Fred Halliday on the meaning of solidarity

Fred Halliday outlines his views in this fascinating interview on why parts of the left have joined the reactionaries, the meaning of solidarity, and much more.

He outlines his differences with his old friend Tariq Ali: So a series of conflicts on which Tariq and I found ourselves on different sides. He took a conventional anti-interventionist position, and I took a more complex position, guided not by the interests of the West but by what I saw as the interests of the peoples in the countries concerned. The issue of whether the U.S. should or should not intervene in a country is a contingent one. Each case has to be debated on its own merits. The key issue is not: Is the U.S. intervening? Nor: What are the U.S.’s motives? The key issue is will that intervention plausibly help those people or not? That’s the question.