Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140834 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
'A roaring polemic of outrage against the moral and political crisis of the liberal tradition. It is already one of the most discussed current affairs books of the new year!At the very least it forces anyone on the left to think carefully about where their movement has ended up in the modern world.' The Guardian 'The book is a superbly sustained polemic.' Sunday Times 'Exceptional and necessary!Do not feel you have to be a leftist or liberal to read it, because it engages with an argument that it crucial for all of us, and for our time.' Christopher Hitchens, Sunday Times 'This is a brave, honest and brilliant book. Every page has a provocative insight that makes you want to shake the author's hand or collar him for an argument. Who could ask for more?' The Observer '(He writes with) a genuine passion and human sympathy about people who have experienced appalling suffering.' Michael Burleigh, The Evening Standard 'Undoubtedly controversial and provocative "What's Left?" is, as its title suggests, a bleakly witty but perhaps dimly hopeful examination of what it means to be liberal in an age where the lines that have been drawn in the sand are in danger of being washed away.' Waterstones Books Quarterly 'One of the most powerful denunciations of the manner in which the Left has lost its way!Cohen's is a brave voice.' Michael Gove, The Spectator 'Nick Cohen explains how contemporary liberals have lost their way with his usual polemical brio.' The Observer 'An essay of wide reference and great brilliance.' John Lloyd, Financial Times 'Cohen skilfully shows how the left perversely set its moral compass by the United States!Cohen is at his best as a painstakingly forensic officer and he marshals his evidence with flair and rigour!He is at his very best when he exposes the dishonesty of the liberal press!Cohen's book has made me look with greater respect at the motives behind those who led the journey to war in Iraq in 2003, and view many of the anti-war campaigners with a new scepticism!This book is much more than a mere denunciation of old left-wing friends and colleagues. It is also a moving account of a long personal journey carried off with wit, verve, considerable literary skill and compassion.' The Observer 'A stake through the heart of the overgrown student politician, the smug BBC parrot and the lazy armchair liberal.' Observer 'Books of the Year' 'Excellent diatribe.' Rob Liddle, Sunday Times 'Books of the Year' 'This is the most honest, and most essential political book of the year.' Mail on Sunday 'A bracing assault on liberal pieties that does not allow disillusionment with the hypocrisy of the Left to dampen a fierce commitment to the defence of the liberal democracy against its enemies.' Tablet 'Books of the Year' 'It is an essay of wide reference and great brilliance, which flays every kind of foot-shuffling excuse for not facing up to the nature of the regime which that evil (and now, mercifully dead) tyrant, Saddam Hussein, inflicted on his country and planned for his region. Cohen surveys a gamut of liberal-left Western opinion that, in part under the pressure of the Iraqi war, has forgotten its best tradition and instead lapsed into its worst, that regards nothing as more important than the failures of its own societies, and that lacks the imagination or the will to comprehend the agonies of those living under tyranny.' Financial Times 'A brave book, with a rare vein of self-examination' Evening Standard 'Nick Cohen smells out the cesspits of corruption and injustice with the keenest of noses. He tells it as it is, without fear or favour. He's one of the few independent voices left in an increasingly closed society.' Harold Pinter 'Cohen's re-evaluation of everything that has ever animated his vastly political being says many, many things that really do need to be said.' Deborah Orr, The Independent 'Powerful, angry, forensically argued.' James Delingpole, Mail on Sunday 'A blistering critique of the liberal left that will make readers of The Guardian choke on their Polenta. Cohen accuses the left of losing its moral compass. He attacks those who endorse Saddam Hussein, denounces Islamofascism and criticises other orthodoxies much cherished by the liberal intelligentsia. A timely, passionate work full of moral outrage -- a sat--nav for the mind.' Tatler '"What's Left " illuminates some important shifts in political thinking that affect us all whether we like it or not.' The Word

Mail on Sunday
'This is the most honest, and most essential political book of the year.'

Sunday Telegraph
'Nick Cohen's anger...towards what he sees as the limp residue of Britain's liberal Left scorch their way through these pages.'

Customer Reviews

Very relevant and timely
This is a polemical work and as such, the tone is a little shrill in places. Its central argument however is very sound and well made. This is that too many people on the liberal-left in the last decade and a half or so in particular have allowed hatred of the West and in particular of America, to distort their political judgement and lead them into unholy alliances and making excuses for appalling reactionaries and mass murderers such as Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and other nihilist Islamists. In particular he recounts in great detail how so many leftists rightly supported Saddam's victims in Iraq as they were oppressed and murdered in the 70s and 80s, but withdrew much of their criticism during the first Gulf war in 1991 and even more so in the lead up to and after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The author does not argue that they should necessarily have suspended their criticism of the 2003 invasion simply because Saddam was a fascist monster who deserved to be overthrown (though that seems a pretty good reason for overthrowing him to me), but argues that they were utterly wrong, after the fall of Saddam, to oppose the efforts of the Iraqi people to try to build a new more democratic society in the following years. The Stop the War coalition has made excuses for the Baathist and Al Qaeda militants who have blown up and killed so many of their fellow Muslims, calling them "the resistance", while denying support to Iraqi trade unionists trying to organise in the admittedly shaky but still real new democracy the country is trying to forge.

The phenomenon of some members of the liberal left excusing the actions of dictators as long as they are anti-Western democracy is not new and the author recalls the excuses made for Stalin during the 1930s and denial of the reality of the purges and show trials. However, the more recent excuse-making is, he says, less understandable as these modern critics do not seem to be motivated in favour of a positive liberal or socialist vision for society, but merely by all-consuming hatred of their own Western governments and political systems. The actions of the latter, whether good, bad or somewhere in between, are invariably portrayed as worse than even the most appalling atrocities carried out in modern dictatorships, including now for example Sudan, Zimbabwe and North Korea - regimes who are very rarely publicly criticised by liberals or leftists outside government. The best these critics will concede is that there is no difference between their Western governments and these tyrannies and they will frequently distort facts to "prove" this, e.g. by claiming that the US and UK were primarily responsible for arming Saddam in earlier years, whereas far more weapons were given by the Soviet Union, China and France (see the table on p366 of this edition); or by asserting that any admittedly horrible act committed by an individual member of the US armed forces show that they are no better than a mass murdering nihilist like Bin Laden.

The arguments in this book have helped me to crystallise my own feelings about the misjudgements so many on the left of British politics have been making, especially since 9/11, when thinking on foreign policy has so often come to mean "find out the US view and then take the opposite one". So, overall, a very welcome book, the more impactful as it comes from someone who himself has many criticisms of Western governments but also clearly possesses what his critics lack - a sense of proportion and a healthy respect for liberal democracy as a concept in itself.

High Time
At last, a writer who isn't afraid to challenge the posturing of a now ridiculous 'liberal left', a loose political grouping who really should have the collective intelligence to know better. Until recently I've counted myself as one of them but now I just feel ashamed. This fine writer will tell you why. But one of his chapter titles, 'Kill us, we deserve it', pretty well sums it all up.

Cohen's analysis is as sober as it is disturbing and I read this book well into the night, as gripped as by any thriller. He also writes lucidly, an especial advantage and in direct contrast to the disappointing traditions of inpenetrable prose by many leftist thinkers.

Nick Cohen, given his fine liberal background, is a brave man to have written this book. He has had the courage to stand up and be counted and should be applauded for it.

I'm Left wondering
I suspect how people react to this book will depend quite a bit on where they stand politically. I have noticed on blogs and messageboards that it has enraged the Trots and Trot-lite fellow travellers in the anti-war movement. It's also had enthusisatic approval from those you might expect it from - Christoper Hitchens, John Lloyd etc. Whereas I imagine some on the Right will (wilfuly?) misread the book as "all Lefties are soft on terrorists". (Although having said that Peter Oborne wrote a very fair-minded review)

Speaking personally as a fairly moderate but anti-war Labour supporter I found myself nodding in agreement with much of his analysis of elements of the Left but a bit annoyed by some of the extrapolations he makes.

It is definitely true that much of the Left these days seems to watch what America does and then look for the reason why US policy is wrong. The same could be said about their view of Blair. It is also true that there is often an undue focus on the "causes" of terrorism, rather than simply facing up to the fact that this is an extremist movement that has no problem with killing opponents. (No-one on the Left was bothered about the "causes" of the far-Right bomber who set off bombds in Brick Lane, Soho etc).

It is also true that the tendency to side with the underdog leads many lefties to turn a blind eye to some rabid anti-semitism on the part of those they support. And the treatment of some Iraqi trade unionists who opposed pulling the US & UK troops out of their country by members of the anti-war movement is simply shameful.

However these are often failings of subgroups within the Left (often those trying to fit the current maelstrom in Iraq into a crude imperialist/anti-imperialist framework) rather than the Left as a whole. And the book seems to veer between awareness of these subdivisions and lumping everyone in together. In addition he does often read like a recent convert to his position, advocating it without nuance, and failing to spot the nuances in others' arguments. A good example of this is where he misreads (in my view) a quote from Amnesty's secretary general (p324-325). I think the context to this quote is Amnesty's interest in economic human rights, and as such I don't think it means what Nick Cohen thinks its means (that human rights don't matter to poor people).

Overall I think it is worth anyone on the Left reading this book with an open mind. It is well-written, even if it does feel a bit like a pamphlet that's been strung out for a couple of hundred pages. And it should at least make those who can be a bit objective question some of their on views and ways of thinking (so that probably leaves out the membership of Respect, SWP etc).

He's no George Orwell though!