Ever heard of the phrase “sleeping with the enemy”? It has various applications, but the central premise surrounds being intimate with the person or persons who can cause you the most harm.
You don’t have to be a qualified psychologist to conclude that this is not altogether a good thing. In fact, it is potentially highly destructive. And yet our government seems to be blithely unaware that it is dragging all of us into the social and economic fallout of such a carnal collusion.
As a liberal student in the 1980s, I was immersed in the fire and spirit of rebellion. A noble cause was at hand: a right-wing, racist regime was suppressing the country’s majority, and change was not only necessary but morally justifiable.
The rest of the world was on our side, and any and every action aimed at the apartheid government’s undoing — no matter how large or small — was a step towards the realisation of true democracy and a better life for all.
And that’s where left-wing liberalism stepped in with the light to guide our way. It was the common man’s moral weapon to slay the beast of neo-fascism and the evils of suppression.
It called for an end to exploitation and a balancing of the scales that were tipped in favour of a few. It was the thinking man’s political position. It was fair and it was clearly logical.
Hovering on the edge, not far from this balmy ideal, was the extreme counterpoint to fascism, namely communism. It had a certain intellectual romance about it, fuelled by the images of poets and philosophers hunched over glasses of red wine in the smoke-filled cafes of Europe.
Oh, the unblemished joy of naivety, the sweet romance of political innocence! The reality was that communism was far from a romantic social ideal.
