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rfmcdonaldI first began thinking about the question in the subject line of this post when I read about the left-wing groups here in Ontario which demanded that shari'a be enfranchised in this fair province's laws. I do grant you that things like London mayor Ken Livingstone's willingness to ally with reactionaries like Qaradawi, Foucault's oft-mentioned support for the first phases of the Iranian revolution in 1978-1979, Chomsky's late 1970s sympathy for and defenses of the Khmer Rouge, and the willingness of so many people to defend Milosevic's Serbia because Milosevic was a socialist (not, say, a crudely manipulative kleptocrat) made me wonder.
Is this a sort of displaced racism, a willingness to see other people's lives be spilt in defense of one's favourite causes just so long as they're not the lives of those you care about? "Go, try to achieve utopia. Just make sure that it doesn't spill across the border." Or is this all an apocalyptic strategy intended to bring down a corrupt global society by increasing the numbers of factions challenging the status quo, again at the cost of the lives of other people? Or is this something else?
Is this a sort of displaced racism, a willingness to see other people's lives be spilt in defense of one's favourite causes just so long as they're not the lives of those you care about? "Go, try to achieve utopia. Just make sure that it doesn't spill across the border." Or is this all an apocalyptic strategy intended to bring down a corrupt global society by increasing the numbers of factions challenging the status quo, again at the cost of the lives of other people? Or is this something else?
