Introduction
No one beats the Italians for cross-dressing. A seminar in Rome on Wednesday (31 May) was organized by the Roman daily of the right, Il Foglio (owned by the wife of Silvio Berlusconi) and the largest of the publishing houses of the left, Einaudi of Turin. The occasion was to launch a book by Christian Rocca, the US correspondent of Il Foglio - Cambiare Regime: la sinistra e gli ultimi 45 dittatori (Regime Change: the left and the last 45 dictators). This was edited for Einaudi by Andrea Romano (author of a good biography of Tony Blair), who used to head the leftwing think tank ItalianiEuropei but left because he was too much of a Blairist to agree with what he saw as a frozen left.
Rocca calls himself a social democrat. The seminar was introduced by Giuliano Ferrara, the closest thing Italy has to a neoconservative. Speaking at the seminar were: from the US, Paul Berman and Christopher Hitchens; from Italy, Piero Fassino, general secretary of the Democrats of the Left, the main partner in the new government, and Adriano Sofri, former leader of the far left Lotta Continua, in jail for the past ten years on a murder charge but out for health reasons; and from Britain, your correspondent, speaking about the Euston Manifesto.
The event - held in a cinema near the parliament in Rome - was capacity, with lots of press, there not so much to hear the finer details of the Euston Manifesto, nor even the arguments of Berman and Hitchens and the reservations of Fassino, but because of Sofri, whose imprisonment has been a cause of the liberals and the left and who is likely soon to be pardoned. The morning papers were full of that possibility, the stronger since another alleged terrorist, Ovidio Bompressi, received a presidential pardon the day before.
Some of the debate
Rocca:
- Summarized his book: which is a lively, detailed essay on the state of the Western left, confronted with the challenge of expansionist dictatorships and Jihadist terrorism; and which is enthusiastic for regime change by force of arms.
Berman:
- Regime change by force of arms was not to be lightly embarked on – and Iraq had been.
- He had been for the war, but for larger strategic reasons than the possession of WMD (though he believed they existed).
- He had seen that the war would go badly before the invasion.
- He believed that there is a debate now going on in the Muslim world – but in the only place it can go on, in Western Europe.
Hitchens:
- The end of bipolarity meant that the two sides didn't restrain their craziness any more: not an argument for a return to the Cold War, but for a realization of new responsibilities.
- There is a civil war within Islam, which Islamic Jihadism hopes to win by exporting it to us.
- It is a large error to believe that the solution of the Israel/Palestinian conflict would mean the end of terrorism.
- One of the real projects of Al Qaeda is to wrest Kashmir from India – a project which could unleash a terrible conflict.
- Our refusal to acknowledge the deadliness of the challenge of Jihadist Islam is a much greater failure than engaging in a pre-emptive war.
Fassino:
- 9/11 showed that a terrorism was abroad which believed that the more victims the better. No country was immune.
- The process of globalization is invading all aspects of life; the dynamism of the global economy means that human rights are also being globalized.
- The realpolitik of the Cold War era can no longer be justified.
- There should not be a discussion on whether or not we promote democracy; the question is how.
- Armed intervention is often posed as the only way – but it's just one instrument. You must make a judgement on the outcome before the start.
- You don't go straight to war; you build a history of opposition to oppressive regimes.
- The Arab reformers are generally secular: they are democrats because they are secular.
Sofri:
- The Euston manifesto was both too short and too long.
- The part he liked best was that it was clear – whether for or against the war in Iraq, the left must face up to the challenge of fundamentalist Islam.
- Those who call for armed intervention in all areas of repression are wrong.
- He was for intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
- We refused to intervene in Rwanda, while having a hideous conversation about whether or not to describe it as genocide.
- There is a pacifism emerging in the left which prescribes peace for everything.
- We can't let Sharia law prevail in private spaces, as in Canada. We need to ensure that families have rights.
- Ahmedinejad is sincerely convinced that heaven on earth will come; he may prove to be a tragic figure.
Ferrara:
- We should be for democracy not just for idealist but for practical reasons. Democracy is the only system that can make a globalized world governable.
- Democracy is more than a value; it's an instrument.
Lloyd:
- The Euston Manifesto is in one sense banal; but its banality is necessary, since the principles it proclaims have been lost to much of the left.
- The values it proclaims are a liberation for all – often achieved through war and struggle.
- Ang Sun Suu Kyi's call, when she received the Nobel Prize – use your liberty to promote ours – is the motto of the Euston Manifesto.
- A dominant theme of the news media is a settled conviction, usually more implicit than explicit, that the horrors of Iraq and elsewhere are a result of intervention, with no other main agency.
Comment
This was a big occasion, with the leader of the largest party of the left, and a man (Sofri) who is perhaps the most influential single commentator on the left, having made a journey from extreme leftism to a kind of liberal social democracy; and with the two most prominent US commentators who are in tune with the principles of the Euston Manifesto. It showed that:
1. The blogosphere and the internet can quickly aggregate groups across borders who had thought themselves isolated.
2. Italy, generally thought of as having an immobile left mired in anti-Americanism, has a vigorous debate.
3. The lines between left and right are breaking down radically.
4. There's a widely perceived need to move on to the next stage of organization, with as yet no settled idea of what this is. (John Lloyd)