[This review is reprinted from Middle East Quarterly]
Dr. Jamie Glazov, editor of FrontPageMag.com, exposes the hypocrisy of leftists and liberals who claim to champion the principles of freedom, democracy, liberalism, and feminism yet support both communist and Islamist dictatorships, which implement none of these principles.
David Horowitz, Glazov’s boss, also wrote a book in 2004, Unholy Alliance, on this subject, but Glazov digs deeper. The author, who fled the Soviet Union as a child and earned a PhD from York Univeristy in Toronto in Soviet studies, points in the first 100 pages of the book to a nucleus of American apologists in the 1930s who heaped praise on communist strongman Joseph Stalin, including Walter Duranty of The New York Times and author Upton Sinclair. In the generation that followed, intellectuals including novelist Normal Mailer and feminist activist Simone de Beauvoir continued to apologize for communist regimes in Cuba, China, Nicaragua, and Vietnam.
With the decline of communism, the Left began to support Islamism. Whereas journalists, novelists and activists led the charge in the first wave, Glazov explains in the second half of the book, the most vociferous defenders of Islamism now come from the Ivory Tower.
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, French philosopher Michel Foucalt, who enjoyed stints at the University of Buffalo and University of California Berkeley, lauded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a “saint.” The late English professor Edward Said, famous for his anti-Western philosophy, Orientalism, became a popular apologist for Palestinian Islamist violence in the 1990s. In 2001, Rutgers University English professor, Barbara Foley, called the 9-11 attacks a legitimate response to the “fascism” of U.S. foreign policy. In 2006, Noam Chomsky, an M.I.T. linguistics professor, lauded Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose group calls for the destruction of America and Israel.
What Glazov does not explicitly note is that the foremost apologists for Islamism in the universities are the specialists in Middle Eastern Studies. From Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi to Georgetown’s John Esposito, the field has become overwrought with professor-activists who now rationalize Islamism to new generations of students.
But, Glazov provides ample proof that the professors are not alone. Filmmaker Michael Moore likened Iraqi terrorists to “minutemen.” Media mogul Ted Turner reported lauded the 9/11 hijackers as “brave.” And, of course, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter met Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, against the wishes of the U.S. State Department, and now seeks to engage in diplomacy with the group best known for suicide bombing.
Glazov’s lucid and compelling book would be strengthened by distinguishing more clearly between liberal-Left and far-Left. Indeed, not everyone who identifies with the former supports the ideals of the latter. Still, United in Hate highlights an important and disturbing trend that has made the battle of ideas against Islamists and despots that much harder to win.
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To order United in Hate, click here.
The title of Glazov's book says it all: "United in Hate".
One of the greatest shibboleths of the Western Leftisit liberal is that they are the compassionate, thoughtful political movement, when the fact is THEY are filled with all the stereotypical hatreds of which they accuse the Right:
They are homophobes, they are racists, they are classists, they are bigots. Walter Duranty, perhaps the proto-Modern LIberal, set the mold. For years, his racist, bigoted screeds in the New York Times insisted that the people of the Soviet Union were "Asians", and as such, were incapable of individual thought, and were, in fact, better treated with authoritarian, iron-fisted controll. Duranty's hateful invective perfectly fit with the eugenic posture of most of the achedemic left at the time that held people were not soveriegn individuals, but part of an oozing, maleable ectoplasm to be formed and shaped by elites of the state. This is why HItler and Tojo can never be viewed in a cultural vacuum. They were supported in world-wide achedemic/scientific thought to be cutting-edge statesmen that us Americans, cast-offs from an antique, Christian, Anglican world could not understand.
Rather like the Global Warming alarmist of today.
From Michael Moore to Noam Chomsky, the left is besotted with these creeps that loathe and despise humanity. To them, the fewer people, the better. In fact, this could be the underlying assumption of Leftism: They Hate People. Thus they embrace Maraget Sanger and her genocide against African American babies, or Lillian Hellman and her feeling that we would all be Stalinists if we could look inside American prisons. They appreciate mass murderers because they cull the herd, as they see it, that's spoiling their view of Utopia.
Dead on! Nothing to add.
Great synopsis of leftist ideology. My only complaint, the same I have with most people who oppose the left's agenda, is the loose use of the words liberalism and liberal. The left long ago hijacked the term liberalism as well as the language and the meanings of words that are inherent in liberal philosophy. Most people have been taught that America was founded on liberal-conservative principles and so when the left uses the language of classic liberalism the general public is not aware that the left imparts different meanings to words such as equality, freedom, liberty than did the Founding Fathers. As long as we allow the left to misuse and co-opt language we will lose too many arguments in the public realm. I am proud to lay claim to the Classical Liberal philosophy and Burkean conservatism. Everyone should educate themsevles as to what is true liberal-conservativism and what is Modern Liberalism,, the latter being simply the scientific socialism of Marxist-Leninism.
Nicely wrote and insightful.
Right on!
There is no doubt in my mind that the American left is in bed with the islamics , spew hatwe for all our Rpublic stands for i.e, Freedom . They togerter whan control over every thing , taking power from the people is part of their process Alinski, Soros, Omama are pne and the same , The democrats are to blame also control and greed is their way.
Well said, right on the mark.
[...] United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror Dr. Jamie Glazov exposes the hypocrisy of leftists and liberals who claim to champion the principles of liberalism and feminism. [...]
Follow the money. And if they say it's not the money, it's the money. When the Soviet money machine ran dry, "they" just found a new sponsor.
[...] MORE [...]
It is invariably about the money. In the end even the people who appear to be absolutely ideological may be but usually are just pretending to be predominantly ideological.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Kurosh-e Kabir, Juniper Inthedesert. Juniper Inthedesert said: RT @zolqarnain: United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror http://bit.ly/7IT2Pz #Obamafail #Jihad #sharia #iranelection … [...]
It seems to me that the romance with terror is the romance FPM has with state sponsored terror. The U.S. has the distinction of being the only nation convicted by the ICC and the U.N. General Assembly of state sponsored terror when the U.S. directed a war against Nicaraguan civilians in the 80's. Estimates are that about 40,000 were killed. It was called terror then by it's defenders and it's still terror by any reasonable definition. What Chomsky does that people here don't like is he asks us to look in the mirror. It's very easy to criticize the violence of your state's enemies, like Stalin and Mao. Chomsky criticizes them as well and always has. But Chomsky recognizes that it's not all that useful. Soviets for the most part aren't reading his criticisms. He lives in America and he can affect change in U.S. terror policies. Why not focus on things for which you can actually have an impact?
For FPM this criticism of U.S. sponsored terror suddenly is transformed into "Romance" and "Support" for brutal regimes that happen to be enemies of the U.S. Why doesn't his criticism also make him a supporter of U.S. client terrorist regimes in El Salvador or Guatamala or Colombia? How about Uzbhekistan where they like to boil people alive, rape them with broken bottles, and torture children in front of their parents in order to supply information to the CIA? He's never tied to those regimes because those regimes are U.S. clients. They are our buddies, so their terrorism and torture isn't something that arouses attention. It's only when enemies of the state engaged in evil behavior that FPM will notice.
He is demonized here for asking us to look in the mirror. He's demonized for asking us to apply the same standards to ourselves that we demand of others. For this he's supposedly in love with the Soviet Union and Islamic fundamentalism. It's so preposterous it's amazing to me that anyone can believe it.
One other point. We're told that Chomsky "lauded" Nasrallah and Nasrallah calls for the destruction of Israel and the U.S. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan we might have praised those that took up arms to repel them. Is this the same as saying that we agree with everything they say? Is this the same as saying we like the way they treat women? Their country was invaded and they took up arms against a vastly superior military and they fought. I have to respect that. I don't support the destruction of Israel or the United States and neither does Noam Chomsky, despite the caricatures you would like to offer. Nasrallah does deserve a measure of respect for what he has done. Lebanon was invaded without any credible pretext. Multiple thousands of civilians were killed rapidly (20,000). Lebanon has fought bravely and repelled Israel to some extent, though Israel still occupies parts of Lebanon. I can respect that and respect the Afghan resistance without advocating everything they say.
And by the way, I used to be an avid FPM reader, until I learned how much of the story they omit from the discussion. Run in to an informed person and if you're armed with the knowledge provided by the people here you'll lose the argument every time. Pick up a book by Noam Chomsky and learn about what your not hearing here.
[...] all weaving the “Mental Burqa.” Pretending to counter Feminism, it is this error’s mirror version of the Marxist construct of gender [...]
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[...] The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror. With the decline of communism, the Left began to support Islamism. Whereas journalists, novelists and activists led the charge in the first wave, Glazov explains in the second half of the book [Unholy Alliance, the most vociferous defenders of Islamism now come from the Ivory Tower. [...]
[...] [...]
[...] The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror. With the decline of communism, the Left began to support Islamism. Whereas journalists, novelists and activists led the charge in the first wave, Glazov explains in the second half of the book [Unholy Alliance, the most vociferous defenders of Islamism now come from the Ivory Tower. [...]