Posted on 10/15/2005 5:33:22 PM PDT by FairOpinion
Book Review of: Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, By David Horowitz, Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2004. 296 pp.
The nature of political doublespeak never changes and its agenda is always the same: Obliteration of historical memory in the service of power…. Only a restored memory can demolish totalitarian myths and make men free.
(David Horowitz, in Big Lies, Center for the Study of Popular Culture, 2005)
At first sight, a merger of the secular political left and the Islamist radical believers is an anomaly. But this book carefully dissects the secret of their partnership: their shared hatred of America. This explains why they have made common cause in their venomous opposition to the American-led war against Islamic terrorists.
The author stresses that this book is not about war critics as such, “but about the leaders of the organized anti-war movement and the practical support they are willing to give to America’s enemies and their agendas.” And what a gripping and deeply disturbing story this is.
Horowitz describes how the Left receives its inspiration from the Marxist ideology that has inspired millions in their search for a perfect world. One of its guiding principles is the belief that the existing world, especially the West, is rotten to the core and must be totally overthrown. As Marx put it: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”
This totalizing and revolutionary principle at one time made American Communists look to the Soviet Union as the land of promise. That promise collapsed, but the same motive continues to inspire the post-Communist radicals including the anti-war Left. Horowitz convincingly demonstrates that this ideology is still firmly ensconced on American campuses.
Betrayal by the Intellectuals
This explains why patriotism is one of the prime targets of the radical protesters. A number of prominent university professors led the way mapping out a radical stance against their own country. Professor Eric Foner of Columbia University quoted Paul Robeson, an “icon” of the Communist Left and a winner of the Stalin Peace Price, who had claimed: “The patriot is the person who is never satisfied with his county.”
Foner, like Horowitz, grew up in a family of Communists but he never left the fold. His history of the United States, The Story of American Freedom, has been described as “his attempt to rehabilitate American Communism.” The same can be said about the influential book by another “fellow traveler,” the historian Howard Zinn, A People’s History, which, according to Horowitz, “reflects a left-wing culture that despises America in its very roots.” It is this type of source material that has given generations of American students not merely a warped but a bitterly antagonistic view of their own country. Here is Horowitz take on this reality:
As a result of the Left’s colonization of the academic social sciences, this anti-American culture is now part of the educational curriculum of America’s emerging elites, and as much an element of the cultural mainstream as any other historical tradition. Indeed, it is a dominant element. In 2004, the Organization of American Historians devoted an evening at its annual convention to honor Zinn and his work.
The shocking events of 9/11and their aftermath was the “defining moment” that set off a massive movement of opposition to the policies of the Bush administration. Again, the tenured university professors led the way.
Right after the beginning of the war in Iraq, a group of professors at Columbia University held a “teach-in” where they denounced the American-led military action. Professor of anthropology Nicholas De Genova called for “a million Mogadishus,” a reference to the 1993 humiliation of American soldiers in Somalia. He said that U.S. patriotism is a form of imperial warfare and white supremacy and that the “only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military.”
Behind such shocking and hate-filled comments at a time when their own country is at war lies the conviction that America is not just afflicted by faults and shortcomings, but that it is an unjust society to the core. (In other words, a form of “total depravity” that calls for total “redemption.”)
Therefore, all its wars are also unjust, no matter what the alleged purpose may be. This premise leads many in the protest movement (especially in Europe) to the outrageous conclusion that President Bush is no better than Saddam Hussein.
One of the most notorious spokesmen for this view is Noam Chomsky, a prestigious professor of linguistics at the MIT. He is best known for his numerous books, articles and speeches as a relentless critic of the United States. He did not spend any time empathizing with the victims of 9/11, but the day after he proclaimed that the attacks amounted to a turning point in the war against imperialism, since “for the first time, the guns have been directed the other way. “
Despite his vitriolic language Chomsky has a large following not only in the U.S. but all over the world, spreading his hatred of America to overflow crowds and in his voluminous writings where he brazenly re-writes history.
At the beginning of the war in the Middle East, Chomsky addressed large Islamic crowds in India and Pakistan where he called the United States “the greatest terrorist state” that was planning to commit genocide in neighbouring countries. This attempt to turn his Muslim audiences against his own country in that volatile part of the world must have been his personal effort to “turn the guns around. “ In normal times such explosive falsehoods would be called treason.
Birds of a Feather
Horowitz provides a deft overview of the transition American radicalism underwent in order to survive the post-Stalinist disillusionment. He details the various phases of that transition from the old to the neo-Communism, which he describes as the time of the “forerunners,” including the “Utopians,” and the “nihilist Left,” to arrive at the current “Anti-American Cult” stage. At this point the Left has found common cause with the radical Islamists who believe that America is the “Great Satan,” responsible for the survival of the equally-detested nation of Israel.
Islamist radicalism originally was hostile to Communism, but that changed in the 1950s. The writings of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) have been influential in the shaping of the extremist Islamic movement and such leaders as Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden, as well as the Islamic terrorist organizations Hizbollah, Hamas, and al Qaeda.
Qutb wrote that sharia amounts “to a universal declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men and from servitude to his own desires.” Horowitz points out that despite the libertine inclinations in some factions of the political Left, “Western radicals’ efforts to purify their tainted souls of ‘racism, sexism, and homophobia’ reflect parallel inclinations.”
Both movements, the secular Left and the Islamic radicals, are totalitarian in their ambition to control all of life and both are exacting in their demand for loyalty. Their radicalism makes them believe that the ends ultimately justify any means, including murder. As Horowitz writes: ”Like the salvationist agendas of jihad, the Left’s apocalyptic goal of ‘social justice’ is the equivalent of an earthly redemption.”
Marx said that people turn to religion (like opium users) to dull the pain and suffering caused by injustice and exploitation – under capitalism. He predicted that eliminating oppression and creating a society of justice will do away with the need for religion. The secularist half of this strange partnership is banking on Marx’s prediction; in the meantime they turn a blind eye to the religious zealotry of their newfound partners.
No Enemies on the Left
The final sections of this book detail how this combination of secular and religious fanaticism is played out in sabotaging the American government’s determination to respond forcefully to 9/11. This campaign is conducted by treachery and by cleverly exploiting the very freedoms in America that its enemies are determined to destroy.
The FBI and the CIA were hindered in their fight against crime and terrorism by the so-called “wall” that separated the two agencies. The Patriot Act intended to overcome that deficiency, and it has been an essential tool in exposing and convicting a number of key members of terrorist and terrorist-related organizations.
Horowitz names organizations and individuals who have consistently fought against the efforts of the Justice Department to bring to justice people who support and actively work for Islamic terrorist organizations. No matter how clear their guilt, the National Lawyers Guild, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the American Muslim Council, and others in that fold are ready to defend them. They invariably do so by claiming victim status for the accused and denouncing the government as a destroyer of human rights.
Lynne Stewart is a prominent member of the Left establishment. A lawyer activist, she has made a name for herself as a staunch defender of the “victims” of the American government, which she denounced as a “poisonous government that spreads its venom to the body politic in all corners of the globe.” In the same breath she said that Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedung, Lenin, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are modern heroes.
She acted as counsel for the blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman who was convicted as the mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Stewart was found guilty of providing material support for the sheik’s terrorist activities. No matter, she continues to receive a hero’s welcome on university campuses and other events sponsored by the despisers of America.
When asked whether she would defend the right of citizens to protest against a revolutionary government that had “liberated” its people from the oppression of capitalism, she said: “I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.”
The shame of it is that a person proclaiming such nonsense is a revered member of the American Left. This is historical revisionism at its most evil. The good news is that people with the determination to tell the truth are still with us.
David Horowitz’s Unholy Alliance is a remarkable and insightful book. It helps us to see through the veil of falsehood and secrecy that protects those who want to do us harm. It is an indispensable source of information to counter the twisted imaginations of the secular and the Islamist participants in this conspiracy.
It's an excellent assessment and analysis.
Confusing, are they right-wing Islamofascists or left-wing Islamocommos?
It will be funny when the leftists are kneeling at the edge of their mass grave, staring down at the decomposing bodies of friends and family, rifles pressed against the backs of their heads and their hands tied behind their backs...
Before the muslim officer behind them cries out, "fire," will they finally understand their foolishness, or will they continue to blame America at that last second?
Horowitz has it exactly right. I have said here many times that the final Crusade will come when the left in all its socio-political forms is joined by the Islamists. And guess what, folks?
He is right that there is much irony in a coalition made up of the leftists and the Muslims because they seem to be on opposite ends. But, rather than being on opposite ends of a straight line, they come together at a point on the circumference of a circle.
Basically you have the leftist western intelligentsia slurping their lattes while cheering on their "wet works" zombie radical Islamic operatives because their chicken guano ballast requires fewer callouses on their hands. I'd like to arrange a mother of all ideological contradictions meeting with them and the Spanish Civil War Anarchist Durruti.
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*they continue to blame America at that last second*
Winston Churchill understood (todays whining leftists) like Hitler are driven by "currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them."
Some on the left hope we lose and that the USSR comes back. I also know that Vladimir Putin and Wen Jiabao, both avowed commies, give Iran and Syria weapons. (Sounds idiotic considering that both countries have islamic insurgencies)
with any luck, it won't be Muslim officers. it will be American patriots sending these scum to meet the worms. these leftists will never "understand their foolishness", any more than Muslim radicals will learn to live in peace. there can be no reasoning with these people, no negotiation. their goal - in both cases - is the destruction of the American way of life, and the only way to defeat them is to exterminate them like the vermin they are.
Face it, Chomsky and a lot of the trotsky-ites in the U.S. will just die with the vitriol in their throats til their last breath. All we need do is just ignore them; that will upset them more than anything.
Ignoring them is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Intellectuals have a fascination for "planned" societies. It comes from their conceit that in such a society, they would be in the "planning" class
Ping!
Ok. This Lynne Stewart broad is a f*****g retard.
Maby we should have a fundraiser to buy Lyanne Stewart a ticket to North Korea, and present it to here somewhere (on camera, of course)
Horowitz describes how the Left receives its inspiration from the Marxist ideology that has inspired millions in their search for a perfect world. One of its guiding principles is the belief that the existing world, especially the West, is rotten to the core and must be totally overthrown. As Marx put it: “Everything that exists deserves to perish.”
What is rotten about the world is the left. Their ideology supports anything and everything that is abhorrent to a normal person. When you look at a lot of the 20th century ideologies you'll realize that they may sound good but once their proponents are in power they can be some of the most brutal leaders the world has ever seen. Look at naziism (Hitler), communism (Stalin and the purges in Russia, China and the killing fields of Cambodia), and then islamic theocracy (Iran and the extermination of those who were part of the Shah's regime). You can see the same trends starting to happen in this country. If we are not careful the freedoms we enjoy will be lost to those whose only goal is their self-gratification.
I think they'll blame America to the last second. if they are ever to wake up, they should have woken up after 9/11, Beslan, Theo Van Gogh..........
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