Why Do Leftists Like Islamic Terrorists So Much?

[jordan179]

(this started as a reply to banner's posted question of the same name)

Introduction

Why do leftists (socialists/communists) like islamic terrorists so much?

Comments

[fpb]

Frankly, you wasted a great deal of space. The reason for the immediate and unthinking empathy between hard left of whatever colour (and a lot of the hardest left is not necessarily marxist or even socialist - take the anarchists, for instance) and Islamofascists, is that they both are institutionally in revolt against things as they are, and that they both believe it possible to have a perfect social order on this earth. This gives them all the same enemies, almost the same rhetoric, pretty much the same mood, and pretty much the same procedures. Add to this that in all cases the really dominant element is the hate of reality - to which the various ideals and beliefs are really appendages or excuses - and you realize that there really is no reason why they should not go together.

[jordan179]

Well, I tend to think about things primarily in their historical contexts, and there was a time when the hard Left would not have sympathized with the Islamofascists. As a matter of fact, there was a time just a quarter-century ago when the Soviet Union was stymied in conquest by an alliance between America and the Islamofascists, in the Soviet-Afghan War.

The reason for the long essay was to show how reality "failed" the Left, over a prolonged period of time, thus reducing them to the despair required for them to cheer for the Islamofascists -- who stand for pretty much everything the Left opposes -- save for opposition to the world order.

In other words, the Left is now so desperate it will take any allies.

[fpb]

No, no, no, no, no, no. Your problem, as someone else told you, is that you make a heap of everything from middling Democrats to black-banner anarchists and imagine that they are all of one mind and one purpose. What has been happening is a flattening of most of Western public opinion - manipulated, of course, by the media - on the traditional positions of the extreme, especially Marxist, left. These people, let me tell you, have been pro-Palestinian for decades. The links between the PLO and European terrorists in the seventies are well known: it is certain that the PLO trained hundreds of Italian Red Brigade members in its camps. Some of them eventually converted to Islam, like the hideous Hamza Roberto Piccardo, the Muslim Brotherhood's man in Italy. What is new is that what was once a murderous lunatic fringe that no respectable Social Democrat (or Italian Communist - the Italian Communists were practically the same as Social Democrats in the seventies and early eighties) would touch with a barge-pole, has now drifted into

[jordan179]

No, no, no, no, no, no. Your problem, as someone else told you, is that you make a heap of everything from middling Democrats to black-banner anarchists and imagine that they are all of one mind and one purpose.

I don't, actually, where American politics are concerned. In America, only the most extreme left wing of the Democrat Party actually likes the Islamofascists or wants them to win (joined, amusingly enough, by a few extreme-right Republicans). From what I've heard (and from what you're confirming) European leftists are a good deal more radical.

What has been happening is a flattening of most of Western public opinion - manipulated, of course, by the media - on the traditional positions of the extreme, especially Marxist, left. These people, let me tell you, have been pro-Palestinian for decades.

Yes, especially because (back during the Cold War) the Soviets were one of the PLO's main funding sources.

What is new is that what was once a murderous lunatic fringe that no respectable Social Democrat (or Italian Communist -

[fpb]

They will not take over. But in the hypothetical case, what will happen is that most of those people will quite happily convert and join the secret police and the re-education camp guards.