The
online journal, The Blanket, was an unlikely
candidate to become one of the few outlets in either
Britain or Ireland to publish the 12 notorious Danish
cartoons. Opposed to the Iraq war, an ardent advocate
of the Palestinian cause, the publication wears
many of the proudest garments of dissident socialism.
Despite this, Ulster�s self-avowed upholder of �protest
and dissent� has taken the difficult decision to
re-produce the cartoons; a decision born of a belief
that issues of political integrity were at stake.
The
Blanket broke with 'the Left�s' �anti-cartoon�
consensus in March 2006, with an editorial that
denounced Islamic extremism, declared support for
the threatened Danish artists and resolved to carry
each one of the offending images. In so doing, the
journal announced its support for a new manifesto,
Together facing the new totalitarianism,
whose signatories included Salman Rushdie, the philosopher
Bernard Henri-Levy and Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- currently living in hiding after her support for
murdered film-maker Theodore Van Gogh.
The
consequence of this decision was obloquy among many
old cohorts, with some supporters terminating their
involvement with The Blanket and condemnation
expressed from former allies in the Socialist Worker�s
Party and the Palestinian Solidarity Committee.
Yet the response of Anthony McIntyre, co-editor
and driving force behind The Blanket, was
defiant:
If
we believe� in the light of reason over the darkness
of religion, vibrant equality over rigid hierarchy,
libertarianism over authoritarianism, fear alone
should not dissuade us from standing beside the
people behind the manifesto.
He
denounced �the capitulation of many who make a verbal
commitment to free speech but roll over at the first
sign of having to pay a price to protect the very
freedom of that speech�. Casting a critical lens
over European hostility to the cartoons, he also
felt compelled to ask: �Have alleged liberals and
left-wingers become far more oppressive than the
religious institutions they so distrust?�
The
editor�s defence of his policy towards the cartoons
displays a nuance so lacking in much of British
debate on the matter. McIntyre makes the distinction
between the artistic content of the pictures
and the procedure that put them into the
public domain. No liberal was obliged to display
the cartoons when they emerged � free expression
does not entail going for �shock value�. But the
importance of the images rose above their artistic
merit when exposed to the violence of the totalitarian
tendency.
In
this context, McIntyre�s real struggle is not so
much against Islamist theocracy as the trajectory
of old allies on the Left: those who would see violent
protests against the cartoons as an understandable
reaction to the apparent depredations of the West,
and recoil at the �imperialist� notion of projecting
democracy and human rights across the planet. The
Blanket thus, makes a formidable addition to
a dynamic dissident movement being mobilised within
leftist ranks; a �hidden continent� of opinion as
Paul Berman puts it, perturbed that the rush to
condemn excesses of Western power is forcing
the surrender of Western virtues - or, at
least failing to apply liberal standards outside
the Anglo-American sphere of controversy. In Britain,
its literary expression can be found in Saturday,
Ian McEwan�s meditation on conflict, intervention
and indifference; the idea has since been galvanised
by the Euston Manifesto. Common to all is the appeal
to the conscience of liberal politics to restore
Enlightenment values against terror and intimidation;
an appeal that has been central to the work of The
Henry Jackson Society since its foundation in
March 2005.
The
fact that such appeals have to be made casts an
extraordinary insight into the �Pandora�s Box� opened
up by the globalised, post-9/11 landscape, shaking
old political certainties. Past ambivalence among
sections of the Left towards Fascism and Communism
accepted, it is still a striking phenomenon to be
confronted by anti-war protestors parroting the
Baathist/Islamist diagnosis of Middle Eastern ills
and to witness those liberals who speak of democratic
transformation derided as stooges of imperial designs.
To
all of these tendencies, the stand of Anthony McIntyre
and The Blanket provides a compelling reaction.
As McIntyre stated in the interview he has given
to The
Henry Jackson Society (see here), he sets himself firmly against the �irrelevant
Left�, which sees �some people in the world� not
worthy of the same rights as other human beings�.
Instead, he hopes The Blanket can be part
of an effort to arouse �a more creative, inventive
and imaginative� alternative, which reaffirms �the
values and freedoms that liberal democracy provides�
and throws its weight behind the democrats, dissenters
and reformers under tyranny and theocracy. Liberty,
in other words, must reclaim its place as the partner
of equality and fraternity.
As
our interview with McIntyre shows, one of the most
striking features of his broader outlook is a belief
that liberal renewal must rest on an abandonment
of �the monolithic view of the world - that there�s
only one cleavage between �Left� and �Right�. With
�a huge cleavage developing here about human rights
and freedom of speech, which doesn�t break down
along the traditional left-right divide�, old alliances
cannot be taken for granted. To adopt therefore
the strategy of �my enemy�s enemy is my friend�;
to judge every issue by who appears to be on which
side, is to move with one eye blinded through the
dangers of modern global politics - and to risk
ending up with some very questionable allies indeed.
The
challenge of reasserting liberal principle against
oppression transcends both the reductive constraints
of Left versus Right and the strategic context of
the Iraq war, which have hitherto dictated the terms
of debate. The Blanket�s achievement is to
lay bare the truth that, long after the Bush/Blair
era fades, the bigger issues underlying the �War
on Terror� will remain to be confronted, and the
vitality of Western discourse will face a sterner
test. As McIntyre has argued elsewhere, �There is
no reason to adopt the St Peter stance and deny
them for the sake of an easy life.� When the thing
at stake is liberty: �There will be no easy life.�
