Once again, Terry Glavin cuts through the crap and manages to separate the principles of a genuine Left from the overgrown, entangled weeds of “anti-imperialism.”
Borrowing from Bob Dylan, he writes:
What’s dying is a cynical “anti-imperialist” politics that divides the world into two camps, with American-Israeli imperialists on one side and a “resistance” of plucky Islamists on the other. It a politics that divides the world’s workers against themselves, and absurdly situates the brutal, antisemitic despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the same camp where the western “Left” pitches its tent.
What’s busy being born is a new kind of politics, informed by the best and bravest traditions of the Left, but enlivened by its own “post-ideological” underpinnings. The students, workers, feminists and liberals of Iran are leading the way, learning as they go. The pro-democracy movement is practically leaderless. It’s now taken on a life of its own.
And to borrow from my namesake, their cause– our cause– is “as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.”
