Anti-modernism and authoritarian collectivism have become a mixture with complex ingredients that expresses itself on the popular level by being at the same time anti-modern, anti-American and anti-Semitic.
History is, as historians should know but like to forget, not a reliable guide to the present. The uses of this “science” — as Europe, liking overstatements, is apt to call it – are while limited, of quite some use when specific situations warrant it. To know when the analogies apply and what their significance is amounts to a test of the “professional” in a discipline that is about literature, instinct and insight more than it is about being a genuine science.
The above puts the “science” in “history,” while putting the discipline’s uses in question. Therefore it is fair to state pertinent prejudices. Facts are, Bacon said, like bullets. They count regardless of who set the weapon off. Theories are testimonials: they are measured by the quality of the source. Therefore honesty demands revelations about premises — if one is conscious of them.
A premise of the writer is that — astonishingly — some fundamental errors of the past are about to be repeated. This pertains to the original reception of both the Bolshevik mutation of Marxism in “Russia,” of National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. The list ignores analogous mental derailments in lesser countries. It does so not because they are of lesser significance as symptoms of mental ailment in public affairs but since, to his detriment, the reader is likely to become impatient by their examination.
In the 19th century the forces shaping the modern world brought industrialization and with it new economic nets that connected settlements, then regions and finally continents. People were made aware that their well being depended on forces whose roots and movers were beyond their community. Not being able to encounter the remote figure who seemed to have been one's good or bad fortune was of significant novelty.
For centuries a flesh-and-blood person, the lord of the manor, the master of the shop, set prices for labor and local products or the terms of employment. These terms were not necessarily fair or beneficial. Nevertheless, being personalized they were understood and tied to a source that was to the extent it was present, also “understood.” Economic growth and the specialization of work, as in politics the emergence of the territorial and later the national state and then the rise of the empires, brought more efficiency. A higher standard of living became possible but with it came also a depersonalization of relationships and of the entities in which one lived. Man depends on the social context in which he exists. The process of growth that went from the community to the state and from the cabbage patch to the factory and then to globalization made it difficult to trace the origins of the strings at the end of which we dangle. The confusion regarding the relationships, attributable to the remoteness of the energy determining lives created new needs. The “self-evident” of earlier days had to be replaced and new causes for new burdens had to be found. None of these were included in that part of traditional religion that dealt with the social order.
Seeking insights to explain complex situations with roots beyond the vision of the un- or partially educated created a bull market for secular religions – and for their not-always-benign prophets. For the latter the fitting analogy is not the Dalai Lama but Ayatollah Khomeini. A characteristic of these ideologies is the upshot of the need they were reacting to. Those fearful of losing their way in confusingly complex surroundings atavistically craved simplicity. Ergo a simple idea to make order in an apparently disorderly world was in demand.
Today, for many sub-groups within the developed world as well as for entire national communities beyond it, the described psychological state of emergency still exists. Small wonder! Creative destruction threatens safe jobs. Meanwhile world politics brings the problems of remote peoples near, thus encroaching on those who expected to live in the cocoon in their “reservation.” Globally the intensifying interaction of civilizations causes comparisons to be made between ways of life: frequently not a convergence of ideals and customs but a threat to accustomed ways is the reaction — which leads to a clash of cultures.
The longest threads in the webs spun by the ideological simplifiers are leftist collectivism — mainly Communism and its mutations – and racist nationalism — chiefly National Socialism’s “first half” and anti-Semitism. Reactionary Eastern Orthodoxy and Slavophilism also belong here, for the Islamists have taken up its basic cause and thesis. Notable is that these strands are interwoven not only through the conditions to which they react but also in some of their tenets, namely by utopian collectivism directed against an “outsider” enemy.
In European culture — which is not limited by the term’s geographic component – the favorite enemy cast in the role of the biblical devil is a composite apparition. Jewdom’s and Capitalism’s conspiring witchcraft is the cause and the beneficiary of the unnatural and immoral order that deprives mankind of the harmonious condition it should enjoy. The basic concept’s attraction is age old: just remember Adam, Eve, the snake and paradise. The task then is to mobilize mankind to regain its patrimony. “Expropriating the expropriators” and eradicating the “vermin,” or prevailing over the morally decadent but technically advanced, are markers on the road to a state of justice, harmony and equality. (What is really meant is “uniformity.”)
The anti-Semites and anti-Capitalists of the post-WWI era reacted to humiliation, defeat, truncated countries, and existential fears amplified by the “depression” that threatened accustomed ways of life. Their “isms” also fed on their dread of each other. Later, revulsion about the Holocaust and the total defeat of the revolutionary-totalitarian Right compromised the anti-Semitism that came from that corner. (Its Leftist version survived under the code “Cosmopolitanism.” If etymologized the term suggests an inclusion of everything foreign and global.) The embracement of the Palestinian cause because of its anti-western possibilities — it served as a catch phrase for radical Arabism and then of Islamism – by the Left changed matters. It gave respectability to repressed hostility felt for Jews that then re-emerged in the form of (some, but not including all varieties) anti-Israeli positions.
Concurrently, the reaction to what is labeled as “globalization” is growing. On the governmental, institutional and on the level of mobilized masses, the fear of the new and of the plotting aliens behind it is easily gauged. This is especially the case with conservative Islam. Its dogmas, converted into a way of life, enshrine approaches that guarantee stagnation. A consequence is weakness relative to a foe chosen because his success challenges the correctness of the faith’s assumptions and the order built upon it. Since an adjustment is impossible unless the doctrine is modified, the developed and democratic world must be destroyed for “good” to prevail. Marxists and Nazis share(d) the same conclusion.
Today’s fear of the future’s economic dimension is coupled to concerns regarding personal financial security. Complementarily, violence in the case of radical Islam has, again, proven to be an excellent propagandist. Although the Jihadists are openly articulating their goals, as their violence grows so does the inclination to weasel out of the problem — as was the case in the Thirties, and then with the “better red than dead.” Unfortunately, mistaken policies — even if they are “repeats” whose originals failed – are attractive because they justify postponing painful dealings. “Pretending away” the facts momentarily diffuses the challenge — only to make the threat emerge irrepressibly and with a greater punch later. Appeasers today like to attribute Islamism to something like the “aggressive, anti-humanitarian US foreign policy, the failure to create a Palestinian state and the aggression against Moslems.” The implication: let us distance ourselves from America and its minion Israel. Some prefer to reverse the terms, as for them a Jewish conspiracy already rules the USA and with it the world. The practitioners hope to be spared the wrath of the Jihadists that will reward cooperative neutrality. Even small yet telling signs point to another outcome. Take this report of a graffiti in Switzerland: “You dirty Christian dogs, when are you going to leave this country?” Well, you can run. You can hide. You can gain time. But you cannot get away.
With this we encounter a new symbiosis of what used to be the separately marching columns of the extreme Left and the Right. The Left that, when in power, persecuted Moslems as “clerical reactionaries” now finds it convenient to support Islamists. Revealingly in the elections in Yemen the Islamists and the Communists were allied to replace the government. The bridge is the Left’s anti-modernism and its anti-Capitalist suspicion of Democracy, rounded out by the anti-Americanism derived from these. The absorption of nationalism — and vice versa – by the Left is and old amalgam. Current mutations are illustrated by Castro and Chavez. Also the “anti-Zionist” advocates of a Caliphate share common enemies with the Left. America and Israel, with the democracy and the dynamic economic system they represent and share with many others, must be destroyed to erect the Islamists’ ideal polity. Obviously, in case of success the systems erected by the Left and the Islamists would have to clash. Nevertheless, for the time being they can cooperate against a world order with which they feel unable to compete and cannot coexist. For this reason anti-modernism and authoritarian collectivism have become a mixture with complex ingredients that expresses itself on the popular level by being at the same time anti-modern, anti-American and anti-Semitic.
This was an interesting article with some good points, but it left me with some nagging questions. For example, if the left “hates democracy”, is this meant to imply that the right loves, or should love, democracy? I’m surprised that I have to say it, but conservatives have always been suspicious of democracy, and rightly so. Leftists do like democracy, as long as it gives them the results they want. Conservatives and rightists, on the other hand, know full well the dangers of democracy and seek to severely curb its problematic influence (yes, I know many conservatives in the past few years have become more comfortable with it, but we have to think in terms of centuries, not mere years- and under that view, democracy has been systematically promoted by leftist progressives, and prudently resisted by rightist conservatives).
I was also puzzled by the mention of advocates of a “Caliphate”. The last time Muslims had a generally recongnized Caliph, Muslim “fanatacism” was at an all-time low. It was not until the early 20th century dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire that Islamic radicalism, as we know it today, in its modern incarnation, began to develop. Indeed, one of the main reasons that Islamic republicanism has become so prominent is that the Caliph no longer exists as a (relatively benign) political expression of Islamic political desires.
Anyway, like I said, it was an interesting article, and made some good points, but I worry that the author is a little too enamoured of modernity and modernism for conservatives to embrace everything he’s written here.
I too am interested in the relationship between Catholicism, Islamism and anti-modernism. The Catholic Church suffered the Protestant reformation as a consequence of growing modernism, the modern individual can know both the universe via science and God via individual revelation. Yet the Protestant reformation itself was likely a causal precursor of the (pseudo)scientific anti-Semitism of facsism et al. Perhaps the same sort of Islamic Protestant reformation is underway; now the interpretation of the Koran is moving to become democratised. Neither Osama nor any of the ultra-conservative Islamists speak in a way consistent with a thousand years of Islamic theology. As a consequence the jihadist interrpetation is open to whomever has the greatest number of followers or most effective soldiers. Theology is rapidly leaving Islam as Islam becomes ever more clearly a weapon for majority rule of a billion plus ignorant people who claim this non-theological dogma as their personal faith. Democracy of the ignorant guided by the despotic is a horror. Contemporay Islamism is just that. Once their soldiers become their priests the people are doomed.
the author did an interesting analysis of putative opposites to show similarities. However IMO he stopped a bit short in his analysis of the “extreme” Right, by which I assume, perhaps incorrectly, he means the range between Chronicles
Magazine and some of the nationalist groups that ascend today in Europe.
What is the “extreme” Right? Is European/Caucasian consciousness racist or extreme per se?
You say: “Conservatives … know full well the dangers of democracy …”
What we know is the proper function of democracy and the overstatement and misapplication liberals make of it. There is, to be sure, a danger of a mob-ocracy, and our Bill of Rights is partly a bulwark against the mob depriving individuals of our most basic rights. However, that is hardly the only danger to which our rights are subjected or the worst. Democracy is still preferable to the more closely held forms of power. Better the tyranny of the mob to the tyranny of a hereditary king, nobility, politburo, junta, or federalism. At least the mob (so long as it retains power) can change its collective mind. The reason we don’t have a true democracy is that it would be too unwieldy in practice. The ancients considered it and discarded it as impractical to poll every citizen on every question of law or running a country. For that reason, they fixed on the next best thing; which was to create representative governments consisting of elected proxy agents with fixed and limited terms of service.
The last caliphate was that of the Ottoman Turks which ended in 1924. However, you are inaccurate in suggesting this caliphate was any less bloodthirsty than are the terrorists of today. The Ottomans carried out a series of massacres against Macedonians, Armenians, (http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/atrocities/intro/intro.html) and Assyrians (http://www.aina.org/martyr.html#1895-1896%20A.D.), and others on a genocidal scale. They conducted such campaigns throughout the 18th, 17th, and early 19th centuries, the very period apologists cite as a benign rule of their non-Muslim populations. They did sometimes favor one group of non-Muslims over others as a means of keep all off balance. They also favored some, like the Bulgarians in Macedonia and the Jews in Palestine as part of their policy of ‘replacement’, the same policy they’d been using since they rose to power. For centuries, the Ottomans encouraged replacement populations to colonize lands they themselves had ruined (killing, driving off, and enslaving the population and destroying forests and crops to cripple opposition). As with the Arabs before them, they did not conquer all at once, but conducted repeated campaigns resistance was broken. Well before the fall of Constantinople, they realized they’d profit more by resettling people on their conquered lands. Most conquerors kill off the warriors and leave the peasants in place to work the land. Because Islam dictates infidels must be converted, subdued or killed, and the existing religion severely curtailed, it became Turkish policy kill off the warriors and priests, massacre a substantial portion of the population (particularly in the towns, but also in the countryside), and enslave whatever people remained. Because they were killing off so many, they were constantly in need of slaves where they were well established. They tended to haul away most of their captives to work these base settlements and left the rest to revert to wilderness. That left their newer territories devoid of a population necessary for the upkeep of the land and in need of ‘restocking’. It was this policy of ‘favor’ and invitation to colonize many Westerners mistake as proof the Ottomans were an improvement over their Seljuk and Arab predecessors. They were merely more astute in the ways of subjugation, and regarded non-Muslims as a sort of cattle to be used where needed.
Carmine says: “Neither Osama nor any of the ultra-conservative Islamists speak in a way consistent with a thousand years of Islamic theology”
Don’t be so sure. Check out the following websites for an alternate take on what constitutes true and prevalent Islam (http://hnn.us/articles/16536.html, http://www.worthynews.com/news-features/human-rights-muslim-understanding.html, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10665, http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/bstock/2005/bs_0303p.shtml, http://www.freemuslims.org/about/). The last entry shows there are at least some moderate Muslims who acknowledge the militant character of Islam, acknowledge Muslim leadership is pro-terrorist, the distortions deliberately used to disguise what’s going on, and a sincere desire to change Islam. Why would they just not abandon Islam if it is so horrid? Obviously, there is some affinity with cultural and ethnic roots at work here, but also some conviction Islam has something worth preserving.
From these, and others, it is clear fundamentalists are closer to “true” Islam than are moderates. This is not to condemn Islam as incapable of change, but it is a serious mistake to think Islam is or ever has been anything other than militant, or that hard-line fundamentalists don’t enjoy wide support within the Muslim world. If anything, liberalism (or something like it) has only begun in the last century to take root in Islam. Most of what is considered ‘liberalized’ Islam is practiced outside Muslim countries (typically, where they are shielded by real democracies), and are considered heretic or apostate subject to cruel punishments (even death) where Islam prevails. For more on this topic, read Andrew Bostom’s excellent book “The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims”. Also, Robert Spencer’s “The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)” and Ibn Warraq’s “Why I Am Not a Muslim”.
Finally, recall the reaction of ‘ordinary’ Muslims around the world on 9/11 and just after. On that day we were treated to Muslims not only in Tehran, Kabul, Baghdad, and Gaza firing guns in the air and their women trilling with delight, but also expressing approval in places like Cairo, Riyadh, Islamabad, Algiers, Jakarta, Manila, Paris, London, and even New York! Within days, mainstream Muslim news organizations (Al Jazeerah, Islam Online, The Muslim News, &c) were reporting the event as though our fault we were attacked, staged by the U.S. to provoke a war and/or monopolize oil, an evil Jewish conspiracy, or a hoax. Much of the commentary was focused on equating U.S. support for Israel and other policies as terrorism to justify the attack as self-defense. If the fundamentalist were not in accord with common Muslim understanding, why were all these Muslims (around the world) so delighted and so quick to distort reality?
Taken together, I’d say these establish a better than 50/50 case Osama is accurately reflecting Islamic doctrine and also the most common understanding Muslims have of their religion, its traditions, and history.
Carmine, you next state: “Yet the Protestant Reformation, itself, was likely a causal precursor of the (pseudo)scientific anti-Semitism of fascism”. This is like saying Christianity is a precursor of modern secularism via Thomas Aquinas, Crusades, Inquisition, Reformation, discovery of the New World, Enlightenment, scientific enquiry, socialism, McKinley’s assassination, and the electric toothbrush. You can find threads through all of these, but that does not establish causality. The Protestant Reformation was not genocidal, it was fratricidal. The only commonality I can find is that both involve killing for ideological reasons. Would that make both equal to the Carthaginians attacking the Romans because they were competitors in the Mediterranean, or the Israelites under Joshua because he retook lands given by G-d to the Jews? Sure there are similarities, but no more. Both the Reformation and Holocaust were shaped by the passions and convictions their participants, but there is no doctrinal continuity between them propelling one toward the other. Socialism, communism and fascism do not depend on the schism of church to get started, and might easily have happened (perhaps even inevitably) without a clash of religions. The logic behind the Holocaust had its roots in anti-Semitism and socialism. Anti-Semitism has its roots in anti-Judaism and Islam (where it was practiced as dhimmitude) and passed on to Europe. Anti-Semitism precedes the Reformation by about 400 years, and anti-Judaism is even older. Socialism is a precursor for the Holocaust because it is an ideology that depends heavily on justifications for its depriving people of our independence in support of the “greater good” of the collective. This justification gave free reign to the bigots who infest and are attracted to socialist regimes, depending on a logic previously absorbed and accepted by the masses as being for our “greater good”.
I hope this helps.