Loach, Garaudy and the reactionary left

Via Poumista, and of relevance to these two posts: I came across this piece at Principia Dialectica about censorship-loving film director Ken Loach's support for Oliver Besancenot's new French anti-everything party. I loved the description of Loach as 'the Ken Barlow of film', and this summary of the Respect-supporting film-maker's oeuvre made me chuckle:

Loach is an exponent of dire social-realism, all kitchen sink docudramas, he always aims for the lowest common denominator. His films are as erotic as an old Soviet Union tractor, and as funny as an evening in Butlin's. The scenario dished out by Loach is all very simple, a sort of manichean world point of view:

Palestinians: good

Israelis: bad

The North of England: good

The South of England: bad

Chavez: good

The USA: BAD

Work: very good (he doesn't even allow tea breaks when shooting his boring films)

Money: bad

Man: bad

Woman: good

The list is endless.

Speaking of the reactionary left: the same site also has news of French Stalinist-turned-Islamist Roger Garaudy, about whom I wrote in this post, who apparently has turned up in Spain:

A certain Roger GARAUDY, once the chief ideologue of the French Communist Party, wayback in the sixties and seventies now lives in the best part of Cordoba, ie. the old town, and in some style. He has become a fundamentalist muslim, and a negationist to boot, who denies the Holocaust ever took place. As Nick Griffin calls it the HOLOHOAX!  Garaudy would like to see Israel wipped off the face of the world. Garaudy’s odyssey is  thus a strange one - or is it? It seems he always needed authoritarian beliefs in his poor life. Once he worshipped Stalin and Lenin, now it is Muhammad.

The strange thing is that we're still surprised by these alliances of extreme left and extreme right, and by the ease of movement between secular and religious totalitarianisms.