Simon Cottee

“I knew,' said Orwell in 1946 about his early youth, 'that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.' For Orwell, this meant an ability to face not only that which troubles or disturbs us, but that which directly challenges our deepest convictions and assumptions: thus a power of facing. It is often the case, therefore, that to be 'in denial' is not only to commit an epistemological error, but also a moral one: a refusal or unwillingness to critically examine one’s own beliefs and value-judgments.

"What the left needs, quite clearly, I think, is just such a 'power of facing.' Not only must it summon the nerve and courage to reconsider the idea that terrorism is a natural consequence of inequality and injustice; it must also acknowledge the equally disorienting fact that militant Islam is a foe with which compromise is not only undesirable, but axiomatically impossible. Even more decisively, it must attempt to fashion a less reductive and more dialectical understanding of American power and the world within which it operates. What it must materialize, in other words, is the antithesis of the fundamentalist world-view: a firm sense of reality and a certain openness of mind to face that which is deeply troubling.”
― Simon Cottee