Nick Cohen - Fascist

See what I did there. I took the name of someone I disagree with politically, and put the word fascist next to his name. I didn't offer any definition of what I mean by fascist, or an intelligent analysis of the contemporary phenomena of fascism, I just used the word. It's a very useful technique, try it yourselves sometime.

Cohen's article in today's Observer reaches impressive heights of hysteria even for him. Apparently Respect is disintegrating because of Galloway's appearance on Big Brother. The left (he uses that wonderfully vague word 'liberal') are sick of him, and he 'can no longer count on their indulgence'. I clearly missed this. Obviously Nick is in a much better position than me to know these things, after all, I'm just a member of the organisations he mentions in the article. What would I know about it.

Actually, I know this: The SWP is not going to split from Galloway. Respect is a coalition, and believe it or not, coalition partners can disagree. Socialist Worker makes pretty clear the mood of most SWP members on the nonsense happening in Big Brother.

Despite Cohen's more delusional rantings, Respect did unite on points of principle. In fact, what he seems to fail miserably to understand is that precisely the reason that he is on one side of the fence, and every other significant section of left-wing opinion is on the other, is that we united in opposition to the plundering and occupation of Iraq, and he lined up with the apologists and the warmongers. He's missed that point of principle, because it's not his. This is fine. He's entitled to his opinion. What he cannot do is paint the SWP as opportunists going against their values. The defining faultline of 21st century politics so far is the question of where you stand on American Imperialism: do you resist, or do you apologise? Cohen apologised; we resisted. In fact, to Cohen's dismay, 'the most disgraceful protest movement since the Thirties', was also the biggest ever. 2 million marched, thousands walked out, and opinion polls were squarely against the government. Apparently we were all apologists for Saddam, islamofascists, to use Cohen's impressive rhetoric.

Still, this is par for the course for the 'pro-war left' (though I keep missing what's left about them). What's really interesting is how Cohen increasingly sounds like a journalist writing for the sectarian left. All these ridiculous pronouncements about Respect and the SWP's imminent demise could have come straight from the pages of the Weekly Worker. I don't know why, but I genuinely expected better of the Observer...