Nick on David Horowitz
Shorter Nick: The excellent and wise David Horowitz and his sidekick fail to notice all the respects in which Western liberals are perfidious. Apart from that David H is a really good egg whose courage, strength and indefatigability I salute (and, by the way, George Soros is a very bad man).
Update 3:15pm by Chardonnay Chap. Sorry for butting in, but I've just noticed something really priceless at the end of that article.
Er, no he's not. Nick's Wikipedia entry (edited by ncohen2):
Update 3:15pm by Chardonnay Chap. Sorry for butting in, but I've just noticed something really priceless at the end of that article.
Nick Cohen is a columnist for the Observer and New Statesman.
Er, no he's not. Nick's Wikipedia entry (edited by ncohen2):
Until June 2007 he contributed regularly to the New Statesman, but departed and sued the magazine.
posted by Captain Cabernet at 9/12/2008 10:57:00 AM
22 Comments:
What an outstanding first phrase ...
We are living through an age of liberal betrayal, ...
Never mind that posting on Decent racism, how about one on Decent pomposity?
Frontpage magazine!! Suddendly the seals of Dacre seem rather unimportant.
Quite. Writing for Frontpage Mag, accusing David Horowitz of being insufficiently critical of liberals.
And he accuses liberals of making common cause with those who stand for everything they should oppose.
A nice paragraph that links Radical Islam and Baathism as well. It could have been written by Cheney.
I particularly enjoyed:
Having seen liberal opinion here in England go berserk during the war, ...
These berserkers seem to be everywhere these days.
Oxford dons and contributors to the New York Review of Books, who hated her for challenging the stereotypes of their reactionary multi-culturalism, and denigrated her in the most patronizing manner they could devise [...] the New York Review of Books, which demeaned her
He's still upset about being shown up by Timothy Garton Ash, isn't he? So much so that he's smearing him all over again.
the conflicts of our time are draining old labels of meaning
I'm really not convinced by this, especially since Nick praised anthony Browne for being... um... 'a liberal' recently.
David Horowitz and Ben Johnson [...] are patriots first and foremost
well maybe. but look at who Front Page voted as man of the year in 2007. Still can't work out what 'liberal' means, Nick?
the betrayal of "liberalism" by liberals and the left cries out for a book of its own. [...] Nick Cohen would eminently qualified to write the book, and we hope he does.
um - he already has. and it was shit.
Nick seems to be speaking up for extraordinary rendition and Gauntanamo here, as well as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (that's what Bush meant , with his " that countries had to choose whether they were going to help America or provide safe havens for terrorists" quip)
Christ, a couple of years ago even Nick thought that Horowitz was "unhinged".
It's really quite sick.
Never mind that posting on Decent racism, how about one on Decent pomposity?
Decency depends upon pomposity. When I had a more abstractly Decent attitude I was motivated by pomposity (and the resultant self-righteousness/snideness). I didn't need debate so much as a slap, because such a blithe attitude towards atrocities isn't just stupid, it's nauseating.
He's still upset about being shown up by Timothy Garton Ash, isn't he?
Do you have a link for that? It sounds like fun.
Nick's piece is here
and discussed on AWIWOD here
the cohen position on Hirsi Ali sees to be: if you disagree with anything she says (even if you don't try to stop her saying it) then you are siding with the people who persecuted her earlier in life.
Andrew: the boys had it covered
[redpesto]
Never mind that posting on Decent racism, how about one on Decent pomposity?
could combine the two actually, as you don't usually have to venture far from Frontpage to find go iawn Kahanism.
Frontpage hasn't always been so kind to Nick...
Ah memories...
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=7404B5CA-0BA1-445C-A5FE-F4FB8D41CB22
This is all deeply sad. Cohen's rightwards drift seems to be accelerating by the column, not to mention the incoherent spite. Did this process really begin with that bloody Paul Berman book?
Von Pseud
Damn you Cheeseboard. I [i]knew[/i] someone would beat me to that one.
Von Pseud
From that link (which I found as well), this bears repeating:
Glazov: .... So why define yourself in a tradition which does have a lot to do with totalitarianism?
Cohen: I have never been a part of the totalitarian Left, and I'm not at all clear why you say that I have with such confidence. Suppose I were to assert that you were a part of the Nazi or Ku Klux Klan tradition, and you were to reply that you were no such thing. Suppose I were to insist that you were on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, to display a near total ignorance of all the democratic strands on the American Right and to keep repeating the same charge without substantiation or modification.
I suspect you would feel you were debating with a man who was ever so slightly unhinged and give up.
I give up.
Also, from Horowitz's Wikipedia entry:
According to attendee Alexander Cockburn, at that conference Horowitz recounted that his communist parents had not permitted him or his sister to watch Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies and instead had required them to watch celebratory films about the Soviet Union.
Does anyone else sense a bit of myth-making here? And it's not unlike Nick's own account of his parents. Of course, Horowitz may be telling the truth - parents do resemble their children in many traits - it's genetics - so it would be no surprise if generations of Horowitzes have been inflexible, humourless, ideology-driven prigs.
Does anyone else sense a bit of myth-making here?
Well, there was always a bit of myth-making involved in the Day/Hudson movies...
So it's over. Nick is now officially on the bonkers-right, without any clauses or caveats. This is real far-right stuff here. Sad.
the betrayal of "liberalism" by liberals and the left cries out for a book of its own. [...] Nick Cohen would eminently qualified to write the book, and we hope he does.
Ouch, that's really got to hurt; for the objects of one's sycophancy to be utterly unaware of one's own recent work. Nick's like the little kid in the playground sucking up to the bullies who remain oblivious to his existence.
Geodesic Malarkey
Doris Day and Rock Hudson? Does anyone else notice a certain subtext, absolutely hilarious in context, to this?
Having seen liberal opinion here in England go berserk during the war, ...
Nicely spotted Gastro George. I believe the technical term is projection.
Indeed Cohen's entire trajectory whereby he accuses the liberal left of abandoning their core values losing the plot and hopping into bed with unsavoury right wing forces whilst complainng about the plight of those on £100,000 pa, defending the practice of extraordinary rendition, commending Anthouny Browne's position on immigration, complainging that Democrats dislike Sarah Palin because she represents ordinary decent people and writing laudatory reviews for Frontpage magazine either demonstrates a lack of self-knowledge unexampled since Eva Peron emerged onto a balcony in a designer dress, raised her arms so that the diamond bracelets could be heard to fall into position like railway cars in a siding and pronounced "We, the shirtless...".
Alternately, the whole thing is an elaborate situationist prank along the lines of the Social Text affair and the real Nick will re-emerge to point at and mock his new found admirers.
Sadly, I fear that the former is probably the case.
"It may not be a surprise that Ms Criscenzo could not see what was in front of her nose, but it is flabbergasting that George Soros, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and the New York Times shared her myopia."
Bollocks to Barack's "beserkers", Nick's a McCainiac through and through.
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