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

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

[anniegetyourgun]

Good connect, ram....thanks!

[headsonpikes]

1968.

So the American "New Left" and the Arab "Al Qaeda" are twins separated at birth!

That makes a kind of black-hearted sense.

[ramdalesh]

Here Pok/Everybody take a look at McArthyism, Does History Repeat Itself?

Bill Clinton. You are Surreal!

[beckett]

Roger Kimball smashes Hardt and Negri's Empire to smithereens in an article in The New Criterion, which can be found HERE.

[SauronOfMordor]

I like his analysis

[wretchard]

Marxism and radical Islamism represents a revolt of the intellectual and cultural elite against what they perceive as a disgustingly vulgar capitalist culture. Historically, the leadership of both these movements springs, not from the poor, but from the well-to-do classes of a society.

You can think of radical Islam as Marxism with Che Guevarra's beret replaced with a turban and the beard grown a little longer.

The strange implication of this is that the front line against terrorism isn't on some distant hillside in Central Asia, but in the battle of ideas in the capitals of the world. Osama Bin Laden simply has the guts and military skill, but the ideas he carries in his head are those of the cultural elites who may find in large numbers throughout the media, the culture industry and the academe.

[Matchett-PI]

Excerpt #1: "Whereas the old international was made up of the economically oppressed, the new one would be a grab bag of the culturally alienated, "the dispossessed and the marginalized": students, feminists, environmentalists, gays, aboriginals...".

Notice that these are typical of the constituancy the DemocRATS are proud to represent .

Excerpt #2: " ...And so it is that in the latest leftist potboiler, "Empire," Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri depict the American-dominated global order as today's version of the bourgeoisie. Rising up against it is Derrida's "new international." Hardt and Negri identify Islamist terrorism as a spearhead of "the postmodern revolution" against "the new imperial order." Why? Because of "its refusal of modernity as a weapon of Euro-American hegemony." "Empire" is currently flavor of the month among American postmodernists. It is almost eerily appropriate that the book should be the joint production of an actual terrorist, currently in jail, and a professor of literature at Duke, the university that led postmodernism's conquest of American academia.

What the terrorists have in common with our armchair nihilists is a belief in the primacy of the radical will, unrestrained by traditional moral teachings such as the requirements of prudence, fairness, and reason. The terrorists seek to put this belief into action...".

"Nihilism": (1)a: "A viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless. b: A doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths.

A critical thinker will have the courage to admit the reason why professors like the one at Duke, have had a field day indoctrinating the students who come through their classrooms. The students were raised to be relativists like their parents. All of the "truths" a relativist holds to are subjective. Right and wrong are subject to the situation; "situation ethics".

"Relativism": (1)a: "A theory that knowledge is relative to to the limited nature of the mind and the conditions of knowing". b: "A view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them".

"The Rule of Law", upon which American government is based, is only one of the "Christian worldview" founding principles that is incompatible with the relativistic worldview.

Relativists are a threat to human liberties when they are able to obtain enough power and control.

[Neets]

Uh huh. N/C

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

This was a subject of the Sept. 29 thread posted by FReeper Hugh Akston. It is certainly worth the read. Great stuff, keep it coming.

I have always looked at Marxism as a religion...

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

This was a subject of the Sept. 29 thread posted by FReeper Hugh Akston. It is certainly worth the read. Great stuff, keep it coming.

I have always looked at Marxism as a religion...

[Diogenez]

It is this marxist-terrorist nexus speaking when bin Laden refers to the human beings killed at the World Trade Center as "soldiers of the existing order" and quotes Noam Chomsky on the number of Iraqui babies supposedly murdered by America.

Correct and excellent as the above analysis is, it misses the more direct though covert motivation and addiction of the marxist intelligensia. First, last and always their motive is power - power that they covet for themselves exclusively - power that they share with their clientele of the moment never except in theory. Theirs is an unqunchable, positive lust to dictate to everybody else how to live every aspect of their lives. To this end, in the century just ended alone, they have destroyed the lives of 73 million and show appetite for tens of millions more.

[KantianBurke]

bump

[Neets]

Hey toots...he's about two months behind you but what the heck??? You are my hero you know.

Did you see he touches in a round about way, if you know what you are looking for, that every 20 years resurgence that we spoke about regarding the uprising of the peacenicks?????

[XBob]

good analysis

[XBob]

very well put - "The strange implication of this is that the front line against terrorism isn't on some distant hillside in Central Asia, but in the battle of ideas in the capitals of the world. Osama Bin Laden simply has the guts and military skill, but the ideas he carries in his head are those of the cultural elites who may find in large numbers throughout the media, the culture industry and the academe. "

[dennisw]

A masterpiece!! And from the Weekly Standard yet!

[dennisw]

FYI

[dennisw]

A deconstructionist bump.

[timestax]

bump

[xm177e2]

Derrida, meanwhile, reacted to the collapse of the Soviet Union by calling for a "new international." Whereas the old international was made up of the economically oppressed, the new one would be a grab bag of the culturally alienated, "the dispossessed and the marginalized": students, feminists, environmentalists, gays, aboriginals, all uniting to combat American-led globalization. Islamic fundamentalists were obvious candidates for inclusion.

And so it is that in the latest leftist potboiler, "Empire," Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri depict the American-dominated global order as today's version of the bourgeoisie. Rising up against it is Derrida's "new international." Hardt and Negri identify Islamist terrorism as a spearhead of "the postmodern revolution" against "the new imperial order." Why? Because of "its refusal of modernity as a weapon of Euro-American hegemony."

I've been thinking about this, I was wondering how and why radical Islam became "politically correct."