Why are so many on the left sympathetic to a totalitarian, genocidal dictatorship, over their own democratic nations? Because the left secretly yearn for totalitarianism – and despise democracy.
In Nick Cohen’s What’s Left, he recounts that, even after the Chamberlain government had been jolted out of its appeasement policy, large swathes of the British left continued to push the “anti-war” line: which, in practise, meant pro-Nazi Germany. During the War, Orwell wrote, “English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated”.
But was that really so? Am I the only person to suspect that, had the Germans won the Battle of Britain, its fashionable intellectuals would have been among the first to don a natty brown shirt? Even Orwell conceded, in his essay, that “If one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they […] do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries”.
The Australian left, as ever, ape the intellectual fashions of Britain and especially America.
The late Peter Coleman recalled in his memoirs that around the time when the Japanese were bombing Darwin, Sydney’s young bohemians would meet at Sherry’s coffee shop in Pitt Street to discuss matters more important than the war.
Last week, as G7 leaders considered united action to counter the threat of Communist China, the ABC insisted climate change was the real issue. The Australian Prime Minister, even more than the Chinese President, was the recalcitrant who should be brought into line.
Never mind that China is already the world’s single largest greenhouse gase emitter, pumping out more CO2 in just a few days than Australia does in a year.
But while the threat of climate change is largely imaginary, the threat of China to everything else the West once held dear is very, very real.
A safer prediction is that China will continue to pose a real and potentially existential threat to free and open societies as it seeks to replace the rules-based international order with the survival of the fittest. The Chinese Communist Party has no qualms about pursuing its objectives at the expense of other nations and seeks geopolitical dominance over the US and its allies.
As a result, Australia is a participant in a cold war not of its making. Yet West Australian Premier Mark McGowan insists we are at fault.
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Without the billions of yuan China pays for WA’s iron ore, McGowan would be presiding over even more of a beggar state than he already does (despite the flush of Chinese wealth for the past few decades, WA’s relative economic performance has been lacklustre and its health system is on the verge of collapse).
His recent rebuke of the federal government’s rhetoric was embraced by the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Zhao Lijian.
Mark McGowan is simply dancing to the tune of his paymasters in Beijing.
America’s new governing class is hardly better.
The firming of resolve against China at the G7-plus meeting last week suggests that democratic nations have not entirely forgotten the lessons of the first Cold War. Yet the equivocation of the progressive left remains a persistent threat, notably in the US, where the resolve of the Biden administration is less than clear thanks to the waning of self-belief among progressive Democrats with influential roles in the administration.
The muted response to Beijing’s swallowing of Hong Kong, the incomprehensible decision to resume talks with Iran and a readiness to underplay the significance of cyber attacks from Russia betrayed an instinct to seek accommodation with tyrants, no matter what the threat.
In the minds of those who see climate change as the overwhelming threat to humanity, appeasement makes sense. To them, Western economic and industrial decline is the solution, not the problem.
The Australian
This is the great danger we find ourselves in — and the reality is that it is not the Cold War we should be thinking of, but the period between the Wars.
Then, as now, an intellectual fad – disarmament – fatally weakened democratic nations in the face of the rise of totalitarianism. A disastrous official policy – appeasement – was pursued under the delusion that the enemies of freedom could sated or reasoned with.
And deep in their hearts, the left yearned for an authoritarian Big Daddy to save them from all that pesky ‘democracy’.
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