Social Theory has gone mad. Click onto any of my weblog links and I’m sure you’ll get just as intrigued by this E-Team business as I am. If you’re (like me) a regular lurker on Comment is Free I wonder if your head is whirling as fast as mine. Down with John Lloyd; Rise Andrew Murray – or at least that’s what I think I’m supposed to think.

Gone are the days when right meant right, center meant sitting on the fence and left meant left. To be a leftist these days is no longer so simple. It seems to me that the root cause of the much dramatised divide in the leftist camp would be the war on Iraq. One is either pro-war or anti-war and this stance will be the sole definition of ones’ leftist ideals. Now as the anti-war mob have proven themselves to be right all those pro-war types can admit they were wrong and we can unite in plans to pull troops from Iraq, kill Bush and make peace in the middle east, right? WRONG. The arrogance of Nick Cohen and Norman Geras has led to something much worse. a new manifesto and a load of pro-war excuses. Andrew Murray notes their ‘non position taken on the Iraq war’ in the Euston Manifesto to be an ‘embarrassing silence’. Although I enjoy reading his Independent comments I’m no great fan of Johan Hari but to openly admit that he was wrong about supporting the war three years on has got to take some doing especially when I’m sure he was well aware of those ready to snap the olive branch.

So what is it about the E-Team that I struggle with? In all honesty I’m not actually that sure (aside from the war thing). After reading its statements I’ve gotta admit that yeah I believe in a lot of it: the support it lends to equality, its belief in human rights and the freedom of speech, principles of democratic elections, a two-state solution, embracing plurality and opposing anti-Americanism (it’s not all bad is it?) But then again I’m not one for sugar-coated imperialism and neo-conservatism or a rejection of the social left. I’m one for the removal of dictatorships like the Saddam Hussein regime but I’m certainly no pro-war type and have never lent support for an illegal war on terror and its rumors of WMDs. I’m for Leninology (because he’s a right on dude) so does that mean I should automatically disagree with Harry’s Place types? I’m for the liberation of Palestine so does that make me an anti-Semite who as John Lloyd suggests is forming ‘close alliances with fundamentalist Islamic groups’? I like George Galloway so does that mean I’m a [insert smear campaign here] believer? So please help me, what camp do I fit into? The real left, the progressive left, the new left, the internationalist left, the red left, the neo-con left, the Blair left, the right left, the center left or the ‘what are all you middle-aged blogosphere men arguing about’ left?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 10:23 am and is filed under News, Politics and tagged as euston manifesto, socialism. Print this blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.