Islamic Radicalism and Us

I believe that there are three fonts of radical Islamism/Islamic Fascism today. One is the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt, two is the Saudi regime in Saudi Arabia and, three is in Pakistan. I believe all three states are deeply involved in funding, supporting and manipulating Islamic movements throughout the world. I think there is plenty of evidence connecting, for example, the Saudia Arabia and Pakistan to Al-Qaida both in creating it in the first place and nurturing, aiding, directing it to perform terrorist acts in the West. Though this opinion is somewhat controversial plenty of analysts have connected those two countries to Al-Qaida. Bin Laden, if he is still alive, and his top people are in Pakistan as are the Taliban they were allowed to escape, from Afghanistan, through a deal with ISI who are largely calling the shots in Afghanistan as they have for a couple of decades.

If it were not for nations supporting terrorism I doubt it would get very far--there would be a different kind of radical Islam akin to Hamas and Hezbollah which are not, in my view, terrorist organizations primarily but rather organizations that use so-called terrorism as a military weapon because they face overwhelming Israeli military superiority. Hezbollah and Hamas have no choice as full spectrum organizations whose main function is to create a convivial society in the face of massive corruption on the part of "respectable" officials (Government of Lebanon and PLO) and, at the same time, military opposition by the Israeli government who want corrupt politicians in countries around them that they can bribe and threaten.

Al-Qaida in contrast only exists to carry out terrorist acts, which is why I believe they are largely directed by intelligence services of the above-mentioned countries. The U.S. and possibly European and certainly Israeli intelligence also support the existence of Al-Qaida (though I do not believe they "guide" it) because it gives them and enemy that will never go away (since they are, largely, agents of "friendly" countries). This explains the notion of permanent war the very state of social reality that Orwell warned us about. Permanent war is the perfect situation for the institutionalization of a permanent international oligarchy. Since this "War on Terror" is so unpredictable it cannot suffer from the disease of diplomacy as the Cold War ultimately did--it seemed logical to the public that, after a while, to negotiate with the enemy rather than risk planetary extinction. There are no such pressures on the War on Terror--there are no real consequences to continuing the war other than a permanent financial drain and, as long as there are bread and circuses, no one will care in the short and medium term.

I would refer, ultimately, to many statements made after 9/11 by news commentators and politicians on all parts of the political spectrum welcoming a "sense of unity" in the American people like it was some kind of Godsend; furthermore, commentators were almost giddy at the idea that the struggle against terrorism eliminated moral ambiguity and enabled us to think in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys" which is a huge psychological relief to the problems of post-modernism. Newscasters were ready to present themselves as soldiers for the cause, many young people volunteered to join the military. Prison camps in Afghanistan had cell-blocks named after countries wherein terrorist incidents had been inflicted on Americans, people urged the military to have the names of loved ones inscribed on bombs destined to slaughter Iraqis, people were rounded up simply for looking Islamic and so on. War offers society a relief from internal contradictions both politically and socially and it is my belief from reading the writings of neo-cons with great interest in the 90's that they believed that the survival of the West was in danger not through external threat but through a "loss of nerve", through a descent into sensualism and moral depravity, through a loss of respect for authority, through the loss of a collective sense of purpose. They believed and still believe that the West needs to find its discipline and virtue through struggle. At the time I agreed with their analysis to some degree; I differed from the neo-cons in that I did not believe such a return to virtue should occur through warfare but through spiritual and religious renewal through religious experiences as described by William James in Varieties of Religious Experience. I thought that when faced with the emptiness of consumerism people would begin to peel away from it as an ideology. Because the neo-cons are essentially atheists it is clear they would not want what I wanted.

At the time (the 90's) I believed there would be a smooth transition to spiritual values through the meeting of the great external threat I believed we faced: global warming and environmental degradation. I felt the struggle to create a convivial life in the face of these threats would be a creative struggle that would, in the end, demand a return to the extolling of a virtuous life and social cohesion through more communal activities in place of the current "cocooning" that is occurring in the McMansions and on-line activities that keep people from truly interacting. I was wrong and naive. The reason why global warming is and was and will be largely ignored in the U.S. is that the current rulers need to have the public massively consume and afraid in order to keep their incomes coming in. "It's the economy, stupid" is the mantra--if doing something about global warming would lower the income of the rich by 5% this would be intolerable.

So, I finally came to the conclusion that the problems of our world are largely about the lack of virtue and social responsibility by the elites and the rich. Societies have always been dependent on the condition and culture of the elites--what "the people" think and do is, historically speaking, largely irrelevant--it is clear they can be manipulated today perhaps even better than in days of yore. Most people like and require authority and a mythical framework within which they can live--making public policy does not fit. Making public policy is up to the elites--how they feel and think about these issues will determine our futures. Before you jump on me on the elites, I don't mean they are a secret organization I just mean that they are those who are most powerful and rich. I pretty much got my POV on the state of modern elites from the book The Revolt of the Elites.