I am of the Left. I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t think I fall into that category. (It’s true I don’t write for the Guardian)

To me the Left is support of human rights and a more egalitarian economic system. I think it’s an outrage that so few people seem to care that (in this economic crisis) so many more people have been made homeless. The bankers and the auto makers are grabbing all the headlines, it seems. (Oh, and the mafia and the terrorists of course.)

The homeless have become invisible. (No make that even more invisible)

It’s because I am troubled by things like that, that I am of the Left.

Regards,

Inna

Karl, a couple of points by way of answer:

Your second point first: “it is also wrong to accuse the whole left to maintain an “utopic belief in a world of fluid boundaries and identities”. Many of the left are fervent nationalists and understand except Zionism every national movement.”

The idea that not all leftist are anti-nationalists is perhaps truer in Central and Eastern Europe than in the West. Most left leaning people in the US that I know as well as those from England and France (with a few important exceptions like Bernard Henri Levi) that I read do seem to subscribe to an ideal of peoples “without borders.” Yes, they are loudest about it when criticizing Israel but it’s no secret that they do harbor utopian dreams.

This is what allows them to criticize Israel so fervently without seeing themselves as hypocrites.

I accept your second point that there are people on the left who do not believe as Dalrymple does. However, they don’t seem to write for major leftist publication like the Guardian.

In any case, at what point do we stop asking about individual exceptions and start asking about the central doctrines of the left that allow people like Dalrymple to write the kinds of comments he does?

The left needs to blame the West and more specifically Zionism for any ills in the world today. It is the raison-de-etre of the movement. The reasons for this is clear: Zionism and more specifically the Jews are a challenge to their utopic belief in a world of fluid boundaries and identities.