THE LIBERAL DEFENCE OF MURDER

By RICHARD SEYMOUR

Published October 2008

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“Imperialist intervention, strenghtening the former regime elements and the most retrograde components of the revolt, was the worst thing to have happened to the Libyan revolution.”

As British and American planes begin bombing another Arab country, now is the time to revisit THE LIBERAL DEFENCE OF MURDER, Richard Seymour’s searing critique of the doctrine of ‘liberal interventionism’.

Richard Seymour blogs at Lenin’s Tomb - http://leninology.blogspot.com/.. You can read his blog posts on Libya there. See also this recent piece on the GUARDIAN website:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/22/gaddafi-demonology-media

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In THE LIBERAL DEFENCE OF MURDER, Richard Seymour takes apart the mechanisms employed by liberals to justify the violence of this past decade, and shows us how appeals to the public to support war for ‘humanitarian’ reasons can often result in disastrous consequences.

Seymour examines the arguments of a range of left and liberal commentators, from Christopher Hitchens and Nick Cohen to Susan Sontag and Thomas Friedman, and provides a powerful indictment of their support for the Iraq war. He charts how such commentators represented American military power as an ally of progress rather than its enemy and were instrumental in mobilising public support for a misguided and illegal war.

Seymour also tackles the arguments of the ‘pro-war Left’ and demonstrates how they readily equated radical Islam with totalitarianism and refused to acknowledge the broader, and more complex, geopolitical climate that surrounded the attacks of 9/11.

Tracing colonial exploits in the nineteenth century and war mongering in the twentieth and twenty-first, Seymour shows how liberalism, a doctrine that appears to emphasise human equality and universalism, has often been implicated in violent systems of domination and exploitation.

Seymourexcavates the origins of liberal apologies for empire and tracks their development over three centuries, on both sides of the Atlantic, thereby providing an essential account of the many wars that have come to define the contemporary political landscape.

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Praise for THE LIBERAL DEFENCE OF MURDER:

“A great deal of damning material on the apologists of recent illegalities” Philippe Sands, GUARDIAN
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/21/richard-seymour-liberal-defence-review

“A powerful counter-blast against the monstrous regiment of ‘useful idiots’” THE TIMES

“A powerful critique of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and of those liberal intellectuals who support it.” INDEPENDENT
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-liberal-defence-of-murder-by-richard-seymour-1649105.html

“An excellent antidote to the propagandists of the crisis of our times.” INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-liberal-defence-of-murder-by-richard-seymour-1488515.html

“Essential reading” Owen Hatherley, NEW STATESMAN
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/12/liberal-defence-seymour-murder

“Among those who share responsibility for the carnage and chaos in the Gulf are the useful idiots who gave the war intellectual cover and attempted to lend it a liberal imprimatur. The more belligerent they sounded the more bankrupt they became; the more strident their voice the more craven their position. As the war they have supported degrades into a murderous mess, Richard Seymour expertly traces their descent from humanitarian intervention to blatant islamophobia.” – Gary Younge

“Indispensable ... Seymour brilliantly uncovers the pre-history and modern reality of the so-called 'pro-war Left.'” – China Mieville

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Richard Seymour runs the popular Lenin’s Tomb blog, which comments on the War on Terror, Islamophobia and neoliberalism and has developed a cult following since it was founded in 2001. He also writes for other publications, including THE GUARDIAN. He is the author of several books, including THE LIBERAL DEFENCE OF MURDER and THE MEANING OF DAVID CAMERON.

Every now and again, I hear about a new website offering free e-books. You will forgive me for the fact that, without fail, I first scour the site anxiously to see if someone has uploaded my book. This is pure vanity on my part. No one would waste their time, and if they did I should likely have the person flayed and generously doused in salt and vinegar before forcing them to appear on Britain's Got Talent. Well, I'd probably meditate on that image before telling myself to get a grip. In fact, I should be flattered, not pathetically worried about whatever marginal (and probably non-existent) loss of sales resulted. But this thought arises because of the growing profile of devices like 'Kindle' and other pda-like e-book-reading technology. We are told, somewhat pontifically, that the age of the printed book is over. That soon a great portion of our current consumption of wood-producing florae will be finished, resolved and absolved, by a technological fix. I look forward to any innovation that will reduce the clutter about my house, never kind the carbon footprint. But I remain sceptical nonetheless.

Here's the explanandum and explanans. I find myself buying a copy of a book that I know I can read for free as an e-book on, say, Gutenberg or any number of less august websites. This despite the fact that I have decent computer, and a pda device as well. I can re-format the text if I like, add pictures at a stretch, save it as a word document or convert it to pdf. There's a vast array of free open-source software that will enable me, provided I will invest a small amount of time and effort, to do more or less what I like with a document. Yet, I still go and get the Penguin classics edition of Pride and Prejudice rather than take a few moments to download, perfectly legally, a text file of the whole work. Why? John Sutherland has pointed out that the printed novel or book has some technological advantage that e-books and equivalents can't emulate (as yet). Just for example, you can use your opposible thumb to flick back and forth between pages. You can write notes in pencil where you feel like it, underline if you want to, fold page corners to mark a place - all in a very easy, manageable and physically satisfying way. Now, I know you're going to say that these functions can be replicated or simulated in the e-book reader format - true, but far more burdensomely. With a printed book, you can insert yourself anywhere in the text in a split second. You can dip in and out, use the index, find a page number in very speedy systems of reference that actually don't work very well with reader technologies. The tactile aspects of reading which we take for granted just don't seem to be assimilable to the current in-your-face interfaces.

There is also a sense in which the e-book reader profanes what was holy. Once, however much a book was mass produced, and was as commodified as a packet of biscuits or a VHS cassette, all one had to do to bless it with the seal of the author's pure presence and authenticity was to get him to sign it. (I have repeated this operation a few times, and you'd be surprised by how many people are called 'eBay', 'Seventeenpoundsisabitsteep' and 'Justfuckingsignityoutwat' - all Tibetan names, apparently.) Now, I suppose, they'll simply superimpose a scan of the author's signature on a limited range of the downloadable e-books and punt them for 2% more. If that happens, I'm just going to call it a day, loves. Without that occasion for intercourse with the Ordinary People, I'm lost, and so are they. Anyway, the point is, that isn't going to happen, because e-books are mostly crap.