Ouch!

Louis Proyect puts the boot into Michael Bérubé:

He would not have time in his busy schedule to roll up his sleeves and organize like-minded people to build a coalition conforming to his own ideals. If you read his blog, you will learn that when he is not writing articles on cultural theory or redbaiting the left, he is playing hockey or the drums. In other words, he is not actually sufficiently motivated to put his crappy politics into action, the way that a serious political person might. Fundamentally, we are dealing with a dilettante who enjoys shitting on people whose views he disagrees with. Like Walter Mitty, he must have fantasies about leading people into a more just world but like most liberal intellectuals he does not bother since the Democratic Party does all the work that is necessary to rout the Taliban and al-Qaeda. After all, the Obama administration that Berube genuflects to has all the guns and money it needs to kill Afghans. Why would they require any kind of volunteer activism from a college professor who has better things to do with his spare time?

I’ve had my runins with Bérubé as well; he fancies himself as somewhat of an enforcer of acceptable leftwing behaviour but suffers from the usual liberal blinders. Especially in the early years of The War Against Terror there were quite a few liberals like him as much or even more outraged that resistance against it was largely organised by socialists, anarchists and other dirty fucking hippies than by the war itself. Hence those huge rants against Chomsky, ANSWER and such targets, who, no matter how outrageous their statements, never actually killed anybody or ordered bombardments on civilian targets in the name of freedom, but who did have the temerity to find good things to say about America’s officially designated enemies. All part of the policing political debate so that only serious people get to participate. The irony is, people like Bérubé got exactly the same treatment from the “respectable” right, but thought that the correct response would be to offer them better targets…