2/19/2023 0 Comments Why is communism bad essay![]() Gottlieb was writing before the election of Donald Trump, which was for le Carré the last straw. Gottlieb’s judgment may have been coloured by le Carré suddenly dumping his long-time publisher in favour of Viking, but there is truth in Gottlieb’s assessment. His former publishing editor, Robert Gottlieb, a one-time editor of The New Yorker, believes le Carré’s books “grew more and more virulently anti-American”. He published an essay “The United States Has Gone Mad” just before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and his anger spilled over into his next novel, Absolute Friends. Le Carré was a virulent critic of America’s reaction to the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and the support given by the Blair government in the UK. ![]() Many of these novels were poorly received by reviewers, the reviews often reflecting the reluctance of critics (and fans) to accept the new world order. His novels now explored Middle East politics, the war on terror, the international pharmaceutical industry, the world of arms dealing, the financing of terrorism, Brexit and the Russian mafia. Le Carré, however, welcomed plotting on a broader canvas. The fall of the Berlin Wall was predicted to spell the end of the spy novel. Communism may have been the cause of the Cold War, but not all the soldiers are evil: “half-angels fighting half-devils” in the words of one of his characters. Le Carré’s world of espionage is never black and white but is a world shaded in grey. John Le Carre at the 2016 premiere of The Night Manager at the International Film Festival in Berlin, Germany (Gregor Fischer via Getty Images) This tension – whether the ends justified the means – is most obvious in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, his third novel, and the one which launched his career as a full-time writer. Le Carré’s characters continually agonised over the lengths to which liberal democracies should go, or must go, in order to defend these ideals. In a 2017 interview, he defined these ideals as “a notion of individual freedom, of inclusiveness, of tolerance. Those ideals are a central concern of his early novels. ![]() The ideals that had driven the West in the war against communism came to be forgotten, according to le Carré. Above all, le Carré showed in his later novels an increasing disillusionment with the United States as the acknowledged leader of the victors. ![]() The vacuum was filled, according to le Carré, by opportunistic politicians, rampant capitalism, nationalism, isolationism, rapacious multinational corporations, international criminal organisations and a Russian kleptocracy. ![]()
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