Why I loathe Norman Geras

Geras who?

You’re excused if you never heard of him before, but back in the halycon days of 2002-03, Norm Geras was a big shot blogger. A real life socialist professor who had written real books on Marxism (!) and who agreed with the war on terror, Geras was the token leftie of the socalled warbloggers, who treated 9/11 as their Pearl Harbour, but instead of signing up for their tour of duty fired up the old keyboard and fought the Greatest Intellectual Struggle of Our Time from the comfort of their office during lunch breaks. Geras whole schtick was to link to some self declared socialist and to explain, more in sorrow than in anger, how real socialists like Lenin and Marx would’ve supported American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. In that slightly stupifying academese of his he would then suggest that his victim, far from coming by his opinions honestly, was duped or more sinisterly, had ulterior motives for opposing the war, was anti-western, anti-american or worst of all, anti-Israel. Since those halycon days Geras’ fame has slowly dwindled, trapped in his own circle of hell with the rest of the ex-leftists and Eustonites as the War on Terror went sour, the successes of 2002 and 2003 turned into defeats and more honest bloggers, both left and rightwing no longer felt the need to take those people serious.

Which doesn’t mean Geras and others like them have stopped blogging, just because we stopped paying attention. Nope, the professor is still plugging away, recycling the same old stale shit:

However, when it comes to large-scale trends it is not merely accidental what issues people gravitate towards in significant numbers. The contemporary liberal-left is much more drawn towards some of these than to others for its condemnation and protest – the actions of Israel, the US and other Western democracies come to mind – and there are political preferences and blind spots involved in this. What I doubt, as a matter of sociological explanation, is that their choices have to do mainly with the prospect of success. Or, looking back: the anti-Apartheid struggle did not, at the time, seem like one that would be rewarded with an easy or proximate victory, but this deterred no one from speaking and acting in solidarity with the South Africans waging it. One may or may not want to get involved oneself, but those who protest from afar in support of the democratic movements in Zimbabwe and Iran do something of what they can do. Silence as the better option for such situations is an eccentric and paradoxical counsel within the traditions of progressive politics – though naturally, as with everything else, one can speak and act to better or to worse effect.

Let’s overlook the simple fact that he’s, you know, wrong, there have been plenty of leftist, socialist and liberal bloggers talking about Iran and Zimbawbe, as a simple google search should have told him in seconds. What’s infuriating is not that, but the way in which he insinuates but never quite says outright that the reason “liberal-left” (sic) is silent on Iran but not Israel is because we are all a bunch of jewhating anti-americans. Instead he slips in his needle without ever having to say outright anything he has to defend later. If anybody takes offence they’re the bad guys; he stayed perfectly civil.

What’s also infuriating is the sheer bloody pointlessness of the complaint. Even if it were true, even if leftist bloggers paid more attention to what their own governments are doing, so what? South Africa under Apartheid is actually a nicely revealing example Norm is using there, as the very same arguments he and his friends have been using to disparage “the singling out of Israel by the left” were used by friends of South Africa then. Campaigners against Apartheid were communist dupes, or just out to bring down a western government, hypocritical for not paying equal attention to atrocities in Black ruled countries, etc. And the reason why these arguments missed the point is that like Israel now, South Africa then was activily supported by the British and American governments and hence opposing these policies could have an impact that a condemnation of a nation already in the shithouse like Iran doesn’t. It’s very well to say that what’s happening in Iran is bad, but what’s the point when everybody already thinks so?