“…it is surely elementary ABC that for the international left, supposedly the inheritors and continuators of Enlightenment values, torture committed by anybody and against anybody under any pretext whatsoever is completely beyond the pale. If the prisoners were al Qaeda, it makes absolutely no difference to the case; how can those who protested the bestial behaviour of the US in Abu Ghraib, or the use of torture by Nazis or the French in Algeria, justify the torture and execution by hanging of 13,000 people by the Assad regime and still claim to be part of the socialist and humanist tradition? I still cling to the hope that some of those who may have embarked on a course of political support for a savage dictatorship can turn back in time before their path leads them far from the ranks of the left and far from our common humanity.”
–John Scott on fascist Vanessa Beeley & those on the left who justify the torture of political prisoners because they are “monsters, mostly hardcore Al Qaeda.”