Over at Crooked Timber, Henry is being silly again…
He takes off from a review of a new book by Robert Conquest – The Dragons of Expectation, and a quote from the introduction:
“And we are told that a number of members of the Middle Eastern terror groups had originally been in the local communist movements – The members of [the Real IRA and the Shining Path], as with those in Italy or, for example, the Naxalites in India, were almost entirely recruited from student elements who had accepted the abstractions of fashionable academics. And the September 11 bombers were almost all comfortably off young men, some having been to Western universities and there adopted the extremely anti-Western mind-set.”
…and then Henry takes off into outrage:
[Conquest] makes some rather outrageous claims in the course of a general attack on leftist academics and internationalists. I haven’t read the book yet (I’m trying to get my hands on a copy),1 but if the reviewer is quoting him accurately, Conquest argues that a fair portion of the blame for September 11 can be laid at the feet of left-leaning professors.
…
But if he’s seriously trying to claim, on the basis of no apparent evidence, that leftwing professors in Western universities shoulder some of the blame for September 11, he should be deeply ashamed of himself. It’s a vicious, disgraceful slur, and it’s every bit as unacceptable as the claim that the West and the US had September 11 coming to them. Still, I don’t think that Reynolds or any of his cronies will be following their advice to the left and disassociating themselves from Conquest (indeed, judging by Reynolds’ dishonest and hate-filled post, I wouldn’t be surprised if he agrees with Conquest’s claims).
Well, it’s funny; I agree with some of Conquest’s claims, and think there is a significant body of evidence to support them.
Modern academic leftism stems has deep roots in history; from Heiddeger to Adorno & Lyotard. Those roots are shared with the modern Islamist movement.
Ali Shari’at, the Paris-trained Shiite theorist who was one of the leading thinkers of the Iranian Islamic revolution, translated Fanon and Sartre.
Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth,’ published in 1961 predated Qutb’s ‘Signposts on the Road,’ published in 1964, and what I have read about the latter certainly suggest connections to the former.
Now I’m going to be bumming heavily if Henry finds this hate-filled; it isn’t. But I do say, and have said that the modern left has intellectual ties (what I call Bad Philosophy) to modern terrorist movements. That’s an arguable hypothesis.
Henry can sputter all he wants, but that’s not argument.
For goodness sake, if you’re going to slag me off, you could at least get my name right. This is the second time in a row that you’ve made this fairly basic error. And you could also read the post rather more carefully – you’re vigorously beating the bejasus out of a straw man of your own invention, which has absolutely nothing to do with the post that I wrote. I have no quibble with the argument that parts of the left have links to modern terrorist movements. The same is true of parts of the right. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m objecting to Conquest’s specific slur that some of the 9/11 terrorists learned their anti-Western values from the Western universities that they attended. Without any evidence (and Conquest appears to provide no evidence) that’s a bald slur – an attempt to burden leftist academics with part of the blame for something that they’re not responsible for. Really, this is an extremely sloppy misreading of my post, and a serious misrepresentation of what I’m saying. I’d expected better of this blog.
It’s true Shariati translated Fanon, etc. but he is surely a very atypical Islamist, without much connection with the bin Ladens etc.
Boy, the name thing is embarassing. Happily, the point I make isn’t.
The quote you cite says three specific things:
1) The bulk of Middle eastern terrorists had been part of leftist (“local communist”) movements;
2) Other radicals, including the IRA, Shining Path,and Red Brigades had backgrounds as students who had “ccepted the abstractions of fashionable academics”;
3) That the September 11 terrorists included or were led by students who had studied in Western universities and had taken on an anti-Western mindset there.
Which of them isn’t true?
There’s a legitimate discussion to have about how Atta came to be so antiwestern (and how Qutb did, as well). But it’s handwaving at best to suggest that there is no possible relationship between anti-Western ideology which is, I think pretty conclusively present in university curricula and a group of young men who adopted and then acted on their own version of this philosophy.
The denial in the review cited is similarly in denial of basic facts in evidence, and presents none to support the claims made.
So no, I’m happy that I’m arguing the point made jointly in your post and the review, and think your denial – the tone of which I’d credit to my demb mistake on your name if it wasn’t so close to the tone of your post – is basically handwaving. Academic leftism is the US and Europe is strongly anti-Western, and ideologically linked to Islamist thought through common roots.
The 9/11 hijackers found their ideological center in European universities, and took up a philosophy rooted in Western leftist thought there.
I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to ask what that’s about, and am bemused that you do. Actually, that’s not true, I’m not bemused. But neither am I surprised.
Sorry about the name thing, though.
A.L.
Clive, my understanding of the Khomeni revolution placed Shariati among his supporters. If I’m wrong on that, I’d be happy to stand corrected.
A.L.
I suppose the right bears the responsibility for the crimes of the KKK, simply because of the tenuous connections between conservative thought and the ideological fanaticism of the movement? Come on. You’re not going to argue that bad criticism of the enlightenment is responsible for the rise of terrorism in the middle east, or for the attacks of 9-11. Oh, you just did exactly that.
I think the problem is that Conquest and his defenders suggest this inference:
Both many western academics and Islamist terrorists criticize the West, sometimes for similar reasons.
Islamist terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans.
Thus, western academics advocate the murder of Americans.
How someone could see this as anything but a hateful slur is mystifying.
talboito –
I don’t have to use inference, I have biography; the biography of the terrorists themselves, who typically come to radical Islamism in the course of studying in Western universities.
Do I think that professors there incited terrorism? Of course not. Do I think that the most effective way to attack terrorism is by understanding – and then undermining – its philosophical roots? Yes. I’ve been saying this for years.
pedro –
yeah, it’s funny, I do think that ideas have consequences – right and left. The KKK were more a part of the nativist movement than a truly conservative one, but why let history get in the way of a good rant?
A.L.
A.L. – On the point that I’m actually arguing. You claim that the “9/11 hijackers found their ideological center in European universities, and took up a philosophy rooted in Western leftist thought there.” To my knowledge, there is no evidence whatsoever that any of the hijackers absorbed their views from what they were taught in these universities. Furthermore (and this is something which you quite legitimately don’t have any reason to know), there’s no reason to believe that they were exposed to any such philosophies as part of their university training. My understanding is that they studied technical subjects at technical universities in Germany. In contrast the US, students doing technical degrees don’t usually have any obligation to take liberal arts or social sciences courses – the courses concentrate on vocational training.
Finally, there is a rather more plausible alternative account for which we actually have some evidence – that the hijackers learnt their ideology not in universities but in extremist mosques and Islamic discussion circles. In short, the argument that you seem to be putting is rather implausible, and as far as I can see, you don’t have any evidence whatsover besides your own priors to back it up. Perhaps I’m wrong – tell me more about the curricula that these people learnt from, the specifically anti-Western elements within them, and how these anti-Western elements converted them to the cause of terrorism. Otherwise, you’re making some extremely wide-reaching accusations about the role of Western universities in changing these people into terrorists without any evidence whatsoever to back these accusations up.
“The bulk of Middle eastern terrorists had been part of leftist (“local communist”) movements;”
This is jsut about the exact reverse of the truth. Al Qaeda’s main recruiting ground was the anticommunist guerilla campaign in Afghanistan. By your logic, it’s people like Robert Conquest who are responsible for 9/11. As Henry said in his original post, the arguments you’re defending here are no better than those of people who say America had it coming.
Henry Farrell:
What I find really funny about this is that you found it necessary to hunt around and find something that you could distort into a right-wing Ward Churchill.
Obviously you couldn’t simply say “Ward Churchill is wrong and all reasonable people know that.” Nor could you deal fairly with the views of Glenn Reynolds, which are by no means unique to Glenn Reynolds – thanks to lots and lots of people like Ward Churchill, who is a long way from being unique himself. Instead you smear Robert Conquest in a lame exercise of Moral Equivalency, based on a book that you have not read, which deals with a subject that I do not think you know very much about.
You probably do not know, for example, that the masterminds of the Khmer Rouge genocide (the fourth greatest in history) were Marxists who were educated in Western universities. Middle Eastern terrorists have a decades-long collaboration with terror recruits from European universities, like the German Red Army Faction and Red Cells, and the Italian Red Brigades. An imprisoned leader of the Red Brigades is the co-author of Empire, the bible of anti-globalization.
Forgive us for wondering about such things.
The Marxist connection isn’t just abstractly philosophical, the Baathists are willfully Stalinesque too, for instance, and of course Horowitz’s book clangs loundly on these themes on the Academic “Revolutionary Front”.
But every time I go looking at it, I keep coming back to the conjecture that there must be some kind of an operational relationship as well: not to start a red scare, but the S.American Marxist-AQ connection has some compelling evidence about it. Links between AQ and allied groups and FMLN, the gangs of the MS13, ETA, Soviet support for Iran, etc. Iran-Contra only makes any kind of sense in light of the existing operational networks for drug and gun running at the time. It’s not inconceivable that those networks have persisted.
That the WWP and such fund international Answer and all the major antiwar parties might _not_ just be a product of the ideological serendipity fo antiamericanism, but of agreement somewhere between a wink-and-nod to direct involvement or even funding: where _is_ the WWP getting it’s funding these days, one wonders? I think we need to be looking for an (Saudi but Anti-Regime elements)<->(Marxist drug running elements) nexus in S.American. America isn’t the only place the Saudis have invested their money, and Opec has a vested interest in the reigion given it’s the other significant producer.
Keeping us jumping from one foot to another, or, at least, keeping us from being unable to focus totally in the middle east, by making trouble in S. America, might be on somebody’s todo list. If things continue to heat up in Venezuela and Columbia (not to mention *guay and Costa Rica to the North) over the next two or three years, we can assume that there is something to this.
“The Marxist connection isn’t just abstractly philosophical, the Baathists are willfully Stalinesque too”
And, as all Fox viewers know, the links between Saddam and bin Laden were proved by the mountains of documents captured when Baghdad fell, confessions from leading Baath operatives and so on.
Meanwhile on Planet Earth …
Sometimes the links are quite direct – vid. the recent outrage from U. Colorado Prof. Ward Churchill, who has been “openly celebrating the 9/11 attacks using classic Bad Philosophy tropes.”:http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/archives/004321.html And “it gets even worse.”:http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/archives/004337.html – the more you read, the deeper he digs himself.
The borrowing of justification and incitement toward their shared objects of hate is a mutual, 3-way phenomenon.
Henry –
Let’s ask two more questions:
1) is the nature of the Islamic education in the university communities (both students and surroundings) different that that in the broader community?
2) As it’s reasonable to assume that people who go to Jesuit universities – controlling for other factors – might have a higher propensity to become priests? Could it be something about the social and philosophical environment?
A.L.
Style and substance: I see A.L. keeping his word count down, and writing sentences that are easily understood. When I disagree with him (e.g. his take on Juan Cole), the terms of the disagreement are clear.
Farrell’s post is long, and its structure is complex; he makes many subordinate points. The narrative is easy to read–he’s a talented writer–but it’s much harder to grasp (all of) the points he makes.
Best I can tell from that post and his comments here, Farrell is outraged by a number of things in Conquest’s book. Most of them are provably or likely true; shoot-the-messenger comes to mind.
The one claim that Conquest (apparently) makes that Farrell has shown grounds to dispute is covered in his comment #8, above.
bq. My understanding is that they studied technical subjects at technical universities in Germany. In contrast the US, students doing technical degrees don’t usually have any obligation to take liberal arts or social sciences courses – the courses concentrate on vocational training.
A subsidiary point on which, I suspect, Farrell is correct. But that hardly extends to an invalidation of Conquest’s appararent overall thesis, or to A.L.’s thoughts on “Bad Philosophy,” linked in the body of this post.
By all means, readers here should follow the link in A.L.’s post to Henry Farrell’s original post at Crooked Timber. Find out for yourself if Farrell’s dissociation of the Left from the roots of militant Islam holds water.
Also follow the link Farrell provides to Instapundit under the text “disgusting efforts.” See if Farrell’s adjective applies, as Farrell intends, to Glenn Reynold’s post. Perhaps “disgusting” is a more apt description of the writings of Ward Churchill that Reynolds is discussing. Not to mention the workings of an Academy that provides professional success to folks like Professor and Departmental Chair Churchill.
Here are four of the comments to Farrell’s post that I found thought-provoking:
Feb 2 4:02am, Xavier’s riposte to Farrell
Feb 2 4:04am, blixa’s riposte to Farrell
Feb 2 4:43am, Farrell’s response to X. and b.
Feb 2 8:11am, Sebastian Housclaw’s challenge to Farrell.
Burn, straw, burn!!!! Burn with the heat of a thousand suns!
Shariati, for all of his flaws and bad philosophy, was not a terrorist. Nor was he the leading thinker of the revolution, but rather its intellectual father. Khomenei was the leading thinker, but he drew upon Shariati, who, by the way, was assasinated in 1977 in England.
But really … why didn’t you just link to this piece and be done with it?
I find the speculation that American/Western University pofessors are responsible in any way at all for the anti-Americanism of the A-Q folks (GB’s phrase, not mine) so bizarre that it makes me wonder whether people like Armed Liberal have ever met such professors, been on a uiversity cmpus, or lived in America. Turn on the TV, and you will find infinitely more fuel for anti-Americanism (for someone disposed to be a religious fanatic) than you will find in any classroom of an American university. Even, I would bet, Churchill’s classrooms. Got to a bar off-campus, sure, you’ll find more fuel, especially late at night. But the professors? Come off it.
John Quiggin says:
“Al Qaeda’s main recruiting ground was the anticommunist guerilla campaign in Afghanistan. By your *logic*, it’s people like Robert Conquest who are responsible for 9/11.”
I couldn’t agree more. It is this kind of logic that populates Jerry Falwell’s rantings (and incidentally Glenn Reynolds’ too). If the utterance “ideas have consequences” serves as justification for the blanket indictment of thinkers for the sins of people tenuously informed by their ideas, then it might as well be used as an indictment of *any* intellectual endeavor.
Praktike (#16),
The essay you link, “What Osama Learned From The Left,”:http://www.worldthreats.com/al-qaeda_terrorism/What%20Osama%20Learned%20From%20The%20Left.htm, does indeed state the premise that Conquest semms to be pushing, and that so offends Farrell. Thanks for posting the citation, and for correcting the record on Shariati.
Pedro wrote:
Actually no, the Klan frequently co-sponsored events with the American Nazi and Communist Parties while decrying capitalism which puts them firmly on the left.
Besides which everyone knows that the influence of the Klan in the South was inexorably linked to the influence of the Democrat Party. When Republicans gained influence, the Klan and their Democrat allies lost influence.
AL: “The KKK were more a part of the nativist movement than a truly conservative one…”
By that token, the militant Islamicism is more of, well, a religious-extremist movement than a leftist one.
AL: “…but why let history get in the way of a good rant?”
Indeed.
Two side notes:
First, the cooperation between Marxist movement and some Islamic militants looks more like the American support of Islamic militants in Afghanistan – a marriage of convenience against a common enemy, and not one based on shared ideology.
Second, a far better analysis of the intellectual continuities in various aspects of anti-western fought is Ian Buruma’s and Avishai Margalit’s Occidentalism. It chronicles how there are, in fact, borrowings across various anti-western movements, but makes it clear those borrowings have extended across both the left and right.
Besides which everyone knows that the influence of the Klan in the South was inexorably linked to the influence of the Democrat Party. When Republicans gained influence, the Klan and their Democrat allies lost influence.
Mr. Winston is reversing the causality here. The order is as follows:
The national Democratic party put itself behind civil rights, marginalizing the Klan;
The national GOP decided to cater to the racist elements in the South (Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”);
The Democratic party (eventually) lost power in the South.
On the “What Osama Learned from the Left” essay:
At that point, it seems obvious the appropriate course to take is to stop reading the essay, because the author clearly can’t keep the difference between various intellectual movements straight.
But we also get gems like:
And:
Semi-informed idiots are still idiots, even if they can misapply terms like “nihilism” with considerable finesse.
Obligatory disclaimers: (1) Ward Churchill is a loon, and it is unfortunate that we have to put up with him in order to protect intellectual autonomy in academia; (2) I have not been, or ever have been, a “postmodernist.”
I suppose next we’ll learn how bin Laden and his cohorts–rather than agreeing with Osama bin Huntington about the clash of civilisations–embrace the criticism of nationalism that Derrida espouses, and that they agree with Foucault about the History of Sexuality. Soon enough we’ll learn that the Islamic fundamentalists in the middle east are pushing for gay marriage and the abolition of prisons.
The simplitude is astounding.
btw, if Thorley Winston hasn’t picked up on it yet, the point is not that the KKK is a conservative project, but that it is rather ridiculous to indict conservatism simply on the basis of the *tenuous* connections between their political philosophy and the language with which the KKK defends its despicable cause. (To say that, because they articulate a defense of a core cultural canon, conservatives are responsible for the fueling the fanaticism of racists, is a bit over the top. I leave it as a trivial exercise to figure out why isomorphic arguments are equally stupid.)
Who in his or her right mind can argue that Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida are the intellectual forefathers of Osama bin Laden? Or that Western criticisms of the Enlightenment have fabricated ObL? I mean, not even the conservative equivalent of Social Text should accept such moronic nonsense for publication.
AL – Let me repeat myself. You’ve made a very big and extremely offensive claim – that the “9/11 hijackers found their ideological center in European universities, and took up a philosophy rooted in Western leftist thought there.” You’ve provided no actual evidence to support that claim. Instead, you’ve made an extremely weak argument by analogy. You don’t seem to know anything about the German university system, how it works, or what it teaches, especially in the technical education sector.
At this stage, it seems to me that you have three choices. First, come up with some real, substantial evidence that the extremely offensive claim that you have made is in fact correct. And it’s a big claim – as stated above, you would need evidence of (a) serious anti-Western material in the university curriculum, and (b) how that material had turned a group of individuals towards terrorism. Second, admit that you don’t have any evidence to back up your assertions. The last time you attacked me, it was in order to defend the self-correcting nature of the blogosphere. This is a fine opportunity to self-correct, and one which I believe would enhance your credibility – all of us have made heated assertions at some stage or another that we would prefer not to have made in the cold light of morning. Third, continue as you’re doing, which is to try to bluster your way out of the narrow corner that you’ve backed yourself into. I’ll be interested to see what choice you make.
Folks, I’m sadly going to be in a meeting that lasts through dinner tonight; please dont; take my silence for lack of interest in responding.
I’ll pick this up tomorrow, and yes, I think there’s a lot to pick up.
A.L.
(whose oldest son just finished a semester at university in France)
Matt Weiner wrote:
The Democrats finally decided to come out for civil rights in 1948 thereby joining Republicans on the issue who had been consistently for it since the founding of our party. However while the national party was officially in favor of it, racist “Dixiecrats” were and remained a vital part of the Democrat coalition.
Which is a common smear that Democrats use to rationalize why they lost the South but one unsupported by any actual facts. Nixon had a virtually unblemished record on supporting civil rights both as a member of Congress and as Eisenhower’s Vice-President. In 1968, the racist elements went for former Democrat George Wallace who took the Deep South and Nixon won handily. In 1972, Nixon won every State but Massachusetts making it an “Every State but Massachusetts Strategy.” There is simply no evidence to suggest that Nixon catered to or even had to cater to any “racist elements” of any part of the country.
Which happened in the 1990’s some thirty years after the civil rights issue had long been resolved and the Democrat’s allies in the Klan had rightfully been reduced to an impotent object of ridicule.
The fact of the matter is that when Democrats dominated Southern politics, they had to rely on the support of racists like the Klan to stay in power. When the GOP took over it was after the Klan had been defeated and the civil rights issue resolved. The GOP’s dominance of Southern politics, unlike that of Democrats, has never relied on the support of racists like the Klan nor has the GOP ever had to compromise on its support of civil rights.
There is simply no evidence to suggest that Nixon catered to or even had to cater to any “racist elements” of any part of the country.
LOL.
“Which is a common smear that Democrats use to rationalize why they lost the South but one unsupported by any actual facts. Nixon had a virtually unblemished record on supporting civil rights both as a member of Congress and as Eisenhower’s Vice-President. In 1968, the racist elements went for former Democrat George Wallace who took the Deep South and Nixon won handily. In 1972, Nixon won every State but Massachusetts making it an “Every State but Massachusetts Strategy.” There is simply no evidence to suggest that Nixon catered to or even had to cater to any “racist elements” of any part of the country.”
This is difficult terrain, and your comments get at some important issues. On the one hand, it is simply wrong to assert that Democrats can’t win in the south because southern whites are racists who yearn for the days of Jim Crow. On the other hand, there is very strong evidence that a Civil-Rights realignment began in the 1960s that ultimately, with the help of Nixon’s southern strategy, destroyed Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition. Consider the fact that Goldwater, in 1964, during a Johnson landslide, was the first Republican to win across much of the deep south. In 1968, Humphrey lost Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas to Wallace on the civil rights issue (the 1968 election was actually extremely close, Nixon received only a little more than 1% more than Humphrey, and small vote changes in a few states would have made Humphrey President).
In this respect, the aggregate results from 1972 (with its landslide for Nixon) and 1976 (which saw Carter, a southern evangelical, run against Ford, an establishment, moderate Republican tainted by his pardon of Nixon) are probably better understood as masking the collapse of the New Deal coalition, a collapse that can be traced back to Kennedy’s (belated) and Johnson’s (whole-hearted) embrace of the civil rights agenda.
Looking back to the traditional stances of the Republican and Democratic parties – and I find myself largely in agreement with your diagnosis, although we should note that Eisenhower made a furtive effort to convince Warren to move the court in other direction on Brown – simply isn’t very helpful here, since the point is that, at least from 1964 onwards, we see a shift in the ideological orientation and coalitional basis in both parties. The fact that it took decades for the Republicans to consolidate this shift doesn’t disprove the idea that it was Civil Rights that got the ball rolling. Remember, after all, Reagan’s campaign in the south in the 1980 election.
_My understanding is that they studied technical subjects at technical universities in Germany._
Atta studied urban planning at the University of Hamburg for eight years, focusing on historical islamic preservation. We know that “a fellow student”:http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/atta/interviews/bodenstein.htm of urban planning studied “Middle Eastern studies, urbanism and history of Islamic art.” I don’t think Atta’s stuides necessarily hermetically sealed him from classes on philosphy, religion, or history.
Thorley,
It’s uncontroversial that the overwhelming majority of African-Americans vote Democratic, and have done so consistently for decades. If the parties have the history of racial ideology that you assert, how do you explain that? How have they been so badly suckered?
I’m not being sarcastic- I’d be very interested in your response.
My guess is that Democratic support for various social programs which African-Americans have been forced to rely upon more than many might have something to do with it.
Sebastian,
As much as the image of blacks as indentured servants to the Democratic party might be appealing to certain elements, let me suggest that the problem has more to do with a disconnect between articulated Republican policies and values and those embraced by most black Americans. Sort of the reverse of why the Democrats have trouble with many evangelical voters whose income status suggests they might be better off under Democrats.
Ted Barlow asks:
Honestly Ted, I don’t attribute any special significance to what percentage of _______ (fill in whatever gender, racial, etc. characteristic you wish here) voters vote for a particular party as it relates to that characteristic. There are often other factors (religion, economics, values, etc.) that explain why a voter might decide to vote for that party or candidate that have nothing to do with that characteristic but aren’t as obvious as gender or skin color.
In the case of black voters who pull the lever for Democrats, I saw an interesting statistic in the mid-1990’s that something like 60 percent of college-educated blacks work in the public sector. Insofar as Democrats tend to be seen as the party of government whereas Republicans (unfortunately not so much lately) tend to be seen as the party that wants smaller government, I would wager that someone who sees their job security as tied to a robust government employment roll would probably prefer to case his vote for the party that seems more likely to keep the gravy train rolling. I think if we looked a little closer at the demographics, we’d probably find that the support of black government workers for Democrats is probably not that much different as the support of white government workers for Democrats.
Another reason might be that Democrats have been better at the racial spoils system than the GOP (a system I hope we abolish). There was a book put out about the “emerging democratic majority” about the time of Governor Clinton’s election to the presidency which relayed an interesting story about former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. Senator Gramm was originally elected as a Democrat and received something like 80 percent of the “black vote” but when he ran again as a Republican, it dropped down to 40 percent even though he hadn’t changed a position on a single issue. The reason it turned (based on some polling he did to find out why) was that as a Republican he was seen as being tied to the Reagan administration’s proposals to reduce welfare benefits – which provided a significant source of income for the customers of many black small businesses. In other words, it wasn’t so much that blacks were disproportionately receiving welfare benefits but rather than the black small business owners were more likely to have customers receiving welfare benefits. Add that to Democrat support for racial preferences in job hiring, government contracts, college admissions, etc. and IMO it’s not that much different than any other voter, regardless of skin color, who is going to vote to protect their favorite government program.
IMO I think we looked closer at the demographics of the “black voter” or even the (unmarried) “woman voter” who tends to prefer Democrats, we would probably find that the voting pattern correlates with whether that individual voter sees themselves as having a stake in government employment or reliance on a particular program. That’s not to say that there aren’t other issues as well such as social issues or even perceptions about the respective party’s attitudes towards race and gender. Needless to say, I don’t want my party to stoop to that level in trying to get more blacks to vote GOP by becoming a “Democrat-lite.” The right way to expand our base is to change preferences by earning more votes by trying to change incentives from a Nanny State mentality that builds its base around dependency on government largess to an investor-class/ownership society model that focuses on productive work, thrift, entrepreneurship, and stable families.
Reading the reaction to Dave Schuler’s post on this subject, it occurs to me that most of these discussions are largely useless because of rampant confusion about the difference between liberals and leftists.
When Dave points out that “the left” supported isolationism and anti-democratic movements in the 30s (including, during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Nazis) there is a rapid communications breakdown because people think that when he refers to “the left” he means Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for crying out loud. How does this kind of confusion come about?
Liberals complain that they have allowed conservatives to “define” them. Well, somebody had to do it. But the truth is that liberals have been hiding behind non-partisan colors for so long, and trafficking with leftists for so long, that they no longer have any idea how to define themselves. And they can’t even discuss it without going off the brink.
Leftists won’t admit what they are, and too many “liberals” don’t know who they are. That’s why they can’t stand up to people like Ward Churchill (a token denunciation used as a pretext for an attack on Glenn Reynolds does not suffice), and why they can’t stand up to – or even honestly acknowledge the existence of – campus fascism and its anti-American, anti-democratic, and anti-free speech agenda. And its open cheerleading for terrorism.
“2) Other radicals, including the IRA, Shining Path,and Red Brigades had backgrounds as students who had “ccepted the abstractions of fashionable academics”;”
You forgot Pol Pot, who studied at the Sorbonne.
“liberals have been hiding behind non-partisan colors for so long, and trafficking with leftists for so long, that they no longer have any idea how to define themselves. And they can’t even discuss it without going off the brink.”
Most importantly, liberals have not been willing to do any housecleaning, as the conservatives did, to marginalize their bigots and weirdos. Liberals have no problem embracing Michael Moore and ANSWER, so they can’t complain if they get confused with leftists. Hell, I’m a liberal (of the old-fashioned kind) and I can’t see any difference.
“And, as all Fox viewers know, the links between Saddam and bin Laden were proved by the mountains of documents captured when Baghdad fell”
Mountains of documents (including a few about bin laden)
More.
More.
More.
More.
Every person has to make moral choices, and what they do and say matters.
In the 30’s through the 50’s the NAACP used to have signs outside it’s offices in NYC saying “A Black Person was lynched today” which was factually true.
Lynching was a very public and racist murder, condemned by only a few (almost all on the Left), and participated in by a gruesome degree by nearly the entire White community as recent exhibits about that crime show. Anyone who has seen descriptions and photos about that can only experience horror and revulsion.
The Left used to understand the need for moral choices, and intellectuals, writers, Professors, spoke out about this horror, and condemned it, when public opinion and sentiment made this a costly choice and one that was not risk free.
Today, sadly, we see NO intellectuals willing to defend freedom, democracy, human rights, and the Western Way of life. Instead we have various boot-licking statements pouring out of the Left praising every brutal terrorist, murderer, and tin-pot anti-American dicator and murderer.
Castro puts Librarians in jail and closes private Libraries, BURNING BOOKS like Twain’s and Harry Potter, and no Leftist will condemn him. Norman Mailer calls the wreckage of the towers more beautiful than when they stood, Stockhausen calls 9/11 the greatest art work ever, a French philospher says “we have all dreamed of this day” about 9/11; Sontag, Moore, and other Leftists celebrate the 9/11 terrorists and along with Bill Maher think them “courageous” and “justified” and not a single Leftist intellectual has the courage to speak out and condemn them.
The Left stands for nothing but empty politics of celebrating terrorism, destruction, and murder, as long as it is done by people who are not white and/or Christian. If the victims are white Americans (mostly) all the better. No one the Left will stand for freedom and simple human decency, lacking the courage and moral conviction they once had.
When the intellectual arguments of the Left echo that of Qutbism, and bin Laden, that in and of itself should be reason enough for the Left to abandon it as a measure of moral principle. That the Left has not done so is a measure of it’s bankruptcy, that stems from a deliberate moral choice: anti-Westernism over simple decency.
Jim,
Please forward your resume.
(not really)
“Today, sadly, we see NO intellectuals willing to defend freedom, democracy, human rights, and the Western Way of life. Instead we have various boot-licking statements pouring out of the Left praising every brutal terrorist, murderer, and tin-pot anti-American dicator and murderer.”
Huh. Tell me, how do you feel about Michael Moore and his unfair and inaccurate generalizations?
“IMO I think we looked closer at the demographics of the “black voter” or even the (unmarried) “woman voter” who tends to prefer Democrats, we would probably find that the voting pattern correlates with whether that individual voter sees themselves as having a stake in government employment or reliance on a particular program.”
How about you *actually* look closer rather than speculate in ways consistent with your prior ideological biases?
“…from a Nanny State mentality that builds its base around dependency on government largess to an investor-class/ownership society model that focuses on productive work, thrift, entrepreneurship, and stable families.”
Have you looked at government spending and, um, levels of “thrift” under the current, Republican administration? How about pork-barrel spending and handouts. If this is your idea about what distinguishes the Republicans from the Democrats, you really need to do some empirical work.
Why is it so damn difficult for people – both conservatives and liberals – to understand that people may vote differently than they do for principled reasons? Is it possible, just possible, that people who see the world differently don’t have some sort of “false consciousness”? Man, we started out arguing over whether Marxism was to blame for militant Islam (which is weird enough), and we’ve reached the point of Marxist-influenced arguments from putative conservatives. What a long, strange trip a blog comments section can be.
Oh, and what Ted Barlow said.
By the way, I can’t resist: I don’t remember any leftist looking into Vlad Putin’s eyes and telling us what a “good soul” he has. And why should we go to Cuba to watch Harry Potter being burned, when we can do to any number of right-wing evangelical Churches here at home?
Folks, we’re coming a bit off the rails here – and somehow, it always has to be about America… what is it with y’all down there? 🙂
Robert Conquest’s argument is very straightforward, and it has ZERO to do with the American South. It would be appreciated if posters actually addressed that argument, and kept their parallels congruent.
As the reviewer notes, and Crooked Timber agree with this focus for outrage:
bq. “t is hard to know what to make of this passage. It appears to attribute some responsibility for the horrors of Sept. 11 to left-leaning professors in Western universities.”
Um, yeah. Conquest’s overall argument seems to be that many violent Islamist thinkers and terrorists have been influenced by and offered aid and comfort (ranging from outright incitement to justification) by anti-Western academics, to which quite a few have been exposed either personally or through the written word.
I’ll give both the reviewer and Mr. Farrell serious points for acknowledging Conquest’s legacy and correctness on some very big issues, most of which were stands made in direct opposition to most liberal and leftist academics. Kudos to both of them for being honest folks who pointed that out, too.
Both seem to focus on the issue of whether Mohammed Atta and co. learned their hate from Western univerisites, and are the professors therefore responsible for 9/11. Ultimately, the terrorists are responsible for 9/11, of course. The positive contribution of Bad Philosophy, however, is worth serious examination.
To say that “Atta didn’t get his ideas in university,” even if true, is somewhat like the argumentative reputation the Jesuits used to have. “If you claimed they murdered 3 men and a dog,” goes the saying, “they’d try to defeat your argument by proving that the dog was still healthy.”
Atta, and those like him, could be strongly influenced by Western academics without even setting foot in a classroom. Like Armed Liberal, I don’t find that idea to be a stretch at all. So let’s look at the various levels of influence here, and the connections between “Bad Philosophy” and the terrorism of 9/11 and beyond.
*Level 1: The Ideology Link*
In cases like Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, Peru’s similar Shining Path, et. al., the link between academia and murderous political ideologies of terrorism and massacre is crystal clear and can be traced both ideologically and biographically. But let’s step to the modern Islamists.
A.L. has run articles here before about the degree to which modern Islamism as an ideology is a native-Western hybrid, with the “western” imports coming from ideas and praxis borrowed from radical/totalitarian ideologies whose roots in academia are deep and lasting. If that argument can be shown to be true, then this argument is over and all of Farrell’s huffing and puffing can’t blow the house down. Islamism would have significant roots in anti-Western ‘bad philosophy’ ideas from Western academics, which have killed 170 million people or so (and counting), plus whatever fascism racked up, and now we’d add Islamism’s victims. Close variants and even identical examples of these ideas are still widely believed and disseminated in Western academia today. QED, as they say.
Having helped make up communism, fascism, and now Islamism, it would certainly seem that a public accounting of the consequences, coupled with naming and shaming, would be in order for those who preach such things.
If you want to make parallel arguments about racism in America, you’ll have to show that racism (as a practised and violent ideology, not just some vague and ill-defined construct of “everyone who disagrees with a liberal”) had strong roots in a progenitor ideology to which the group you’re targeting subscribes. But nothing like that has been advanced here – merely post-hoc/propter-hoc (before/because of) fallacies and unsupported smears.
I recommend just ignoring such posts as deliberate distractions, unless they offer something more substantial and congruent.
To clarify further re: what “more substantial and congruent” may mean… Someone might make an argument that “states’ rights” in the U.S. South is a valid parallel. This would fit the bill as a congruent argument form – a progenitor ideology that is claimed to have had important influences on the ideology held by violent racists. Of course, they’d find themselves (a) on thin ice, given the modern Democrats’ sudden and welcome fondness for federalism; and (b) still not having shown the link between states’ right and the ideology of racism or the actions of the Klan. I’ll also add that (c) making this argument about the U.S. south, even if you’re successful, leaves Conquest’s argument about terrorists and bad philosophy udeological connections utterly unrefuted. You’ve merely changed the subject. To which I say, “interesting and arguable, but that isn’t the issue here,” and move on.
*Level 2: Individual Ideological Incitement*
Then there’s the next level down. This steps from ideology to individuals. Do individual western academics provide encouragement to and justification for terrorism? Pretty clearly yes, and we have a very wide set of examples to choose from.
Prof. Ward Churchill is hardly unique. Crooked Timber says that he represents himself. If he was the only one, that might be true. But there are lots like him – and so what he actually represents is a trend. Other American professors who have wished for “a million Mogadishus” or say “anyone who blows up the Pentagon gets my vote,” etc. can be found, easily. And then, of course, there the fetid bog of the so-called “Middle Eastern Studies” field, which includes more than its share of crude apologists for terrorism like Columbia’s Massad, not to mention actual terrorists like Prof. Sami Al-Arian.
If this level can be shown to be connected to the phenomenon of terrorism, then A.L.’s point that defeating terror’s ideology requires the ideological defeat and weakning of those promote ‘bad philosophy’ in the West as well gets a very strong boost. As A.L. has noted a few times, this is a phenomenon that doesn’t end when the Islamists do… there are many other kinds of terrorists, and their destructive capabilities will only grow in the coming decades. I’ve said as much myself, esp. in “The S.P.E.C.T.R.E. of Terror, Inc.”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/002423.php
So, welcome to next front in The War Against Bad Philosophy.
ASIDE: If people here can find comparable examples of prominent political people or academics supporting violent racism in the USA (Robert Bryd is a “gimmie”, though renunciation is a valid counterargument if it can be shown), I guess you could have at it… All you’d really accomplish is to show us that the transmission belt can indeed exist, and thank-you.
Ok, on to the next question down as we examine this level of the phenomenon…
Do the works and teachings of these academic supporters and apologists for terrorism filter back to individual terrorists, or get used as propaganda by terrorist organizations, or get used by these people as public justification and support for terror?
In practice? Absolutely. Our “CIVIS: Hatred Rising topic category”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/cat_civis_hatred_rising.php provides abundant examples of this cross-fertilization, and cooperation and/or ideological fraternity between neo-Marxists like the Chomskyites or neo-nazi factions, and modern Islamists. Not unknown, to say the least. “Prominent Democrats have even taken notice.”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/004785.php
What about theory, and specific bad guys? The role of current prominent haters like Noam Chomsky, as well as “blasts from the past” like Fanon, in justifying or even inspiring terrorism against the West, could also be a focus of much productive discussion and research. So-called “Middle Eastern Studies” is already under the microscope of criticism, and deservedly so. Any of those subjects could spam multiple blog posts or even books – and they do.
Armed Liberal sticks to theory and broadens that discussion to include criticical deconstruction of the whole romanticist political project and ideology, which values emotions over consequences and commitment as a good uncoupled from morality. He has made a good argument, IMO, and his formulation also has the advantage of letting us address a problem that spans the political spectrum. The future is unknown, and thinking about this problem is ways that blind us to future developments isn’t smart. So it’s a worthy addition to the War on Bad Philosophy as we look for roots that reach beyond even political ideology.
*Level 3: Affecting Individual Terrorists*
Let’s take it down one more step now, to direct influence involving specific terrorists by background and biography. Which is the source of Crooked Timber’s outrage at Robert Conquest.
If you believe that ideas have consequences, then a phenomenon of academics who believe Western society to be corrupt and the use of force against it justified, and/or who advocate its revolutionary collapse… to say this has no relationship with terrorists who attempt to do just that is more than a bit of a stretch. It’s an important topic worthy of study, both in order to shed more light on the true variables involved and to recognize the real cost (if any) of those ideas.
On the most personal level, we’ve run the studies here that show most Islamist terrorists to be middle to upper class individuals, with post-secondary educations. These proclivities often weren’t present before that post-secondary phase, a phenomenon that also tended to be true of Western radical-chic terrorists in the 60s-80s. Which leads one to ask, legitimately, “exactly what are they learning there? Is there something in the program that’s triggering them, or is it some other influence + the natural stupidity of youth?”
A question worth asking, I think. On the “option b” side of that argument, I’ll note that we’ve seen a lot of stuff here indicating that many post-secondary Islamists are “hard sciences” types, and so this whole field strikes me as one worthy of further research until we understand it better. Indeed, the existence and structure of the whole “transmission belt” (to use a Leninist term) are worthy subjects for study… though if Islamism itself is a western hybrid, as noted above, then Conquest is already vindicated and all we’re looking for is details and triggers.
Speaking of Robert Conquest and vindication, we already have a proven model in this area.
Conquest’s second claim, that a large number of Middle Eastern terrorist movements and individuals built their base and tactics as Marxists, is simply unarguable. The Soviet Union and its client states in the Warsaw Pact and Middle East trained, recruited, supplied, and sometimes guided many of the world’s terrorists and most of the major anti-Western terrorist groups during the 60s-70s, including those in the Middle East but not limited to them. When splinter groups formed, they were almost invariably Marxist variants as well, even in the Middle East. Middle Eastern countries friendly to the Soviet Union hosted most of the training bases, thus creating a cadre on which later terrorist efforts would be built (though Cuba and some African satellites also participated).
All of this is very well documented, and available to anyone who wants to take a serious interest in the subject.
We could certainly talk about the Iranian influence on much modern-day Islamist terror’s ideology and practice, but (a) they’ve largely copied the Soviet/Leninist organizational model for supporting terror; and (b) this supplements Conquest’s point, it doesn’t refute it.
Bottom line: There was indeed a strong “radical-chic” phenomenon at work in the late 60s and beyond, which created an independent transmission belt of radical students from Western Universities who joined such movements – the Red Brigades, German Red Army Faction, SLA in America, the Black Panthers, etc. A.L.’s romanticist bugbear also played a strong role, but if romanticism was their emotional state, Marxism in all its variants was almost universally their ideology and their link to support.
This second transmission belt sometimes produced useful Western cadre who would find their way into the more professional training offered by the Soviet Empire (the European terrorists at Entebbe were one good example). If they didn’t show that much promise, they could also simply remain as operational fodder who benefitted from the Soviets’ assistance along with the rest of their organization. Or, they might remain in the outer tier of supporters and apologists who publicly justified terrorist actions or offered ‘safe houses’ to hunted members, without ever being involved in committing terrorism themselves. Each option represents a form of diminishing usefulness to a terrorist organization, but usefulness nonetheless.
In other words, we’ve seen a related phenomenon before. It is not unreasonable to wonder if it’s still with us, given the escalating consequences and costs of terrorism in the modern world.
*Conclusion*
I’ve seen nothing here that even begins to refute Conquest’s main points… indeed, they strike me as being very worthy of further discussion.
These are important subjects, and the body of literature and study related to them is substantial and growing. A more normal response might be to inquire into the sources Conquest is using and has used for these assertions, in order to enhance one’s understanding.
Instead, we got an attempt to foreclose an important argument, and an assertion that publicizing the actions of Ward Churchill and his scummy ilk is “disgusting” somehow. The level of outrage here is way disproportionate to the trigger, and given the other evasions involved, one does get a “methinks the dude, like, protesteth too much” felling about it all.
That was certainly my take.
Meta-comment, Joe: Your piece should be promoted up to the post level, not buried down here. It’ll keep the discussion from scrolling off, as well.
AL, Joe,
for every “bad philosophy” example you can find from someone on the left, I can point to one from the right. The links are just as or even more direct. Sayyid Qutb, for instance, quoted no Western thinker — make that “thinker” — more often than Alexis Carrel, a wingnut rightist Vichy supporter who wound up defending euthanasia and arguing for a kind of elite politburo of the right to run the affairs of us little folks for us (very roughly).
This argument about “what Osama learned from the left” comes up every so often, and as a lefty I naturally find it a little offensive if it’s put that way. I think the truth is that murderousness for the sake of some ‘transcendent’ cause is more or less equally distributed across the political spectrum: Stalin, Hitler, and Bin Laden have differing political heritages, but become awfully similar in the way they were or are willing to achieve their totalitarian goals. (And no, Hitler was not a left-wing figure.) We snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if we start to identify murderousness with “left” or “right” and fail to simply identify it with its perpetrators, be the murderers ‘left,’ ‘right’, or beyond.
“That was certainly my take.”
Indeed, since virtually none of your claims were substantiated, those that were are of very little substantive impact. The USSR and Cuba trained a lot of Marxist nationalist and terrorist movements in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, to which I say, “no shit,” what does this have to do with American academics, leftist or otherwise? Or are we going to ape the leftist nuts who think the alliance between the US and the mujahadeen in Afghanistan somehow makes the US culpable for 9/11? And what of the fact that a very few academics and pseudo-academics have made statements of the type you cite? I’m sick of hasty generalizations in these arguments. I’m also sick of argument by innuendo and through the drawing of sketchy connections (if Marxists are culpable for Iranian-sponsored terrorism because Iran learned stuff about terrorist organization by studying Marxist terrorists, then why not just blame 17th century Calvinists for coming up with the revolutionary cell in the first place?).
You seem relatively well informed, but you also seem woefully ignorant of the scholarly literature on terrorism, particularly the literature that tracks the profound changes in terrorist methods and organization over the last 20 years.
I’ll just raise two last points:
First, think in terms of counterfactuals. If Fanon, or Said, or Foucult, or whomever you want to blame for strains of occidentalism that date back into the nineteenth century and have been associated with both the European left and the right, had never written a single word would the 9/11 attacks have still happened? If you’re answer is “yes,” then you really don’t have much of a case. If you’re answer is “no,” then you need to explain yourself in much greater detail.
Second, we’re reaching truly perilous terrain here in terms of any meaningful ethics of responsibility. Consider the implications of blaming, for example, someone who writes about unsavory acts of the United States for 9/11, which is pretty close to what you’re doing. Frankly, I hardly see what distinguishes this line of argument from political correctness in its original meaning.
Excuse rampant misspellings :-). Hit post when I meant to hit preview.
No-one said Carrel couldn’t be an example of “bad philosophy” too. He certainly sounds like one, and it’s pretty clear where his ideas led.
Are people still teaching his stuff?
“The Ichneumon Wasp”:http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/03/ichneumon-wasp-european-left-has.html
#46 Thomas Nephew,
Excellent thoughts, and it was very worthwhile to follow the two links to your writing in comment #46. I take your justified condemnation of the Vichyite Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel as an extension of A.L.’s “Bad Philosophy” concept. That an important line of thought runs from Carrel to Qutb to bin Laden to Atta and Zarqawi hardly excuses the “Bad Philosophes” of the left.
Farrell’s objections notwithstanding (e.g. comment #26), the questions stand.
* Which ideas (philosophies) undergird and provide inspiration for totalitarian strains of militant Islam (al Qaeda, Islamic International Front, Wahibism, Khomenism)?
* Which of these ideas (philosophies) are evil or misguided, as viewed from the perspective of classical Liberalism?
* Which have been ‘misappropriated,’ and what exactly does that concept mean?
Dismissals and redirections of the matter at hand to the course requirements of technical Masters’ degrees don’t get to these points. Extending “Bad Philosophy” to include the intellectual forbears and powerhouses of Fascist ideology does just that.
As praktike observed earlier in this thread in a different context, straw-man arguments abound. But a serious defense of the ideas of Fanon, Derrida, Said, Sontag, and other darlings* of parts of the Academy should be focused on those ideas, and their consequences.
Having read Thomas Nephew’s precis of Alexis Carrel, I will join in damning that fascist. Per Paul Berman, that is no exoneration of the Guiding Lights of International ANSWER and its ilk.
* darlings, not Darling. Though Ward Churchill’s name can be appended here.
to Yehudit’s #39 post about “mountains of evidence” of links between Saddam and Al Qaeda
Much of the Stephen Hayes stuff, along with the (*gasp*) Washington Times “proof” has been trenchantly assailed by many sources whose arguments seem tighter than those of the Hayes-types slithering around the public discourse.
A quick googling of the topic will provide ample refutations, but here is a compilation that provided many arguments against the “evidence”
http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_11_23_archive.html
http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/feith_memo/index.html
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3540586/
http://mediamatters.org/items/200406300014
Of course, there is always that news release from the Pentagon itself that questioned the Hayes assertions.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2030480
Anyway, the matter is far from case-closed, one way or the other, but I think it is fair to say that whatever “link” was there was vastly overstated and misused to whip the public up into a frenzy. Personally I think this undermined other, more legitimate casus belli that could have taken more of the spotlight.
Mohhamed Atta studied at the Technical University of Hamburg, _not_ the University of Hamburg. The TU does not have faculties in Philosophy, History or Religion. His European academic environment was entirely technical, while his Islamicist indoctrination took place within Muslim communities unrelated to the TU. Atta and his colleagues may have had philosophies that could be called good or bad, but they certainly did not acquire them in western technical universities.
I know contemporary German University life very well, and the contempt shown by Islamists in the university communities for all aspects of western life and ideology is open. The greatest contempt is reserved for liberalism, and especially the secularist left-liberals like Habermas, Rawls, Foucault, Kung. In contrast, there are Islamicists who have found common cause with prominent Christian conservatives, Ratzinger, for example, and the American religious right is also viewed favorably.
Why is there an assumption, among US conservatives, of ideological continuity between the Marxist/Arabic Nationalists of the the ’60s and ’70s with the Islamicists of more recent vintage? The main connection between the two movements is the sense among the younger that the older had failed to change their societies, and the turn to religion was a reaction to relgion’s absence in the earlier ideology. Otherwise, and ultimately, the two movements are in fundamental conflict with one another, although they may make tactical alliances of convenience.
The Iranian revolution is a example of such an alliance, and the ultimate exclusion of the leftists from power in the Islamic Republic is one of the open wounds defining the present dynamic in Iran. The Palestinians are in a virtual standstill between the aging secularists and nationalists of the Fatah movement and the broadly younger Islamicists of Hamas and other groups. The present and future environment in Iraq is and will be defined by a dynamic between these two groupings, a dynamic for which the Bush government appears not to have given great consideration.
#52 Abishiktananda,
Thanks for the links. Please do check out Joe Katzman’s formatting suggestions when including them (“To add a live URL…”).
The articles support your contention that the matter is far from case-closed, certainly in many of its details. But they hardly provide definitive rebuttals or refutations of Hayes et al.–and wouldn’t even if they were correct on every point. They don’t justify your use of “sneer quotes.”
Search the WoC archives for Dan Darling’s (lengthy) analyses of these matters; you might find his take to be more compelling than that offered by Newsweek et al. Anyway, I do.
#53 DJW,
Great post. I think you (and some others, earlier on in the thread) do provide compelling evidence that rebuts the “Atta and his ilk learned their Anti-Americanism at University through contact with their professors” theory.
You ask, “Why is there an assumption, among US conservatives, of ideological continuity between the Marxist/Arabic Nationalists of the the ’60s and ’70s with the Islamicists of more recent vintage?” The answer probably starts with “this 2001 essay by Paul Berman;”:http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/18/berman-p.html note that he isn’t talking about the anti-Western Left, but about Islamist roots in the European fascist movements of the 1930s. Vichyite Alexis Carrel came up earlier in this thread.
So, is A.L justified in extending this line of thinking to encompass ‘left’ intellectuals hostile to the tenets of Liberalism? Or perhaps, is Henry Farrell justified in finding it outrageous and disgusting that Conquest presumed to do so, in the book that launched these thousand ships?
I find the readiness of the Crooked Timber crowd to hurl invective at ideas and ideologues of the anit-Liberal right to be a bit at odds with their attitude towards those on the anti-Liberal left. A play, perhaps, on the old NRA bumper sticker that might go, Leftist ideas don’t kill people, people kill people. And true enough–as far as it goes.
The more interesting thought-experiments, to me, center around the sophisticated appreciation of the weaknesses and schisms in Western society that the Islamists have shown, and continue to show. Terrorism, after all, is about the target audiences more than anything else.
Absent the effects of Fanon, Derrida, Said, Chomsky, et al. and their philosophies, Qutb and bin Laden would still be important figures in an important Islamist grievance/jihad/Caliphate movement. But if the Western audiences and Western responses were not so strongy influenced by our anti-Liberal left, what would al-Qaeda’s strategies be? Would their impact be greater, less, or about the same as what it actually is?
AMac,
Thanks for the heads up on the links. This is my first time here, and I apologize for the breach in protocols.
I also do apologize for the use of “sneer quotes.” Rest assured that they were less “sneer” and more “I’m-not-entirely-sure-I-buy-it-so-I-am-using-quotes-to-distance-myself-from-the-word.” Anyway, I checked out the Dan Darling information, and quite frankly, there is a lot of conjecture in there. I found little to suggest that the criticisms of the claims of a link were invalid. As I tried to convey, I’m more concerned with the cavalier manner in which many in the “Link” crowd tend to dismiss all criticism of the claim about Iraq sponsoring terrorism. That is to say, it might be debatable, but it sure isn’t rock solid. More importantly, given the above, it is woefully inadequate as grounds for war, especially considering that terrorism is slippery enough to not need state sponsorship, and that toppling allegedly compliant regimes does nothing to guarantee a terror-free environment. It seemed and seems so dubious.
Abhishiktananda (#55),
Well thanks for the tone and content both of your response. Dan Darling’s put up a post this morning (2/4/05) responding to your points, which I’m about to read. Hope you get a chance to do the same, and respond to him. Glad you found WoC and joined in on this thread.
Interesting thread.
My view of this is not that leftist academics preach anti-western philosophy, but instead it is the dynamic of fear and intimidation used in leftists circles to enforce conformity.
It is the pressure to not question what is said that is most dangerous. If you are taught to question the subject(s) you study, it’s called intellectual study. But if you are taught to disreguard counter arguement, then you are teaching facism disguised as intellectual populism.
Does it matter what philisophical theme is used? After all, terror groups rarely if ever conform to their own root philosophy anyway…