The Liberal Defence of Murder
by Richard Seymour
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard SeymourEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-17
ISBN: 1844672409
Number of pages: 358
Publisher: Verso
Book Reviews of The Liberal Defence of Murder
Book Review: A fine first book for Mr. Seymour
Summary: 5 Stars
The author (Seymour) discusses how prominently the defense of slavery figured in ante-bellum American foreign affairs. He notes how intense racist feelings drove American intervention in the Philippines and Haiti. He points out that American intervention in Cuba was prompted not by a desire to save Cuba from Spanish terror but that a big motivation was a fear that Cubans of African descent were in the leadership of the anti-colonial rebellion. He notes that Andrew Jackson declared that it was inevitable and of no problem to him that Native Americans would eventually be exterminated in the face of the advance of Anglo-Saxon culture across the continent. Similarly, Theodore Roosevelt exulted in the achievements of "white" civilization in its westward expansion, though he thought this achievement was marred by the presence of African Americans in the South and Native Americans. TR declared with regard to the latter that they had little more right to the American land mass than the wild animals which inhabited it. In a similar fashion, Seymour shows that Alexis de Tocqueville argued in the 1840's that even if France had committed hideous atrocities in Algeria, France was still the superior civilization and North Africans had to be forced to recognize that.
Seymour notes that while Karl Marx was repudiating his previous endorsement of British colonialism and damming the horrendous British atrocities during the suppression of the Indian mutiny in 1857, John Stuart Mill had a different take. After the suppression of the Indian mutiny, Mill wrote articles glorifying the great humanitarian achievements of the British Empire in India. British rule, of course, brought about the robbery of Indian natural resources for the benefit of the British elite, many famines, and virtually no gains in the standard of living for the vast majority of Indians.
Liberals, socialist and marxists also commonly supported colonialism in the early 20th century.......
Seymour spends a great deal of time discussing the ideology of liberal and leftist humanitarian interventionists and how these folks are predecessors of previous liberals and leftists who supported colonial state terror. These brethren, unfortunately probably often with a great deal of honest belief, accept American claims to benevolent intentions without applying any serious examination of the results of American actions. They avoid sticking their necks out and leading mobilizations against U.S. backed human rights horrors like in Colombia under Alvaro Uribe orTurkey's ethnic cleansing of its Kurds. Seymour spends a great deal of time in the book discussing the liberal-left support for US wars in the Balkans. One of the more interesting things that Seymour notes but which I never realized is that in the middle of the Kosovo War, Christopher Hitchens expressed the realization that Serbian ethnic cleansing began after, and was a predictable effect of the NATO bombing that began on March 24th 1999. But it was not long before Hitchens abandoned such doubts and resumed his now familiar path toward the sad spectacle he is today.
Seymour provides a survey of some of the writings of the patriotic liberal-left. He examines Paul Berman's support for Reagan's terrorist war against the Contras. Seymour notes that ex-contra leaders like Edgar Chamarro admitted that the Contras had committed many hideous atrocities against civilians; the Sandinistas had won a free and fair election in 1984; the Nicaraguan people voted out the Sandinistas in 1990 after George H.W. Bush warned them that economic warfare and contra terrorism would continue unless Violetta Chamarro was put into office. Yet Berman, who professes to be an anarchist, idiotically insisted that the Contras--led by the barbarian ex dictator Somoza's military men--were similar to the Kronstadt rebels facing down the Bolsheviks in 1921.
Seymour discusses the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He quotes the head of the British army as saying in September 2007 that the vast majority of the Iraqi resistance is not composed of salafist terrorists but Iraqi nationalists. Seymour notes how economic "shock therapy", the same which has caused such suffering in the former Soviet bloc, has been imposed on Iraq. Regarding racist views of the occupier toward the natives, Seymour notes how Robert Kaplan joyfully reported how US troops welcomed him to "Injun country" in Afghanistan. He points out that documents obtained by the ACLU showed that troops at Camp Mercury outside Fallujah regularly inflicted severe beatings on detainees and "Haji" is a frequently thrown around adjective. He notes that American backed death squads, such as the Special Police Commandos--General Petraeus's creation and staffed by Badr brigade troops and ex-Bathist intelligence men--have committed widespread torture and murder.
He notes that one study has shown that small farmers in Afghanistan have become allied with the Taliban, not because they desire to see all the works of Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis burned. US sponsored fumigation programs have ruined their poppy crops, their only source of income, while poppy crops of large landowners have remained untouched.
Seymour also gives an account of the French "anti-totalitarian" clowns and gives examples of their appalling stupidity and ignorance (including one from Bernard Henry Levy in the endnotes).
To make some criticism: There are a few typos regarding names (e.g. at one point the author refers to the ante-bellum politician Henry Clay as being Secretary of State in 1897). I know this book is supposed to be a study, in part, of liberal discourse. However I think Seymour spends just a little too much time conducting deep philosophical inquiry into the highly clichéd ideas of "anti-totalitarian "thinkers.
The author runs a UK based blog called "Lenin's Tomb," which I rely on as a source of analysis of current affairs. Seymour displays a wide-ranging knowledge about the social, economic and political events around the world and a grasp of sources and details that seems similar to that of Noam Chomsky. I was impressed by the range of secondary sources he uses for this book. Seymour is a Leninist (not an anarchist like Chomsky) though he is non-dogmatic and libertarian in spirit.
Summary of The Liberal Defence of Murder
Searching examination of the influence of the ?pro-war Left? on US foreign policy.
A war that has killed over a million Iraqis was a 'humanitarian intervention', the US army is a force for liberation, and the main threat to world peace is posed by Islam.
Those are the arguments of a host of liberal commentators, ranging from Christopher Hitchens to Kanan Makiya, Michael Ignatieff, Paul Berman, and Bernard-Henri Levy. In this criticall intervention, Richard Seymour unearts the history of liberal justifications for empire, showing how savage policies of conquest?including genocide and slavery?have been retailed as charitable missions.
From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Seymour argues that the colonial tropes of 'civilization' and 'progress' still shape liberal pro-war discourse, and still conceal the same bloody realities.
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