*If it comes to a choice between fascism and imperialism, then 1 choose imperialism'. So says Fred Halliday.
Professor Halliday of the London School of Economics has become a familiar figure on our TV screens - as an expert on the Middle East and Afghanistan. In the late 60s he was a leading figure in the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation (RSSF), and subsequently a long-time member of the New Left Review editorial board, before departing a few years ago, with Anthony Barnett, in unexDuring the Gulf crisis be became an increasingly open supporter of the USA's war.
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By Phil Hearse Last week, laying out his pro-war views explicitly in the New Statesman, he attacked the bulk of the left for its "disastrous" decision to oppose the war. At the centre of his case are two arguments. First that Saddam's regime is "fascist" and thus in imperialism's war he backed the lesser evil. Second, Kuwait, like other nations had the right to self-determination which was violated by Iraq. He starts on a personal note, claiming he has been the subject of unfair pressures from others on the left. Unshackle the Unions Saturday April 27th 1991, 11-5.30 Malet Street, London Micky Fenn (sacked Tilbury This event has been jointly organised by The Socialist Movement Trade Union Ctte, The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Solidarity Network, He has, apparently, bad abuse shouted at him by SWP and other 'ultra-left' (a telling phrase) paper sellers in shopping arcades. He cites unfair attacks by the likes of Alexander Cockbum, who are 'safe in their East Coast and Home Counties platitudes'.
Why the eastern seaboard of the USA and the Home Counties are to be con sidered the home of safe leftist platitudes, rather than Highgate or the LSB can all agree that shouting at people in shopping arcades is to be deplored. Though compared with what the Tragi people have had to endure it seems a small thing.
The substance of Halliday's argument is without merit. Iraq is not a fascist regime. It is a brutal dictatorship, a degenerate form of Arab nationalism. based on the military. But the precise character of Saddam's regime is not the point. Socialists should be in favour of the destruction of reactionary regimes. of course.
But it matters how they terests and with what results. There is a world of difference between the iraqi masses overthrowing Sad dam, and an assault by imperialism which strengtbens reaction in the Middle East and worldwide. slaughters more than 100,000 into the bargain. Someone who doesn't see that lacks logic, as well as common humanity.
Halliday's view that we should defend Kuwaiti "self-determination' is also wide of the mark. The Kuwaiti city-state is an enclave for pumping oil to the West, dominated by super-rich rulers who employed immigrant workers to do the dirty work, Socialist Outlook backed the right of the in habitants of Kuwait to have the right to decide whether to be integrated with Iraq. The majority of the inhabitants have now left, imperialism. There is no Kuwaiti nation. Self-determination for Kuwait has the same status as self-determination for Monaco.
Fred Halliday has come into conflict with much of the left once before - over the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. He backed that intervention on the grounds that the USSR was fighting Islamic reac tion. His pro-American stance on the Gulf is not a flip-flop, but the self-same argument, but with the in volvement of an imperialist rather than a Stalinist superThis blindness towards reaction, expecting it to do progressive work, stems, as Halliday nightly says from previous debates and more fundamental political positions. Fred Halliday bad his original political inspiration in the work of Isaac Deutscher, author of the most famous biography of Trotsky, Halliday edited a collection of Deutscher's writings, published as a Penguin. It was his interpretation of "Deutscherism" which gave Halliday's mode of thought a distinctly pro-Soviet angle.
But Isaac Deutscher, whatever he got wrong about the Soviet Union. never made the mistake of having any trick with imperialism. His reaction to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was to unequivocally champion the Arab cause. Deutscher would have seen what was going on. Fred Halliday has moved to the right by giant leaps. Perhaps being shouted at in shopping arcades is an acceptable price for becoming a safe-for-tbe-establishment TV guru.