montenegro.

As for your claim: " .... when America was trying to set up democracy in Iraq, their claim that they wouldn't let the Islamists win is one of the things that discredited them .... "

overlooks the simple fact that the Sunnis, the backbone of the Islamists, are in the minority, 30 % or so: democracy in Iraq was bound to mean Shi'a dominance, for the first time in Iraq for perhaps a thousand years. Saddam protected and boosted the Sunnis.

Of course, the Americans overlooked the fact of inevitable Shi'a dominance in a barely-democratic state with no previous history of democracy.

The US: fools rush in .....

Cheers,

Joe