Walter Baier on the left's anti-imperialism

In the light of the protests against President George W. Bush in Vienna, Walter Baier, former leader of the Austrian Communists, calls on the left to abandon its purely 'anti' attitude: "Is the old cold war principle 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' still valid, or would a democratic left not be better off forming its own opinions and developing its own standards in today's international politics? The latter evidently poses a problem for groups and people who in order to maintain the illusion of belonging to a 'global campaign' have borrowed the term 'anti-imperialism' from the 1970s. But even back then part of the left had realised that without an emancipatory project leftist politics cannot survive. Moreover, in the end this retro version of 'anti-imperialism' boils down to not doing the one thing that is the most obvious thing to do, namely declaring solidarity with violently oppressed leftists – in the past those in Iraq and Afghanistan and currently those in Iran."

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