Postmodern Jihad: What Osama bin Laden learned from the Left.

The Weekly Standard ^ | 11/26/2001 | Waller R. Newell

[Luis Gonzalez]

BUMP for later reading

[onyx]

Thanks for the ping, dw. You're right, this IS a masterpiece! Evil twins: Lefties and OBL's Islam.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

I was wondering how and why radical Islam became "politically correct."

Because leftest ideology flows from Islam and its prophet. It isn't a new philosophy. It is stoneage male dominance and he who carried the biggest club ruled the tribe. It was insane then, it is worse now because lefty women who have no clue are buying into the propaganda that Islam is truly peaceful. The other side of the story is the Identity and Nations people using the insanity that is Islam to bring recruits into their *different-people* hate groups.
In short, it is politically correct because it can be a useful tool for either side, and either way, it is a lie.

[Brian Allen]

..... the leader was found to be a Spaniard who had converted to Islam. His pre-Muslim background? Active in HB, the political wing of the Marxist Basque-separatist terrorist group ETA. That same day, I read about Hugo Chavez, the left wing dictator of Venezuela, praising bin Laden.

The doors between Marxism and Islam, in other words, open both ways .....

All of the world's terrorists are first and foremost, psychotic marxist gangsters -- and _____________________ ... fill in the blank [Irish "republican," for example] distant second.

Most, like the self-styled "i r a" have become so addicted to their criminally-murderous ways -- robbing banks, trafficking drugs, kneecapping, blowing the arms and legs off babies, little girls and boys and little old ladies -- stuff like that -- that they probably don't even remember about half of the time what they were supposed to be about in the first place! And don't care!

[Brian Allen]

Thank you, Dennis.

[The Right Stuff]

Marx and Lenin both believed that the communist revolution must be international in order to survive

It that because the machine invariably collapes without new influxes of capital, labor, etc. to exploit?

[Clinton's a rapist]

Good analysis.

[headsonpikes]

Socialism is the theory; cannibalism is the practice.

[The Right Stuff]

heh, heh. Well put!

[denydenydeny]

The Left has always valued "authenticity" and passion far more than it values human life, or even any specific political program.

I am reminded of that scene in Godfather 2 where the revolutionary jumps into the governor's car and detonates a bomb. Viewing this, Michael Corleone solemnly and knowingly intones that "people who are willing to die for their cause are impossible to defeat" or something similar. This, for the Left, has always been the conventional wisdom. Osama could not have avoided this message in recent lefty culture.

[stands2reason]

I checked out the post, but I don't get the point. Please 'splain connection for mentally-impaired.

[Brownie74]

Thanks for the ping. Bump!!

[A.J.Armitage]

Thanks for the bump.

[Justin Raimondo]

Wow. Thanks for drawing my attention to this. Although it seems to me that OBL would be none too pleased with Foucault and the academic nihilists: it's strictly a one-way love affair, in spite of the attempt to show otherwise. This is, however, the best analysis of the "Empire" book I've seen.

[Cacique]

Both Marxism and Islam are collectivist ideologies, as was Naziism and Fascism. The subjugation of the interests of the individual to the will of the collective. The advantage that Islam has over Marxism is that it has a concept of an after-life and a deity. Something that is totally lacking in atheistic Marxism and proved to be one of it's weaknesses as it could not satisfy the spiritual needs of it's adherents. A very dangerous combination.

BTW, I am still an atheist, though an ex-marxist.

[spycatcher]

Nice ping

[Victoria Delsoul]

MANY ELEMENTS in the ideology of al Qaeda--set forth most clearly in Osama bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of War Against America"--derive from this same mix. Indeed, in Arab intellectual circles today, bin Laden is already being likened to an earlier icon of Third World revolution who renounced a life of privilege to head for the mountains and fight the American oppressor, Che Guevara. According to Cairo journalist Issandr Elamsani, Arab leftist intellectuals still see the world very much in 1960s terms. "They are all ex-Sorbonne, old Marxists," he says, "who look at everything through a postcolonial prism."

Good post.

Bump.

[dennisw]

I'm glad you like it. I detest the left in academia. What was once a struggle for the working class (however mistaken) is now a struggle for all kinds of crazy indulgent things and a trashing of Western Civ. in general.

[ken21]

sartre said in the intro to fanon's book that the 3rd world had the right to attack the industrial world, so there you have it.

[dennisw]

Right after 9-11 I posted some photos of the dead Che on a slab. After he was hunted down in Bolivia. I'll see if I can find one.