Alan Johnson (political theorist)

[1] Johnson was born in North Shields and developed as a socialist in 1979 as a volunteer at the Marxist bookshop Days of Hope in Newcastle upon Tyne.

[2] A former Trotskyist and long-term member of the Socialist Organiser Alliance,[10] researching Hal Draper,[11] Johnson is a co-author of the Euston Manifesto.

[13] Critical of the blanket labelling of advocates of military intervention against dictatorial regimes as neoconservatives in foreign policy, he calls for a "proper consideration of the social democratic antitotalitarianism of Paul Berman, Václav Havel, Adam Michnik, Ladan Boroumand, Kanan Makiya, Azar Nafisi, Bernard Kouchner, Tony Blair, or Gordon Brown" and points out that "neo-conservatives" in the Democratic Party deserve "their share of the credit" for "undermining cynical and self-defeating 'realism' and embracing democracy-promotion.

"[14] He is 'a long time socialist and a supporter of Palestinian statehood' and is an activist for the two states for two peoples solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

The second commitment is to defend and promote a form of political argument that is nuanced, probing, and concrete, principled but open to disagreement: no slogans, no jargon, no unexamined assumptions, no party line.

[18] Žižek responded angrily in his 2013 lecture in London[19] and in the New Statesman, calling Johnson "that jerk who pronounced me a leftist fascist", adding "I think we should take over these – all of these – authoritarian gestures, unity, leader, sacrifice, f*ck it!