The Liberal Defence of Murder [Hardcover]

Richard Seymour (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

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 )

Product Description

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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Product Details

• Hardcover: 358 pages
• Publisher: Verso (October 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844672409
• ISBN-13: 978-1844672400
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #982,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars State of Mind, November 18, 2008

By	a reader (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Liberal Defence of Murder (Hardcover)

I've been following Richard Seymour's blog "Lenin's Tomb" ever since a google search during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006 led me to his site. There are some good blogs on the internet, but I was unprepared to find a blog with such a superlative command of history, highly-crafted deployment of the English language, and withering rhetorical style. So when this volume was announced (a year ago?) I was anxious to get my hands on it. It was worth the wait; Seymour extends his highly-footnoted argument through the 358 pages of this book (not 224 as shown here on Amazon) in a way that both keeps the pages turning quickly and convincingly argues his thesis, which is:

simply, that as long as there have been colonies, empires, invasions, and imperialisms, there have been liberals who nominally "should" seek to defend essential human rights and who "should" know better than to lend their intellectual powers to the hyperpowers that seek legitimacy for their military actions, BUT they (the "liberals") usually do not. In fact they aid and abet the murder of many, many human beings. This book charts why and how these intellectuals make their choices to support and defend all sorts of different projects from the British Empire to US Imperialism, WWI, the Cold War up to the conflicts of the 1990s and then, of course, the still-evolving invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

What is most powerful about this book to me is how it places the role and rhetorical tactics that so many well-known pundits and intellectuals embraced after 9/11 in the run-up to the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq in a long-running historical context---this is a role that has continued to thrive for hundreds of years, a certain state of mind, or a mind that begins to identify with the State, or hyperState like the US or British Empire, and project all of its former peace-and-equality-loving liberalism onto this power. The result being a naivite about the potential benevolence of imperial powers and consequent demonization of the enemy (racism).

This book is highly recommended to those who have already made up their minds about pro-war liberals and wish to read a well-written historical critique of this personality type, but it is perhaps even more highly recommended to those in NYC and elsewhere who after 9/11 embraced a certain type of "decent" flag-waving, pro-war rhetoric, but who now and over the past few years have begun to reevaluate exactly what was happening then and how those who used their intellects to help enable military invasions might have been (even unknowingly) covering for an older and more insidiously murderous historical project.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine critique of the liberal warmongers, October 16, 2009

By	William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Liberal Defence of Murder (Hardcover)

Richard Seymour, who runs the Lenin's Tomb website, has written a fascinating study of Britain's imperial wars and their liberal apologists. They variously claimed that the British Empire brought feminism, humanitarianism, internationalism, secularism or democracy. In reality, empires mean autocracy, reaction and violence. Empire is not and never was a force for good.

He shows how liberals and Labour social-democrats backed the empire's endless wars. They tried to justify their support for imperialism by claiming that the only alternative to empire was barbarism, so the Empire was the lesser evil.

They claimed that empire paved the way for democracy, that conquest meant freedom, and that colonialism brought `civilisation' and `progress'. The reality was far grimmer: between 1872 and 1921 life expectancy in India fell by 20%. In the years 1876-8, between 6 and 8 million Indians died of hunger and in 1896-1900 another 17-20 million died.

After 1917, liberals and social-democrats joined conservatives in defaming communism (later personalised as `Stalinism') as the worst evil, making everything permissible. The logic of anti-communism is a slippery slope, with no stopping place before connivance with the crimes of imperialism. Seymour dissects the shifting lies of the pro-war `left', Greens like Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Trotskyists like Christopher Hitchens. The current fashion of humanitarian intervention fits in with the neoconservatives' moralisation of empire.

Seymour explores the vague and elastic notion of `totalitarianism' and denounces those who call Islam the `third totalitarianism'. He shows how Hitchens distorts his opposition to religion in order to target Islam.

Empires mean domination and exploitation at home and abroad. Reaction abroad breeds reaction at home. Empire brought no gain to the great majority of Britons in the past and brings no gain to Americans now. While the US has extended its reach across the world, American workers have had no real wage growth for 30 years.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I highly doubt the one-star reviewers have read this book, September 4, 2009

By	Oma (NY, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Liberal Defence of Murder (Hardcover)

It's a masterpiece. Personally I've have a few problems with some of the nuances of Seymour's positions, but no one can say that this is anything, but a meticulously researched and well written account of centuries of racism and imperialism and the apologias for such crimes by so called "progressive" intellectuals.