Instapundit joins the War on Bad Philosophy with his post about this article on Independant.uk about self-hating Jews and the tendency of the West to blame itself.
From the article:
Ditto those who blew apart the however many hundreds of kids dancing the last of their lives away in Bali. It behoves us to stay out of their motives. Utterly obscene, the narrative of guilty causation which now waits on every fresh atrocity “What else are the dissatisfied to do but kill?” etc as though dissatisfaction were an automatic detonator, as though Cain were the creation of Abel’s will. Obscene in its haste. Obscene in its self-righteousness, mentally permitting others to pay the price of our self-loathing. Obscene in its ignorance for we should know now how Selbsthass operates, encouraging those who hate us only to hate us more, since we concur in their conviction of our detestableness.
Here is our decadence: not the nightclubs, not the beaches and the sex and the drugs, but our incapacity to believe we have been wronged. Our lack of self-worth.
Reynolds adds:
Why do they hate us? In part because so many Western intellectuals tell them they should.
No kidding.
I don’t think “they” pay a whole lot of attention to what Western intellectuals are saying.
Nor is it self-hatred to point out that oppressive conditions bred crime and terrorism.
Bob, I strongly disagree. As noted, Fanon and his heirs are widely read, and the ideology of “liberation” (which I also agree isn’t totally a bad thing) is clearly a part of what we see in the writings of the terrorists.
I think you assume they are more rational than they (and we) are.
A.L.
Bob:
I’ll add the basic question: why isn’t the terrorism aimed at those who oppress them? At the oligarchs and kleptocrats who run much of the Middle East?
A.L.
I think you overestimate Fanon. He was a anti-colonialist, which is two trends before Islamism.
I think the people in the colonies figured out that colonialism sucked without Western intellectuals telling them, ya know? It’s not like the French and British occupations of their countries was exactly a picnic. It’s a bit condescending to say that they needed Fanon to tell them they were oppressed.
As for not revolting against the native oppressor — they did. Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc. All experienced massive waves of domestic terrorism and Islamist rebellion, which were savagely crushed with methods just as terrible as their own.
A very good history of the Islamist movement can be found in Gilles Kepel’s study.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674008774/qid=1035238098/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/102-6481997-6600114?v=glance
Yeah, Henry, but:
I’m claiming an intellectual line that comes down through Fanon to the Frankfurt School; and while I know (and should have added for context) about the anticolonial wars that took place in much of the colonized world (actually, there have been colonies and anticolonial wars pretty much throughout recorded human history), my claim is that the grafting of Western intellectual traits onto traditional cultures fractured by their contact with modernism – with a generous helping of exploitative trade, internal oppression, and a hegemonic desire for short-term ‘stability’ – presents a new and different challenge.
But (to quote Doonesbury back when it was funny) What do I know? I’m just a begonia.
A.L.