That great historian Robert Conquest once told Christopher Hitchens that it was no longer useful to distinguish between left and right in politics because “fools and knaves [I’m quoting Hitchens’ paraphrase here] of all kinds needed to be opposed and that what was really needed was a ‘United Front Against Bullshit.’” Conquest’s lifelong quarry has been the Western intelligentsia that embraced totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, and little about the style or substance of that quarry has changed since he took up his pen. Neo-Nazis in Europe are today joined with holy imperialists in Russia in a violent international campaign to defeat what they earnestly describe as a “fascist junta” in Ukraine – and are cheered by anti-imperialist socialists in Britain. So while ideologies and fronts may come and go (Populaire, National, Islamic), Conquest’s barricades must never be dismantled because bullshit has true staying power. It also has wider application than by the tyrannical or the fellow traveling.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 00:12:04 +0000
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