You Cannot Reform a Totalitarian (You’ve Got to Defeat Him)
Back when I was even younger, and living in Rome, the main topic of conversation was of course Communism. Italy had the largest Communist Party outside the Soviet Union, and it was forever on the cusp of becoming the biggest party in Italy, thus forming the government, thus taking over. (Marginal comment for those who aren’t up on 20th century Italian political history: it never happened.)
Although the deep thinkers at the European and American universities were eager for the West to lose its “inordinate fear of Communism” (a phrase conceived by then-National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and pronounced by Jimmy Carter in an unfortunate speech at Notre Dame early in his first and last term), most of the Italians I knew were very much concerned (they would have to endure it, while the American intellectuals could stay safely in the States and comment on it), and while many intellectuals dreamed of a reformed “Communism with a human face,” everyone in Italy knew that the model for a Communist Italy was the USSR itself.
Back then — we’re talking mid-to-late seventies — the hot topic was “Eurocommunism.” An amazing number of highbrows were convinced that Western Communists, such as the Italians, were capable of being democratic, pro-NATO, and even anti-Soviet. The unfortunate Zbig was one of them, as were almost all the “scholars” at Harvard gathered around Stanley Hoffmann. Those of us who knew the Italian Communists first hand (local party HQ were a few doors down from us, and we knew them well) were harder to enchant, and when Washington Post owner and one of her star journalists, James Hoagland, came to Rome to praise Italian Communist leader Enrico Berlinguer, we were appalled.
A good friend, the brilliant philosopher (and ex-Communist) Lucio Colletti, used to put the essence of the matter very well: “Communism can’t be reformed. Either you’ve got it or you don’t. If the Soviet Union actually reforms, then I will confess to failure to understand the whole phenomenon.”
I agreed, we made some bets with those who thought Communism could be democratized, and that there could be a reliable NATO government in the clutches of the Italian Communist Party. Years later, I got plenty of free food when the Soviet Empire collapsed, and the Italian Communist Party crawled onto history’s dust heap.
Lucio, who had spent many years inside the Party, understood that a totalitarian system cannot be changed. Either you’ve got it, or you don’t; you can’t humanize it, because its very essence is the elimination of freedom and the total domination of all those who come under its sway. And so it was. Communism was defeated, not reformed.
Which brings us to today’s sermon, containing three main themes:
First, those who believe that today’s most virulent totalitarian movement — radical Islam — can be reformed and democratized understand neither the Reformation nor Islamism.
Second, totalitarianism is what binds together the radical Muslims and the radical Leftists. Those who purport to be surprised at the marriage of the two groups need a refresher course in twentieth-century mass movements.
Third, the fight for freedom is both domestic and global, and we’re going to have to defeat our totalitarian enemies from Islamist Iran to radical Leftist Nicaragua, and our own would-be oppressors of free Americans. It’s a single, global, war.
The Illusion of Reforming Radical Islam
The whole point of radical Islam is the domination or destruction of all those who don’t accept the Islamists’ dictates. It’s not, as some suggest, a demand that non-Muslims bow to Islamic supremacy; it’s also directed against those Muslims who believe in a different version of the holy writ (indeed, apostates are generally hated far more intensely than non-believers). There are variations in “sharia” and the radical Islamists won’t tolerate any departure from their version, any more than Stalin tolerated Trotsky or Bukharin or Lovestone, or French Catholics tolerated the Huguenots, or the Lutherans put up with Anabaptists, or Hitler made room for the SA.
Lots of those who talk about an “Islamic Reformation” seemingly forget (if they ever knew) that the Reformation was not a debating club, but one of the bloodiest moments in Euiropean history. Although it’s important to demolish the evil visions aimed against us and our free society, you can’t convert fanatics by “winning hearts and minds,” or showing them “the errors of their way.” Utopians unhesitatingly crush or kill those who get in the way of fulfilling the vision. They have to be defeated.
Religious and Secular Religions
I don’t think Hannah Arendt’s masterpiece on totalitarianism is much read nowadays, which is a pity. She understood the dynamics of totalitarianism, saw that antisemitism was common to its several varieties, and didn’t permit herself to get hypnotized by one or another ideological theme in the fascist and Communist movements and states. Thus, the Hitler-Stalin pact made sense, as did the later war between them.
There were some surprising forms of cooperation between fascists and Communists, some of which were seemingly impossible according to the neat division of the world into Left and Right. My friend Renzo De Felice, the author of a (very long) biography of Mussolini, came across a fascinating collection of documents that had been sent to the fascist intelligence service by its Soviet counterpart. They were coded reports on the locations and activities of Italian Communists living in the Soviet Union. And De Felice also found the code, which was clearly provided to the Italian Duce by the Soviets.
The totalitarians had a lot in common, as they do today. If Stalin could actively help Mussolini, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to find Islamic fanatics working hand-in-mailed-glove with Leftist fanatics. Don’t make the mistake of believing that they are in cahoots simply because they have a common enemy. More important is that they share a common vision of total control over the peoples they come to dominate, both their own and others. There is a fascinating history of Islamist leaders being “educated” and trained by Communists (Khomeini, for example, studied with Soviet Communists at one point), and while there is a long tradition of Muslim antisemitism, a good deal of contemporary Islamist Jew hatred was delivered to them by the Fuhrer’s minions both during and after the Third Reich. Now the evil is exported from the Middle East to Latin America, where Leftist tyrants like Chavez trot out some of the worst of Ahmadinejad’s antisemitism.
The Fight for Freedom
Totalitarians can’t be reformed. You can’t “win” by debating, and so in the war against totalitarian countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela, you have to defeat them politically if possible and militarily if there is no other way. It’s dialectical, as Comrade Marx might say. Political defeat weakens them on the battlefield, and military defeat makes their ideology much less attractive to would-be recruits, as seen by Al Qaeda’s shriveling after their defeat by American military forces in Iraq, and by the generally improved security in Afghanistan (when you rarely read about fighting in Afghanistan, as at the present, it’s usually because we’re doing well).
The fight against the totalitarians is not just America vs. the totalitarian network; it’s very much at the heart of American politics right now. Mark Levin — may the hair on his toes never fall out — has tirelessly and energetically fought against the would-be tyrannical statists who want to dictate our actions in every niche and cranny of life. When Marco Rubio warns that the Obama administration threatens to turn us into a nation of deadbeats, that’s what he’s talking about. They’re certainly not the only ones. Right here at PJ Media we’re blessed with the likes of Simon, Solway, Fernandez, Radosh, Klavan, Hanson et. al., all fighting hard against the totalitarians.
This, too, is dialectical. The other day, Fouad Ajami wrote a fine piece in the Wall Street Journal about Syria, and he bitterly remarked that “deep down, the Obama administration seems to believe that Assad’s tyranny is preferable to the opposition.”
Just so. They prefer the tyrants because that’s what they aspire to themselves. They hate the messiness of our fractious society and they don’t think much of our ability to make good decisions for ourselves, so they just tell us what to do and defy us to beat them. Just like the foreign tyrants do.
That’s no doubt the “deep down” reason why Obama worked so hard — indeed is still secretly working hard — to get his version of the Hitler/Stalin pact with Iran.
Somebody ought to remind Obama how that great triumph of totalitarian diplomacy worked out for the two of them.
Absolutely right on, Mr. Ledeen!
I reread it twice and still can’t see “Faster, please!” in there. #disappointed
Thank you sir.
A very important column.
A lesson for all of us to reflect upon. Again and again.
PS To the GOP in Congress: read this lesson, learn it, and forget about “bi-partisanship” with those who hate Freedom.
PPS An advice for all the young Readers of this column: read it until you have learned every detail of it, then expand the study of it, look for sources and studies. It’s a precise diagnosis of everything I have witnessed in my now long life.
Also advise young readers to study Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer and The Ordeal of Change.
Not only can the radical Islamists not be reformed, some of them have or want nuclear weapons. We are not scared enough. See this guest blog by Tom Nichols on my website: http://clarespark.com/2012/01/09/living-in-the-nuclear-age/.
I dare add to this great lesson a little detail: when the Stalin / Hitler pact was signed (the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact) the Soviet Communist Party informed Hitler of all the details of the communist secret organizations in Germany. They were instantly found and sent to the lagers.
Nihilism, the father and mother of totalitarianism, has created a hell on earth…
Michael,
This is a fine post, put I predict a slew of comments declaring that Islam = Radical Islam and an “authentic” Muslim must, therefore, be a Radical Muslim.
My two cents: I think that Islam has, had, and will have tremendous problems adjusting to the modern world, including internal and external violence. But, there are also Muslims who are moderate, authentic (as much as it’s up to me, a non-Muslim, to decide who is an authentic Muslim) and brave and it is in our interest to support them.
How do we support a moderate? It is by nature neutral, no side, standing for nothing. How do we stand for nothing? It’s the weiney shaky kneed middle.
Authentic muslim? What is that?
It would be in the best interest of the so called moderate to pick a side and support it, otherwise they’ll just be viewing the bottoms of boots.
Just for the record; Islam adjusts to nothing, no more than Nazi Germany adjusted for the world.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, particularly on Jihad Watch (http://www.jihadwatch.org/) a “moderate” Muslim is simply one that is not fully practicing his/her faith, rather like the Christians and Jews that accept homosexuality and abortion. That may be fine, as it goes, but they are rightfully criticized by those of the faith that actually practice the tenets of that faith and just may see the error of their ways.
It’s interesting that Mr. Ledeen brings up the Reformation. Luther didn’t seek to set the Roman Catholic church on a new path (as did, for instance, Calvin or Zwingli). He sought to return it to the beliefs and practices of the early Christians and Church fathers and remove the “innovations” and false teachings that the papacy had added over the past 1000 years or so. Likewise, what we refer to as the Islamic “radicals” are seeking to return “moderate” Islam to its true roots and beliefs.
The true radicals in Islam are the EXTREMELY rare ones who believe Islam can co-exist peacefully with Western values. More power to them, but realistically you have to admit that they are irrelavent in this global war. They aren’t making a dent.
The jihadists are following over 1000 years of written Islamic theology, and jurisprudence. Read their texts. It may be unpleasant to accept, but they are following the established teachings of their religion. We as a society need to grow up and accept that. Most of us are unwilling to do so because once you do there is no choice but to resist. Resistance is hard. We don’t like hard stuff.
Thank you to Chiefparker, Paul of Alexandria and Mark for your replies to my comment. Please forgive me for not having the time to reply individually and at length.
I would define a moderate Muslim, i.e., or practitioner of moderate Islam, as one who believes that Islam sanctions lifestyles which are compatible with the modern world and political activity which supports a tolerant and democratic international order. I concede that “moderate Muslims” are a small group when compared with “traditional Muslims” or “radical Muslims”. I also stipulate that moderate Islam is a belief system in development and with an uncertain future.
While (see above comment by me) I don’t deny that there are tendencies towards internal and external violence and other unsavory things in Islam, I also see examples of moderate Muslim political activity in the 2009 protests in Iran and the many brave Iraqis who groped towards a moderate political consensus and structure (including, for example a few moves away from de-legitimization and demonization of Israel) during the period 2007 to 2009. I would tie the failure of those movements to our failure to protect them from the malignant force of the present government of Iran (if only we had followed the advice of our host).
I think it is unproductive to try to define the phenomena of Islam or the Islamic community entirely through a study of Islamic holy texts and believe that one most also look at how Muslims live and define themselves. On that point, I must note that I am not an academically qualified expert on Islam. My expertise is derived from two personal sources: 10 years work in the US as a federal criminal investigator in locations with significant Muslim populations where I occasionally worked on matters related to terrorism and terrorism financing and knew Muslims as subjects and sources; and, three year-long tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with extensive experience working with and against local Muslims as both comrades and targets.
One of the most striking impressions that I received from my experiences was that my Muslim sources and comrades often great incredible risks for themselves and their families as the cost of working for moderate political outcomes. Furthermore, my Muslim partners considered their political practices to be a more authentic expression of Islam than that exhibited by the terrorists who we targeted. They also considered their personal practices (even if less superficially rigorous) to be as authentic or more authentic an expressions of Islam as the practices of the terrorists and their supporters.
islam is a totalitarian cult. If you identify yourself as a muslim you are part of that cult and are supporting its totalitarian aspirations. If you do not identify with islam’s totalitarian aspirations, you are simply not a muslim.
By the author’s own admission, there could be no such thing as “radical communism”, and there is no such thing as “radical islam”.
Communists and Islam share window dressing and nothing more. One is an ideology based on pure mysticism and arbitrary values dispensed by a god. One is based on 19th century European revolutionary intellectualism and the other on dark age garbage pail faith no different from making offerings to Thor. The Muslims were the Vikings of their region. Unlike the Vikings they were never absorbed and no one outside of Islam really cared enough about their miserable conquests, aside from perhaps India, to overwhelm them into extinction. So there Islam sits, on lands no one really wants aside from oil and their greatest weapon is immigration – hardly the makings of a great society.
Communists denounce mysticism and are social engineers. There is no need to shrink polemic to make a point. Yes they both want their systems to triumph and that’s it and they can’t even agree on what their system is.
Other than both being micro managing social pedants, what do they share? Their imperatives are worlds apart.
You are splitting hairs and straining to find what are relatively trivial distinctions.
Radical Islam and communism seek the same end: the extinguishing of the individual.
I suppose it matters a little bit if one is to be extinguished by a bullet or by a sword, but only for a little while.
I see your point. However, it seems that communism and radical Islam have both differences and similarities. The similarities are particularly important in how they affect society and the individual. Both reduce personal freedom, both impose massive rules on society, both impose a strict order on society, and both invoke an orthodoxy of belief (either through religious writings or through political propaganda).
The “window dressing” you refer to is military conquest of those who disagree. I really don’t care why they want to do it. I just want to make sure we have the biggest stick.
I don’t see any way around the conclusion that a defeat of radical Islam is possible only when Islam itself has been falsified at the most fundamental level, so it has no followers.
Battlefield and political defeats are superficial, transient falsifications of Islam. Helpful, perhaps, in the short run but counterproductive in the long term inasumuch as they are the perfect exmample of “what does not kill me makes me stronger”. These tactical defeats simply force radical Islam to develop more effective tactics, such as lawfare, for example. Airliner hijacking, suicide bombing.
There is no reason to suppose that Islam will ever stop breeding radical Islam. It never has. What is different now is that the number of radical Islamists required to carry forward the jihad has shrunk, thanks to Western technology and jihadis’ forced ( by us) tactical adaptations, to a vanishingly small number of the world’s increasingly enourmous Muslim population. It wouldn’t matter that 99% of the world’s Muslims suddenly morphed into Jeffersonian democrats. The 13 million of the 1% are more than enough to breed and harbor the crews that lay IED’s, abduct, and finally execute the nuclear detonation or biological catastrophe that surely lies ahead on the road we now travel.
I don’t know what would so utterly falsify Islam as to effectively pass the movement to extinction. My limited imagination can conjur only awful, cataclysimic things, things on a greater scale even than the events that falsified and defeated Nazism and Japanese imperialisim in the previous century.
I hope smarter, wiser folks can figure that one out. First, though, they’ve got to face it and talk about it in plain language.
Their is no way to defeat a billion Muslims; imagine if Germany or Japan had been 10 or 20 times larger in land and people. All you can do is isolate them by cutting off immigration into the West and either let them go back to sleep as before oil or come around to being more on the pragmatic rationalist side. The problem Muslims are fanatics; the more you beat them the more they will smile at you through broken teeth.
Islam’s own intolerance combined with a surging population make them their own worst enemies provided they can be quarantined which unfortunately the West does not believe in. Every body’s okay and equal and will be treated fairly and the West will commit suicide to prove they are not racists. The West never stops to think of what exact value not being perceived as racist has. People think we are anyway so may as well start culling failure.
Paul Slatniter: I didn’t say “defeat a billion Muslims.” I talked about defeating the radical Islamists. Bring down the Iran regime, for example…that would have quite an effect.
It amounts to the same thing. Hussein went down and Iraq is arguably a worse potential source of terrorism due to the fact that this disconnect between the leadership, people and the ideology doesn’t exist. Those Muslims not radicalized are at best neutral or offer tacit support. There are few who are actively pro-American from their cultural standpoint.
You cannot cut the head off of Wahabbism since that head doesn’t exist. What head do you cut off in Pakistan and why would the Sunni world care if Iran is taken down? What did cutting off the head do in Afghanistan?
The whole glaring point of terrorism is that it exists because armies and gov’t's cannot do the job the terrorists want.
The reason your method worked in Germany and Japan was because of a central gov’t, smaller population and territory. Also, the populace’s were ideologically indoctrinated by what amounted to new regimes. In the end their larger cultural indoctrination to bow to authority and order won out and post-WW II terrorism didn’t amount to much in Japan and Germany.
Within Islam, you have massive populations and territory and the ideology and culture are practically one and that one is spread across disparate nations and for thousands of years. Islam is not comprised of pragmatic rationalists who can in the end be swayed by reason or casualties.
Even the fanatic Japanese chose not to have Orwell’s boot stamping on their face forever.
I think what may work are fresh, new and innovative ideas but it is vanishingly unlikely they would be employed. The U.S. should close embassies and shut off immigration and visas in Islamic countries that allow conspicuous hate speech, have no separation of church and state or have no bill of rights. They want to be themselves fine, but let them be shamed and quarantined in the eyes of the world. Then their own people can take them down and if not they are effectively quarantined from exporting terrorism by emigrating. It’ll never happen but neither will the use of force or taking down gov’ts work though that actually is happening and with zero effect.
I didn’t talk about defeating a billion (1.3 billion, isn’t it?) Muslims, either,although there is no law in nature that says such a thing couldn’t be done or shouldn’t be considered if all reason and self-preservation excluded all other options. The fact that one’s existential foe is very large and formidable doesn’t rule out trying to defeat him and survive. There’s that New Hampshire thing, right? Live Free or Die?
But no, I talked about defeating radical Islam by denying it the medium in which it roots and is nourished.
My proposed approach is no less radical than the one you commented on, which I didn’t make.
To utterly falsify islam you have to remove the fear of retribution for becoming an apostate. Wherever there is no fear of leaving islam, there is no islam.
The correct spelling is ZPIGniew Brzshitski
Mr. Herb, in fact the great supporter of American Socialism “Mr. Zbigniew Brzezinski”,he is just one of millions of Poles Anti-Semitic, as well he is a great enemy of the Greatness of the United States of America.
Communism was defeated because it never became a religion. Being “just” an economic and political system, it set up expectations that failed, spectacularly. It was supposed to be a reasonable and practical system, so it wasn’t reasonable that it kept failing, decade after decade. The contradiction was so deep that its center did not hold.
Religions don’t get measured the way secular enterprises do, and don’t have to succeed in similar fashion. Because their playing field is the alleged spiritual realm, because there is no objective way to evaluate what goes on there, because the ways of any god are mysterious, the religious are rarely dissuaded by any kind of secular setback to their religious endeavors.
Religious belief isn’t rational. But it’s very resilient and persistent.
Man, I hope you can offer a good way to distinguish between an economic and political system, and a religion. We treat the two classes of things very differently in law and in culture.
A lot of the discussion in this comments section dances around the unasked question: should the United States of America treat Islam as a religion or as an economic-and-political-system?
I don’t think the rationality criterion you mentioned will do. All internally logical systems are derived from at least one unprovable assumption, or so Godel’s Completeness Theorem assures us. Anyhow, neither Islam nor any economic-and-political-system I know of sports complete internal consistency.
So what’s the difference? My understanding is we treat Scientology as a religion in law. Is there an economic-and-political-system around, membership in which is prima facie seditious?
I think the United States should get back to doing what made it great. Protecting the freedoms of individuals. The experiment in “granting” collective rights has been a disaster. Once the United States gets back to behaving like a constitutional republic, it wont have to worry about whether or not islam is a “religion”. islam wont have rights. Only individuals will have rights, and islam’s totalitarianism can’t flourish in a United States like that.
I think people who look forward to a “Muslim Reformation” to replace extremist Islam with something more tolerant do not understand the present day world. We are currently living through the Muslim Reformation. The spread of Wahhabist-style Islam around the world, with its fanaticism and intolerance for both other religions and for other interpretations of Islam, is the Muslim Reformation in the Sunni tradition. Indeed, there are two reformations going on, the Wahhabist Sunni one and the Khomeinist Shi’a one. Both are hostile to the West as well as to each other, although they can have their own Molotov/Ribbentrop-style alliances against the West now and then. Iran’s threats against a sympathetic Islamist Turkey show the future trend there. One day they will tear at each other’s throats.
This reformation antedates the oil boom, which just made it more widespread by financially empowering the Wahhabists. Two hundred years ago a Hajji spent time in the Nejd learning about the Wahhabist thinking, then returned to India to spread the word. He settled among the Pushtuns, and over the next fifty or so years it spread widely in India. Wahhabis we instrumental in fomenting and carrying out among Muslims the Great Mutiny in 1857, and British observers identified them separately from the other Sunnis and the Shi’a. The spiritual descendents of these Wahhabis are the Deobandi sect.
Islam goes through periodic reformations. The rise of the Abbassid Caliphate was an early example. The Almoravides, the Almohads, and the Shi’a Fatimids in North Africa were other examples. Earlier reformations were more localized, for the most part, than the one today. Globalization and the unprecedented immigration of Muslims into non-Muslim-ruled lands (supposedly forbidden by the jurists) makes what would have been, in the past, a problem mostly for Muslims in the path of the reformers and purifiers, a problem for the whole rest of the world too. Eventually the reformers become corrupted back into civilization, but it takes a while and they spill a lot of blood before that happens. Then another bunch of reformers comes along and starts the blood flowing again.
I had hoped that encouraging among the Middle Easterners liberty and prosperity in the modern world as an alternative to Muslim supremacist jihad would gradually bring the reformation under control, because I saw the alternative as leading to a gigantic bloodbath. For various reasons I think this effort is not succeeding. Therefore a bloodbath will come.
Michael,
Interesting take on Obama. Although I agree with you that his instincts run towards totalitarianism, I think you give him far too much credit regarding his abysmal failure to stand up for freedom and justice in Iran. I really think Obama’s primary failure is and has always been an inability to make moral distinctions. He really believes, I think, that the United States is a great source of evil in the world and that the Iranian regime is no worse, perhaps even better, than we are. Hence, he is simply incapable of articulating a moral vision. He is blind, Michael, and not particularly bright either.
aren’t those moral distinctions? if we’re the cause of the world’s evil? etc…
Good point. They are moral distinctions, only very simplistic and without substance. The West=Bad. The Third World=Good.
I suspect this worldview is what makes him so useless as the leader of the free world. His disgraceful inability to articulate the cause of justice was particularly on display with how he has dealt with Iran. And devastating to the people of Iran who desperately needed the moral support of President Obama to help rid themselves of the serial killers who run their country. As you have so carefully chronicled, his behavior has been disgraceful.
Natan Sharansky used the term “moral compass” to describe the ability to make moral distinctions. He also noted it is what we should look for in a leader. He also stressed Ron Reagan was a good leader because he had it and Jimmy Carter a poor one because he did not.
O has a different moral compass and don’t underestimate his moral discipline. Were he more incompetent we would be safer.He has forever weakened American influence abroad and empowered democratic Islamic extremism.The formerly private economic sectors of healthcare, finance, and real estate are now dependent on executive fiat, and are under his control. 46 million food stamp recipients, 20 million illegals, and huge numbers of academic and bureaucrats await their rewards.Statism requires the destruction of private economic success before it can succeed.When private job creation is destroyed, socialist jobs are all that is left.
Leftist elitism offers an explanation for why Leftists do not strongly oppose totalitarian governments such as in Iran, which currently restrict most of the social goods that Leftists say they want.
Progressives accept totalitarian regimes because of the progressive’s own plan:
(1) Take control of government.
(2) Invest government with absolute power to make wise decisions.
(3) Guide society to peace, prosperity, and happiness.
A totalitarian regime has already accomplished (1) and (2). That regime may be nasty and currently against all of the progressive’s desires, but the progressive doesn’t want to throw away that accomplishment. The progressive wants to use diplomacy and cooperation to bend the totalitarian regime to progressive ends.
Finding a totalitarian regime in place changes the task of transformaing society into a type of grant proposal. The Leftist assumption is that our elite will convince their elite of a better way, without having to engage a large number of stupid peasants.
Mr. Ledeen is a good writer and analyst, but in this article he misses the mark. He fails to understand that the totalitarian that needs to be defeated is not some tin-pot middle eastern dictator like Assad, but none other than the so called ‘holy prophet’ of Islam, Muhamme and his totalitarian ideology of Islam. The fight for freedom is not just against a man but against an ideology.
In the Second World War it was important to defeat Hitler the dictator, but it was more important to destroy Hitler’s ideology. While Muhammed has been dead for 1,400 years his violent supremecist ideology of Islam unfortunately didn’t die with him.
For freedom to survive it is Islam that must be thoroughly discredited, dismantled and destroyed.
We must also stop using the absurd term ‘Islamist’. It would be the height of absurdity to distingiush between a ‘NAZI’ and a ‘NAZIist’ based on whether they were actual killers or not. The important point is that anyone who supported or helped to propogate NAZIsm was a NAZI, whether they killed or not. Why make the distinction within Islam?
The sooner we understand these truths, the better:
- Muhammed was a classic tyrannical sadistic dictator.
- His Islam is a militant totalitarian supremecist ideology.
- Islam is antithetical to freedom.
- Every Muslim is an Islamist whether a murderous jihadist or the friendly Muslim next door.
- The ideological destruction of Islam and the liberation of one fifth of humanity from Muhammeds enslavement is the greatest human rights imperative in the history of humanity.
ISLAMO DELENDE EST – Islam must be destroyed!
~ The Infidel Alliance
I happen to disagree with some of the premises in this article. Although I agree whole heartedly about the nature of totalitarianism, I tend to disagree with this assessment of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan having been to both places. The misplaced confidence in the COIN strategy in both Iraq and Afghanistan has removed any chance of victory, and dimplomatic relations in both countries are tenuous at best. Not to mention Afghanistans growing economic relationship with China who was recently granted rights to mine Afghanistans rare earth minerals as US soldiers continue to fight an enemy that both our administration and afghanistans administration want to hold peace talks with. The US foreign policy stance has been woefully inadequate for as long as I can remember, and seems only to make China look like a better partner than us. Although I do agree that totalitarianism abroad is an issue that cannot be ignored, The US has done a less than stellar job addressing it by either the right or the left. Perhaps we should start focusing on the growing totalitarianism here at home. Once we’ve secured freedom in our own country, we’ll be better prepared to handle it elsewhere.
While I totally agree with you about totalitarianism, there are some examples in the arab and Muslim world where I don’t think any form of real democracy (as we know it) would survive. For example, the Sultan of Oman has been in power for years and he controls a country that is strategically placed at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. ANY Iranian attempt to close the Gulf could be stopped by ships and planes based in Oman. The Sultan is an aboslute ruler and is popular with his people. There is a heavy British influence in Oman and the country does have a form of parliament, but the Sultan still has the final say on everything. Now, since these people are happy with this form of totalitarian state, and since its ruler is very friendly to the west, why is there a need to overthrow it? As long as there continues to be a heavy British influence in Oman and the people are not clamoring for the Sultan’s overthrow, why rock the boat?
I tend to believe that there are certain countries on this planet where democracy will never take hold. Afghanistan is one of them, Iraq (which was never a real country to begin with, just created by Europeans after World War I) is another. But I think that only countries that have been former colonies, especially those that were under the influence of Britain, have a shot at democratic reform. That’s why it’s so sad to see a country like Egypt, which probably had one of the best chances at democracy, decide to embrace the totalitarianism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. Well, always remember that Hitler never took power, he was elected to power. But it seems that there are many countries that just don’t have democracy in them and, for whatever reason, feel better having an absolute ruler or an oligarchy in power. So unless we want to go into each of these many countries (like Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Russia, to name a few) and force them into a democratic form of government, then we have to accept what they have. This doesn’t mean the rest of us have to emulate them, let alone capitulate to them, but we need to recognize the fact that democracy will never spread in them (as in Afghanistan, which is still stuck in the 15th century).
Unless one of these totalitarian states, such as Iran, endangers the welfare of the rest of us or our allies, then we probably need to let them wallow in their own totalitarianism.
I totally agree. The idea that liberal democracy like that which we have in the US can be forced on a nation is misguided. It has to happen organically. The people of that nation have to as a whole be willing to embrace the idea of liberty and secular government. Our efforts to enforce these priciples on those who don’t understand or desire it has been disasterous. People get the government they deserve. As Ben Franklin said “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”
Libertyship46, your choice of Oman is interesting. I have nothing against a Kingdom if the people are happy as they seem to be in Oman. Obviously the Sultan listens to his people and gives them what they want. In a case like that, the people are actually freer than in a lot of so called democracies. The biggest problem would be who is next in line to replace the Sultan when he dies or retires or whatever. Would they follow in the current Sultan’s footsteps or would they turn to tyranny? I don’t know what they have in place to prevent that if anything at all. It’s up to the people to decide if their government is right for them. If they are happy with what they have, so be it.
Yeah, but I’ve always said that Monarchy is at least better than Communism. At least with a Monarchy you have the chance that you will end up with a benevolent ruler. With Communism you are pretty much gauranteed that those who wind up in power will be brutal sociopathic dictators. The system is set up to promote the ones with the greatest drive to consolidate power, whereas a Monarchy is pretty much a crap shoot. Could be benevolent leader, could be dictatorial tyrant.
The 0′s regime thinks Saul Alensky was a great guy, likes the program of the current Iranian regime, and believes that the new National Socialist Democratic Action Party of the U.S.A. will ring in a new era of prosperity for its own elites. 0 is working hard at destroying the American economy so that he can “rebuild” it to his liking…which will be crony capitalism writ large, coming out somewhere on the Fascist/Communist continuum. [One should never say the Fascists were/are "right wing" because they were/are not; dictators/totalitarians are never "right wing" because the fundamentally do not believe in "free market/free" anything - just personal control of everything.]
You are also correct in saying that the “reform” of Islam currently underway is more repressive than past versions. Wahhab and his followers were hunted by the Ottoman police – they were a threat to the regime.
I think the idea that you can’t reform communism also has application in the US today. The lesson here would be – you can’t work or compromise with the Left. You can’t ever work with Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or Sreny Hoyer or Carl Levin or any of them. Period. Never. Their existence is defined by destroying our system. Every compromise they are willing to make has within it the seeds of our destruction. That is the only reason they would offer it. So, which of the Republican candidates is most likely to oppose the above Democrats and develop an effective legislative strategy to beat them? Who has done this? Clue – it’s not Mitt.
Somebody ought to remind Obama how that great triumph of totalitarian diplomacy worked out for the two of them. It’s sweet that you think the Mad-Hatter even knows, let alone understands this.
There were some surprising forms of cooperation between fascists and Communists, some of which were seemingly impossible according to the neat division of the world into Left and Right.
Fascism is a branch of socialism, so – like the Shia and the Sunni – they cooperate against the unbeliever and fight against each other.
Anyone doing a modicum of reading outside of MSM has had a clear view of the fraud that is “Arab Spring”. It was always a propaganda front for installing Islamist regimes. Mubarak, Assad, Ghaddafi had become fixtures of an outdated US policy of buying off dictators beholden to Western interests. Time to move on for the global good where the pendulum is swinging away from freedom/liberty towards statism/tyranny with the West leading the way.
Ledeen is spot on- the Left mistakenly believes they can ultimately win out by placating the radicals and turning a blind eye to their religious extremism and human rights atrocities. Just cracking a few eggs to make the omelet of international fascism under the guise of “social and economic justice”. So many will find out too late that they were merely the useful idiots of international masterminds.
Excellent essay Mike.
They also don’t seem to understand that the Reformation happened by reinterpreting scripture, not changing scripture. Nearly everyone who talks about an Islamic Reformation seems willfully ignorant of the fact that the only way to “reform” Islam is to actually delete whole chunks of the Koran since their very existence is ipso facto serious fodder for religious persecution and war.
It’s also downright insulting to the intelligence of the average Muslim to believe that they would regard a lobotomized Islam created to appease non-Muslims as authentic.
Are you suggesting that Obama and his minions might be angry enough at the Iranian regime for its contrarian behavior as to WANT it to provoke an incident when the Stennis returns to the Persian Gulf? How could you suggest such a thing? For starters the timing is off by at least a half year; October would be better month for transiting regime infested waters.
Mr Ledeen, your observation may be correct.
But then, practically, how do you suggest we defeat the worst totalitarian system in place today and growing like a cancer ? not in Russia mind you, not in Venezuela, Cuba, not even in Iran or China but right here in the usa, and more generally in the West, rapidly destroying our cultures, our identities, our history, our freedoms, our peoples ?
Excellent, thoughtful piece. Much of this harkens back to “The Road to Serfdom”, where Hayek discusses the relationship between personal and economic freedom, as well as the tools of totalitarianism.
To beat the wannabe tyrant you have to wake the apathetic up to the real agenda. This means attacking the politically correct concebsus that tells us if we all join hands and sing Kumbiya we can create Utopia.
It is a foolish hippie pipedream that all the people of the world can come together in one global nation.
Michael, I conclude that this: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/iranian-group-set-national-council-190217251.html is a step in the right direction.
As an aside, my Mom appreciates you saying kaddish for her sister than passed away 15 days ago.
While I agree in substance with much of what you say, and certainly I disagree with much of the current administration’s foreign policy, i think the analogy to the Hitler Stalin pact is a bit too far. I would instead analogize to the Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement and its appeasement.
Nice essay…so many and so little time to read them all. I read Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism” as a freshman in college. I was so fascinated by it that many of my dorm mates called it my Bible. I am surprised at how so few people have even heard of it. I believe its been re-printed. (I wish I could find my copy). We live in interesting times. Thank you PJ Media.
Dear Michael, indeed it is hard to reform the corrupt people or even the curing of Idiots. In fact they are the most Evil on the surface of the earth.
I think any a nonviolent conflict with the evil regimes or the evil ideologies it will be useless…it’s a waste of time. Yes, Communism was defeated by a War, not reformed. Nazism was defeated militarily, was not reformed diplomatically. Terrorism in Israel, almost has disappeared after the crushing of Hamas senior leaders militarily. The threat of Al-Qaeda almost was paralyzed after the Global War on Terrorism.
And you, Dr. Michael Ledeen, you are one of those who have played an effective role – in defeating of the Evil Empire – during the Cold War. History must attested for your great struggle against the Evil Power (the Soviet Union) that at the time most of American policymakers and the Liberals were miscalculated. They did not classified it or consider it as Evil Empire, while then-Reagan’s administration mightily believed that Soviet Union an “Evil Power” and became necessary to its annihilation.
The radical Muslims and the radical Leftists today are in cahoots. Yes, they have a common enemy called “the Giant Imperialist and Zionist, the Great Satan, and the infidel Zionist and crusader”. They share the common vision and goals. Their stance against Capitalism and Zionism is tangible common denominator of hatred toward the United States of America and Israel. They despise her Great Influence on the earth. They seeking to destroy her, while all the time they are protected by their close allies, the opportunistic neutrals “the Chinese and the Russians”.
The Totalitarian regimes and ideologies impose their vision and ideas by the force and violence on people so that they control the minds and the hearts of the people. They want the total control over the people lives and their properties. While FREEDOM PROTECTS THE PEOPLE RIGHTS AND THEIR PROPERTIES, WHICH IS WHY THEY MUST BE DEFEATED!!!?
Michael Ledeen’s point is reminiscent of Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s distinction between totalitarians and authoritarians. She also thought (with the Soviet Union as her prime exemplar) that the former could not be reformed. One might quibble with this point in the following way: by the 1980′s, and probably earlier, the leaders of Soviet Union had lost their belief in marxism and thus abandoned the ideology that underpinned their totalitarianism. As a result the later Soviet Union had evolved into a rather cynical authoritarian system. And according to Kirkpatrick, such systems are at least somewhat capable of being reformed.
She would probably defend her idea by saying that as long as the USSR remained totalitarian it was incapable of reform. And that is most probably right.
Nonetheless, we should open for signs that any of the malefactors in the Muslim world are evolving into authoritarianism. I don’t see much. However, there is one thing that strikes me as unprecedented. That is the action of the Arab League in opposing Qaddafi and in defending human rights in Syria. Admittedly, the League’s efforts have been weak and incompetent, but hasn’t it been the case previously that this kind of critical attitude toward fellow dictators is considered taboo? “Human rights” creeping into the Muslim lexicon could indicate a welcome crack in the foundations of some of these extremist states.