Remember the war against Franco,
That’s the kind where each of us belongs
He may have won all the battles
But we had all the good songs!
– Tom Lehrer
The radical is always the more glamorous. People wear Che Guevara T-shirts. They don’t wear Samuel Gompers, A. Philip Randolph, Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky, or Jean Jaures T-shirts, yet those largely forgotten social democratic and labor heroes achieved far more benefit for reform and workers without murdering a lot of people.
Rosa Luxemburg, the nastiest rich spoiled brat in Zamosc, is fondly remembered though her career was a disaster and her career helped create the conditions that eventually brought about Nazism. Who knows about Frances Perkins, who did far more to help workers and was the first woman ever to be in the cabinet of an American president?
Thus, two things are certain. The extremist has better public relations and the extremist fails. Either he’s defeated, perhaps killed (dying the secular equivalent of the martyr’s death), or gains power, becomes horribly repressive, and messes up society big-time. In modern times, Yasir Arafat has been the king (perhaps I should say sultan) of lost causes, a fact which made him lionized in Europe.
Ah, the romance of the lost cause. Once the province of Irish Republicans, Polish nationalists, and sons or daughters of the Confederacy, the lost cause has an intense emotional appeal. There’s something stirring about defeat. And if you lose, you can’t be one of those evil rulers who actually have to show what his policies can do. At Civil War reenactments there are always more people wanting to be Confederates than Union soldiers. But if the Confederacy had won the Civil War, the ensuing additional decades of slavery would have put a damper on contemporary enthusiasm.
The same applies to the slave labor camps of Joe Stalin, or at least it should. But if the radicals do gain power, Hollywood actors can always go to visit Venezuelan dictators and glory in the man of action with the big mouth and the iron fist as he stamps on his demonized but actually helpless enemies.
A Czech friend of mine who was a leading dissident (and paid the price for his genuine heroism) recalls how Western radicals came to his country during the Communist period. Some sucked up to the ruthless dictators as if they were people’s heroes; others lectured democratic reformers who were facing terrible repression about how Communism would really work if it were only managed somewhat differently.
All of these reflections come as a result of the open revival of the far left in the West, and especially in America. In recent years, the far left has prospered by pretending to be liberal. All of the dreams in the 1930s about infiltrating liberal organizations and taking over the Democratic Party have now come true.
But that doesn’t seem to be enough as the Occupy movement seeks to bring back the good old days of Stalinism. To hold such a position means that no one ever taught you at university anything about democratic political philosophy or the gaping holes in Marxism, not to mention the record of what Communism did when it was in power.
Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. So what does that make the third time?
I watched the video: you seem to feel a democracy with a free vote is only a democracy if the people you want to come out on top do so.
As for accuracy: when the Israeli embassy was under siege in Cairo, the first protest weeks before the border incident, you reported the security forces were doing nothing to protect the embassy. A few hours later 400 protesters were injured by those security forces in the largest display of casualties in Egypt since the original Tahrir protests. You mentioned nothing about it. Forget about accurately predicting, how about accurate reporting?
And it is telling how you can have an interview over 9 min. and never mention the Egyptian army, which is the real boogeyman, not the MB. The fact is that the army is more dangerous to Egyptians than the MB but the reverse is true in terms of Israel and so democracy is again only as useful as your own agenda.
Saying going slowly towards a goal doesn’t make one a moderate also could be more accurately stated as not exactly a paradigm for success either. It’s been a long time since 1928 when the MB was founded and to date they have accomplished very little to merit being portrayed as a massive threat. Certainly the MB’s intent is insane but their ability to carry out that intent another matter entirely. The tortoise and the hare? Well, if there is no time limit as in a sporting season, then they’re always a threat to take over first place – always. But that’s stretching the word “threat” an awfully long way.
You forget that since the MB’s foundation they had no real chance of being elected. The elections in Egypt were a fraud. And they had no chance to come to power through a revolution either since when they did use violence they were crushed by the regime. Now it’s the first time in their history that the MB has a real chance of gaining real power over Egypt and its institutions. So yes, if only 5-10% of Egyptians will vote for them and for the other Islamists, and 80-85% will vote for liberal democrats, as you seem to suggest, then indeed the MB will be no threat. If, on the other hand, they and the other Islamists will gain 40-50% of the vote they could very well introduce all kinds of changes to Egyptian institutions (most importantly education, media and religion related institutions – the opinions makers) that will lead to their further growth in the next elections, which could then tip the scale entirely.
The results of the last “elections”, under Mubarak, didn’t represent the real power of the MB since the regime faked them. Here’s what journalist Khaled Abu Toameh (a moderate liberal Muslim Arab, quite a rare species indeed) wrote about it a few days after the elections (in an article criticizing the US – who would’ve guessed?):
http://www.hudson-ny.org/1707/egyptians-blame-obama
Some quotes:
“Radical Islam will one day take control over most of the Arab and Islamic countries, whether through free elections, as was the case with Hamas, or through a revolution, as Khomeini did in Iran. But one must not be naïve: Muslim fundamentalists will rise to power also because of their growing popularity in the Arab and Islamic countries.
“The Arabs have a proverb, “If you have no shame then do whatever you want.” Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who has long been presiding over one of the Arab world’s most corrupt and repressive regimes, has once again shown that he has no shame by stealing the vote in Egypt’s parliamentary election.
“But one would be doing injustice to Mubarak by singling him out; the proverb applies to nearly all the corrupt dictators in the Arab and Islamic world.
“Yet even by Egyptian standards, the feeling in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world is that Mubarak this time exaggerated when he virtually wiped out the opposition. It would have been better, for example, had Mubarak allowed the rest of the world to see the real power of the Muslim Brotherhood in his country.
“The Egyptian dictator is actually deceiving the world by pretending that Muslim extremists do not exist in Egypt.”
And as for democracy – Hitler also gained quite a bit of power first through the democratic process. What have we learned from that? That all the players in the democratic “game” have to agree on the rules as a precondotion for participating. The people of Hamas shouldn’t have been allowed to participate, even under a different name, because Hamas covenance calls for an Islamic state, meaning sharia law, and sharia law contradicts democracy, unless you consider Iran a democracy. In Iran the people can – or at least could before Ahmedinejad – choose between different candidates approved by the clerics, but they could not vote out the clerical rule – installing a secular rule will contradict sharia. Sharia contradicts many other democratic principles, like freedom of religion, which includes the option of freedom from religion and the freedom to convert. Under sharia law a Muslim isn’t allowed to convert out, and people have to follow various religious dicatates in dress and habits even if they don’t believe in it or else be tried and punished. And there is no freedom of speech if criticizing the religion or the prophet or whatever else is considered blasphemy by the rulers is punishable by law. And one can point to other aspects that contradict the democratic principles. The MB as an Islamist party is not an authentic democratic player. It will use the democratic process to gain power if it can, but if they’ll gain power they will not relinquish it, certainly not to a seculer rule because it contradicts sharia, and the MB really believes that sharia was dictated by god.
I forgot to mention that in the video Mr. Rubin makes a distinction between sharia being the main source as opposed to the source of law in the new constitution in Egypt as if this is something to be feared.
Semantic quibling aside, it is to be feared because it already has long been enshrined in the Egyptian constitution as article 2. It is a question of whether it will be kept not added. Egypt is a Muslim country and a conservative one.
And I never suggest moderate civil/secularists would get 85% of the vote. In fact I have no idea how the vote will turn out. However it is smart to not use the fraudulent gains of the MB in parliament under Mubarak as a source for saying the MB will then win such and such a percentage.
As for Toameh, he’s an idiot I don’t pay any attention to one way or the other. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Abu Toameh is an idiot? Well, he’s only been covering the region for, like, 30 years, while living in it, has been a journalist in the PA until he got tired of being censored, has been a journalist in an Israeli newspaper, published in several international outlets, and have been living all his life with both Arabs and Israelis, speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, and knows both societies quite intimately. But hey, what can he possibly know about the Middle East?
And as for the article about sharia being a source of legistlation, it really depends how far the government takes it. Life in Egypt weren’t exactly a paradise in this regard as well. There were converts to Christianity who fled to Israel for fear for their lives. If the MB gains a lot power, do you expect things to get better or worse in this regard in the coming years?
I apologize: I confused the name with an Arab propagandist with a similar last name. I admit my memory isn’t the best.
In my opinion, if the MB gains a lot of power in Egypt it will be a disaster for Egypt. The MB lives in a dream world and creates enemies rather than looking to themselves for the answers to their problems. I confess I cannot remember an MB member ever having said one thing I consider wise or informed in a larger sense. They plot and connive and say one thing in English and another in Arabic and basically inhabit a mad world. The same world as Hamas and that world is the same where a bunch of Nazis got together in Wannsee and said, “Let’s kill 11 million Jews” and everyone said, “Great idea.”
There are an awful lot of Egyptian women going to the polls; hard to believe that is good news for the Islamists but we’ll see.
And finally, here is a quote: “…believe in your heart of hearts that if you lie or shade the truth it will do you and your cause no good.” I am not on the wrong side, I just believe in that quote.
It’s from Barry Rubin.
The important point is whether the party elected holds a free election at the end of its term, or transitions to a dictatorship with no future free elections. An example is Venezuela where in the 1960’s Betancourt, who had led the effort to re-institute democracy against the dictatorship of Perez Jimenez, stepped down at the end of his term and free elections were held, compared to Chavez, today, who is twisting or breaking every law to remain in power after his legal term expires.
The attacks on Prof. Rubin seem often to come down to two propositions. First, he is charged with skepticism about the results of democratic elections because he is more concerned with Israel’s interests than with democracy. I believe Shimon Peres said something along the lines of “Democracy is not just about elections. It’s also about the day after elections.” Prof. Rubin is not opposed to democratic elections. He is opposed to the anti-democratic consolidation of power which has occurred following the election of anti-democratic forces. (Turkey and Iran come to mind.) He is opposed to such developments because they are bad for the long-term prospects of moderates in the Middle East, of world-wide democracy, of the West, of the United States and of Israel too. The second charge often leveled at Prof. Rubin in these pages is that he overestimates the capabilities of the Moslem Brotherhood to gain and to consolidate power along the lines I suggest above. We shall soon see if his detractors are correct or if he is. If, in fact, they prove to have been deluded and thus irresponsible, I can only hope they have the intellectual rigor and integrity to admit it publicly.
Rubin’s initial predictions re Tunisia have proved to be too optimistic. For a long time he said Tunisia is a different case, is far more secular than Egypt, and has a good chance to succeed in a transformation to a moderate democracy, though he didn’t rule out an Islamist victory, but he didn’t predict one either.
BTW, so far I don’t remeber him explicitly predicting a solid majority for the MB in Egypt, but the MB being the strongest party with a plurality of the vote. At least that was his initial prediction. Things have changed since then (the MB decided to field more candidates and a presidential candidate, and some other factors and events).
Get em’ Mary!
Why do people keep choosing a path that leads to disaster?
I respectfully suggest reading ” The March Of Folly ” by Barbara Tuchman
Why do people follow the path of irrationality and escape from freedom? Populist revolts are, by definition, the voice of the People, and are usually irrational and fed by envy and anger. OWS is populist, the revolts that Prof. Rubin writes about are usually populist. For one example of folly that nails “the Jews” for making us think see http://clarespark.com/2009/08/19/noam-chomskys-misrepresentation-of-walter-lippmanns-chief-ideas-on-manufacturing-consent/. It is time to review the original conception of American exceptionalism.
Mary,
I cannot thank you enough for your comment. You are a case in point of everything Prof. Rubin has said about the left and the Middle East:
-you are weak on facts (or intentionally obscuring the truth) in your observation about the Israeli Embassy incident in Cairo- apparently you don’t know that it took Jerusalem and Tel Aviv hours to get Egypt’s leaders to rescue the embassy staff. Yes then 400 Egyptians were injured- after they committed an act of war on the sovereign land of another nation.
- then you provide your fabulous insight into the Muslim Brotherhood. I am sure you have read four or five reliably leftist new articles about these new “Democrats” but anyone who is a student of fascism and totalitarian regimes can see all the bad signs of terrible things to come from the Brothers- fanatics? check. genocidal? check. Anti-American? check. Linked to Osama bin Laden’s right hand man Ayman Zawahiri and Hamas? check. What can possibly go wrong? How about another Iran astride the most vital waterway in the world (the Suez Canal)?
- infantile your reasoning and understanding of what the MB is is the very wishful thinking that Dr. Rubin writes about: I am sure you are a feminist, how do you feel about the widespread forced clitorectimization of Egypt;s women? You certainly know a few gays, and people who had premarital sex, ever heard what the MB thinks of that? Their leading thinker, Daoud Qutb attended a 1950′s sock hop and thought he was witnessing Sodom and Gommorah. Did you know the Brotherhood was allied with Hitler and supplied by him with arms to overthrow England in WWII?
- you don’t seem to understand the greatest weapon is power. with power you can kill lots of people you don’t like. Of course the MB is smiling for the cameras but war follows totalitarian ideologies like summer follows spring.
Such troubling facts for you my child, I suggest you actually read what Dr. Rubin has written and give him credit for his scholarship and insight.
Daoud Qutb = Sayyid Qutb
I was referring to the protests at the Israeli embassy in mid-May not the one you are talking about and said so, though not the date. Here is a piece from an essay written at the time:
“On May 16 Mr. Rubin had an article at Pajamas Media called “Read It Now: The Possible/Probable Main Crisis for 2012″. In this article Mr. Rubin writes “And here’s an Egyptian demonstration outside Israel’s embassy. Today. Don’t see any police protecting the embassy, do you?” and he provides a link to a video. In this video, actually from May 15 during the Nakba Day rally the day before, you can see protesters who are clearly being tear gassed, presumbably by police. On the same day as Mr. Rubin’s article, Ahram’s online edition reported the ‘number of injured at 353 after police violently cracked down on the demonstration at Cairo’s Israeli embassy.’ This is extremely significant because that number of injuries is the largest number since the Egyptian uprising itself. On May 17 Ahram Online reported 150 of those protesters had been arrested. There has been no subsequent reporting from Mr. Rubin on this event in the week since. It should be noted that the Egyptian army also squelched an attempt by protesters to go to the Gaza border during the Nakba Day weekend in a motorcade.”
I didn’t say the MB wasn’t comprised of nuts with a dangerous agenda, I suggested that the army is worse for Egyptians right now because they have been in brutal power for a half century and more. That doesn’t make the MB nice guys.
As for facts you don’t even know who the famous Sayd Qutb is enough to get his name right or that he was in America in ’49 not the ’50s and so it is you who have apparently brushed through a few articles but without having absorbed them. I have written a long essay on Mr. Qutb.
Congratulations on appointing yourself an insightful student on totalitarian and fascist regimes. Where then is the sourcing of your insights – quotes, footnotes? Calling me a leftist when I’m not? Accusing me of being weak on facts right in front of you or intentionally lying? In fact I am not a child nor a feminist. Dumb insults and mischaracterizations don’t make an argument but are only muddled propaganda and wishful thinking.
Learn to read and think.
For the record, my point about the attack on the embassy is that the police did nothing for a long time while the embassy was under attack. Only when the demonstrators had actually taken over the building and the Israelis within were backed into a room with the demonstrators bashing down the door did the police finally act. My statement was accurate. Regarding mentioning the army, I have done so in many articles. Regarding democracy, I never said that democracy should involve the people “we” want winning. As I have written, the question is not democracy but the strategic interests of countries. You accept the winner but that doesn’t mean you think it is good or like it. As for viewpoints, when I am writing on Egypt I clearly identify when I am talking about Israeli interests, Western interests, and the interests of the Egyptian population itself. As for overstating the Brotherhood’s power, I wrote the first article in the world predicting the revolution and pointing to the Brotherhood’s role–October 7, 2010–and consistently discussed the Brotherhood’s primacy from January onward. At a time when people said it was weak and would only get 13 percent of the vote I pointed out properly that the figure would be at least 30. Regarding the ignorance of one of the people writing comments, she implies I predicted the Brotherhood’s power based on Mubarak-era elections. It is well known that the Brotherhood received 20 percent and its vote was undercounted. But I have used higher figures based on specific polls I have cited over the last few months. I think it is rather amusing if at this point anyone thinks I have been overstating the Brotherhood’s power. Let me note that in Tunisia I predicted that the Brotherhood would come in first with a minimum of 20 percent of the vote. They actually received 41 percent. A few years ago I predicted that Hamas would come in first in the Palestinian elections with just short of a majority. They actually received a majority.Pretty good track record I think.
I did NOT imply you predicted the Brotherhood’s power based on Mubarak-era elections! I’m surprised you misread me like that, if you read what I wrote at all, which I doubt. I thought that others might be underestimating the Brotherhood’s power based on Mubarak-era elections, so I reminded that the Mubarak-era elections were not real and shouldn’t be relied on. Apparently I should have been clearer about what I meant, but I thought it was obvious from the context. I really can’t figure out how could either of you misunderstand what I wrote this way.
In the comment I was replying to, by Mary Gerund, she wrote:
“It’s been a long time since 1928 when the MB was founded and to date they have accomplished very little to merit being portrayed as a massive threat.”
I replied:
“You forget that since the MB’s foundation they had no real chance of being elected. The elections in Egypt were a fraud.”
Later, after the first paragraph, I gave her a link to Khaled Abu Toameh’s article about the election fraud and how it misrepresented the real power of the Brotherhood. It’s very possible that I was wrong about how she got to her conclusion that they’re no real threat, but how on earth could any of you read it as if I was implying that’s how you got to your conclusions? I didn’t even mention you! And anyway it’s far more straight forward to assume people will underestimate their power based on the fake elections rather than overestimate it. It doesn’t make any sense.
And just to make sure there aren’t any additional misunderstandings, citing Abu Toameh on the fake elections DOES NOT in any way, shape or form suggest that HIS estimation of the Brotherhood’s power is based on the fraudulent elections…
I might be ignorant, but next time before publically denouncing someone’s ignorance I think it would be fair to read more carefully the actual comment in question and not rely on how another commenter interpreted it. As far as I can recall you don’t like it when people denounce you based on how others interpreted your article.
And as for you being the first to predict the revolution, I was probably the first person to write anywhere (in other forums under another nickname) that you were the first person to predict it
, or rather the only one I know of. When events swept from Tunisia to Egypt I connected them to this article. The most crucial sentence being:
“But it does mean that something awaited for decades has happened: the Muslim Brotherhood is ready to move from the era of propaganda and base-building to one of revolutionary action.”
I was following you for quite a while when you were still only on blogspot, and it’s exactly for things like the above that I’ve continued following you. It’s been more informative than anything on the news.
With all due respect, the video is of police action earlier and not later and at the last instant and there were no mitigating comments about anyone being backed into a room or WHEN the police took action. The comment was that they were NOT taking action. Besides this, the point is that there was no further comment in the following days about the police beating hell out of the protesters thus leaving one with the impression the police NEVER took action.
Similarly on May 11, 2011 at PJM Mr. Rubin writes “The Salafists are already attacking Christians in Egypt and the government isn’t defending the Copts at all”, referring to clashes between muslims and Christian Copts in the Cairo enclave of Imaba a few days before. Yet two days prior to Mr. Rubin’s article Cairo’s Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that the army did in fact intervene and it was reported that 190 people were arrested 4 days prior to Mr. Rubin’s article according to Cairo’s Al-Ahram Weekly. On top of this Al-Masry Al-Youm indicated 3 days previous to Mr. Rubin’s article that the 190 were to be tried by the military. In the articles by Mr. Rubin in the next 12 days none of them mentioned these events. Unless you believe every single person arrested was a Christian and the Muslims ignored this is problematic.
Mr. Rubin’s analyses are anything but objective and substantial. They are are always talking points from right wing Israeli vantage. Unfortunately they also suffer from factual inaccuracies because Rubin has a tendency to mend the truth when it is not to his liking, or to his simpleton “radical” versus “moderate” paradigm. By radical camp according to Rubin belong the countries as perceived by Rubin being in opposition to Israeli interests while the ‘moderates” are pro Israel. And since in his mind the US should adopt those Israeli interests without exception, he wants you to believe that “radical” are also anti American. Of course this would be a self fulfilling prophesy if American foreign policy tows the Israeli line “religiously”. For anyone looking at the matter objectively, it is quite obvious that US and Israeli interests do not completely overlap. Most importantly, for a global power such as US it is simply foolish to make an enemy out of a whole group of people on account of their religions. Of course, I am talking about muslims. It might look like a smart move by the israeli right to turn the Arab/Israeli political conflict to Muslim/Jewish religious conflict to stroke the anti muslim sentiments in the west after 9/11. But this will surely backfire as in any religious confrontation those who are nominally, or culturally religious will be marginalized and religious radicals will gain social acceptance. Indeed it was the Iraq religious war which Rubin advocated so heartily turned enhanced the Islamists. But unfortunately Rubin never learns. It should not be the US’s position to pick winners in Israel’s liking. That simply does not make sense and also infeasible. Arab societies are going through deep social changes and the best one can hope is that theses mass movements do not lead to civil wars.
israelis were very much AGAINST the iraq war.
it is the jew-haters who invented this lie and continue to push it.
I’ve stopped reading mstr’s comments a long time ago. Just scroll over and not feed him is my recommendation.
That’s a good strategy, especially when you can’t counter what has been said.
my sentiments exactly, Jonton.
Romanticism isn’t only a side effect of these various belief-systems, it’s the root and source. All of the horrible belief-systems of the past couple of centuries are emanations of the original Romantic movement of the Renaissance. The minor differences between fascists and socialists and Nazis and communists are all easily understood from this perspective: they’re all romantics first. Romanticism is the most pernicious of all evil religions, and has done more harm to the world than all the Molech-worshippers ever dreamed. And strangely enough it was always inevitable; making love and beauty into fetishes turned love into casual sex and beauty into heaps of garbage labeled art. Too it was always a toy of the wealthy, and so remains; those who have to struggle with the mundane daily experiences of getting a living can’t afford to be too romantic in outlook. Giving power to the pampered whimperers of the Romantic movement was always a bad idea, and they have demonstrated better than any nay-sayer could’ve dreamed.
Yet they still hold sway, because after all, one doesn’t need to be a good manager or competent captain to lead a revolution; an incompetent but eloquent raconteur is more than good enough. Witness our President.
Thomas Sowell’s brilliant A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles describes romanticism in a different way as the unconstrained vision. It is a vision of humanity unconstrained by traditions, history, culture, genetics, and common sense. Many conservatives seem to not understand that romantics of the unconstrained vision are moral relativists with zero respect for any of the above. They are not governed by what conservatives with a constrained vision would call reason.
Ditto. Not to mention Mr. Rubin’s article. Which I am now mentioning.
Excellent.
Soros in his own words.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/open-society-soro…
A short summary: Marxism is good for the people, but the people don’t know what’s good for them. But fortunately for us, Soros does! And acts to accelerate evenets. And he will save us, whether we like it or not.
“Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. So what does that make the third time?”
A cult.
Unearned self-esteem, ignorance, and the easy distractions of sport or video arenas.
How can SELF esteem be unearned?
OT; but kinda on topic;
Why is it no conservative blogs are even MENTIONING the UK embassy takeover in Iran?
I have my supicions, which explains why I’m in moderation Hell over in Ledeen’s piece.
Sanctions working means what, for the drums of war?
They are. It’s just not out of the ordinary for the nutcases in Iran. They commit acts of war, routinely, and are allowed to do it.
So why get exercised over it?
It is kinda weird: naturally BBC World News is headlining it but Fox and HuffPo are acting like it never happened and headlining the Gitmo detainees; they prefer details of Madonna’s broken marriage and some comedian nobody knows who died. MSNBC and CNN have it on the front page at least.
Who are these “Iranians” everyone is talking about?
First of all let me thank Mr. Rubin for the Tom Lear excerpt from “Folk Song Army.” He was a great satirist and his songs remain fresh and witty even outside of the context of the 1960′s.
Sedond, Mr. Rubin really nails it when he says “What made the Middle East different from every other place in the world is that there the Nazi collaborators won.” Sadly enough this is very true. The Western powers have a lot to answer for concerning the stunted state of democracy in the Mid-East. The World War I treaties that carved up the Ottoman Empire resulted in a batch of artificial “states” with no tradition of democracy or responsible self-government. This was not helped by the neo-colonialism of the inter-war era.
However one must ask if even the most diligent attempts to promote democracy would have had any effect even if they had started right on Armistice Day – 1918. There is not only no tradition of democracy int he Mid-East but, lets face it, no desire for it as well. Whatever the “Arab Spring” produces it won’t be the type of democracy that Western liberals like to envision.
The “democratic states” that will be produced out of this will initially be dominated by tribalism and faction. (Sort of like Weimar Germany int he 20′s and 30′s.) Radical Islam will present itself as the only force, indeed the logical choice, that can bridge feudal identities and create popular support for secular government. In this sense they will play the same function that National Socialism played in inter-war Germany. The result won’t be pretty but we will have to face it.
I almost always agree with Barry but this time I am not quite sure why he included “Polish nationalism” and Irish Republicanism among “lost causes”. The latter may perhaps be arguable (depending on what one defines as “Republicanism”) but both Poland and the Republic of Ireland are independent states (though neither quite the same as the 19th and early 20th century nationalist envisaged). Also, it was “realistic romantics”: Pilsudski and de Valera who turned these previously “lost causes” into “success stories”. Of course, since history never ends, just as a “lost cause” can become a success story so the latter can turn into a “lost cause”. However, little Estonia’s cause turned not to be “lost” after all and who can tell if the cause of Kurdish nationalism is “lost” or not.
However, the occupy movement is a different story altogether for it is entirely incoherent so any “success” for it would assuredly bring about a disaster not only for the majority of public but also for its participants. As Newt Gingrich pointed out: who would pay for the park?
I love your analyses and writing Dr. Rubin, however I wish at the end of your articles you would include the number to a suicide hotline.
I have to ask, did you ever see anything positive come out of the Arab world, besides the cuisine?
Bob, even the cuisine is not good.
Try having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a nice glass of Wisconsin milk in the Middle East; they are depraved.
It’s a matter of taste. Being an Israeli a substantial part of my food was always Middle Eastern, so I guess it’s natural for me to like it. I like also many other kinds of foods – Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Argentinian, and even peanut butter – but the Middle Eastern tastes are usually the closest to heaven. And I like Middle Eastern music even more. Not much of the pop stuff, but the more refined and virtuosic genres. Like this song (though the singer-songwriter wasn’t an Arab, but of Jewish and Berber origins, said to be a descendant of Al Kahina according to his family’s legend. But Middle Eastern culture is a mix of Arab culture and all the cultures living here from way before the Arab conquest, plus Spanish culture from the days of Andalusia. There’s a whole genre of music called Andalusian).
This “romanticism” you speak about is most pronounced in The Jewish Centers those country clubs where Jews meet to discuss politics and their love in the old days of the USSR, Che and now Obama in spite of their knowing full well that he is a long time anti- Semite up to no good for the Jews. The Muslim Brotherhood recently declared at El Azar that their aim is the killing of all the Jews. They will be elected to rule Egypt just as Hitler was in Germany. Terrible days for the world. Muslim extremists aim to make a world governed by Islam. They are starting first with the Middle east. Turkey and Iran are already governed by Islam. The rest of the Arab world is following fast.
Whenever someone uses that old cliche about how “history is written by the winners,” I try to raise the counter-example of the Spanish Civil War. In the English-speaking world, the 1930′s Spanish Left and their allies have been romanticized for decades, and for a long while it was often hard to find balanced histories of the Spanish Civil War in libraries. More recent historians such as Antony Beevor have helped present a more truthful view, but there are still a lot of misconceptions of that period. I believe that Beevor concluded that, while Franco’s Spain was no great bastion of liberty, a Leftist/Communist victory would have been a disaster. And it is now clear that the Leftists in Spain committed many atrocities, as did the Nationalists.
And with Multiculturalism and PC still running rampant,history, or I should say so-called history, is still often written by the ideologues of the Left.
“history, or I should say so-called history, is still often written by the ideologues of the Left.”
Definitely. And it’s a big part of the problem. When you have a twisted version of history you can’t quite understand it when reality behaves differently from what you expect based on your “version of history”. At some point people understand they’ve been lied to – with different people it happnes at different points, but it eventually happens. And then another problem is that when they go out and look for the truth they might find other versions that are biased toward some other side. How can one tell? That’s what happens when the “official intellectuals” betray their purpose and instead of at least trying to research their subject with an objective attitude, as objective as they can be, and at least try presenting a truthful account, they use their positions for ideological indoctrination and political influence.
But what about when they’ve been lying to themselves because it feels better? The true history and context of the Crusades versus the Islamic conquests ain’t exactly a secret and yet the entirety of the middle east monstrously distorts the transient conquests of a miserable band of Frankish pirates and shrinks Islam’s own permanent and far larger conquests. And so the West are “Crusaders” and Islam shrinking violets like the kids with the giant sad eyes in those stupid paintings who’ve always minded their own business.
What’s even more disturbin is that the West itself has adopted this version. You can understand why people will adopt a false narrative that makes them feel good, but why would people adopt a false narrative that makes them the eternal and only bad guy in every story throughout history? And if both Muslims and Westerners agree on the false narrative who will point out the hidden truths?
The rules in the West are that criticizing yourself is the best thing you can do, so you’d better do this a lot, and you can never overstate your own guilt, even if you bend the facts to do that – that’ll just prove you more noble, but criticizing anyone else, even if you rely on cold hard facts, is racism and phobia. The rules in the Muslim world are that criticizing yourself is almost unheard of and in certain contexts could be considered blasphemous, which is punishable by law or fatwa, but criticizing the infidel is natural since infidels are evil by definition. A certain measure of criticism is healthy since it can make you improve and grow. Too much criticism and too little praise, or no praise at all, may result in self-hatred, depression and even suicide. Too little criticism may arrest one’s development. Surprisingly, or not, that correlates quite well with the suicidal tendency of the West, and the arrested development of the Muslim world. So the Muslims not being criticized enough from either the inside or the outside isn’t doing them any favor. And when you do criticize them you get tantrums, like spoiled brats, that are then immediately comforted by their loving compassionate leftist mom who reassures them they are perfect and anyone saying otherwise is a bad bully with a personality disorder they should pay no attention to.
The idea that conquest and imperialism are bad are Western notions, and relatively recent ones. In the Muslim view conquest and imperialism are bad if carried out by infidels. If Muslims do that they just spread the light and law of god, so it’s actually one way they express their love for the rest of humanity. In my entire life I’ve only encountered one Muslim person (a Muslima, not so surprisingly) that expressed thoughts about how horrified these poor people must have felt facing the conquering Muslim armies. Such thoughts are not very common in Islam.
(1) The saying that history is written by the victors is false. The Bible was written by the Jews, the losers; Thucydides’ Peloponesian Wars was written by the losing side, Athens. Every country that has written history has writings about its defeats – England (William the Conqueror), the American War of Independence; France – e.g. the Franco-Prussian war, Germany – World War I and World War II; most of the countries in Europe about the Napoleonic Wars; etc.
(2) On the Spanish Civil War and the role of the Communists, see George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia.
Bonnie Prince Charlie got much treatment than his bane, the Duke of Cumberland. In that case it was less the serious historians than the poets and the playwrights. Indeed, the same can be said of many of the lost causes. It seems the losers have more entertainment value for future generations.
The enabling of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists in multiple countries in the Middle East will certainly be seen by future historians (unless they are all Muslim historians, a likely possibility) as the biggest strategic mistake since the 1500′s. What follows will be much worse than what followed the Islamic revolution in Iran. This is the setup for the coming horrific wars. Europe death marches into the dark night of Islam.
Romantic “che.” Hard worker for Fidel.Lots of murdered Cubans. Fulgencio Battista a great leader…slaughtered fellow Dominicans. PaPa Doc, a great Haitian leader…more dead. Pinochet in Chile…lots dissappeared. Villela in Argentina. Lost count of missing Argentinians. Evita Peron (I and II) more “population control.”
Romantic President of Brazil,Dilma Rouseff, check out her guerilla activities:
http://www.cristianolima.com/index.php?Secao=Noticias.Mostra&Noticia=9853
The military blotter has pages of her assaults, killings and related lawlessness. Romantic, an icon for women given to lawless behaviour.
Jesse James’s of Latin America. Romantic, communist/socialist murderers. Just like Franco.
“Why do people keep choosing a path that leads to disaster?”
In the case of Islamic middle eastern culture, it seems that any tools for self criticism are either frowned on or simply unavailable. Islam is always right, even when it’s wrong and that seems to be the end of it.
In the case of the West jumping off a suicidal cliff, it seems the reasons are much more complex and are centered around guilt about imperialism, colonialism and racism which have been imposed from within Western cultures.
The disenfranchised, gays, minorities, women, have come to have their own views of success, which are an excuse factory, come to be seen as reality and now gov’t policy when in fact they are rather simple paradigms of failure and incompetence rather than exploitation and oppression. That means that the idea of what constitutes success and failure is being gleaned from a fantasy world rather than reality. Insanity follows.
Calm down Barry. The radical Liar-in-Chief who won the WH has no more lies to tell to gullible Americans, most of whom now see him as the personification of everything they don’t like about Washington. This spells doom for the dems next year; we all need to just be patient and let it happen.
Yes, but I sincerely hope we don’t replace a hard-core Progressive with a compassionate conservative Progressive.
“Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. So what does that make the third time?”
Reality?
You mean reality show? That would be a sign of the times in more than one way.
The first time tragedy, the second time farce, and the third . . .?
The Grand-Guignol’s House of Horrors and the Dance of Death (Danse Macabre, Totentanz).
Actually, these are, and have always been, the longest-running shows of all, sad to say.
We do need a little sense of history. The Muslims supported the NAZIs so being losers, they suffered a victors’ peace.
In Europe, those troublesome Germans were forcibly removed from places where they made mischief, Poland Czecho for two. Islam really has no complain either, putting things at hazard and losing.
What the West does is feel compassion, forgetting that where Islam is, is simply the result of what they are and have done. In other words, the West is really indulging in self-pity over a fate that they dished out in their own area.
NAZIs really like Muslims so much so that there were SS Division recruited among the Bosniaks for partisan suppression with really spiffy uniforms. Is it any wonder that Serbs and others feel less than friendly?
In 1977 the Israeli Labor Party suffered it’s first and most profound defeat since the founding of the State of Israel and within just a few years, ultra Leftists like Amos Oz and others, along with radical pro Palestinian peace activists had taken over the Labor Party. Sure, they had been there all along, but with the defeat they managed to throw out the Old Guard and convince those who remained, primarily Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin to accept the new Left Wing and peace at any price order without complaint.
This story is probably as old as mankind itself and just as disheartening.
1954 was the year the American Communist Party made strides infiltrating the Democratic Party. At a holiday party following Christmas that year, two members of the ACP were explaining how they planned to influence Democrat politicians to vote on legislation which would be more Socialist than Liberal. Those members were high up in the ACP.
Now deceased, I’m sure they would be pleased with what Obama and his followers have achieved. The sad thing is that so many Americans believed the ACP was promising a Jefferson-type America the common man would have a voice in governing. The problem now is those voters didn’t understand the difference between a moderate Liberal and an extreme Socialist. We have Medicare thanks to the former and are facing the latter’s death camps for old people—if it isn’t changed.
I got a telephone call in June from a Healthcare provider telling me they were barring me from buying medications from my local pharmacies, that I had to buy them through them. I was just about out of Lipitor and they said it would be two weeks before thay would ship the medications. I told them Obamacare was not in died force and if they did that and I died my family would file charges against them based on the laws of myn state which says withholding medications is murder. There is no difference between Obamacare and Hitler’s solution for Europe’s Jews!
How are you suppossed to enter this contest?