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Win the complete Counterblasts series!
HOW TO ENTER: Those in North America, email verso@versobooks.com. For the rest of the world, including the UK, email enquiries@verso.co.uk. Please put COUNTERBLASTS COMPETITION in the subject line or your entry may not be counted. The winners will be announced on Tuesday 10th April.
Can truth really be stranger than fiction? If anyone can answer that question definitively, it is Thomas Friedman, who occupies pride of place in the Counterblasts series in The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work by Belén Fernández.
Starting today, to celebrate the publication of Verso's new Counterblasts series, we will be posting three quotations every day relating to each of these three neoliberal defenders of empire and capital. All you need to do is spot the real one from among the fakes.
The prize is the full set of Counterblasts - Michael Ignatieff: The Lesser Evil? by Derrick O'Keefe, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work by Belén Fernández and The Impostor: BHL in Wonderland by Jade Lindgaard and Xavier de la Porte - AND Britain's Empire by Richard Gott and Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo.
Recent coverage of Michael Ignatieff: The Lesser Evil? by Derrick O'Keefe includes:
An interview with O'Keefe on Redeye: Vancouver Cooperative Radio
An interview in The New Left Project
Ignatieff was a key figure in rallying liberal support for that disastrous, immoral war. In fact, on the night that the "Shock and Awe" invasion of Iraq began, Ignatieff was out with his Harvard colleague Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi ex-Trotskyite turned war hawk and key source for the neo-conservatives in Washington, D.C. Each in their own way, Ignatieff and Makiya were – to borrow the late Tony Judt’s description of liberal war boosters – "useful idiots" for the Bush administration.
This alone would have qualified Ignatieff for inclusion in Verso’s Counterblasts, a series of polemical books aimed at key apologists for Empire and Capital. But I also wanted to examine the full arc of his career as a public intellectual; it seemed to contain lessons about the political retreat of the past 30 years and about the real nature of liberalism today.
And a blog post by O'Keefe on Rabble.ca
In general, however, there's been too much focus on personality over policy in analyzing Ignatieff's historic failure. We can start with a hat trick of concrete examples where political decisions -- all to varying degrees at odds with previous leader Stephane Dion -- managed to drive the party even lower in the polls.
Nothing about Ignatieff's spectacular failure in electoral politics seems to have humbled him. Witness his op-ed in the Financial Times last week advising new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on how to win the hearts and minds of the victims of looming austerity measures. The FT headline, making reference to Monti's nickname "the professor," is unintentionally hilarious: "One professor to another: listen to the people, or fail."
Al Jazeera posted an excerpt from Michael Ignatieff: The Lesser Evil? on December 31, 2011:
As Canada's Liberal leader, the intellectual- turned-politician became an uncritical supporter of Israeli aggression.
The case of Michael Ignatieff, who resigned as Liberal leader in May 2011 after a devastating electoral defeat, is exemplary. Ignatieff came to Canadian politics after a long career as a public intellectual in the United Kingdom and the United States. And although he was a high profile supporter of war and empire, prior to returning to Canada his work still featured occasional, but sharp critiques of Israeli occupation.
As Liberal leader, he became an uncritical supporter of Israel, even joining in the now routine attempts by the Harper government to demonise and criminalise Palestine solidarity activism in Canada.
In an article devoted to the new technocratic governments in Greece and Italy published in the Financial Times, the "liberal" professor and former politician Michael Ignatieff notes:
it is a good sign that Mr Monti [the new Italian Prime Minister] is being called "the professor". It's an indication that the people want him to succeed. Having been a professor myself and having done my time in politics, I would offer only one piece of advice: convince your people that you are doing this not for the banks, not for Europe, not for the bond market, but for them, your fellow countrymen and women.
In the light of the outstanding achievements of Professor Ignatieff as the leader of the Canadian Liberal Party, one can really wonder what Professor Monti should make of this advice. Last May, under Professor Ignatieff's leadership, the Canadian Liberal Party underwent its worst electoral result ever, forcing him to resign. Apparently, Canadian "countrymen and women" were not very convinced by Professor Ignatieff's enlightened views.