Nick Dyrenfurth From: The Australian May 10, 2011

LAST week the world learned of the death of a misogynistic, homophobic, racist mass murderer who supported a theocratic, neo-fascist ideology posing as a liberation movement. In Washington and at New York's September 11 Ground Zero, spontaneous crowds cheered in the streets upon the announcement of Osama bin Laden's long-overdue demise.

Most of the world's population, Muslim and non-Muslim, greeted the news in a more sober fashion. But the overwhelming majority must surely have agreed with the man who authorised bin Laden's death, US President Barack Obama: justice had been done.

To be sure, bin Laden was opposed to every tenet of modern progressive politics; secular democracy, representative government, a hatred of feudal or class-based inequity, equality of the sexes, anti-racism and the core values of the Enlightenment itself.

No self-respecting social democrat mourned his death. And yet, had one's daily reading habits been confined to sections of so-called "progressive" opinion, bin Laden's death was a matter of profound regret. The extra-judicial killing was a denial of due process, celebrity lawyer Geoffrey Robertson protested, oblivious to the impossibility of capturing or trying bin Laden. "[It's] hard to celebrate one more corpse," opined Jeff Sparrow, a devotee of the violent Bolshevik thug, Leon Trotsky, on ABC's The Drum. Not to be outdone, Crikey's Hunter S Thompson-wannabe, Guy Rundle, downplayed bin Laden's crimes claiming that: "Morally speaking, 9/11 was no worse than a B-52 run over Vietnam."

You don't have to believe that American engagement in Indochina during the 1960s and 70s was foolhardy or that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was likewise ill-judged, as the present writer does, to find Rundle's commentary nonsensical. Then again this is a man who has penned such thoughtful treatises as "Zionists and Nazis Connected. Discuss."

Perhaps the most disturbing local contribution came from another Drum regular, anti-Israel activist Antony Loewenstein, who announced that "the West has much to learn". Bin Laden's "[terrorist] tactics were abhorrent and failed to attract huge numbers of followers" Loewenstein surmised, nonetheless the West's subjugation of Muslims meant that the "arguments for his organisation's force have only strengthened since 9/11".

In other words, Osama was a nasty piece of work but fighting the good fight against imperialist crusaders. (Never mind that the majority of al-Qa'ida's victims have been Muslim.) Loewenstein concluded by offering a paean of praise: "Bin Laden died a man who profoundly changed the landscape of the world."

Well, yes, he certainly changed Lower Manhattan's landscape.

If any further evidence were required to show that a segment of the 21st century Western Left has completely lost the plot and plumbed the deepest, darkest depths of moral nihilism and cultural relativism, the contributions of these so-called "progressive" thinkers is conclusive proof. As British academic-cum-blogger Norman Geras put it this week: "In the demise of a reactionary murdering theocrat they are unable to see and plainly articulate the sense of anything good".

As has been well-documented, social democratic parties are in serious decline across the West.

In part, their woes are the perverse result, as the late Tony Judt put it, of their success in conquering mass poverty and material deprivation, and other epic 20th century struggles against inequality and discrimination.

Indeed, the survival of liberal democracy in the face of the twin totalitarian threats of fascism and communism owed much to the efforts of social democrats.

Today, however, noisy elements on the far Left - think Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and our local scribblers - seem to believe that Western-style democracy is in fact the real enemy.

With monotonous regularity they excuse bin Laden and his fellow Jihadis' death-cult or rationalise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vile anti-Semitism, instead preferring to blame the US and Israel for all the woes of the world, including partial responsibility for the September 11 atrocities.

There are of course brave souls on the Left who have challenged the ostensible status quo. One thinks here of Geras and his fellow Euston Manifesto signatories. Recently a local player emerged to put a similar case.

In his maiden speech to NSW parliament last year Labor MLC Luke Foley, from the party's Left, argued that social democrats must confront the newest "totalitarian movement of the far Right" just as they successfully opposed fascism. "This global Islamist movement is misogynist, racist and homophobic [and] based on an utter perversion of the Islamic faith.

Great Post
Thanks

would any of the like him and his followers in their backyards I wonder??..to see someone sitting there watching and plotting and planning his next hate filled  revenge..was stomach turning..yet they feel he was a worthwhile citizen of the world..a good man..

well what annoys me most is that these sympathisers get so much milage out of this where Germaine she is usually out they telling us we are wrong... he was all good.

To try and simplify the views of a man like Noam Chomsky, down to a level where the writer of the article puts him on a plane with Pilger, is enough to tell me that this guy is just one more who does not like admitting that he has no greater claim to declaring what is moral, and what is not, than those he accuses of nihilism.

To describe the killing of Bin Laden as "justice", is not a position  I would expect from those wishing to claim any moral high ground, over fundamentalist Islam.
His death was a revenge killing, and in that regard, puts those who ordered it on very shaky ground when wishing to denounce as barbaric the behaviour of fundamentalists who have honour killings as a part of their core beliefs.

While I do not mourn bin Laden's death, I do mourn for our sense of justice, because the fact that we so easily accept the meting out of such summary execution, as justice, is a diminution of our own values.

It is an easy thing to point out the many faults of people like Bin Laden, and to highlight the moral and ethical flaws in his beliefs, but unless we also show the same vigour in exposing the injustices and wrongs in our own system, then we should not be making rash claims of being alone, in holding some, superior, moral imperative, which allows us to make moral judgements upon others while, characterising any criticism of ourselves as morally nihilistic, for that is pure hubris.

We of the west must accept responsibility for our part in this escalating enmity between Islam and the west, and also accept our part in the rise of people like Bin Laden, and to try and characterise his position as growing from a purely religious, rather than political, ideology, are ignoring the facts of our recent past, and assigning labels like nihilist to people honest enough to speak up about our own faults, is not anything to be proud of.

I am not an advocate for Chomsky, but I recognise his abilities as a thinking person, and believe that putting him on a plane with someone who is a far more simplistic reactionary, like Pilger, is failing to pay due consideration to the depth, and complexity of Chomsky, by comparison.

A lot of what Chomsky says is actually pretty good, if you take the time to listen to him, but he is a bit too far out there for me to personally agree with his whole world view, but I still have to respect the man's intellect.

mozzaok wrote on May 11^th, 2011 at 10:29am:



Hopefully you'd not support his rampant anti-semitism.

Some of his comments about Israel are outrageous.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on May 11^th, 2011 at 10:33am:



I just love all the indepth telling it like it is...

sort of reminds me of the 60s and the hippie revolution when they talked the meaningful  talk ..and all were in awe of them..lol..nothing has changed..

like you andrei I prefer to use my own instincts.. I dont need some guru to tell me what HE thinks..

Andrei.Hicks wrote on May 11^th, 2011 at 10:33am:


Unfortunately Andrei you are prey to the lies of an ever eager right who seek to malign any they believe are not with them, and Chomsky is certainly not anti-semitic.
His stance has always been anti-racist, and it is only his criticism of some of Israels actions that have seen the false anti-semitism accusation made.

Criticising an Israeli government is no more anti-semitic, than criticising the Gillard government is anti-Australian, and the people that make those false claims are the ones whose views you should view with caution.