First, you overrate the importance of the frankfurt school, which had some cultural influence among pinhead socialists certainly, and helped peddle various ideologies to the contemporary left through the 60s or so, but was just one type out of many that all shared a complete unwillingness to blame anything about hard left thought for the disasters of the 20th century, which were systematically somebody else's fault. That somebody morphs gradually into a loose association of all capitalism (or moralism, for that matter) with fascism, that becomes more and more conspiracy-nutty-paranoid as time goes on.
"there is no other plausible explanation."
Sure, there are about a dozen. I'll give you some reports from the front about what the elite left actually thinks and believes.
"After all, Muslim fundamentalists stand for everything repugnant to the left-at least on a superficial level:"
True, but they also fight the same oppressive capitalist fascists that the left dreams it is on the point of losing to (that's the rest of us, for those in Rio Linda), which will of course plunge us into the endless dark night of fascism.
Contemporary leftists think George Bush is Hitler, that the war on terror is the new politics of fear, that mankind is being manipulated by shadowy corporate and cynical political cabals into endless war in order to perpetuate the power of those cabals, raves about the military industrial complex, diligently researches the history of Germany and the rise of fascism and reads tea leaves looking for signs it is happening here (in the US, not Iran), expects near term total economic collapse and/or hyperinflation, about half think capitalism has never actually worked and must be rotten at the bottom, another third think freedom to print money and a spread of non profit enterprise can smash the corporate oligarchy, etc.
And I am talking about hundred millionaire dot com tycoons, movie stars, full professors adn brilliant researchers - not muttering bums down at the Greyhound terminal. This is what they talk about over dessert on Nantucket after a day out on their boat, or at scientific conferences when they are unwinding in the bar after the lectures etc.
You cannot possible overrate their simple paranoia, driven by political pessimism and a pomposity that can capture light by gravitational pull. The left experiences short term loss of power to the likes of Bush and Cheney as something on the order of the fall of Rome.
Oh and I left out the best part. None of this is controversial. All of it may be assumed as a matter of course, and to be agreed on by everyone in polite company. It is terribly important and deeply insightful, but everyone earnestly agrees and already knows it, yes, yes, it is just like that.
Jason:
I think we are on the same wavelength. If you accept the distinction which I draw between leftist elites and their useful idiots, you, me, and the rabbi are in accord. The bulk of the left are as you described, self deluded, arrogant, petulant, and in deep denial. They are the dupes of The Frankfurt School whose baleful influence is far more persuasive than you accept and, paradoxically, so much harder to recognize because it has become the very fabric of our society.
Whether one examines radical feminism, hatred of religion, hatred of America or any of the other excressences of the left which were explicitly contrived by The Frankfurt School as tools for the destruction of Western democracy, one is forced to the conclusion, "there is no other plausible explanation" apart from a cold-blooded willingness to risk the caliphate (just as Mao was willing to risk Japanese victory and perpetual occupation of his country) for a greater chance to rule.
