In Their Own Words: Comparing the Rhetoric of Jihadism and Nazism

In the twentieth century, genocidal, imperialist totalitarians wore swastika armbands, herded members of supposedly inferior races into concentration camps and shouted, “Heil Hitler!” In the twenty-first century, they wear black coveralls and hoods, decapitate civilian contractors, shoot children in the back, plow hijacked airplanes into buildings and shout, “Allahu Akbar!”

Jihadism is this century’s equivalent of Nazism in more than just barbarity. The Osama bin Ladens and Abu Musab al-Zarqawis are the violent face of a coherent, ruthless ideology that imitates the Nazi method of winning popular support. Jihadists — whether terrorists, imams or intellectuals — exploit collective frustration by converting it into a pervasive sense of victimization, then offer the solution: embrace an inherent superiority, seize entitled power and destroy all opponents.

Just as the Nazis described Germans as victimized by a decadent West — as represented by democracy, jazz, “degenerate art” and the Versailles treaty — so do jihadist intellectuals describe Muslims. …

Just as the Nazis believed that oppression prevented Germans from fulfilling a destiny mandated by their unparalleled superiority, so do jihadist intellectuals who view Muslim superiority as spiritual, not racial.

Al-Asi rejects Western values and asserts Muslim superiority more emphatically. “Obviously, all of this spells out an ‘agenda’ of Islamic political activity, not in the Western definition of politics, which is sullied and corrupt, but in the Islamic definition of politics, which is clean and healthy,” he says. He criticizes his co-religionists for being seduced by “a cunning materialism that decays the Muslim will and causes the Muslims to join the ‘modern and developed’ world!”

Just as the Nazis regarded Blitzkrieg as critical in the fight against an oppressive West, so do sympathetic intellectuals regard jihad, as Ramadan himself implies:

The groundwork for such beliefs must be well in place before the masses will follow such theory and rhetoric. In America, the complete dumbing down of America started to really take hold in the late ‘50s and gained real ground during the 60s through the 80s. With enormous help from academicians, thought to be the intelligentsia, their liberal stance, albeit…Socialism/Marxist ideology, disregarded most democratic history and used the Communist approach to government. Steady sociopolitical programs of social engineering for public schools and colleges heavily laced with Political Correctness has eroded the American way of common sense thinking for ones self and being responsible for self.

All government labor unions in each state and Washington has reached a dangerously close level to all “civilian labor” across the country – the latter having none of the perks a federal laborer has. The federal employee lobbies for more entitlements, more pay for fewer hours of labor with all costs paid by the government...the money must come from the American tax payer for these Government Unions. The “civilian” laborer/business owner must make it on his/her own. The former is a Socialist, the latter a Conservative.

So Jihadism could not gain a foot hold with out the afore mentioned conditions – you take a country and remove the basic religion and remove that country’s history through ‘liberal thought control’, liberal courts, liberal education and liberal leaders and you have the perfect mix for Jihadism. Europe will be Muslim rather than Christian within a few years because Christianity, Judaism and Catholicism are straying from their foundations – in order to keep members, those entrusted with God’s word have made being a Christian more lenient to suit the times, not the message. Islam on the other hand, has changed little since its inception. Plus the Muslims are reproducing at an alarming rate; Catholics and Jews are not. The ACLU files a lawsuit every time the name of our Lord or symbol of him/Christianity comes into view – that same organization of lawyers does not lift a finger to discourage Islam being taught in American Public schools and more and more Mosques being built throughout the country.

“[The] argument is that democracy, freedom and civilization are under attack and must be forcefully defended…”......An understatement to say the least – and that dear people is exactly why George Bush was re-elected – America successfully dodged the Socialist bullet once again making it harder for the Islamic hoard to take over the Western World. Socialism embodies a certain lawlessness to humanity…do your research. (sorry for the rant)

The leftists don't see the similarities between Nazism and jihadism because they themselves have become fascist. No longer does the left want to have the state own everything, they want fascist-style controls on private enterprise and protectionism (globalization which is internationalist is now bad according to the left).

The left is now more in debt to the existentialists (and among them the old Nazi Heidegger) and to Nietzsche than to Marx or Eugene Debs. 'Multiculturalism' and 'radical feminism' don't fight stereotypes with a collectivist universal humanism, they accept them and 'transvalue' them. (There's a lot of tripe on the left about different ways of knowing which stripped of its academic trappings comes down to 'blacks have rhythm' and 'women are less rational than men' except that instead of these being bad things, hey presto! a wave of Nietzsche's magic transvaluation of values wand, and these are good things!)

Their existentialism--blind commitment to 'the cause' as the source of meaning--makes them kin to the jihadists whose new understanding of 'martyrdom' owes as much to Sartre via Sayeed Qutb as it does to the Koran. (Absolute commitment (in the existentialist sense) to Allah now trumps the Koranic prohibition on suicide.)

Leftists nowdays share with the jihadis a Nietzschean admiration for barbarism. The jihadis are just braver in putting their admiration into practice. While the left are content to get misty-eyed about Native Americans living in harmony with nature, or the 'authenticity' of some non-Western culture, the jihadis actually live according to the mores of barbarism.

The old leftists have either died, died intellectually and bought into the new existentialist/romantic/Nietzschean version of the left or become neoconservatives---xcept Christopher Hitchins and maybe a handful of others who are still leftists in the old mold, but do 'get it' and are with us in opposing the jihad.

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