The Magazine

The World of Red Ken

The mayor of London debates Daniel Pipes.

Feb 5, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 20 • By JOSEPH LOCONTE
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London

The chill wind and cheerless skies didn't discourage thousands of Londoners from trudging to the Queen Elizabeth II conference center on Saturday, January 20, to hear a debate about "the clash of civilizations"--the challenge of militant Islam to the West. The overflow event, sponsored by the city of London, pitted American Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes against the leftist mayor, Ken Livingstone. At another level, it laid bare a massive divide between America and Europe: between those who view Islamic radicalism as an existential threat and those who see a protest movement that can be integrated into democratic societies.

Elected mayor in 2000, "Red Ken" Livingstone has become notorious for his role as London's chief America-basher, Iraq war critic, friend of shadowy Islamists, and apostle of multiculturalism. He played his role flawlessly.

The great problem, he argued, was not Islamic jihad, but its American counterpart. "I think there's a real danger," he warned, "that we could repeat the days at the end of the Second World War." What days does he have in mind? The beginning of American hegemony--Washington's secret plot to dominate the world, which everyone knows set off the Cold War.

Livingstone received rabid applause for the notion that the West, particularly the United States, has invited Muslim rage because of decades of miscreant foreign policy. Worse still, he huffed, America projects a pugnacious, Manichean view of culture and politics. Its militarism toward Islam threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Livingstone's immodest conclusion: "There is no honorable basis for the foreign policy of either the United States or Great Britain."

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