or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
41 used & new from £8.99
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Liberal Defence of Murder
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

The Liberal Defence of Murder (Hardcover)

by Richard Seymour (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
RRP: £16.99
Price: £11.49 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £5.50 (32%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Only 5 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want guaranteed delivery by Thursday, February 11? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
28 new from £9.87 13 used from £8.99

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Imperialism and Global Political Economy by Alex Callinicos

The Liberal Defence of Murder + Imperialism and Global Political Economy
Price For Both: £25.40

Show availability and delivery details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power

The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power

by Tariq Ali
4.9 out of 5 stars (7)  £5.63
Imperialism and Global Political Economy

Imperialism and Global Political Economy

by Alex Callinicos
£13.91
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

by Mark Fisher
5.0 out of 5 stars (3)  £5.89
Newspeak in the 21st Century

Newspeak in the 21st Century

by David Edwards
5.0 out of 5 stars (5)  £12.03
A Brief History of Neoliberalism

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

by David Harvey
4.2 out of 5 stars (4)  £6.91
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Hardcover: 358 pages
  • Publisher: Verso Books (1 Dec 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1844672409
  • ISBN-13: 978-1844672400
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.3 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 280,772 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links

  (What is this?)
   Crime Defence opens new browser window
www.levenes.co.uk  -  Assistance with criminal offences 24hrs a day, genuine no fee service
   Are you Ex-Military/Navy? opens new browser window
www.HMForces.co.uk  -  Civilian job boring? Need some excitement?
  
 

Product Description

Review

Among those who share the responisbility 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, columnist Nation and Guardian

Indispensable ... Seymour brilliantly uncovers the pre-history and modern reality of the so-called 'pro-war Left.' --China Mieville, author of Perdido Street Station

Product Description

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 critical intervention, Richard Seymour unearths 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.
See all Product Description

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(5)
(4)
(4)
(3)
(2)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
Agree with these tags?

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Liberal Defence of Murder
95% buy the item featured on this page:
The Liberal Defence of Murder 4.2 out of 5 stars (5)
£11.49
Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War
5% buy
Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War
£6.29
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
22 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Necessary study of the B52 Left., 27 Nov 2008
By Germinal (St. Ives) - See all my reviews
Richard Seymour runs the 'Lenin's Tomb' blogsite, a site I enjoy lurking at, and this is his first book. I enjoyed it. On the evidence here, bloggers can quite easily make the transition to serious writers. It's well written and easy to read, despite the over use of words like 'refulgent'.

Seymour looks at the history of those Left wingers who end up supporting imperialist war, the political 'understandings' which lead them to do so and who move to the Right politically as a result of supporting such ventures. He's talking about the Hitchens' of this world. As such, it's a timely study.

What did I get from the book? Well, I learned that such attitudes are not at all new, that they have a long history on the Left and that they are common in Europe and North America. The B52 Liberals stand in the same tradition as those responsible for the Great Betrayal of 1914 when many socialists supported a war they had pledged to oppose and sent millions to their deaths. Seymour is quite good at spotting the intellectual tradition and sleights of hand that run through such politics. My criticisms, therefore, come from a position of general sympathy for the outlook of the book and the author. There are good sections on the weakness of the concept of Totalitarianism.

I may be guilty of Anglocentrism here, but I would have liked more emphasis on the British Leftists (more accurately former Leftists) who have followed this path. Seymour is good at identifying the American and French, I was largely unaware of the latter, traditions but less so the British ones. Of course The Eustonites get a mention but I would have liked more. A closer look and critique of Cohen's and Kamm's books for instance. Why not reference Melanie Phillips, a liberal who has gone right over into outright racism? Too easy a target? Phillips provides a salutory warning of where this trend can lead. Well, Phillips and Mussolini.

I would have liked the author of a book on this subject to have interviewed the people he discusses. Did Seymour attempt to do so but was rebuffed due to the hostility between him and them?

I feel there should have been more of a tackling of the dodgy ideas used to justify Left support for imperialism - for instance why Islamism and Ba'thism are not Fascism. The idea that Islamism is Fascism, by the way, was first mooted by the right wing Zionist Daniel Pipes and added to the liberal conceptual arsenal.

I also feel the book stutters to a finish a bit. It would be useful to view the possible future of this trend. Still, a good first book.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
20 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The Dark Underbelly of Paternalism, 2 Dec 2008
By senryu "senryu" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
Elegantly written, impeccably researched, with occasional flashes of wry Chomskyan dark humor. Whether or not you agree with the author's point of view, his attention to otherwise glossed-over aspects of liberal/left/neocon theory and policy is thorough and the insights are sufficiently original to justify reading even for those fairly well versed on the subject matter.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The Liberal Defence of Murder, 11 May 2009
By M. A. Krul (Utrecht, Kingdom of the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Richard Seymour is the author of the popular left-wing blog "Lenin's Tomb", and this book is his first book. It chronicles the development of the new trend of supposed 'humanitarian' interventionism, and particularly the support of much of the self-declared political Left for this type of imperialist war. For that is what it is, whether its PR campaigns may invoke 'human rights' or not, as Seymour takes pains to make clear.

The author discusses not just the nature and development of the new war-mongering on the part of supposed 'Leftists', but also goes into detail on the history of this type of warfare. Unfortunately, at times this becomes simply yet another list of the many and multifarious imperialist crimes and interventions on the part of Britain, France, the United States etc. in the long and sordid history of imperialism, with the link to specifically leftist or 'liberal' politics sometimes being rather unclear. Yet this is contrasted by Seymour with more in-depth portraits and commentaries on the various current opinion leaders involved with forging the new pro-imperialist consensus among the 'respectable' Left, which contains an interesting range of different people, from Christopher Hitchens to Makiya and from Samantha Power to Norman Geras. Richard Seymour is deservedly unsparing of these modern apologists for imperialist war, but he also takes care to properly describe and contextualize their positions and arguments, which is quite helpful since it allows a succesful and effective contrast between their claims on the one hand and their opportunism and hypocrisy on the other. This, after all, is the point of the book, and in that sense it is definitely a useful and important read.

It must be noted as an aside that the book is quite riddled with spelling errors, incorrect transscriptions, misspelling of names and so on, which is more Verso's fault than Seymour's, but really ought to be corrected. The structure of the book is also not always clear, with the author hopping to and fro from historical overviews of colonialism to the specifics of current politicians and journalists like Ignatieff and Paul Berman, and then back again to the interventions in Yugoslavia and Iraq. A more well-defined overall narrative would have made this useful book truly excellent. Nonetheless, it is still very much worth reading, in particular since it gives such a clear and well-supported contextualization for many of the beaters of the war drums of the past decade or so.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine critique of liberal and social-democrat warmongers
Richard Seymour, who runs the Lenin's Tomb website, has written a fascinating study of Britain's imperial wars and their liberal apologists. Read more
Published 3 months ago by William Podmore

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant riposte to the liberal apologists for war
This lively polemic exposes liberal supporters of war to a sustained and enjoyable critique. It goes well beyond the usual repertoire of rebuttal and put-down, illustrating the... Read more
Published 15 months ago by A KOUZI

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject























i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.