Leftwing theorist and pioneer blogger with a mission to take on political orthodoxy
Eve Garrard
[first published in the Guardian]
Norman Geras started Normblog in order to engage with a wider audience. It was a runaway success. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
Norman Geras—professor emeritus of government at Manchester University, philosopher, cricket fan, country music lover, Marxist, liberal socialist, democrat, political blogger behind the influential Normblog—has died of cancer aged 70. His interests were rich and varied, but his thought and writings form an integrated whole. He was centrally and always a man of the left, but one who became a scourge of those parts of left/liberal opinion which, in his view, had slid away from commitment to the values of equality, justice and universal rights, and in so doing ended up by excusing or condoning racism and terrorism.