In an article in the New Statesman that seems to be only intermittently available to non-subscribers, Nick Cohen reflects on the sorry state of the contemporary left. There's a long excerpt - giving the key paragraphs, the concluding six paragraphs - on Mick Hartley's blog (via whom), so I'll chip in by posting some of the introductory matter here in case you can't get to the article itself:
The hit of the season is Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a sort of Fox News for liberals. Among the many clunking contradictions and honking errors, one unforgivable scene stands out. Moore brushes aside the millions forced into exile and mass graves by Saddam Hussein, and decides to present life in one of the worst tyrannies of the late 20th century as sweet and simple. Boys scamper to barber shops. Merry children fly kites. Blushing lovers get married.Now head over to Mick's for the longer passage. Nick Cohen's conclusion is that 'the left is dead'.At the end of the film, leftish audiences in America and Europe show they are more than prepared to forgive and forget. They rise to their feet and applaud.
... In July, Yusuf al-Qaradawi arrives in London to meet the leaders of the Muslim Association of Britain - co-organisers of the great anti-war demonstration of February 2003 - and Ken Livingstone, the "left-wing" mayor of London. Al-Qaradawi's Islam Online website is available for the world to read. It supports the murder of Israeli civilians and declares that "on the hour of judgement, Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them". Homosexuals, the website continues, are depraved and abominable and should be put to death to cleanse Islamic society of its "perverted elements". As for women, they must be kept in their place. Wives are forbidden to rebel against their husbands' authority. A husband may beat his wife "lightly with his hands, avoiding her face and other sensitive parts". Rape victims must carry a portion of the guilt if they dress "immodestly".
The liberal media treat al-Qaradawi's views with tact and circumspection. BBC News Online barely mentions them, and instead describes al-Qaradawi as an "articulate preacher and a good communicator". If Livingstone has qualms about al-Qaradawi's endorsement of murder, racism, homophobia and misogyny, they don't show. He sends the limousine anyway.
When they meet, the mayor embraces the priest as a fellow dissident. "Those who raise uncomfortable truths are denounced by those who would rather not consider them," he says.
The left is certainly not in good health. No, let's talk bluntly. The left is seriously ill today. But it is not dead. The mumblers and apologists in the days and weeks after September 11, 2001; the blanket of evasive silence about Saddam's Iraq that descended upon the left's massed ranks in opposing the war to remove his regime; the failure of solidarity with the people of Iraq and the alliances of convenience with poisonous political forces; across the widest sectors of even the moderate left, the sacrificing, ultimately, of every moral and political necessity of speaking out and speaking plainly on certain ticklish subjects, to the sole purpose of seeing George Bush excoriated and then defeated at the polls in November - these patterns of conduct, argument and silence have horribly compromised and disfigured the Western left. Cohen is right to this extent. But, short of giving up, there's nothing for it but to go on making the case. The left is not dead, nor can it die so long as there's brutality and injustice, desperate poverty and inequality, to be fought. And the struggle against those things is for all practical purposes, as Primo Levi wrote in a different but related connection, 'a war without end'.
(See also the discussion by Marcus at Harry's Place.)