For those of you who don’t know, the New Statesman is a very liberal magazine run (I believe) out of Britian. A quick skim of their “about us” page revealed that it was created in 1913 “with the aim of permeating the educated and influential classes with socialist ideas”. You can imagine my surprise on my latest visit to their website to discover an article titled, “how the left went wrong”, by Nick Cohen.
Cohen’s article certainly includes valuable history–focusing specifically on a political figure named George Galloway, an ardent anti-war supporter and tried-and-true communist (and also a fierce rival of Christopher Hitchens — which has resulted in a number of very intense and cut-throat debates, of which I thoroughly enjoyed.. see Siexon, Slate). And, although I think a strong rebuke of Galloway is certainly called for given his positions on various issues ranging from his support of Saddam to his admiration for Fidel Castro, it was not the abandonment of Galloway that so interested me about the article.
In what is the first time in my own memory, I have found a self-proclaimed liberal who admits, or heartily agrees with the premise I have always maintained — that the media 1) plays it soft on liberal guests, 2) suffers from “group think”.
when you hire upper-middle-class arts graduates, pay them well and allow them to work, eat and sleep together in west London, there’s bound to be a “Collective Group Think”. In Iraq’s case, it did not come out in the hard questions they asked the other side, but in the soft questions they asked their own side. For years, the BBC’s attack-dog presenters couldn’t manage to give one opponent of the war a tough interview. Not even Galloway. My colleagues were rich men and women by British standards, let alone world standards. They kept silent so they could maintain the illusion that the family of the “left” was flawless.
this is quite an admission to be sure.