“But, in the late twentieth century, it became more important to many leftists to save “Third World” culture, no matter how barbaric, from “neo-colonialism,” than to support equality and democracy. People on the left would defend brutal dictators (Castro, Mao, Pol Pot, Khomeini, et al.) simply because they opposed “Western imperialism.” As a result, all politics that were derived, no matter how loosely, from Marxism, lost credibility, and finally died in 1989. This was naturally a disaster for communists and socialists, but also for social democrats, for they had lost an ideological basis for their idealism. And, without idealism, politics becomes a form of accounting, a management of purely material interests.”

— Ian Buruma

Ian Buruma What’s Left After 1989? http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/buruma31

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Ian Buruma 4

Dutch writer and academic 1951

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