I think it’s great that he took out the time to respond to Khaled Ahmed’s article.
KARACHI: This is with reference to Hamid Mir’s article of February 8 titled “Why these attacks on me?”. First of all, I think it’s great that your newspaper has printed Mr Mir’s article and I think it’s great that he took out the time to respond to Khaled Ahmed’s article. I wish more people in our society took the time to sit down and put pen to paper when they have disagreements with each other.
Having said that, I do believe that Mr Ahmed’s basic point, which was that the term ‘liberal-fascist’ is a pointless term — and is used as a catch-all to condemn all sorts of different and sometimes contradictory ideological, political and/or philosophical positions — is valid.
Part of this confusion comes from the fact that liberal can refer to two different things, i.e. liberal in terms of social norms and liberal in terms of a programme of political action. To further confuse matters, liberal in the classical political sense of the word refers to the 19th century political belief in free markets, meritocratic governments, equality before the law, and a ‘hands-off’ approach to economic, social and religious issues, while in late 20th and 21st century America it has come to be identified with the American left, the Democrats and their progressive domestic agenda.
While one can agree to a certain extent with Mr Mir that the term describes those who are socially liberal but politically authoritarian, (which Pervez Musharraf was), it has been used to describe anyone who is socially liberal, or anyone who is politically to the left of the person hurling the accusation, or indeed anyone who is considered critical of a particular Pakistani foreign or domestic policy.
The term is less and less useful in recognising any particular political or ideological position and is basically used as a negative label. We don’t know what a liberal fascist is but we know it’s bad. The word doesn’t really have much use in sober journalism.
Iftikhar Zaidi
Published in The Express Tribune, February 9th, 2011.
