more on the Euston Manifesto

The Manifesto has collected 100 more signatures in the last couple of days, along with a bunch of new associated bloggers. Naturally, it has also brought out critics and skeptics, as expected.

This synopsis explains why I support it:

The Euston Manifesto is not a cover for disillusioned radicals seeking to adopt a neo-conservative agenda. It is an attempt by people deeply committed to the values of the democratic left to respond to the profound political crisis that now grips Europe and most of the West. This crisis threatens the fabric of liberal democracy, as large swaths of what presents itself as the left make common cause with religious extremism, totalitarianism and anti-Semitism, while xenophobia and social brutality emerge as dominant themes on the right. We find ourselves continuing the struggle of our predecessors in previous generations of the social-democratic left, who fought the perversions of Stalinism and its apologists on one side, and the supporters of a social order designed to service the interests of established privilege and power on the other. Above all our politics are informed by the assumption that for a movement to be progressive in substance rather than in name only, it must seek to sustain and deepen democratic institutions and human rights in any context that it addresses rather to undermine them. Although this assumption may seem obvious to the point of triviality to some, the ease with which many who speak in the name of the left have discarded its obligations have compelled us to place it at the centre of our manifesto. (Shalom Lappin, King’s College, London)

You can read the whole thing here.

Clive Davis is among the skeptics. (Believe me, I understand the skeptics.) I posted a note on his blog, explaining why I support the Manifesto:

I’m a supporter of the Manifesto (and a leftist only in fond memory). The document, for all its flaws and weaknesses, has one overarching strength: its message is clearly anti-totalitarian and pro-democratic. And it draws no distinction between these two positions: it claims anti-totalitarianism as being the “right side of history,” if you will.

It’s an important argument.