Island Republic｜島嶼共和國

左派的核心價值之一是反帝，反殖，然而，這樣的立場是否錯失了現實政治議程的本質，反而自陷教條主義的危機？這樣的討論在最近的一本書，法國著名公眾知識分子 Bernard-Henri Lévy 的新作《黑暗時代的左派：一個反新野蠻主義的立場》（Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism）進行深入的討論。這一期的《民主》（Democracy），英國的評論者 Nick Cohen 對這本書作出了評論，以「左派出場」（Left Out）為題，透過歐洲左派的垮台所帶來的教訓，解釋自由派支持者應該面對的問題。

這兩天工作繁忙，無暇對此深論，但是由於這篇文章太吸引人，我還是得寫幾行。

Nick Cohen 的論點很實踐性地闡述了反美教條主條的侷限，也呼應之前《尤斯頓宣言》高舉的民主、自由、平等、國際主義四面大旗，是非常有趣的議論。

我發現下面這段言論很有意思，雖然不是 Cohen 文章的核心：

At first glance, American readers may find it easy to dismiss Lévy. The French leftist culture in which he has flourished will strike most as strange beyond measure. America has no Marxist tradition worth mentioning and no experience of Nazi occupation. The totalitarian temptation of communism which enchanted so many French men and women in the twentieth century never enchanted many Americans. Lévy’s searing assault on the ideology of their successors in twenty-first century France may seem to have little to do with anyone outside Europe.

Lévy adds to the impression of otherness by cutting an exotic figure. I met him when we argued against a motion that "democracy isn’t for everyone" at a debate in London last year. He appeared in the green room in an immaculate white suit, looking every inch the dandy, as beautiful in his way as his wife, the actress Arielle Dombasle, who dazzled by his side. Bob Geldof walked across to talk to him, and as my eyes flitted from Geldof to Lévy and back again, I was hard-pressed to tell which was the rock star and which the philosopher. The audience, exhausted by Iraq, was dead against us when we went on stage, but we swung the meeting around and routed our conservative opponents. I like to think that it was the force of our arguments that won the night, but the spectators may just have been bowled over by Lévy’s glamour.

The celebrity thinker is hardly a feature of American politics–do John McCain and Barack Obama crave the support of the equivalents of Glucksmann and Lévy?

But American readers would be wrong to dismiss Lévy as a glamorous foreigner, for a reason I don’t think many liberals have grasped. Americans on the Left may not thank me for saying so, but they have been lucky in one respect to have had George W. Bush as their enemy. He has united the opposition; he has been the glue that has held men and women with wildly contradictory ideas and aspirations together. Hatred of Bush has given the American Left a new salience and a new power, something it hasn’t had since the early days of the Clinton era, but it has not given it a unified vision.