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Category Archives: millennial
Reconciliation-Hearted to Bostom: It’s really not a zero-sum
Andy Bostom has a response to my post on the Bostom-Künatzel debate. He has asked me to stick to substantive issues, which I agree is where we need to go in this discussion. I will, however, make a couple of asides about rhetoric [in brackets] since Andy’s tone has, on occasion, created unnecessary friction. Here are my responses.
Richard the Reconciliation-Hearted
April 6th, 2008 by Andrew Bostom
Actually, I’m mostly known as Richard Artichokeheart.
Has Medievalist Richard Landes chosen his arguments all that wisely?
[Let me guess, that's a rhetorical question the answer to which is... no. :-) ]
Richard Landes, invoking understandably, his background as a Medievalist, with a special interest in millenarian movements — attempts a thoughtful “reconciliation” of what he attributes to be the positions of Matthias Kuntzel, and myself, vis a vis Islamic Antisemitism. But Landes’ discussion has two fundamental flaws.
[Normally, one first goes over the strengths of the argument before going for the weaknesses, but okay. Andy's a no-nonsense guy.]
First, Landes ignores (and likely does not appreciate) Kuntzel’s complete failure to understand the jihad,
[Although this is not purely a matter of substance, it is significant. I neither ignore, nor fail to appreciate the issue, nor do I think it appropriate to use terms like "complete failure to understand" (even if it's true, which I don't think it is).]
which lead Kuntzel to opine, remarkably (on p. 13 of his book “Jihad and Jew Hatred”),
The [Muslim] Brotherhood’s most significant innovation was their concept of jihad as holy war, which significantly differed from other contemporary doctrines and, associated with that, the passionately pursued goal of dying a martyr’s death in the war with the unbeliever. Before the founding of the Brotherhood, Islamic currents of modern times had understood jihad (derived from a root signifying “effort”) as the individual striving for belief or the missionary task of disseminating Islam. Only when this missionary work was hindered were they allowed to use force to defend themselves against the unbelievers resistance. The starting point of Islamism is the new interpretation of jihad espoused with uncompromising militancy by Hassan al-Bana, the first to preach this kind of jihad in modern times.
There is simply no way to reconcile this statement with either classical Islamic doctrine — entirely consistent with Al-Banna’s views — or the tragic, but copious historical evidence of how jihad campaigns, in accord with this doctrine, were (and continue to be) conducted across, Asia, Africa, and Europe. I amass incontrovertible evidence of this living doctrine and history in the The Legacy of Jihad.
There are, in fact, several ways to reconcile these statements with the ample documentation of Bostom’s work. First, note that Küntzel refers to “Islamic currents in modern times.” Küntzel may, indeed, underestimate the importance of Jihad as holy war in Islamic tradition, and overstate the “innovation” of the Muslim Brotherhood when it comes specifically to Jihad, but that hardly means that the Muslim Brotherhood’s reformulation of Jihad doesn’t contain important new elements that included an anti-modern anti-Semitism typical of fascism and Nazism. It’s one thing to say Küntzel underestimates the vigor of an earlier Jihadi and anti-Semitic tradition in Islam, quite another to dismiss his argument that Hassan al Banna’s and the Mufti’s version had new elements that, even if they existed before (see below), took on new and ominous forms.
Anti-Semitism, Nazis, and Muslims: Is it Islamism or Islam?
Keith Pavlischek has an interesting meditation which begins with a discussion of a debate between Andy Bostom and Matthias Küntzel about the nature of Islamic anti-semitism. This debate has recently turned even more vituperative, alas, as a result of a book review by John Rosenthal of Klaus Gensicke’s Klaus Gensicke. Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten: Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten in Policy Review. Pavlischek’s opening discussion focuses on the debate’s substantive issues and highlights their significance.
Jihad, Jew-Hatred, and Evangelicals and Jews Together
By Keith Pavlischek
Thursday, March 27, 2008, 6:14 AMAn instructive and fascinating debate has erupted over what at first glance may seem an academic point. The debate is between Matthias Küntzel, the author of Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, and Andrew Bostom, the editor of The Legacy of Jihad and author of the forthcoming book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.
The debate is not over whether contemporary Islamism is vehemently anti-Jewish but over the historical roots of that Jew-hatred. Küntzel locates the current rabid Jew-hatred specifically in the influence of Nazi ideology. Bostom, alternatively, insists that the legacy of Islamic Jew-hatred is far more ancient and deeply rooted in classical Islam. Bostom assembles a wealth of historical material and concludes, “According to the full range of hadith concerning the Jews, stubborn malevolence is the Jews’ defining worldly characteristic: rejecting Muhammad and refusing to convert to Islam out of jealousy, envy and even selfish personal interest, lead them to acts of treachery, in keeping with their inveterate nature.”
Contemporary Islamic Jew-hatred, according to Bostom, cannot simply be linked to the influence of Nazi propaganda but rather with an entirely explicable reaction to the very existence of Israel. Explicable, that is, given Islam’s traditional hostility to Jews. According to Bostom, “The rise of Jewish nationalism—Zionism—posed a predictable, if completely unacceptable challenge to the Islamic order—jihad-imposed chronic dhimmitude for Jews—of apocalyptic magnitude.” He then quotes his mentor, Bat Ye’or, who explained: “Because divine will dooms Jews to wandering and misery, the Jewish state appears to Muslims as an unbearable affront and a sin against Allah. Therefore it must be destroyed by Jihad.”
One crucial implication of all this is that the Israeli-Palestinian “problem” has less to do with any particular policy pursued by Israel than with the Jew-hating ideology intrinsic to Islamist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood (not to mention the Islamic Republic of Iran). Also, the deep-seated Jew-hatred of the Islamists should disabuse us of the notion that the threat of Islamism will wither away with the establishment of a Palestinian state.
I don’t intend to weigh in on the particulars of the Küntzel-Bostom debate, except to note that it has profound implications for how we name the enemy. Do we call them Islamofascists, which tends to suggest their current form of Jew-hatred is originally modern? Or do we call them Jihadists, suggesting a more ancient and intrinsic connection to Islamic theology and political understanding (with consequently diminished prospects for reform)? In any case, the debate is instructive, with both sides presenting plausible (and not mutually exclusive) explanations.
I agree here with Pavlischek. Not only are these issues crucial, the positions are not mutually exclusive (hence my dismay at the stridency of the debate). All of the books here discussed support the Honor-Shame Jihad Paradigm (Israel is a theological blasphemy to an honor-shame form of religiosity that can only feel good about itself when it debases its parent religion); and challenge the Western cognitive egocentrism of the Politically Correct Paradigm that insists on seeing the conflict as one of rival nationalisms that, hopefully, can be resolved by compromise. Indeed, those tempted by the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis would do well to ponder Pavlischek’s comment: “the deep-seated Jew-hatred of the Islamists should disabuse us of the notion that the threat of Islamism will wither away with the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
The rest of the article treats the matter of Jewish discomfort with Christian support for Israel. That is an entirely different issue, about which he has some interesting things to say, despite completely ignoring the major source of the discomfort — i.e., the underlying apocalyptic beliefs that fuel some of the most passionate support for Israel, beliefs that make the Zionist fervor a time-bound phenomenon, an instrument in the hastening of Jesus’ return, at which point Jews will vanish from the earth either in the battle of Armageddon or by converting to Christianity.
The debate between Küntzel and Bostom, despite the excess of heat it has generated, also sheds important light. Küntzel’s point is that although there is a long history of Jew-hatred in Islam, since Hassan al Banna, and even more, since the establishment of Israel, that hatred has shifted from what I call anti-Judaism (“we” are right and proud because you are wrong an humbled) to anti-Semitism (your very existence threatens us, we must exterminate you before you destroy us). This is the shift that the Nazis made in their turn to what Goldhagen calls “exteminationist anti-Semitism” and Friendlander calls “redemptive anti-Semitism” — i.e., salvation comes from wiping out the Jews. I think, it is correct to see the rebirth of Jihad in the 20th century as a) a virulent form of anti-Semitism that incorporated much of the European tradition — blood libels, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, etc. — even as its earlier traditions of Jew hatred provided the fertile soil for this transfer.
Bostom may well be correct in showing that even this kind of genocidal thinking existed, if not in precisely the form it now takes, throughout Islamic history. My own suggestion here is to view this exterminationist anti-Semitism as the product of apocalyptic time: that’s how it operated in Christianity (e.g., the slaughters of the First Crusade), and how it operates now in Islam. Fundamentally, as far as I can make out, Bostom and Küntzel agree on a key point: the existence of Israel has driven Muslims, long accustomed to throttling and humiiating Jews, into paroxysms of hatred. Today, for Muslims drenched in the frustration and humiliation of a tiny Israel resisting their efforts to restore the true nature of the world order and return the Jews to dhimmi status, it has morphed into a desire to kill all Jews everywhere.
So if we want to understand the dynamics, we are best advised — I think — not to look for a permanent state of genocidal Jew hatred, nor for a once-only appearance in the modern world, but for its episodic emergence in paranoid apocalyptic moments when Muslims (or Christians) think they are fighting a Jewish enemy that refuses to accept its place at the bottom of the hierarchy (as in the case of modern Zionism), and that the genocidal element takes on a particular power when Muslims and Christians believe that they are engaged in the apocalyptic battle of the Endtimes.
Hopefully this suggestion may permit us to move on to the important discussion of what is going on in Islam today, and how we can deal with it.
Jihadis and “Revolutionaries” in Europe: Deadly Bedfellows
This piece, which appears at the Counterterrorism blog, strikes me as short on details and somewhat superficial. But it does address an issue of primary importance, well worth keeping on our radar screens. If anyone has references to further material on the subject, please cite it.
Left-wing Extremists and Salafi-Jihadists in Europe: Brothers in Arms?
By Assaf Moghadam, July 15, 2007In recent months, a confluence of several events fueled speculation among some German officials that left-wing extremism in Germany is on the rise and may even turn to violence reminiscent of the terrorism practiced by the Red Army Faction (RAF) in decades past. Although Germany’s Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, today rejected rumors of a renewal of left-wing terrorism in Germany as baseless, one still wonders whether Europe may witness a reincarnation of left-wing terrorism in the near future. Is it possible that left-wing groups and Salafi-Jihadist networks in Europe may cooperate in the future? To that end, it is worthwhile to examine some of the similarities between left-wing extremism rampant in Germany during the late 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s on the one hand, and the Salafi-Jihadist movement on the other.
Several events provided impetus to the renewed debate surrounding left-wing extremism in Germany. On March 25, 57-year old Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a member of the “second generation” of the RAF, was released after spending the last 24 years in a German prison for her role in the killing of nine people. A former colleague of hers from the RAF, Christian Klar, asked for an early release, only to be rejected by President Horst Köhler after the latter found him to be unrepentant. German fear that left-wing extremists are planning major disruptions at the forthcoming summit of the G-8 in Heiligendamm heightened concerns of a left-wing terrorist resurgence. In early May, the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz, VS) of the state of Baden-Württemberg, Johannes Schmalzl, noted that the “old spirit of the RAF” was wandering across the “leftist scene.”
The MSM and Iraq: Dangerous Consequences to Inaccurate Coverage
Richard North has an important post up entitled: Who Will Give the True Picture? In it he ruminates on a wide range of issues concerning coverage of the Iraq war, both from the American and British perspectives. Among others, he cites an important article by an American Major in the US Army, Gerd Schroeder, who writes about the extensive and available news of positive developments in Iraq which the MSM, if they mention it, spin negatively. Concludes Schroeder:
Accurate, meaningful information that spans the full spectrum of subjects, including good news as well as bad is critical to getting a true picture of the war. If the information is slanted too far one way as it is now, the consequence will not just be defeat of the US, but could lead to mass murder and instability throughout the Middle East, Africa and the world at large. That does not mean that it will happen, but an American defeat would have a chilling effect on our allies and embolden our enemies.
Eloquently, but not sufficiently strongly put. Allow me to rephrase: British and American withdrawal from Iraq will register on the screens of Jihadis the world over as a stupendous victory as in the response of Ayman Zawahiri, as important — if not more — that the victory of Bin Laden and the Mujihaddin in Afghanistan in 1989, which has launched the current wave of global Jihad. Global Jihad Warming will shoot up several degrees, tepid supporters will become more fervent, fervent supporters emboldened to new aggressions. And after Iraq, which will descend into an apocalyptic bloodbath, the major victim will be Europe, with its restive and increasingly aggressive Muslim populations, and their latest non-ethnic (i.e. honkey) recruits. As Henri Desroche said about millennial movements, they “take” like forest fires, and once they do, one cannot “put them out,” only hope to direct them, to have them burn out with as little damage as possible. While our presence in Iraq makes those fires burn brighter (and our media play a key role in that), our departure would be the equivalent of pouring oil on precisely those areas which permit the flames to jump to other forest land.
Humiliation and Terrorism: Goldhagen’s Analysis
Daniel Goldhagen has an excellent discussion of the problem of “humiliation” and Jihad. While for polemical reasons he may be dismissive of “humiliation” as an explanation of Arab/Muslim “rage,” his overall point — there’s much more to the problem than “humiliation,” is crucial, especially when it comes to policy options. I’ve highlighted particularly significant passages and added some notes.
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
Issue #4, Spring 2007The Humiliation Myth
Humiliation doesn’t explain terrorism; the spread of Political Islam does. A response to Peter Bergen and Michael Lind.
Daniel Jonah GoldhagenAs Peter Bergen and Michael Lind ably demonstrate in their recent article ["A Matter of Pride," Issue #3], the notion that poverty causes terrorism – and that, absent poverty, terrorism would diminish radically – is a fallacy. Indeed, the “myth of deprivation” is so manifestly inadequate that it is worth asking whether its supporters actually believe it or whether, instead of confronting the complexities of terrorism’s causes and the difficulty of combating it, they prefer to mouth a platitudinous perspective that poverty causes all ills and that alleviating poverty (which will not happen soon) cures them.
It’s actually worse: I think most people want to believe that poverty causes terrorism because we Westerners think we have the formula for “curing” the problem thus understood. “Throw money at it.” That’s the French solution with their “lost territories.” Goldhagen’s right that we won’t be alleviating poverty soon the world over. But we think we can solve it in places where we decide to push hard (the so-called “Middle East Marshall Plan”). Of course, when “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” — when we throw money at impoverished cultures that, often, are the product of their terrorist “leaders” — we end up engaging in what Pamela of Atlas Shrugged, in a conversation with David “poverty causes terrorism” Korn in a conversation at the OSM/PJ Media launch called “extortion.”
Les procès Al-Durah, acte II : Portrait d’une culture de l’honneur en crise
Le deuxième “procès Al-Durah” a pour objet une manifestation qui s’est déroulée en octobre 2002 devant les locaux de France 2. Un documentaire de la chaîne ARD, l’homologue allemande de France 2, venait de montrer la désinformation spectaculaire par Charles Enderlin et la malhonnêteté criante de son caméraman Talal Abou Rahmeh. France 2 en bloqua la diffusion en France, alors que celle-ci aurait du être quasiment automatique, s’agissant d’un sujet qui concernait la France. Il en résulta une manifestation de protestation, à l’appel d’un vaste regroupement d’associations, juives ou pas, qui décerna, à France 2 et Enderlin, le “prix de la désinformation”. Parmi les divers appels, un site web appela à manifester contre “les mensonges et l’énorme manipulation” de France 2. Pour défendre sa réputation, France 2 a entamé des poursuites contre celui qu’elle accuse d’être responsable du site web, pour “atteinte à l’honneur et à la considération de M. Charles Enderlin”.
Sans doute, Américains ou Israéliens jugeront tout cela complètement fou, et je serai d’accord avec eux. Une des raisons pour lesquelles les juges de ces affaires de diffamation ne consacrent qu’une après-midi à l’audition des témoins et aux argumentaires des parties est qu’il y en a plein d’autres en attente. Alain Finkielkraut, une des rares voix sensées et courageuses de la France d’aujourd’hui, a cinq procès sur le dos, pour des propos qui, aux États-Unis, seraient débattus ouvertement dans les médias.
Mais la législation française sur la diffamation favorise grandement les plaignants, et de tels propos tombent sous le coup de ces lois. On pourrait alors supposer que la question sera de savoir si c’était vrai ou faux, si la cour prend en considération des éléments de preuve. Était-il exact de parler de mensonges et de manipulation ?
C’est cet espoir qui avait rendu si optimistes ceux d’entre nous mêlés à cette série de trois procès en diffamation autour de l’affaire Al-Durah à la sortie de la première audience. Le procureur l’avait dit clairement, les allégations étaient infamantes. Mais, ainsi qu’elle l’avait exprimé clairement, la justice voulait que l’on se demande “est-ce exact ?” et si oui, il s’agirait alors de critiques légitimes.
Dans la mesure où je m’intéresse tout spécialement au rôle central que jouent la critique publique et l’autocritique dans la mise en place et la pérennité de la “société civile”, cette question – la possibilité pour les citoyens de critiquer des personnages de la vie publique – me semble vitale à un moment de son histoire où la France est confrontée au défi culturel si grand que représente l’absorption de millions d’immigrants musulmans, généralement aussi mal disposés envers la société civile française que peu enclins à l’autocritique.
L’étonnant retournement du tribunal lors du premier procès contre Philippe Karsenty, après la recommandation du procureur d’abandonner les charges (car l’accusé avait fourni suffisamment d’éléments à l’appui de ses dires, et la gravité du sujet autorisait une certaine rudesse de ton) m’a clairement fait comprendre qu’il s’agissait moins des faits que de la réputation des acteurs de premier plan, France 2, première chaîne publique, et son correspondant vedette, Charles Enderlin.
Le jugement – qui sera prochainement traduit et commenté sur ce site- maintient la fiction de s’en tenir aux faits, mais les considérants, l’argumentation et l’accent sont mis sur Karsenty et visent à protéger Enderlin. J’ai acquis le sentiment que les juges ont fait leur le langage biaisé de France 2, dans leur document de 19 pages. Et la même équipe juridique développe les mêmes thèmes dans le deuxième procès : la réputation sans tâche de France 2 et d’Enderlin, le silence des autorités israéliennes, la personnalité louche de l’accusé et suspecte de ses témoins.
Je ne peux m’empêcher, malgré les nombreuses différences, de penser au dilemme de l’affaire Dreyfus — honneur ou vérité ?
Et si l’affaire Dreyfus était franco-française au départ, puis internationale par sa dimension antisémite et sa signification pour les Juifs, nous sommes ici en présence d’une affaire internationale qui a des implications pour la France, de par le rôle de ses médias dans la diffusion de l’accusation Al-Durah, et en raison de sa spécificité culturelle (et maintenant juridique) qui empêche la vérité de se faire jour.
En fait, les conséquences sont incalculables. Si vous voulez comprendre comment le jihad mondial – une idéologie de haine qui ne le cède en rien à la haine génocidaire des nazis – a pu se développer à ce point ces dernières années, il faut analyser comment les médias français (et au-delà les médias du monde occidental) ont à la fois, d’un côté, diffusé et accrédité les discours les plus hostiles contre Israël et les Juifs, et de l’autre minimisé les violences antijuives qui en ont résulté.
Comment le monde occidental pourrait-il déceler dans l’affaire Al-Durah un appel au jihad mondial, quand le New York Times, par exemple, en 2002, cite un prédicateur jihadiste palestinien qui appelle à l’extermination des Juifs dans le Monde entier en ces termes : “Les travaillistes, le Likoud, ils sont tous les mêmes, ce sont tous des Juifs…” en omettant un appel au génocide qui termine avec la phrase “…tuez-les tous partout où vous les trouverez” ?
Comment les Français pouvaient-ils savoir qu’en oblitérant la culpabilité de l’Holocauste avec l’image Al-Durah, ils agitaient le drapeau du jihad devant leurs immigrés musulmans ? Leurs médias leur ont dissimulé les actes mêmes qu’ils ont largement contribués à provoquer. Le 2 octobre 2000, au lieu de rendre compte des violences antijuives à travers la France et l’Europe qu’avait déchaînées la diffusion, deux jours plus tôt, de la séquence Al-Durah, le journaliste de France 2, à Paris, annonçait que des “colons” à Naplouse avaient tué une petite fille de 2 ans, une information qui est apparue dénuée de fondement même à des sites pro-palestiniens (donc tout à fait crédules). On peut retracer le cheminement de la diffusion des images Al-Durah à l’irruption quasi immédiate d’une “rue arabe” violemment antisémite dans les lieux publics et les universités d’Europe, jusqu’à l’Intifada des banlieues qui hante la France, avec en perspective des cauchemars inimaginables.
Et d’ailleurs, alors que je suis à Paris pour assister à ce procès (22-27 octobre), les banlieues s’échauffent à nouveau. Avec cette nouveauté, l’incendie de bus. S’emparer d’un autobus, faire sortir (ou pas) les passagers et le brûler. Un pas de plus dans la bataille pour les territoires qui oppose les “racailles” de ces quartiers d’immigrés à la République française. Il y a désormais en France des zones où ne sont plus garantis la scolarisation, la loi et l’ordre, représentés par la police ou les pompiers (ce sont aussi, et non pas par hasard, des zones de trafic de drogue) et maintenant, les transports en commun qui permettent aux habitants de ces quartiers qui travaillent d’en sortir. Et ces “territoires perdus de la République” se dégradent et s’étendent à la fois, à mesure que les bandes maffieuses gagnent constamment en agressivité. Encore un écart grandissant entre territoire avec culture productive, d’abondance et un territoire de culture auto-appauvrissante, de carence, qu’on se plait à appeler l’apartheid quand il est question d’Israéliens et Palestiniens.
Et les Français semblent incapables de seulement comprendre, et encore moins répondre, à ce à quoi ils sont confrontés. Leurs médias et leurs élites répètent avec insistance que c’est un problème de pauvreté et de racisme (c’est à dire la faute de la société française), qu l’islam n’a rien à y voir (nonobstant, par exemple, les cris Allahou Akbar, et la survenue des troubles pendant le Ramadan). Pendant mon séjour à Paris, un reportage télévisé relatait l’affreuse histoire d’Ilan Halimi, un Juif français torturé à mort par un gang de barbares (c’est le nom qu’eux-mêmes se donnaient) qui téléphonèrent à ses parents pour leur lire des versets du Coran alors qu’ils pouvaient entendre les cris de leur fils en arrière-plan. Cette histoire en dit long sur l’organisation culturelle de ces quartiers, sur l’étendue de l’empathie ou le poids de la loi du silence qui empêcha, pendant plus de deux semaines, les voisins, qui entendaient les hurlements, de prévenir la police. Et pourtant, pas une seule fois le mot “islam” ne fut prononcé dans ce reportage.
Un ami sociologue a emmené une fois une équipe de CNN dans ces territoires perdus (connus sous l’euphémisme de quartiers difficiles) et un gamin évoqua devant eux le Hamas. Un autre le fit taire. Cache-t-on quelque chose d’important ?
Pour des raisons très différentes, mais tout aussi mauvaises, tant les élites intellectuelles françaises que les gamins des cités souhaitent relativiser l’énorme attirance du jihad mondial pour cette sous-classe. Cet attrait n’est pas celui de la discipline de la religion musulmane, mais d’un culte de mort, haineux, destructeur et nihiliste qui séduit une population enragée de son impuissance humiliante dans le monde moderne. Que ces quartiers où fermente ce ressentiment soient actuellement musulmans ou pas, l’histoire des révolutions suggère que, le moment venu, des reculades françaises surgiront, sous une forme violente, les ambitions millénaristes de l’islam. Comme le note le sociologue James Scott*, dans son livre, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, le millénarisme est une “expression cachée véhémente” qui n’attend que l’occasion de faire irruption dans le débat public.
On pourrait comprendre que les “racailles” veuillent apparaître comme des damnés de la terre légitimement courroucés, qui ne cherchent qu’à s’insérer équitablement dans le jeu républicain, des opprimés qui réclament plus d’argent, plus de programmes d’aide, moins d’exclusion. Mais que l’élite universitaire française privilégie cette interprétation et jette l’anathème sur quiconque a le front, ou le courage, de les contredire me semble bien suicidaire. Une société civile, démocratique/républicaine, libre, ne peut se maintenir avec de telles alliances de démopathes (les émeutiers qui invoqueraient des “revendications” démocratiques) avec leurs dupes (les intellectuels qui s’en font l’écho).
Prenons le cas Finkielkraut. Il est poursuivi pour avoir déclarer que les émeutes dans les banlieues ont des motivations antirépublicaines, et que ces “jeunes” sont nihilistes. Ses détracteurs considèrent ses propos comme de l’incitation à la discrimination, comme quand le ministre de l’intérieur Nicolas Sarkozy les a qualifiés de “racailles”. Les faiseurs d’opinion accusent les Cassandre d’être responsables des problèmes qu’elles décrivent.
Et derrière ça se trouve ce que les Français vigilants appellent l’esprit munichois (en référence à la politique conciliante avec les nazis mise en œuvre en 1938 à Munich par Daladier et Chamberlain). Un ami qui réside dans un des faubourgs les plus calmes me rapportait sa conversation avec un policier. Les ordres sont “surtout pas de bavures !” Pas de vagues, pas d’erreurs. Ils redoutent que la mort d’un “jeune” de banlieue remette le feu aux poudres, comme l’électrocution des deux adolescents l’an dernier. Les autorités françaises vivent dans la crainte d’une nouvelle flambée aussi dure que la précédente. Aussi n’interviennent-ils pas tant que les “jeunes en colère” ne vont pas trop loin.
Ces jeunes, en dépit de leur peu d’instruction (ils ne parlent pas l’arabe, et, bien souvent, à peine le français) ont instinctivement assimilé les leçons de l’Intifada palestinienne : attaquer l’ennemi juste assez pour lui nuire, mais pas au point de provoquer de véritables représailles ; pousser toujours au-delà de ce que les autorités tolèrent (ordinairement, l’incendie de voitures, maintenant, embuscades de policiers). En attendant le martyr espéré, que la France les gratifie d’un enfant innocent massacré par des forces de répression fascistes, un petit Mohammed Al-Durah français, qui leur servirait d’alibi à toutes les violences, y compris l’attentat suicide.
Au final, les Français redoutent qu’il leur arrive ce qu’ils ont tant contribuer à faire aux Israéliens.
Ironie de l’histoire, les Français (et leurs amis européens) ont mis tout le monde en danger en reprochant avec véhémence à Israël de tenter de réprimer l’Intifada jihadiste de 2000, dénonçant, du haut de leur piédestal moral, des “représailles disproportionnées”, non seulement illégitimes à leurs yeux, mais même rappelant les atrocités nazies. Quand les attentats suicides se sont multipliés, les médias français et européens, les dirigeants et les manifestants les ont tous excusés, ou glorifiés, comme pleinement justifiés par la perversité (supposée) des Israéliens. Mais ces derniers, dont les forces armées ont une énorme capacité de retenue, ont placé la barre si haut qu’il serait bien difficile, et dangereux, aux Français de les imiter. Et maintenant, les populations musulmanes de la France (les Français ne savent même pas combien de musulmans vivent parmi eux, ni même qu’ils ont une population “musulmane”) ont intégré l’idée que tuer un de leurs enfants autorisait à faire exploser les civils français.
C’est ainsi. Si Israël est un poste avancé de l’occident à l’âge du jihad mondial, par la violence et par la démographie, la France, elle, fait tout son possible pour faire pencher la balance du côté du jihad. Abusés par des médias de mauvaise foi, pleins de bonne conscience, les Français diabolisent la société civile qui tente de résister au jihad, discréditant tout ce qu’ils font pour se défendre, et idéalisant une société sous l’emprise d’un culte de mort nihiliste, justifiant tous les actes visant à étendre leur guerre d’annihilation. Si Sartre était encore vivant, n’en aurait-il pas la nausée ? (Hélas, j’en doute.)
Aujourd’hui les Français sont pris à leur propre piège, mais ils ne s’en rendent pas encore compte.
Il faut à Dieu une bonne dose d’humour pour placer les Français dans une position où ils devront reconnaître, pour leur survie qu’”Israël est notre alliée, et nous avons beaucoup à apprendre des Israéliens, envers lesquels nous avons été particulièrement injustes.”
Une civilisation peut-elle se perdre par manque de sens de l’humour quant à ses propres défauts ? J’espère toujours que non, mais pour le moment, ce n’est pas gagné !
Note :
* James C. Scott sociologue américain spécialiste des modes d’expression des minorités opprimées
The Pope’s Remarks about Islam: The Joke Too Few Get
The Pope’s recent remarks have set off a particularly revealing firestorm of criticism. Distracted by the Al Durah trial, I haven’t paid close attention until now.
Dismaying is probably putting it mildly. At a distance, one gets the following impression. The Pope expressed disapproval of Jihadi “thinking” in Islam; Muslims the world over expressed vigorous if not violent objection to the Pope’s remarks; and responsible Westerners waxed indignant at the pope’s unnecessary provocation. Under the double pressure of a politically-correct public sphere and a violent or threatening Muslim “street,” the pope apologized.
Of course, the second stage of this story — the Muslim response — is nothing less than a very bad joke. “Call me violent? I’ll show you! I’ll riot and rampage until you stop calling me violent!” This is the kind of silliness even a five-year-old can get.
But the “adults” are not laughing, at least not in public. So what happened?
On the West’s Problems with Islam
Youssef Ibrahim, an Egyptian-born American reporter for the NYT and the Wall Street Journal, wrote a remarkabe op-ed for the New York Sun on the nature of the Islamist threat to Muslims and “infidels” alike. (Hat tip Antidhimmi)
America and Islam: Collision Inevitable?
BY YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
June 19, 2006In its war on terror, America is unquestionably on a collision course with Islamic fundamentalism. The question is how far Islamic fundamentalism is from a collision with Islam itself, as interpreted today by the vast majority of ulemas, imams, theocratic schools, and many of its 1.1 billion followers.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the world has learned a great deal about politicized Islam, which has spawned Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, and jihadis. And it has become clear that Islam needs a serious self-examination.
The rejection of others – which is a basic foundation of Islam that is built into Islamic texts and practices – makes it impossible to divorce the religion from the violent impulses it inspires.
Would that this were clear to many. Speak with a religion major at a major American university, and you’ll probably hear that Islam is fundamentally different from Islamism and Jihadism, that the terrorists had hijacked the religion… you get the idea. My question to Mr. Ibrahim and to everyone: To just how many people has this “become clear”? How often has anyone heard anyone say that the basic foundation of Islam is the rejection of “others”?
Here are some important reasons why Muslims need to re-evaluate where religious practice ends and tyranny practiced in the name of Islam begins.
1.While Islam may appear a tolerant religion in many verses of the Koran, that tolerance is highly conditional on the submission of others to Muslims’ collective will. The holy book is full of references to those who are not Muslims as “infidels.” The Koran speaks in incredible detail of the need to do battle with infidels, to isolate them from the masses of believers, and to persist in efforts to convert them. Thus, as the Koran repeatedly states, the good practice of Islam cannot be limited to the worship of God or service to society. It must encompass spreading the faith, even at the edge of the sword.
2.Virtually all Muslims, including self-described moderates and liberals, believe what the Koran and the Hadith affirm: that Islam was God’s final monotheist revelation. As such it supersedes, indeed cancels out, all previous revelations. It follows, then, that those who belong to any other faith are in need of conversion. In its much venerated and often quoted Sura 9:29, the Koran specifically defines those who are not Muslims and live under Muslim rule as “Dhimmis,” people who under Islamic law “must surrender to the pacts contracted between non-Muslims and their Muslim conquerors.” That concept should absolutely be revisited and revised by Muslim scholars if we are to believe they want peace. The burden of proof of tolerance falls heavily on the nation of Islam.
This strikes me as a critical point. The NYT recently ran an adulatory article about “moderate Muslims” in America. No wonder Ibrahim had to go to the Sun to publish this piece despite decades of work for the Times. It concluded with these remarks by Imam Zaid Shakir, one of the two featured “moderates.”
He said he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law, “not by violent means, but by persuasion.”
“Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country,” he said. “I think it would help people, and if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be a Muslim. Because Islam helped me as a person, and it’s helped a lot of people in my community.”
Now I am not questioning Mr. Shakir’s sincerity in saying that his conversion to Islam has done him good, that it helped him; nor that it can, has and will help others. But the idea that therefore the US should become a Muslim country, that one size fits all, strikes me as the most outrageous megalomania, particularly given the abysmal record of Muslim societies. This is a man who once cheered the Taliban. He claims to have changed, to have given up his violent ways. But apparently, the terrifying examples of “Muslim countries” like the Taliban and Iran (to take a Sunni and Shii example), have not even dented his commitment to the theocratic principles of Islam. This is “moderation” only in comparison with the violence of the Taliban, not anything that we would understand as moderate and tolerant. My guess is that Shakir has more in common with Tariq Ramadan than with Youssef Ibrahim.
As for the journalist who wrote this up, either she is abysmally ignorant of what this remark means — that any Muslim who is honest with you about his or her desires, is engaged in the treasonous endeavor of wanting to overthrow the constitution of the United States — or she (and her readers) are so relieved to find someone that sounds moderate, and so incredulous that such an endeavor would ever succeed, that she is willing to throw it in as a toss-off line at the end of her paean of praise.
3.The aggressive demarcation of Muslims and infidels runs through all Islamic religious texts and speeches communicated to the faithful in millions of mosques across the globe. It is accompanied by much lament over the loss of Spain and chunks of Europe once part of the Muslim empire. The whole notion that Islam is an umma, or nation, unto itself that cuts across borders and comes before nationalities, bears the seeds of menace. Indeed, Muslim immigrants in Western nations are encouraged by their preachers to prevail in their societies and “spread the faith.”
Islam as practiced today in virtually all Muslim countries does not fashion itself merely as a spiritual value, but as a conquering force with a need to dominate – not so far from the next step of Islamic fundamentalist theology, which motivates jihadis.
In millennial terminology, Ibrahim is pointing at the tendency of millennial apocalyptic scenarios (i.e., the means by which the corrupt and evil world is transformed into the millennial kingdom) to turn from transformative to cataclysmic. It’s only one step from Dawa (conversion through preaching) and Jihad (conversion by the sword), and that step most often comes when Dawa no longer works… then our moderate preachers cease to be Mr. Nice Guy. (There’s an amazingly apologetic book on the Wahhabis (Wahhabi Islam : From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad) by a “post-Orientalist” which emphasizes that the Wahabbis are not unrelentingly violent, they believe in trying Dawa first.)
This overwhelmingly hostile orientation, relayed to the faithful by texts and preachers, has led to Islamic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, which is barricaded in deep isolation but uses its huge wealth to export reactionary Wahhabi ideologies to the world, setting up madrassas, mosques, and theological seminaries across the globe.
In Europe, America, Canada, and Australia, it has been easy for Muslim fundamentalists to take over Muslim immigrant communities because Islam promotes confrontation with others. Mosques, religious schools, and the imposition of the veil are tools of domination, not assimilation.
These issues must be dealt with. Much of the task falls to Muslim scholars in Muslim nations, and the work is imperative. Darkness, fear, and xenophobia are the understudy of terror.
The West does not have to bend backward. Indeed, it is time to push back – at the edge of the sword, if need be.
How does a religion which, for over fourteen centuries, considered the uncovertable infidel as to be killed or dominated, which has profoundly dysfunctional relations with the autonomous religious “other,” come to terms with a world in which getting along with the “other” is part of the basic elements of civil society?
No wonder as globalization has become more intense, Muslim reaction has gotten more violent. Not to get millennial about this, but the world has until 2076, the year 1500 in the Muslim calendar, to get Islam to at least begin the momentous shift from imperial to civic modes of interaction. As Ibrahim suggests, it’s primarily the work of Muslims, but those willing to do the work need help from us, and that means we push, we ask hard questions, we embarrass the apologists and strengthen the real moderates. Of course that means telling the difference between demopaths and moderates. No easy task, no more urgent one.
Mainstreaming Conspiracy Theories II: Arab Conspiracy Thinking before and after 2000
Conspiracy theory in Arab/Muslim world
It is something of a commonplace that the Arab and Muslim media are full of conspiracy-thinking. Indeed, anyone bold enough to defy Edward Saïd’s prohibition on seeing Arabs as different from Westerners, remarks among the most salient features of Arab culture a propensity to conspiracy theory: Everything is part of a plot; every motive has secret and malevolent motives. The frequency with which even quotidian political events are conceived as the playing out of conspiracies confirms what observation also notices: this is a culture where the political axiom “rule or be ruled” dominates.
Nor is this kind of thinking a recent phenomenon. After WW II, for example, the Nazi conspiracy theories about the Jews, in particular, their foundational conspiracy theory, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, found earnest welcome in the Arab world. It provided the perfect escape from facing the nature of their failure to wipe out any trace of an independent state made by dhimmi. This same need to explain their humiliating failure by blaming the conspiratorial malevolence of others accounts for why one of the major disagreements in the Arab world today is whether the US is a pawn of Israel or vice-versa.
Dan Pipes’ 1998 book, The Hidden Hand, describes the role of conspiracy theory in the Arab world. There he finds a mentality that pervades almost all forms of thought, that contributes fundamentally to both the insolubility of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the economic stagnation of the Arab world. But he also finds that conspiracy theory works primarily as a depressant: the forces are so great, the Arabs such victims, that nothing can be done. Pipes finds this quality among the most damaging:
Imagining conspiracies of malicious, omnipotent adversaries can induce a profound sense of hopelessness. After all, how can an enemy so shrewd, so powerful, and so vast be challenged? At the same time, how can one negotiate or compromise with such an implacable and evil force?
Since 2000, however, things have changed significantly in the Arab world on two major levels. First, the intensity, variety and sophistication of the conspiracy has risen exponentially. The elaborate film and TV series that depict the most horrendous, bloodthirsty Jewish conspiracies to destroy Arabs and Islam have brought public discussion of these themes to a new and vivid prominence. Similarly the variety of conspiratorial narratives, taken over from the Europeans (e.g., blood libels) and given new twists (e.g., Humantashen made with Christian or Muslim boys’ blood), appear in prominent and respected mainstream media. Any glance at the contents of many of the most mainstream of Arab media (from the PATV to Al Jazeera, to al Ahram) reveals an intensity of paranoid hatemongering conspiracism with few parallels in recorded history. Indeed, some future, impartial judge will probably find the early 21st century Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism was even more fevered (if, hopefully, less effective) than Nazi anti-Semitism.
Right after 9-11, 60 Minutes ran a piece on the conspiracy theory that the Mossad was responsible (can’t find this, pretty sure it was CBS). The narrator expressed astonishment not at the existence of such a rumor, but its pervasiveness, even in educated circles, even in non-Arab countries (he was attending a wedding in Pakistan). That TV program should have been a wake-up call to the problem of an entirely different mentality operating in the Arab and Muslim world, where conspiracy is not relegated to the commoners, but publicly embraced by the elites. Even in moderate, pro-Western Muslim circles one finds an almost naïve recourse to CT. In a recent statement by the apparently genuinely moderate Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) [they’re against Sharia law]), their spokesman, Tariq Fatah, expressed relief at the recent pre-emptive arrest of the terrorists in Canada, and, while attacking Muslim extremists, let this comment slip:
It is ironic that Muslim extremists are portraying themselves as anti-imperialist, when in fact Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are nothing more but a creation of the CIA.
Note how the conspiracy theory – with all its profound misunderstandings of how things “work” – allows Mr. Fatah to deny any Islamic dimension to the imperialism of Al-Qaeda.
But in addition to new intensity since 2000, we also find an even more alarming switch from passive to active. Indeed the emergence of global Jihad has accompanied, fed, and ridden on the wave of this intensified conspiracism. One might suggest – I would – that the turn of the millennium has shifted the gears of the Muslim world from passive to active, that the narrative of conspiracy that had previously had so soporific an effect now offered the very rhetoric of incitement to aggression.
This shift to the offensive, already in motion among certain, relatively marginal jihadi figures like Abdullah Azzam and Bin Laden and organizations like Hizbullah, Hamas and al Qaeda, first encountered success in the public arena with the outbreak of the Intifada in the Fall of 2000. The previously marginal found eager ears for conspiracist narratives that incited to action, not to fatalism, militant Islamism and global Jihad. From that point on a new and more aggressive form of Conspiracy theory took on world-wide proportions: from the outbreak of the Intifada, to the convening of the Durban conference, and 9-11. It continues to spread, from the Middle East to Europe, the USA, Far East Asia, etc.
Like most active cataclysmic conspiracy theory (there is a massive conspiracy out there and we can and must fight it), this one has heavy doses of apocalyptic rhetoric, symbolism and, accordingly, absolutist logic. Suicide terrorism first receives its terrifying justification in the framework of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil; and after 2000, receives large majorities of support in opinion polls. In other words, in the Arab world, conspiracy theory has, since 2000, both taken over even more of the public sphere – i.e., taken over the mainstream – and gone active… a highly ominous development.
Mainstreaming Conspiracy Theories I: Culture Wars, Moral Equivalence and Suicidal Paradigms
Conspiracy Theories from Margins to Center Stage: Dynamics and Implications
Paper delivered at the conference on Antisemitism, Multi-culturalism and Ethnic Identity at Hebrew University under the auspices of the Vidal Sassoon Center for the Study of Antisemitism, June 16, 2006.
Introductory Remarks: Two Anecdotes
Let me begin with two anecdotes from a relatively calm, non-radicalized American campus.
No. 1: I once suggested to a colleague in African-American Studies that we have a conference on conspiracy theory. He blanched somewhat, and said, “but how could we control the audience?”
No. 2: I was on a panel consisting of three rappers, and an African-American professor discussing apocalyptic themes in hip-hop music. The notion that the US government was injecting AIDS in African-American communities came up so often that a member of the audience asked, “how many on the panel believe these AIDS conspiracies?” The three rappers all said they did. The African-American professor said, “I don’t want to answer that, because if I say I do, I’ll lose credibility with my colleagues, and if I say I don’t, I’ll lose credibility with the brothers.”
Between them, these two anecdotes tell us two extremely important elements of conspiracy theories:
1) Conspiracism is volatile: even talk about conspiracies and they can run away with your audience. In James C. Scott’s terms, conspiracies are “hidden transcripts,” pushed out of what’s permissable to say publicly. Just to speak of them, is to court an eruption of hidden transcripts into the public sphere. And given that the Shoah came to us via a people in the grip of mass paranoia, believers in a giant Jewish conspiracy that acted as a warrant for genocide, this is no small matter.
2) Conspiracism is far more common than the public record registers. More than the three rappers, the professor’s response reveals both the depth of the belief and its community-wide validity. No one can question this one without being viewed as having abandoned the community, here, without becoming an “Oreo.” It suggests that within certain communities, a public transcript at complete variance with that of the larger culture exists.
Conspiracy Thinking: Definitions and Dynamics
A conspiracy theory seeks to explain either one extremely important event (singular conspiracy), or a whole pattern of events (global conspiracy) by positing a small group of conspirators who are manipulating the public’s perception in order to a) carry out a nefarious deed of great damage to the public, and b) have the public blame the wrong agents. Most singular conspiracy theories tend to work on the principle of cui bono (to whom the good? i.e., who benefits?), and concern past events which they explain. They also tend to be passive – who can fight such powerful hidden forces? They are cognitive and emotional booby prizes: “Now we know why we’re screwed and it’s not our fault.”
Most global conspiracy theories seek to explain larger cultural phenomena, in particular, modernity (earliest modern Conspiracy theories begin in the late 18th century with the Masons (Illumiinati) blamed for democracy in America and France). Because they warn about a conspiracy in progress, they often (almost always) involve a critical question of timing – how far advanced is the conspiracy? Global conspiracies, because they have not already happened, can, under the right circumstances, become active. The most powerful large scale conspiracy theories convey a sense that the final stages have been reached; that a great battle looms; that if action were not imminent, it will be too late.
All global conspiracy theories have apocalyptic elements in all three senses of the word: they are radical and stunning revelations about the opaque present; they are part of a larger cataclysmic final transformation, of the world, and they are about to happen, imminent. Virtually all active cataclysmic apocalyptic (we are the agents of the huge cataclysm that precedes/accompanies the great apocalyptic transformation) has global conspiracy theories as a central element of its discourse (Nazism, Communism, Global Jihad).
Psychological dynamics: Appeal?
Conspiracy theories explain catastrophes as the work of men who appear beneficent, but secretly conspire to bring about those catastrophes. They assume the worst of these men, so consumed by the desire to dominate others that they will stop at nothing – including the most dastardly conspiracies – to achieve their goal. Conspiracy theories simplify the moral universe: the bad things that happen to us are not our fault, they are the fault of evil others. Future-oriented Conspiracy theories seek to warn an innocent victim population of the plots that these unscrupulous “others” even now set in motion against them. In particular, global Conspiracy theory tends to scape-goat. As René Girard has pointed out – scapegoating emphasizes the innocence of the scape-goater and the guilt of the designated victim. “Conspiracism,” points our Chip Berlet, is a particular narrative form of scapegoating that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scape-goater as a hero for sounding the alarm.”
Conspiracy theories work on several psychological levels. Cognitively, they offer a gratifying world view that explains everything. All details cohere, unnoticed or unexplained facts fit into place, everything connects, gains shape and color. To the believer, now semiotically aroused with his new hermeneutic, the troubling world makes sense. Furthermore, Conspiracy theories tend to engage in systematic projection of bad faith onto the conspirators, or the cognitive egocentrism of bad faith. The articulators and believers in Conspiracy theories live in a universe where everyone is driven by libido dominandi, everyone wants to dominate and, as Eli Sagan so eloquently puts it describing the basic political axiom of the pre-modern world, it’s “rule or be ruled.” The only motivation possible among the conspiring “enemy” is a ruthless lust for power. And finally, Conspiracy theory is Gnostic: it is powerful hidden knowledge, available only the initiate, attractive, even true by very virtue of its being proscribed.
The emotional blandishments of Conspiracy theory are at least as attractive as the cognitive rewards. They offer above all freedom from any responsibility: failures, setbacks and sufferings, are not the victim’s fault; they are the work of the conspirators. The dualistic moral universe of “us” and “them” that Conspiracy theory provides shows up in stark and simple contrasts with no grey areas. Conspiracy theories are a quintessential expression of what, using James Scott’s term, we might call a hidden transcript of resentment.
Furthermore, Conspiracy theory at once eases the conscience – we are not at fault, we are innocent – and liberates it – no limits on what we must do in order to defend ourselves. The more dire the conspiracy, the more liberated the violence of the response: anything is permitted when struggling for one’s very existence against some agent who is plotting to destroy “us.” Conspiracy theories are narratives that justify aggressive action; the worse the conspiracy, the more aggressive the justifiable action. At their worst, they are “warrants for genocide.”
Conditions for conspiracy theory
I wish to posit the argument that Conspiracy theories are always present at a low level in any society. The real question is, when do they take over and drive a culture to act on paranoid fears. Or, to take up a problematic suggested to me by Anthony Kauders on Tuesday, how does it go from the public sphere of private conversations – coffee shop and tavern culture – to the published sphere, part of the public discourse. To take a graphic example, when and how did the paranoid chatter of the sans culottes become the policy of the Committee of Public Safety; when does paranoia dominate the public and political discourse.
Singular Conspiracy theories arise from specific events – Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, 9-11 – and unless they are connected to a larger plot, remain relatively low key. Collective or global Conspiracy theories tend to arise in civil societies, among what we might call “Nietzsche’s ‘blond beasts’ as losers”: those who, formerly dominant predators, having lost the authoritarian powers of aristocratic societies, imagine modernity as an unfinished conspiracy designed to replace their (now former) aristocratic dominion with a new and far more vicious form of universal slavery. These latter Conspiracy theories seem to be a natural companion of modern societies. When modern societies fall into conspiracy theory… when, for example, those in power invoke a clear and present danger to eliminate any criticism since criticism is part of the conspiracy, historically the consequences are grave. The French revolutionary terror, repeated on a colossal scale by the Russians and Germans and Chinese in the 20th century, represents the catastrophic results that can ensue from such madness taking hold.
Conspiracy theory seems to be a low-level constant, a marginal but enduring discourse. The key issue in terms of conditions under which Conspiracy theory takes over public discourse concerns less what produces such thought – it (Indeed, meditating on Scott’s work, I suspect that conspiracy thinking is a major dimension of most “hidden transcript” discourse in most cultures, especially in ones where an aristocratic minority has managed to monopolize power (i.e., successfully pull of a conspiracy of dominion). Given their destructiveness, successful modern societies have developed a healthy resistance to Conspiracy theories. They tend to break out at moments of crisis, when social forces that seem out of control bring ruin upon many (e.g., the great Depression), and they work best in populations filled with a sense of unavowable guilt which they eagerly project onto another party.
The more the conspiratorial narrative identifies marginal and vulnerable populations as the conspirators, the more they appeal to the desire to victimize the innocent and dishonestly absolve guilt. The dishonesty of this kind of scapegoating conspiracy theory of course leads to seriously self-destructive behavior, misidentifying the source of the suffering. As a result, although attacking the mistaken foe may offer immediate if temporary psychological relief, in the long run intensifies the grip of those who do impose the suffering. When European populations rose to the paranoid call of rumors about witches and Jews and lepers poisoning their wells and blighting their lives, they ended up putting themselves ever more firmly in the grip of an ecclesiastical Inquisition that blighted European life for centuries.
At the simplest level, by alleviating the need for self-criticism – indeed, declaring self-criticism a form of betrayal of the cause against the conspirators – conspiracy theory relegates the cultures that indulge in it to a cycle of failure and depression: when serious consideration of past errors cannot take place (i.e., history is dishonest), societies have flat learning curves. Moreover, rendering all relations with the “other” conflictual, makes it difficult to solve problems with positive-sum outcomes (win-win). Conspiracy theories are the crystallization of a whole world view of absolute scarcity: every relationship, every event is zero-sum; every motive hostile; every exchange an attack; everyone suspect.
Given its destructive capacities, Conspiracy theory discourse tends to get banished from public space; and when it does appear, it gets beaten back with silence, contempt and hostility. So one of the keys in determining when one gets an outbreak of conspiracism, comes from paying attention to what happens when a Conspiracy theory discourse goes public. If it gets well received by the public rather than rejected, the culture in which such a narrative “takes” is in for a rough ride, especially if that narrative is a global or future-oriented conspiracy theory.
Role of media
For conspiracy theory to go public it must have means of communicating itself. Many who think conspiratorially never go beyond their own selves, since when they share their concerns with family and neighbors they are rejected and find no friendly ear, or if so, only the ears of other losers. The existence of means of communication for people whom the “gatekeepers” normally keep out of public discourse vastly increases the ability of conspiracy theory to “take” among a larger audience of people who can be reached. Thus, print, telephone, and especially the internet have immensely increased the scope of conspiracy. Indeed, given the capacity of the internet to bring together people from all over the world to exchange conspiracy theories and anomalous “facts,” the number of identifiable conspiracies, and the heat their discussion generates has grown exponentially in the last 20 years. If anything, the WWW represents a Petrie dish for conspiracies. This is especially evident in the increase of the number of conspiracies circulating about the last few presidents. Bill Clinton had more than all the previous sevesan – Nixon and Kennedy included – and Bush surpassed Clinton’s record in his first term. I’ll come back to this point. First, let me make a side journey, via the Middle East.
Illegitimacy of States
Dennis Prager has an interesting meditation on the moral and historical dishonesty behind the attack on Israel’s legitimacy. It is part of a series “explaining the Jews.”
By Dennis Prager FrontPageMagazine.com May 30, 2006
Imagine someone saying that he seeks the destruction of Italy because he regards Italian national identity as racist. Further, imagine that this person constantly denies being anti-Italian, because he does not hate all Italians, only Italy and all those who believe Italy should exist.
Now substitute “Jewish” for “Italian” and “Israel” for “Italy” and you understand the absurdity of the argument that one can be anti-Zionist but not anti-Jewish.
Having spent time with the anti-Zionists, I can hear them say, the Italians all speak Italian, the Jews are not a people, but a religion. Of course, such linguistic unity (which is true of Israel, too, but never mind), doesn’t work for a place like India, or even, at its origins as a state, France.
Among the many lies that permeate the modern world, none is greater — or easier to refute — than the claim that Zionism is not an integral part of Judaism or the claim that anti-Zionism is unrelated to antisemitism.
In order to understand why, it is first necessary to explain Zionism and anti-Zionism.
A modern secular movement called Zionism was founded in the 19th century, but the belief that Jews belong in Zion (the biblical term for Jerusalem) is as old as the Jewish people. See Part One of this series, “Explaining Jews,” for a discussion of why Jews are a people and not only a religion.
Starting in 586 B.C., with the destruction of the first Jewish state, Jews were already Zionists in that they fervently prayed to return to Zion. While the movement known by the specific name “Zionism” is modern, the movement of Jews returning to Zion is more than 2,500 years old. That is why the claim that Zionism — the return of the Jewish people to Zion — is not part of Judaism is a theological and historical lie.
I wouldn’t use the word lie, just because I think it’s important to leave open the possibility that people are either mistaken or ill-informed. What is noteworthy is that for 2000 years, Jews held a passive transformative apocalyptic scenario: God would bring about the transformation that would lead the Jews back to Zion. Modernity, which in my reading, emerges from the unintended consequences of active (largely) transformative apocalyptic scenarios (we humans do the redemptive work… bring about a just society) inspired Jews, many of them, like Herzl, secular Jews, to take their destiny into their own hands.
Judaism has always consisted of three components: God, Torah and Israel, roughly translated as faith, practice and peoplehood. And this Jewish people was conceived of as living in the Jewish country called Israel. One can argue that the modern state of Israel was founded at the expense of Arabs living in the geographic area known as Palestine (there was never a country or a nation called Palestine); but that in no way negates the indisputable fact that Zionism is an integral part of Judaism. Nor does the fact that some Jews who have abandoned Judaism are opposed to Zionism, nor that a tiny sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews (Neturei Karta) believe that only the Messiah can found a Jewish state in Israel.
They cling to the passive apocalyptic scenario whereby only a God-appointed messiah can bring redemption. Part of their argument emphasizes the notion that Jew should not rule over other people, and by trying to do this by human endeavor — before the appointed moment — the modern Zionists had inevitably created a situation in which Jews have to rule over others. It’s worth noting this radical difference between Jewish and Muslim anti-Zionism: the former are radically anti-imperialist, the latter profoundly imperialist. Hence the deep irony of the supposedly anti-imperialist “left” aligning themselves with the Muslims.
When anti-Israel Muslim students demonstrate on campus chanting, “Yes to Judaism, No to Zionism,” they are inventing a new Judaism out of their hatred for Israel. It would be as if anti-Muslims marched around chanting, “Yes to Allah, No to the Quran.” Just as Allah, Muhammad and the Quran are inextricable components of Islam, so God, Torah and Israel are of Judaism.
But, one might argue, even if Zionism is as much a part of Judaism as any other part of the Hebrew Bible, the modern Jewish state of Israel has no right to exist because it displaced many indigenous Arabs, known later as Palestinians.
Before responding to this, it is crucial to understand that this argument — that Israel’s founding was illegitimate — is completely unrelated to anti-Zionism. An intellectually honest person who believes Israel’s founding is illegitimate would still have to acknowledge that Zionism is an inseparable part of Judaism.
But the argument that Israel is illegitimate because its founding led to 600,000 to 700,000 Arab refugees is as anti-Jewish as is anti-Zionism. Virtually every country in the world was founded by displacing some of the people who had lived there, and many of those countries did far worse to far more people than Israel did. Therefore, anyone who calls only for Israel’s destruction had better explain why, of all the states on earth whose founding was accompanied by the displacement of others, only the Jewish state is illegitimate.
Take Pakistan, for example. Unlike the Jewish state of Israel, which had existed twice before in history, there was never a country called Pakistan, nor was there ever any other independent Muslim country in the part of India that was carved out to create Pakistan. Moreover, if the Jewish state of Israel is illegitimate because it created 700,000 Arab refugees, why isn’t the Muslim state of Pakistan, which created more than eight million Hindu refugees, illegitimate?
I’m not sure why Prager doesn’t mention the horrendous massacres — by both Hindus and Muslims — that accompanied this catastrophe: Millions of innocent civilians killed, trainloads of dead and mutilated bodies exchanged. The ability of people to ignore this and to pick on Israel for far less illustrates well the workings of the Human Rights Complex.
The answer is obvious. When people isolate the one Jewish state in the world for sanctions, opprobrium and delegitimizing, they are doing so because it is the Jewish state. And that, quite simply, is why anti-Zionism is simply another form of Jew-hatred.
You can criticize Israel all you want. That does not make you an antisemite. But if you are an anti-Zionist or advocate the destruction of the Jewish state, then let’s be clear: You are an enemy of the Jews and of Judaism, and the word for such a person is anti-Semite.
I am personally wary of using anti-Semite this freely. I distinguish between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism; and much of the Western anti-Zionism today is, in my opinion, anti-Judaism. The fevered death cult of current global Jihad, with its “exterminate or be exterminated” apocalyptic mentality, is anti-Semitic. (Here we find the most dangerous of all apocalyptic scenarios — active, cataclysmic; i.e., we are the agents of God’s wrath and destruction that must precede the advent of the millennial kingdom.)
The Western anti-Jewish anti-Zionism feeds the Muslim anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, but I don’t think they’re the same phenomenon. It’s actually a deeply dangerous and mistaken reading of reality.
Essays in Judeophobia V – Modernity as a Conspiracy to Enslave Mankind: The Protocols Reveal “Jewish” Goals
[This is the continuation of the essay on Anti-semitism which will appear in its entirety (eventually), here.]
Modernity as Conspiracy to Enslave
Theories about a conspiracy of illuminati who secretly sought to take over and rule the world go back to the 18th century, and initially focus on the secret society of the Masons. To some extent they may well be right. To judge from Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791), written at the height of enthusiasm about the French Revolution, the Masons constituted a secret society dedicated to getting rid the authoritarian elites and their monarchical systems that ruled Europe at the time.
“He is a prince!” gushes one character about Tamino. “He is more than a prince, he’s a man (Mensch),” corrects the Mason. Just as Rip Van Winkle noticed when he awakened after the American Revolution and found that the caps (commoners) no longer showed deference to the hats (gentlemen), the Masons sought a world in which deference was gone, a world where the prime divider had ceded to world of equality in which all men “can walk upright.”
The key issue, of course, concerned the purpose of this overthrow. For the elites who felt threatened, the secret work of the Masons could only signify the work of men who, like themselves, sought to dominate others. Thus the purpose of a vision of world “liberation” on the part of the Masons could only mean the intention of world “domination” to the prime divider elites. Thus they heard such “noble-sounding” sentiments as merely the trap, the weapon whereby these people planned to disarm their opposition. Only an imbecile would possibly believe in such ideas as “Liberty, equality, fraternity.”
Thus the intelligent elites who were taking over were using these notions to gull the foolish and greedy masses. These duped mobs who overthrew their aristocracies for promises of freedom and prosperity had a nasty surprise awaiting them. After losing their only real, if iron-fisted, protector, they would be at the mercy of forces over which they had no control, especially those of the technologically enhanced market place. When these new manipulators had achieved their goal – constitutional democracies everywhere, they would then engineer a global crisis that would then permit them to enslave the entire world. At its simplest, these conspiracies represented a political argument made explicit by Plato and Thucydides: the painful order of prime divider society is better than chaos and enslavement of democracy.
Anti-democratic Media: We’ll Decide what you should know
Little Green Footballs links to an astounding article by Greg Mitchell, publisher of Editor and Publisher. It illustrates precisely the way in which MSM journalism has become openly activist in the “good” cause of “peace.” It also illustrates the condescending (indeed anti-democratic) attitude that the MSM takes towards its public: let us keep from them any information that might lead them to the “wrong” political conclusions. We’ve already seen this principle openly adopted in France:
“Politics in France is heading to the right and I don’t want rightwing politicians back in second, or even first place because we showed burning cars on television,”
said M. Dassier, owner of France1 TV last November during the Frantifada. As I noted then, this sudden awareness of how media coverage can inflame or douse the fire came curiously late for the Israelis who had the ugliest (and often most dishonest) claims about them regularly splashed in front of the European public.
Will Press Put Out Fire on Iran?
The media dropped its guard in the run-up to the attack on Iraq. Will they redeem themselves if pressure builds for an air strike or war against Iran? There are some indications that some lessons may have been learned.By Greg Mitchell
(April 13, 2006) — If you have watched any baseball at all, even the occasional World Series game, you are probably familiar with the concept of the bullpen ace getting a chance for “redemption.” That is, he can blow a game one night and come back the next in the ninth inning and save the day, or even the season. Announcers always say, “he got a chance to redeem himself.”
Newspapers may be in the role of bullpen stopper right now, with the current Iran “semi-crisis.” In baseball lingo, they should try to “put out the fire” there, after losing one for the home team in Iraq three years ago.
Most interesting imagery which may, just may, confuse the fireman with the pyromaniac and vice-versa. This is written in high BDS style: Bush the pyromaniac, Iran the innocent by-stander.
To those who would say that this inflates the power or even role of the press in America today, I would reply: You don’t expect the Democrats to keep us out of war, do you? Just as they would not stand up to the president on Iraq for fear of appearing “weak on terror,” they would likely be wary of appearing “weak on the Tehran Bomb.” Let’s face it: All the Democrats want to do right now is stagger through to November with an unpopular president in office, and hope that, maybe, they can re-take at least one house of Congress — without having to stick their necks out.
So the media, usually only a middle-reliever or in a mop-up role on this playing field, might have to pitch with the game on the line.
This is nothing short of a full “advocacy” position. We, the MSM, represent another “warrior for peace.” The extensive use of sports imagery — where the zero-sum nature of the game and the clear identity of the enemy (W) — is astoundingly simplistic. It’s harder to get a more open embrace of the PCP principles that we have been arguing for some time permeate our media. Obviously we, enlightened progressive journalists, are for peace. That such thinking, since 2000, has become openly counter-productive does not cast the slightest shadow over the untroubled brow of our journalist.
Surely the public would not go for a U.S. attack on Iran, given the Iraq disaster?
As I suggested in a comment to Joel Fishman noted earlier, this is precisely our dilemma. The case for an action — a joint action of all sane nations — against Iranian nuclear armament could hardly be more compelling, and yet, because we have allegedly screwed up in Iraq, such an action should be unthinkable. Again, Greg Mitchell does not even pause to contemplate the meaning of a millenarian fanatic who openly embraces using such weapons as something worthy of mention. (This is similar to the presentation of the Palestinians as people who are subject to an occupation where “if anyone in your family does anything, your house will be destroyed,” where “anything” is actually “suicide terrorism” (but we can’t mention that lest we demonize them, or call into question the dignity of their “freedom fighters”).
Think again. A new Los Angeles Times poll–taken before the nuclear news from Tehran this week–found that 48% said they would support military action if Iran continues to produce material that could be used to develop nuclear weapons; only 40% said no. One in four would back use of ground troops.
And if people knew more of what was going on — which, thanks to MSM, they don’t — then the numbers would be still higher.
Thankfully, there are signs that the press may be ready to douse a few flames. Recent media accounts have often cast a skeptical eye on the trumped-up Iran threat, and reporters are already asking probing questions at White House briefings — before the war this time, not months after an attack.
Today, for example, a trio of New York Times reporters (banishing the ghost of Judith Miller) declared, right at the start of a front-page piece, that “Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions, even as a senior Iranian official said Iran would defy international pressure and rapidly expand its ability to enrich uranium for fuel.”
Nuclear analysts, they noted, “called the claims exaggerated. They said nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.”
“They’re hyping it,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, told the Times. “There’s still a lot they have to do.” Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. al-Rodhan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington called the new Iranian claims “little more than vacuous political posturing” meant to promote Iranian nationalism and a sense of atomic inevitability.
Here is a perfect example of when the basic principle enunciated at The Second Draft — that what we need above all is “accurate and relevant” information, comes into play. How do we know that the “experts” are telling us what we need to know, and how much are they telling us what they want us to know. Anyone moved by the arguments of Zbigniew Brzezinski about fearing the anger of the Muslim world is likely to tell us what they think we should know. No doubt the anger of over a billion Muslims is something to worry about, and we don’t want to pick a fight over nothing. But as serious a concern as it might be, it must be placed alongside the fear of a nuclear-armed apocalyptic Muslim world, and the increased aggression we invite by backing down on fundamental principles like not allowing madmen to get nuclear arms.
I’m not a specialist in this, and so I can’t judge the scientific details, but the dismissive language the authors cited in this article use — “hyping,” “vacuous political posturing” — does not inspire confidence. I’m sure a brief look at the language of the appeasers of the 1930s would deliver a host of such estimates about the Germans’ rearming.
An analysis today by The Washington Post’s Peter Baker implied that the crisis was cooling, since military leaders, among others, supposedly feel the U.S. air strikes are not really in the offing and America might, after all, learn to stop worrying and “live with” the Iranian bomb.
Wait a minute. First it’s, “don’t worry they’re years away…” to “we can live with them getting it.” So is the “cool your jets” a way of sliding into this? And if so, can we live with an Iranian bomb?
But Baker also noted Condoleezza Rice’s statement yesterday calling on the United Nations to take “strong steps” against Iran and Karl Rove complaining during an appearance in Houston that it is hard to find a diplomatic resolution because Iranian leader Ahmadinejad “is not a rational human being.”
And I suppose that’s demonizing and posturing.
We also have to remember that Bush administration officials asserted, three to four years ago, that there was, of course, no firm inclination to invade Iraq.
Characterically, Baker’s own newspaper, on its hawkish editorial page, proceeded to hike the temperature by raising the specter of Iran wiping Israel off the map and claiming that while “some” in Washington say the Iranian bomb is 10 years away, “some independent experts say three.” So there’s an equal chance of either? It’s like saying “some” scientists say global warming is a fact but “some” disagree.
Bingo. Hence the importance of reliable, accurate, and relevant information… not spinning the news to bring about the results you want. Just as, presumably, Mr. Mitchell would not want us blindly believing the “expert” who tells us not to worry about global warming, should he not show more seriousness and discrimination in discussing whether we need to worry about Iranian nuclear weapons? Or am I missing something here?
All of this bullpen talk may be nothing but “bull.” But let’s hope this game does not get out of hand, and the ace in the bullpen, the U.S. press, can just do its job, day by day, winning a few, losing a few, without having to get the American team out of a bases loaded jam in the bottom of the ninth.
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.
Gasp!
David Paulin of The Big Carnaval discusses this article in great detail. While I agree with the vast majority of his telling criticisms, he has one final remark that I’m not sure I agree so fully with. Pointing out that the online editor of E&P, David Hirschman has an article on how the “Creeping democracy of Web influences Print Coverage, takes a parting shot at one of Hirschman’s comments.
What caught my eye, however, was this zinger: “So what can newspaper editors and publishers do to reclaim their power as arbiters of public taste? So far that’s unclear.” David, I see why Greg hired you.
Presumably, that last bit of sarcasm indicates that Paulin disapproves heartily. I disagree. It is precisely the job of MSM to be arbitors of taste.
We certainly do need people to filter out the demopathic propaganda, the deliberate lies, the mad paranoid fantasies that any culture readily produces. The point is not that that shouldn’t be the MSM’s job, but that they should do it well, and that right now they are not, most decidedly not.
Right now they — and Gregg Mitchell in particular — are acting like the courtiers in the Emperor’s New Clothes, where instead of being tagged a fool, the courtier who can’t “see” and praise the emperor’s new clothes — the PCP — is tagged a warmonger and a racist. (Ironically, because they’re in the opposition, they often enough think of themselves as dissidents.)
As for the web/blogosphere as a site of reliable news, that’s a hard sell. Cyberspace abounds with the most virulent madness, and anyone venturing into the blogosphere is just as likely, if not more, to fall into the dream palaces of self-brainwashing, as to land on their feet. If 30,000 people downloaded Pallywood in its first three months, millions download the snuff movies put out of Jihadi executions.
I have great faith that the blogosphere will produce the most important, insightful and creative responses to our current crises (they sure don’t seem to be coming out of academia)… but that will only happen when the MSM begins to realize that their loyalty is not to a political agenda, but to trusting the public to respond to the challenges of our situation by informing them. Ultimately it will be the MSM who will help to introduce the best of the blogosphere, and the symbiotic — if necessarily conflictual — relationship between the blogosphere and the MSM will form a key element of a stable 21st century global civic culture.
I look forward to the day when the MSM does reclaim their rightful positions as responsible arbitors of public taste. But that will come from modesty and discipline, not whining about wacky free-lancers in their PJs.
As Blake put it so succintly: “Opposition is true friendship.”
Demopaths show their Fangs: Are they Jumping the Gun?
Steven Emerson reports on a demonstration of the Islamic Thinkers Society in front of the Israeli consulate in NYC. The website is classic “civil society”:
Our struggle is always intellectual & political non-violent means.
The slogans chanted tear aside any mask of civility.
Zionists, Zionists You will pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
Israeli Zionists You shall pay! The Wrath of Allah is on its way!
The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real Holocaust is on its way!We are not your average Muslims, We are the Muslims of Was al Sunnah
We will not accept the United Nations, they are the criminals themselves
They get paid by the Israeli and the US government to do their job.
We don’t recognize United Nations as a body
We only recognize AllahIsrael won’t last long… Indeed, Allah will repeat the Holocaust right on the soil of Israel
Takbeer!
Response: Allahu Akbar!* * *
No wonder they call you sons of apes and pigs because that’s what you are.We know many government services are watching us
Such as the FBI…CIA…Mossad, Homeland Security…
We know we are getting on their nerves
And so are you….
So we say the hell with you!
May the FBI burn in Hell
CIA burn in Hell
Mossad burn in Hell
Homeland Security burn in hell!!Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution
Islam will dominate the world
Islam is the only solution [editor's note -- purely by non-violent means of course!]
Takbeer!
La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur Rasool AllahAnother mushroom cloud, right in the midst of Israel!
Takbeer!! Allahu Akbar!
Dan Pipes wonders if this might not be salutary in waking people up to the real agenda behind their previously civil facade. It seems to be a race between the cognitive egocentrism of the liberals who refuse to believe any American Muslims could really be this base, and the triumphalism of Islamists who, encouraged by the slowness of Americans to realize what they’re up to, start to speak more freely.
The real problem for the West is: how do we wake up to the danger without becoming fascists? And the time constraint is, the longer we take to wake up, the more likely we will fall into fascism when we do. Right now, the politically correct view that insists on seeing the best, no matter how unrealistic, actually makes the situation much worse.
Iran, the Bomb, and the Second Coming
Fascinating article about the nuclear plans of Iran:
Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed “the nuclear club”, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into “grand occultation” in 941.
According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or “nails”, whose presence, hammered into mankind’s existence, prevents the universe from “falling off”. Although the “nails” are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmad-inejad’s more passionate admirers insist that he is a “nail”, a claim he has not discouraged. For example, he has claimed that last September, as he addressed the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York, the “Hidden Imam drenched the place in a sweet light”.
Last year, it was after another khalvat that Ahmadinejad announced his intention to stand for president. Now, he boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a “clash of civilisations” in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the “infidel” West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.
In Ahmadinejad’s analysis, the rising Islamic “superpower” has decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim “ghazis” (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has four-fifths of the world’s oil reserves, and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. More importantly, the US, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by most other nations.
According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad’s strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the “Dr Kissinger of Islam”, President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have “run away”. Iran’s current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by “divine coincidence”, corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.
Moments after Ahmadinejad announced “the atomic miracle”, the head of the Iranian nuclear project, Ghulamreza Aghazadeh, unveiled plans for manufacturing 54,000 centrifuges, to enrich enough uranium for hundreds of nuclear warheads. “We are going into mass production,” he boasted.
The Iranian plan is simple: playing the diplomatic game for another two years until Bush becomes a “lame-duck”, unable to take military action against the mullahs, while continuing to develop nuclear weapons …
At the same time, not to forget the task of hastening the Mahdi’s second coming, Ahamdinejad will pursue his provocations. On Monday, he was as candid as ever: “To those who are angry with us, we have one thing to say: be angry until you die of anger!” His adviser, Hassan Abassi, is rather more eloquent. “The Americans are impatient,” he says, “at the first sight of a setback, they run away. We, however, know how to be patient. We have been weaving carpets for thousands of years.”
Essays in Judeophobia I: Medieval, Modern, Postmodern (Introduction)
[I wrote this essay at the time of the Jenin siege (April 2002) as an effort to explain the "new anti-Semitism" coming from the Left and link it to earlier expressions of Western anti-Semitism which, as far as I could make out, derive from the (right-wing) authoritarian hatred of Jewish influence on culture. It was too long to publish at the time. Overall it constitutes a theoretical framework for understanding why cultures find Jews so problematic. I post it here for readers who might share in my astonishment at the nature of Judeophobia in the 21st century.]
Antisemitism: Medieval, Modern, Postmodern
One Guide to the Perplexed at the Dawn of the Global Era
“Is it possible that the whole world is wrong and Israel is right?”
– Ahad Ha-‘Am, 1893 (about the blood libels)
– Kofi Anan, 2002 (about the Jenin “massacre”)
How impoverished a world, when the answer to that is no.
The Millennial Cusp of 2000 and Philo- and Anti-Judaism in the West
In 1996 I wrote an essay on Jewish-Christian relations entitled “The Social Bermuda Triangle: Jews, Modernity and Apocalypticism” in which I expressed concern over the possible effect that the passage of 2000 might have on the exceptional period of philo-Judaism that has marked Western society from the end of the Holocaust until the present. Indeed the last 60 years may well mark the most exceptional and sustained period of philo-Judaism in the history of Jewish-gentile relations, and the results – a flourishing and creative civil society precisely where those relations are best – seems to support the larger argument of this paper about the relationship between Judaism and civil society. On the other hand, as an historian familiar with the pattern of Christian and post-Christian history, in which periods of philo-Judaism end up flipping into their opposite and generating a sometimes furious episode of anti-Judaism, I wondered about a downswing in the aftermath of 2000.
I chose this date as the point of the downturn for two reasons. First, it was the date of choice for many of the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians whose support of Israel and whose love of Jews is intimately connected to their desire to convert them, and to see the final apocalyptic events play out through the fate of the Jews. Given the powerful historical role of apocalyptic hopes and disappointments in triggering the philo-/anti-Judaic dynamic, I was concerned that the (inevitable) passage of 2000 might provoke a classic case of (post-) apocalyptic scapegoating: Jesus did not return because of the refusal of the Jews to convert according to the Christian messianic scenario. Second, Muslims had become acutely aware of the Jewish-Christian messianic alliance at the approach of 2000, especially the desire to build the “Third Temple” on the site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque. Illustrating the first rule of apocalyptic rivalry – one person’s messiah is another’s Antichrist – the Muslims depicted Jews as agents of the Dajjal (Antichrist), who would himself be Jewish.
I therefore speculated that we might even see an alliance between some bitterly disappointed fundamentalist Christians and the apocalyptic enemy of 2000 – Islamism. At any rate, I argued, Jews should prepare themselves for a rough ride, and, while the philo-Judaic sun shone before 2000, they should strengthen their alliances among their current friends, liberal and conservative, secular and religious. In particular, I meant that we should clarify the nature of our relationships, so that the tacit expectations might not lead to bitter disappointments. When I spoke to prominent Jews about this issue, I received a condescending, sometimes aggressive rebuke. Don’t be silly or alarmist! Alan Dershowitz quoted me in his The Vanishing Jew (p. 97n), as a lone voice cautioning against his unrestrained optimism that the era of state-sponsored Antisemitism and open displays was over.
Sadly, my concerns have proven founded. Although I was wrong about the Christian Evangelicals who have remained remarkably loyal to Israel, I was right about a post-2000 alliance, this one between the radical “left” and the apocalyptic Muslims. In trying to understand how matters could have come to this pass, I have composed the following exploration of Judeophobia, medieval, modern, and, alas, post-modern.
Next: Jews, Civil Society, and Judeophobia.
An Ominous Misreading of the Global Problem: Post-Modern Anti-Semitism Part III
[For the earlier parts of this essay, see "Anti-Semitism: Post-Modern."]
An Ominous Misreading of the Global Problem
This leads to some of the most widespread and potentially disastrous interpretations of the current situation that progressive thought generates and have penetrated deep into a largely well-wishing and good-willed center. The basic position goes something along the following lines: we are the hegemonic oppressors of the world; globalization is merely a new form of imperial oppression; terrorism is the natural product of our oppression; if we wish to put an end to terrorism, we will adopt a progressive agenda for the rest of the world, insure economic well-being, for them as well as for ourselves. In brief, to dry up the swamp of terrorism, we need to bring these people prosperity. On one level, anyone who wishes to see a world at peace and in harmony with both humans and nature, will find it hard to disagree with at least the sentiments to which this analysis appeals. On another, such an analysis, in its haste to lay blame where it hopes most to change behavior, fails to understand two key elements of the current conflicts.
Above all, it grossly underestimates the difficulty of achieving the values and commitments of civil society, as well as ignoring the hegemonic behavior of non-Western political cultures. Instead of seeing the West as a recovering power-addict (and their own voice within it as evidence thereof), and the political culture of prime-divider societies as full-fledged power addicts (in which anyone who expressed a progressive level of criticism would rapidly be eliminated), they demonize their own culture and romanticize the “other.” In so doing, they belittle the Western accomplishment and, in their eagerness not to offend the pride of other cultures, they assume that these other cultures already share our values and commitments. Thus, all Arab spokesmen need to do is use our language – liberation, inalienable rights, tolerance, resistance to oppression, human dignity, peace – and we assume both that they mean the same thing as we do, and that they cherish these values they so ardently invoke.
But from the world of the dominating imperative, in which reciprocity does not exist, peace means that “we” rule you, “end of occupation” means the elimination of your autonomy, and human dignity means “our” honor and your submission. On a social level, this is true even if the most liberal voices of Arab and Palestinian and Muslim causes sincerely believe what they say, genuinely desire a progressive agenda. The problem lies in the fact that these liberals carry no weight in the larger political culture: they could not stop massacres and lynchings in the situation where their own people had the power to do so, they could not secure the victory of their values were their side to succeed. If we do not understand and clarify the ambiguities and paradoxes that underlie any exchange between such differing approaches, we will find out too late, as have so many earlier cultures, that a totalizing ideology while weak will appeal to tolerance, but will change its spots rapidly when strong. The behavior of the Arabs at Durban should ring every imaginable alarm bell here.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Project
PZ posted recently on “The Project.” I think it worthwhile to add that this text deserves careful study. The single best link is at Scott Burgess’ Daily Ablution. The text is now out in translation in French. Comments at Powerline. The connection with Eurabia deserves attention.
It’s difficult to assess things like this. On one level, given the devastating impact that the forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion has had on the Jews, it is extremely dangerous to suggest that members of a religion are bent on world conquest. On another, each case needs to be weighed on the evidence, and the evidence for Islam’s imperialist propensities are farily strong. (I will post later on the elements that make some forms of monotheism imperialist.)
If indeed there is a plan to carry out the Islamicization of Europe (and eventually the world), pretending it does not exist can only assist. And acknowledging the plan does not mean that we need demonize and ostracize every Muslim as part of the plot. Not only are many Muslims the target of Islamists, but there may be some who seek a form of Islam that can live in a multi-religious universe without seeking to dominate. It does mean, though, that we need to be informed and to ask hard questions.
So weigh the evidence, and do so carefully.