by Sunsara Taylor, Revolution
As the U.S.'s crimes against humanity in the Middle East mount, it is of tremendous importance for people in the U.S. to honestly confront and rise to the profound challenges and responsibilities before us in bringing this to a halt. In this spirit, I welcomed the argument made by Hadas Thier and Aaron Hess in the Socialist Worker on April 20, 2007 entitled Standing up to Islamophobia, even while I find their central arguments to not only be wrong, but harmful.
I do not doubt that Thier and Hess want to oppose U.S. wars of aggression and their accompanying assault on Muslims, Arabs and South Asians living in the U. S. But they end up arguing for an approach that will neither meet the actual challenges of opposing the U.S. “crusade,” nor bring forward new, truly liberating possibilities here and around the world. They end up in this unfortunate place through the use of bad logic, flawed methodology, and a duck-from-unpleasant-realities epistemology (method for arriving at what is true).
Let's look at how this is so.
“Standing Up” quotes George Bush as arguing, “The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation, the right of all people to speak and worship and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism.”
Then, they write, “Unfortunately, some voices on the left--even radical sections of the antiwar movement--accept these same terms.” They go on to quote from an article of mine: “Increasingly, humanity is being confronted with two intolerable choices: Bush's crusade for empire or a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist response… The Bush regime has committed crimes on a far greater scale and is by far the greater danger to humanity… but both are complete nightmares. Both reinforce and feed off each other, and as they grow, they suck up the air to breathe for secular and progressive forces in this country and around the world… People in their hundreds of millions--in this country and around the world--must be presented with a third option, an option that refuses to choose between crusading McWorld or reactionary Jihad.”
On their face, these two positions could not be any less the “same terms”; Bush is extolling U.S. imperialist aggression while I am calling for resistance powerful enough to stop it. But it is only by ignoring this glaring difference that Thier/Hess can, first, sloppily insist that my condemnation of Islamic fundamentalism accepts the same terms as those set by the Bush regime, and second, conveniently avoid having to distinguish between two very different kinds of opposition to the actions of the U.S. in the Middle East.
In the face of an unjust war on Iraq and Afghanistan, there are both the just demands of the broad masses of people who oppose the U.S. occupation and ambitions to control the whole region, as well as the reactionary, theocratic opposition that reflects the interests of outmoded strata within those countries. The need to support the just demands of the people should not be conflated with supporting the reactionary fundamentalist forces, nor should the ideology and program of these fundamentalists be equated with the interests of the broad masses in the region.
“Outmoded”: A Scientific Term, Not a Curse-word
To call these fundamentalist forces "outmoded" is not some swear word, nor a reflection of some kind of "prejudice," as implied by the Thier/Hess article. "Outmoded" and reactionary speaks to the content of their own specific version of a very oppressive program for the masses of people in these countries. And on another level, "outmoded strata" expresses the class relations involved. These forces represent old ruling strata in these societies--not the interests of the masses of the people.
These forces--and the program they advance (whatever their individual class origins)--reflect and advocate "traditional," largely "feudal based" class relations in these oppressed countries. Some of these clerics are directly tied to big semi-feudal landholding interests. (This was true, for example, in Iran, which is discussed more below.) But, in any case, their program is explicitly an appeal to, and a program for, the reinforcement of "traditional" relations of these societies. And the complex pattern we see of cooperation and conflict between these forces and the imperialists reflects, ultimately, the complex and contradictory relation of imperialist domination of these countries to feudalism. In short, the imperialists both depend on and "prop up" these old oppressive relations while at the same time they undermine them with new "modern" forms of exploitation which transform and disrupt those old relations.1
Thier/Hess argue against clumping all of fundamentalist Islam together and there are, indeed, some differences among the various Islamic trends. However, anyone seriously interested in understanding the region and the ideological factors that are shaping events there can not ignore the unpleasant fact that there is a common thrust to these trends. This ideology (fundamentalist religion) has taken the very concrete form of a theocratic program in countries around the region, despite some local variations and even conflicts within this broad trend. In this era, taking up religious literalism of any kind as a political program is taking up a program full of outmoded and oppressive content--content that came from the ancient societies out of which the religious texts emerged. In imposing it on the modern world what you get is what we’ve seen everywhere fundamentalism gets a foothold: vicious patriarchy and bigotry, religious warfare, “honor killings,” and the promotion of unscientific, superstitious ignorance. The treatment of women is one of the most fundamental questions among the oppressed themselves and a criteria of how any struggle for liberation should be judged. The fundamentalist outlook and agenda that says the literal interpretation of religious texts should be “law” or the “highest law”--whether it be Sharia law or Judeo-Christian biblical law--goes against fundamental rights of freedom of conscience and equality between people that have been fought for and are needed for a decent society in the 21st century. These things--whether they are being imposed by Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, by the Taliban in Afghanistan, by the state in Iran, or by “oppositional” movements--must be unequivocally rejected, not ignored, prettified, or tailed with identity politics.
The breadth of support for this reactionary fundamentalist program has grown in direct proportion to screamingly unjust imperialist attacks on the people of these countries. Today, the influence of very harmful and reactionary forms of Islamic fundamentalism have the initiative in the Middle East. The brutality of the U.S. occupation and the vacuum of legitimate authority has ignited sectarian religious violence and the rapid growth of opposition to the occupation that has a fundamentalist vision for the country. The U.S., despite all its talk about coming to the aid of women oppressed by the Taliban, has continued to back and install reactionary clerics and sectarian religious forces in the countries it has occupied. All of this complicates the tasks of secular, progressive, revolutionary, and communist movements in that region and demands a different way forward for the masses of people.
Religious Fundamentalism Does NOT Represent the Interests of the Masses
The dominant varieties of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East today, while their ideological roots trace back earlier, began to develop as a political force in the aftermath of World War 2 when the imperial powers forged new forms of semi-colonial and semi-feudal state structures in these countries that diminished the position of many clerics and other traditional feudal power relations. These forces took a major leap in the last couple decades, as many were consciously built up and promoted by the U.S. in opposition to the Soviet Union’s influence in the region. And this leap was greatly accelerated, too, by the effects of a post-Mao coup in China which ended China as an inspiring force for revolutionary change in the world, along with the end of the national liberation struggle in Vietnam. Islamic fundamentalism, in effect, stepped into a kind of secular nationalist, revolutionary, and communist "leadership vacuum" on a world level.
The U.S. has had a contradictory relationship with the Islamic Fundamentalist movements--backing them when it has served their interests and attempting to crush them when these same forces have turned on U.S. interests or come into conflict with it. The decline of British colonialism and the rise of neo-colonialism in this strategic region has often come wrapped in the garb of “modernity” imposed from above--with the free market driving millions of peasants off the land, hurling them into the urban shantytowns and refugee camps. The penetration of U.S. investment and neo-colonial control also disrupted and undermined the traditional semi-feudal power centers and the position of the clerics in these societies. The ripping up of the old social fabric and the chaos, impoverishment, and wrenching apart and refashioning of dependent economies pliable to more thorough and vicious exploitation and plunder of these countries also led to the development of ideological (and not just economic) responses to the imposition of imperialism from the “West.”
All this has fed the rise of Islamic parties and movements that have challenged the forms of rule and alliances that U.S. imperialism has struck in particular countries--and most often these political religious movements have reflected the interests of this outmoded strata of clerics and feudal forces whose position has been disrupted. Their reactionary ideology and political agendas do not represent the interests of the desperate and displaced peasantry and the impoverished and rebellious urban masses they have recruited as foot-soldiers, just as a Christian fascist like Pat Robertson does not represent the interests of the people in this country who follow him--many of them responding to the uncertainty and parasitism that imperialist globalization has visited on their own lives. Just because something has a big following among sections of the oppressed does not mean that it is a good thing.
Lessons from Iran that Should Be Learned from and Not Be Repeated
The Islamic Republic of Iran emerged out of a revolutionary struggle of millions against the U.S.-backed Shah in 1979 after which Khomeini, a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah, moved in stages to consolidate power. Thousands of genuinely anti-imperialist forces--especially communists but also other secular, nationalist, and even more liberal Islamic forces--were rounded up, tortured, and butchered and tens of thousands more were jailed and forced into exile. Women who refused to wear the hijab were whipped, beaten, and arrested and the legal system was changed so that the testimony of one man was equal to that of two women. In 1988 more than 10,000 political prisoners were systematically mass murdered by the Islamic state.
As part of coming to power in 1979, these theocratic forces presented themselves, and drew mass appeal, from an "anti-imperialist" pose. While they had real conflicts with a particular U.S. regime (the Shah of Iran), Khomeini and his forces were reactionary theocrats, not leaders of an anti-imperialist struggle. The real tragedy, and lesson, of the Iranian revolution was that revolutionary forces joined in spreading the illusion that these were anti-imperialist forces to be aligned with and tailed. For this, the masses of Iran have suffered disastrous consequences.
Blindness to the class basis and political content of Islamic movements--whose agenda is imposing theocratic rule and Sharia law--will leave people unprepared for the challenges of the war the Bush regime is actively plotting against Iran. Bush will again pose people’s options as standing with your country or the “terrorists,” with Christianity (or modernity, depending on his audience) or with Islamic rule.
Those opposing the Iraq war and Bush’s "War on Terror" have to firmly direct their main efforts at their own government and at stopping what is by far the greater reactionary force--that of U.S. imperialism. But that does NOT mean having to support the rise of reactionary clerics in Iraq or the theocrats presently ruling Iran. People can and must learn to differentiate between the just demands and struggle for national liberation and the reactionary and theocratic programs of outmoded forces posturing and pimping off the sentiments of broad sections of these societies for national liberation.
New-Democratic Revolution
In oppressed nations like Iran, the path to breaking the hold of imperialism and overcoming feudalism is new-democratic revolution which, unlike the democratic revolution of previous centuries, is led by the proletarian (working) class and its vanguard party. In the context of a new-democratic revolution, it is possible and generally correct to unite with other strata. This certainly includes the peasants in the countryside--along the vast numbers of displaced peasants who've been thrown into shantytown misery; and, further, it is generally possible to unite with sections of smaller capitalists who have real conflict with imperialism over the subordination of all national development to global imperial interests. And unity can even be built with non-theocratic religious forces. All this must be led as part of a program that radically breaks with all the structures of dependency on imperialism, and with enslaving feudalism--as the first stage of a revolutionary program for getting rid of all exploitation and oppression and the social relations this gives rise to.
This is totally different from the program of backward-looking theocratic, feudal and "traditional" forces. Among the first tasks of the new democratic revolutions that have taken place in places like China or Vietnam--before they came to an end--was to uproot forms of semi-feudalism that viciously exploited the peasantry. These genuine struggles for national liberation were fought with both goals and methods of warfare that are distinctly different than the methods of warfare being used in the Middle East today; they were people’s wars that relied on and united the people to fight imperialism. And even the way the wars were fought and the forces they relied on reflected the aims of these revolutions which included, for instance, the liberation of women.
On another level, the more that there is powerful resistance in this country--resistance that cannot be hidden from the people of the world, including in areas that are targets of U.S. aggression and justifiably hotbeds of hatred “against America”--the more that two things will happen. First, this will contribute to halting the unjust wars being waged in our names as well as creating more favorable conditions for revolution within the U.S. Second, this will be giving more "air to breathe" to the secular, progressive, and genuinely revolutionary forces who do exist in the Middle East, including in Iran.
Who’s Offended by the Truth About Tony Soprano’s House?
Thier/Hess then pick up on a statement from Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party: "living in the U.S. is a little bit like living in the house of Tony Soprano. You know, or you have a sense, that all the goodies that you've gotten have something to do with what the master of the house is doing out there in the world."
They quote a later passage from Avakian next: "But September 11 was a rude announcement that there's a price to be paid for living in Tony Soprano's house, for continuing to go along with these profoundly unequal relations in the world and the way that your government, and this system fundamentally, bludgeons people in the world into conditions of almost unspeakable suffering in order to keep this whole thing going, and in order, yes, for some 'goodies' to be handed out to sections of people in the 'house'."
Thier/Hess argue that, "Avakian's view that ordinary working Americans were sharing in the 'goodies' is false. Working-class people in the U.S. have also been forced to pay--with continuing cuts in social services, with shredded civil liberties, and with their lives, in the case of the soldiers used as cannon fodder in Iraq and Afghanistan--for U.S. wars." Thier & Hess can only make their argument by cutting out a critical part of Avakian’s argument that refutes the very point they are making--a point to which we’ll return later.
But first, let’s answer Thier/Hess's argument that working class people in this country aren't benefiting from U.S. imperialism with two words: clean water.
Look around the planet: thousands die each day due to lack of clean drinking water in the third world--clean water which is taken for granted in the U.S. But the disparities go far beyond just water. In this era of imperialism, there is a fundamental divide in the world between oppressed and oppressor nations. Both the economic advantage and the relative peace and stability enjoyed by large sections of people living in the oppressor nations depend on the wars being waged across the globe, the super-profits being sucked out of the labor of children and others, the natural resources being privatized and stolen, and the hundreds of millions of people being driven from their lands and hurled across the globe in an ever more desperate search to survive by being exploited even more ruthlessly as part of the globalized imperialist economy. All of which is propelled by capitalist accumulation and enforced by the military force of the U.S. and other imperialists.
The irony of Thier/Hess's position is that while they accuse me of accepting Bush's imperialist chauvinism, their argument both ignores this shocking divide between oppressed and oppressor nations and sells short the people of this country, including many who are objectively privileged because of this divide but who can be won to stand with the people of the world. These people can be won to a better position not by appealing merely to their economic interests (their loss of social services) or ignoring this imperialist divide in the world, but by telling people the truth about how the wealth of this country comes from its plunder of the world and challenging them to act against this world system of imperialism that is the common enemy of the vast majority of humanity whether they reside in the citadels of imperialism or in the vast areas of the world being plundered by imperialist globalization.
And it should be pointed out that the kind of "economist" reasoning argued here by Thier/Hess also goes with capitulationist political programs that downplay the danger of theocratic political movements that have gained powerful ruling class backing in the U.S. Christian fascist influence over public life is being accepted and accommodated in the name of political pragmatism ("let's ignore this and unite with people's economic interest”) and in the name of "respecting religious faith." Meanwhile abortion, science, and critical thought in education are under serious assault, and these forces are providing the ideological backing of biblical righteousness for a U.S. imperial crusade in the world. The fundamental interests of the majority of people in the U.S. do not lie in living in Tony Soprano’s house.
Many in this country already gravitate towards a kind of internationalism in their sentiment that American lives are not worth more than the lives of others. This should be built upon as well as deepened with the scientific understanding of proletarian internationalism, that is the scientific understanding that, as Avakian has put it, “The interests, objectives, and grand designs of the imperialists are not our interests--they are not the interests of the great majority of people in the U.S. nor of the overwhelmingly majority of people in the world as a whole. And the difficulties the imperialists have gotten themselves into in pursuit of these interests must be seen, and responded to, not from the point of view of the imperialists and their interests, but from the point of view of the great majority of humanity and the basic and urgent need of humanity for a different and better world, for another way.”
I encourage everyone to read the piece from which this was drawn (“Bringing Forward Another Way”) in its entirety as part of fulfilling the responsibility of people living in the United States to understand and bring to a halt the tremendous crimes being committed--and the even greater crimes being prepared--in our names.
As Bob Avakian went on to say in the passage Thier/Hess quoted from, “We need a different world than one where there are a few houses of Tony Soprano, surrounded by a seemingly endless sea of suffering and oppressed humanity, living in terrible squalor and under undisguised tyranny; where the power, wealth and privilege of the relative few depends on, and is grounded in, the exploitation and misery of the many (and where, even within ‘Tony Soprano's house’ itself, there are many who are treated little better than second-class members of the family, or as despised servants). This is a world that cannot, and should not, go on as it is.”
Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution newspaper and sits on the Advisory Board of The World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime
Footnote
1. For example, the imperialists rely on the power of feudal forces in the countryside in many places to keep the masses there under control. (Right now in Iraq, the U.S. is "rediscovering" the great value of "traditional clans" and trying to strike deals to pry them away from the fundamentalist insurgency and help stabilize whole areas for the occupation government.) And, in most oppressed countries, the downtrodden and oppressed conditions of the masses in broad areas of the countryside, together with their close relations to agriculture, helps lower wages overall in these countries and increases the superprofits reaped there by the imperialists. At the same time, capitalist agriculture keeps penetrating into the countryside of these areas and undermines, as well as combines with, older feudal relations there. For more on the dynamics and forms of imperialist domination in the oppressed nations, see America in Decline, Raymond Lotta, pp. 98-112. [back]
*****
Note: The article “Standing up to Islamophobia” by Hadas Thier and Aaron Hess (from the Socialist Worker, April 20, 2007) is reprinted in full in this issue Revolution so that readers can follow the debate.
Standing up to Islamophobia
The following article by Hadas Thier and Aaron Hess appeared in the Socialist Worker on April 20, 2007.
At a recent antiwar panel discussion in New York City, Columbia University professor and antiwar activist Hamid Dabashi commented that whenever the U.S. goes to war, it projects an image of itself as the embattled underdog--an “army of Sparta,” rather than an aggressive superpower bent on conquest.
When the real underdogs resist, however, they are inevitably depicted by the U.S. political and media establishment as driven by an oppressive ideology, with the ultimate goal of undermining “Western values” of democracy and freedom.
Following the U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1898--at the dawn of the American empire--Theodore Roosevelt characterized the Cubans he helped to conquer as “moral degenerates.” In reality, as novelist Mark Twain pointed out, the U.S. imperialists were the “true savages.”
Since September 11, 2001, Islam has become the target of choice in U.S. ruling circles. “The war we fight today is more than a military conflict,” George Bush declared in a speech last year. “It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation, the right of all people to speak and worship and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism.”
If it were only Bush and the discredited neocons of his administration who used this rhetoric, that would be one thing. But Democratic Party politicians are also quick to denounce “Islamic extremism” and warn of the threat of “fundamentalist” countries like Iran.
Unfortunately, some voices on the left--even radical sections of the antiwar movement--accept these same terms. For example, Sunsara Taylor of the pro-impeachment group World Can’t Wait (WCW) and a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), wrote recently of the “intolerable choice…between crusading McWorld or reactionary Jihad.”
It is important that the antiwar movement reject the distorted picture of Islam presented by pro-war conservatives, but partly echoed in comments like these. Our job is to oppose the entire project of the “war on terror,” including the racist dogma attached to it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
OVER THE years, Islamophobia has been given an intellectual gloss by a whole industry of well-paid “experts” on Islam and the Arab world. Two of the most renowned examples are Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington.
At the core of their writings is the idea that Islam and the Arab world have produced a static, unchanging civilization averse to Enlightenment ideals that they claim are the sole province of the “West”--such as religious tolerance, women’s rights and democracy.
These views have little use for historical facts. For example, while Western Europe remained stuck for centuries in what historians call the “Dark Ages,” the Islamic world was the center of intellectual inquiry, preserving and advancing the scientific breakthroughs of the ancient world.
And when it comes to religious intolerance, the oppression of women and barbaric dictatorships, Christianity’s history stands out as especially bloody.
No matter: Huntington argues that the “East” and the “West” are headed for an inevitable "clash of civilizations"--the title of his book that became required reading for the neocons after 9/11.
Politicians and the corporate media adopted these ideas to justify the “war on terror.” In fact, with their claims about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda exposed as frauds, the caricature of Muslims who “hate our freedoms” is one of the few justifications for war and occupation they can still turn to.
Of course, phrases like “Islamic fascism” aren’t used to describe the repressive, theocratic regimes bankrolled and backed by Washington--such as the Saudi monarchy or the military dictatorship in Pakistan. Only Washington’s enemies are branded with the “f”-word.
Unfortunately, significant voices on the left have accepted the core of the “clash of civilizations” idea.
Probably the worst example was an October 2005 article in The Progressive called “Our al-Qaeda Problem”--which was accompanied by a cover drawing of a menacing, turbaned man carrying a huge scimitar blade and towering over a cowering white figure.
Sunsara Taylor of WCW doesn’t employ this racist imagery. But she does accept the framework that the Progressive article shared with pro-war views.
“[I]ncreasingly, humanity is being confronted with two intolerable choices: Bush’s crusade for empire or a reactionary Islamic fundamentalist response,” Taylor wrote in the RCP’s Revolution newspaper. “The Bush regime has committed crimes on a far greater scale and is by far the greater danger to humanity…but both are complete nightmares. Both reinforce and feed off each other, and as they grow, they suck up the air to breath for secular and progressive forces in this country and around the world…
“People in their hundreds of millions--in this country and around the world--must be presented with a third option, an option that refuses to choose between crusading McWorld or reactionary Jihad.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE “JIHAD vs. McWorld” idea comes from the title of a book by Benjamin Barber, written in 1995.
While offering some critiques of U.S.-led “market fundamentalism,” Barber’s book takes more than a few pages straight out of the anti-Muslim playbook.
For example, a typically muddled passage reads: “[A]lthough it is clear that Islam is a complex religion that is by no means synonymous with Jihad, it is relatively inhospitable to democracy, and that inhospitality in turn nurtures conditions favorable to parochialism, anti-modernism, exclusiveness and hostility to ‘others’--the characteristics that constitute what I call Jihad.”
There are many problems with Barber’s understanding of Islam, as with the one Taylor adopts.
For one, it tends to lump together very different tendencies among Muslims, as well as contending Islamist organizations that regard one another as enemies.
It should go without saying that al-Qaeda, a rootless terrorist network initially formed with the collaboration of the CIA, has nothing in common with a mass movement like Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Palestine--nor is there any use in an understanding of Islam that makes no distinction between the Shia-dominated Iranian government and the Sunni Wahabists of Saudi Arabia.
The “Jihad vs. McWorld” view also fails to recognize how and why Islamist oppositional movements rose to prominence in the first place.
Initially encouraged in some cases by Western powers as a counterweight to Arab nationalism--the first “fundamentalist” state was Saudi Arabia, brought into being by Britain and the U.S. to secure the flow of oil from the Middle East--Islamists gained a mass base with the decline of secular nationalist movements.
Support for organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah isn’t primarily the result of a commitment to religious tenets, but because they represent a political alternative that has stood up against imperialism--chiefly, the U.S. and its main ally Israel.
To understand religiously based movements, the starting point for socialists is not the religious ideology, but the social and political forces such movements represent.
Of course, socialists have important criticisms to make of Islamist forces. As in all religions, elements of Islam are explicitly conservative--for example, the attitude that women are the inferiors of men. Such positions are barriers to building the most effective resistance to imperialism.
But the “Jihad vs. McWorld” view fails to recognize that Islamist organizations were able to gain a mass following by representing an alternative of resistance.
To promote such views can only disorient antiwar activism--especially at a time when the U.S. is threatening a war on Iran, a “reactionary Islamic fundamentalist response,” according to Taylor’s view.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The RCP’s Chairman Bob Avakian gave voice to an even deeper confusion in an article that claimed living in America was “like living in the house of Tony Soprano”--where all the “goodies” have “something to do with what the master of the house is doing out there in the world.”
“But September 11,” he went on, “was a rude announcement that there’s a price to be paid for living in Tony Soprano’s house, for continuing to go along with these profoundly unequal relations in the world and the way that your government, and this system fundamentally, bludgeons people in the world into conditions of almost unspeakable suffering in order to keep this whole thing going, and in order, yes, for some ‘goodies’ to be handed out to sections of the population in the ‘house.’…
“All that is being shaken up now. Now, you don’t just get the goodies for ‘living in Tony Soprano’s house’--you get the ‘strangers’ out in the backyard at night.”
Leaving aside the “terrorists in our midst” tone so eerily reminiscent of post-September 11 fear-mongering, Avakian’s view that ordinary working Americans were sharing in the “goodies” is false.
Working-class people in the U.S. have also been forced to pay--with continuing cuts in social services, with shredded civil liberties, and with their lives, in the case of the soldiers used as cannon fodder in Iraq and Afghanistan--for U.S. wars.
Building the strongest possible movement for peace and justice requires clarity about who the victims are and who’s to blame.
It also requires completely rejecting the caricatures about Islam peddled by U.S. leaders to justify their war at home and abroad. If the antiwar movement fails to thoroughly expose the distortions and myths about “reactionary Islamic fundamentalism,” it allows American rulers to keep using one of their most powerful ideological weapons for continuing their wars.
What about Christophobia? Any great leader will immediately recognize that hating on Christianity is sure to alienate Black and Latinos (not to mention Filipinos, Poles, and more) all of whom you need on board for a revolution.
Posted by: dlh | June 09, 2007 at 01:32 PM
I do love the idea that challenging an idea or practice is based in an irrational fear (even if irrational fear is what you're challenging)!
I'm not afraid of Jesus, because he isn't coming back. I am afraid of the death grip religion has on many people, and the mealy-mouthed responses to accept fundamentalism in public life.
It's also not just Islam and Christianity we're talking about here, or at least it shouldn't be. the BJP Hindus have launched one of the bloodiest pogroms in history just a few years ago in Gujarat, India. Similar forces are operating in the Nepali Terrai (or plains region bordering India).
The outmoded point is crucial, as is applying a class analysis to the situation.
The socialist movement irrevocably split in the lead-up to the first world war. Some said we had to support our own national governments because they were "democratic" imperialist, others that Anglo-Franco hegemony had to be defeated, etc.
It was Lenin who said the proletariat must turn imperialist war into class war. It was Lenin who did it, and the world's first socialist country was born.
Not a simple matter of just taking the position! But Sunsara's point about Iran, and pretending Islamism is something it isn't is worth not just pondering, but adopting and spreading.
Are we about liberation?
The other thing really worth digging into are the breakthroughs that aren't accepting this whole BS "choice".
Venezuela and Cuba. Nepal. Our revolutonary comrades in the Philippines and Iran. Mexico.
The choice for the vast majority of humanity isn't neo-liberal imperialism or religious backwardness. But localized tyranny against imperial hegemony IS in the air – and if we don't challenge it and break through with another way – that prophecy will be self-fulfilling.
Posted by: JB | June 09, 2007 at 01:43 PM
I am always quite perplexed when people speak about not "alienating" ethnic christians...I don't know, I am an Atheist who was raised in a Spanish speaking household and no one is bothered by the fact I don't attend my Catholic Church any longer...in fact, I don't know if ANY of my Black, "Latino," Filipino, Irish, Polish, Italian friends go to church even on a regular basis...all declared Catholics and confirmed in it, but honestly they more or less right down to it couldn't give a fuck. We are still acting as if religion is important to these peoples' lives, things aren't as they use to be...yeah maybe they get a bit mad when you rip a picture of the Pope, but they don't listen to the "infallible" word of the Papacy.
On Sunsara Taylor's polemic...I don't know, I surely agree with the spirit of this but I think this theory of "outmoded" is inherently problematic. We of course shouldn't act as if Islamists are going to be a revolutionary order, that is lets not take the typical Marcyist WWP view and support them beccause of the "Global Conflict" or whatever, but on the otherside WE know little less to nothing about the actual Islamists and the different trends...as I have expressed before in the posts with Repeater...we declare this thing to be "outmoded" but why is particularly "outmoded?" Like any other political partisans Islamists have their own vision of creating society and their political project. Now you can say what you will about the political view of the Proletariat being more "advanced," but the question is how does one measure what is advanced to begin with? It can only begin with the politically partisan position of a Communist...and of course we think it is outmoded, because the very fact we are not Islamists and we are indeed Communists; however let us just put it this way...No one believes in what is False...that is, if people think something is incorrect, they tend not to believe in it. Islamists are growing because of the contradictions of THIS society, not because of Feudal relations, but because of the relations of Imperialist hegemony...Sunsara is wrong in belittling the fact that the Islamist movement could have only been possible with the intelligistia and professionals, and support from oppressed peoples...It could have only been the death of the Pan-Arabic movement or its selling out by people like Nasser that made Islamists an alternative. It isn't merely Iranian landlords at work here.
Should we battle "Islamophobia" thought? I think not. I think in a certain sense we should have what Zizek has called the "Radical Intolerance." What is the point of being a Communist if you "tolerate" Islamists anyway. The only thing I can see us doing is being honest, the Islamists are best are our "strange bed fellow" against US Imperialism, but beyond this...I hope secular Left-wing, and if possible MAOISTS, do sprout from the Middle East and smash Islamists' Ideologically, Spiritually, and perhaps even Physically (in cases of Iranian Theocracy). Maybe I am an Islamophobe; however then again I am indeed a Christophobe, Lamaophobe, and Capitalophobe...all things I am happily intolerant of.
Posted by: ShineThePath | June 09, 2007 at 03:01 PM
Great fucking article! This was really needed right now. MIM is just gonna have a fit! Hahahahaha!
Posted by: Red Heretic | June 09, 2007 at 03:47 PM
Yes...this is the line of the RCP=USA and Psuedo-Reds in Nepal? :)
The problem this isn't merely the line of the fringe one man central committee that calls itself MIM, but FRSO (Fight Back) and WWP if I am correct.
Still I think we have to fess up...the embodiment of "the broad masses of people who oppose the U.S. occupation and ambitions to control the whole region," as Sunsara doesn't recognize is a part of the Islamist movements...that is the "masses of people" in a Palestinian concentration camp sometimes support Hamas, Hezbollah, and not PFLP.
Posted by: ShineThePath | June 09, 2007 at 05:42 PM
I really think this article has a LOT to say and is very timely. Really good that this got put up for us to read.
I couldn't help but think whilst reading the "Socialist Worker" article that it was short and without any real grounding for criticism. It just didn't seem to really explain how supporting neither imperialism or it's "enemy" radical Islamists was apparently not possible. I guess they're the attitude that for all the Islamists' faults "at least they're fighting imperialism", which is a dangerous place to be in.
Think of what you can stoop to supporting if you carry this mindset? I find it ghastly that they seem to give only ONE sentence to the issue of where women stand in the world of Islam. I suppose for them to have their support they mustn't look at that rather ugly side of them.
Posted by: ZACK | June 09, 2007 at 09:16 PM
The following passage is from a recent (4/24/07) interview with Ganapathy, General Secretary, Communist Party Of India (Maoist).
I'm posting it not because I fundamentally agree with it, but because it's worth knowing the spectrum of opinion on the topic out there in the Maoist movement.
On the Islamic Upsurge:
Q: But globally the fight is now becoming pro-globalisation versus Islamic upsurge˜in this scheme of things how do you see a classless society?
A: Globalisation is a war on the people and on every value cherished by the people for centuries. Globalisation is the ideology of the market fundamentalists. The market fundamentalists are destroying everything a nation had possessed and preserved for centuries. They promote nothing but sheer greed and self-interest with the sole aim of global hegemony and the means to achieve it is a war on all fronts˜military, economic, political, cultural, psychological. And to achieve this "lofty" goal, they think even the destruction of the world is collateral damage.
There is a people's upsurge against globalization all over the world and Islamic upsurge is an integral part of the worldwide people's upsurge against imperialism, imperialist globalization and war.
A classless society-Communism˜is a conscious human project and has to be built through the transformation of human consciousness. And to achieve this, the first step is to destroy imperialism on a world scale and domestic reaction in every country. Islamic upsurge is a reaction to imperialist globalization and imperialist oppression and exploitation of the world people, and Muslim masses in particular. As long as imperialism exists, and as long as it bolsters up decadent reactionary comprador Islamic regimes in countries of Asia and Africa, it is impossible for the Muslim masses to come out of their fundamentalism. It is only after the destruction of imperialism on a world scale can the Islamic masses come out completely from their obscurantist ideology and values. This will pave the way for the establishment of a classless society.
Q: What is your opinion about Islamic upsurge?
A: The answer to this question is already contained in the above explanation. In essence, we see the Islamic upsurge as a progressive anti-imperialist force in the contemporary world. It is wrong to describe the struggle that is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestinian territory, Kashmir, Chechnya, and several other countries as a struggle by Islamic fundamentalists or as a "clash of civilizations" long back theorized by Samuel Huntington and which is being resurrected by all and sundry today. In essence all these are national liberation wars notwithstanding the role of Islamic fundamentalists too in these struggles. We oppose religious fundamentalism of every kind ideologically and politically as it obfuscates class distinctions and class struggle and keeps the masses under the yoke of class oppression. However, "Islamic fundamentalism", in my opinion, is an ally of the people in their fight against market fundamentalism promoted by the US, EU, Japan and other imperialists.
The upsurge is bound to raise the anti-imperialist democratic consciousness among the Muslim masses and bring them closer with all other secular, progressive and revolutionary forces. I see the Islamic upsurge as the beginning of the democratic awakening of the Muslim masses despite the domination of fundamentalist ideology and outlook in the Islamic movement at present. Our Party supports the Islamic upsurge and seeks a unity with all anti-imperialist forces.
Q: Nasarullah of Hizbollah has recently said that Left should come close to Islamists. In Indian context˜what do you feel?
A: I basically agree with what Nasarullah of Hizbollah has said. One must understand that Nasarullah is referring to the struggles for national liberation from imperialism in Islamic countries.
The need of the hour is to achieve the unity of all forces opposed to imperialism, particularly US imperialism, which is aggressively destroying every human value handed over to us by thousands of years of history and is oppressing every nation of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Left cannot even claim itself to be democratic if it does not initiate steps to unite with the forces in the Islamic movement which are fighting for national liberation from imperialism, particularly US imperialism. All the ongoing movements which are supposed to be led by Islamic forces in various countries as I had mentioned above, are national democratic movements in content. The strong religious language used by the leadership of these movements does not alter their national democratic essence and their anti-imperialist character.
Posted by: G. Frohman | June 09, 2007 at 09:31 PM
Ganapathy is certainly correct in saying that the content of many of these movements led by Islamists, such as Hezbollah, is a national-democratic movement being in essence that is taking a religious form.
What he gets wrong here, and I think this is a dangerous error for our movement, is when he says: "The upsurge is bound to raise the anti-imperialist democratic consciousness among the Muslim masses and bring them closer with all other secular, progressive and revolutionary forces. I see the Islamic upsurge as the beginning of the democratic awakening of the Muslim masses despite the domination of fundamentalist ideology and outlook in the Islamic movement at present. Our Party supports the Islamic upsurge and seeks a unity with all anti-imperialist forces."
I think this is fundamentally wrong. In fact, even though these movements may have a national democratic essence and character at this moment, we also have to keep in mind a) what these movements turn into if they win and b) the way the religious ideology of these movements obfuscates the masses' understanding of what they are doing.
A) These movements, to the extent they are Islamic fundamentalist (as opposed to some more moderate form of Islam), will install regimes no better than the oppressive, neocolonial government of Iran.
B) While the fundamental social forces moving the masses may be national democratic impulses, the religious ideology of the movement obfuscates the masses' own understanding of what they are doing. Thus, the masses do not necessarily move to a higher level progressive and/or anti-imperialist consciousness, but rather come to understand their struggle as a religious struggle, and their consciousness is not necessarily raised toward higher goals.
Posted by: Yes and No, Ganapathy | June 09, 2007 at 10:36 PM
While I think this is a fine article on its own merits, what really strikes me here is the willingness of the RCP to publicly polemicize with the ISO, and the basically respectful tone of the exchange.
Both of these organizations pride themslves in some sense on ignoring the rest of the ostensibly revolutionary left, tat is to say pretending they aren't competing with other communist or socialist groups. While this posture has the virtue of focusing groups on building their own bases rather than in getting into sectarian infighting, it contributes to the larger problem of an intellectually arid environment on the left.
We need much more of this sort of principled open political struggle over line between different groups conducted in a manner that doesn't foreclose cooperation in mass work.
The vast majority of radical and revolutionary-minded activists and organizers out there are not in either of these organizations and quite likely never will be. But we all benefit from vigorous debate of important questions like this.
Kudos to the ISO for initiating this debate and to the RCP for taking it up (and winning the first round IMHO). I hope its not a one-shot thing. It would be nice to read similarly non-antagonistic RCP responses to major political statements coming from WWP, FRSO (both of 'em, but you can't call them "the Mensheviks," okay?), CP, CoC, etc... Taking the lead in opening up these debates in a constructive way will rightly win whoever does it a lot of respect.
Posted by: Christopher Day | June 09, 2007 at 10:59 PM
A little off-topic, but since Shine The Path mentioned MIM, I thought they should at least get credit for this:
Posted by: Christopher Day | June 09, 2007 at 11:24 PM
Never mind. I attempted an embed.
Here's the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=AxT_k3rjMOs
Its a video of Leonard Cohen's "The Partisan."
Posted by: Christopher Day | June 09, 2007 at 11:26 PM
Shine the Path said:
"the embodiment of "the broad masses of people who oppose the U.S. occupation and ambitions to control the whole region," as Sunsara doesn't recognize is a part of the Islamist movements...that is the "masses of people" in a Palestinian concentration camp sometimes support Hamas, Hezbollah, and not PFLP."
What matters is not whether the masses support reactionary poles such as "Hezbollah," but rather, what classes are the leading force in organizations such as Hezbollah, and what do those organizations really represent. Many of the oppressed masses living in the US actually support the US's war for empire. Does that mean we should support the USA?
Posted by: Red Heretic | June 10, 2007 at 12:15 AM
That is simply a false positing of what I have said. Lets begin with first, the statement that the "many of the oppressed masses in the USA" support the war for Empire...First this is just not true, even on the Bourgeois' admission...secondly even if they did, we as Communists are revolutionary defeatists. We are not Populists nor do we bow to Spontaneity. We have are political partisans in it to change the world. We don't support Imperialist aggressors and war despite where the consciousness of people are at. If such were true to begin with, we shouldn't blame the masses but struggle to break such a hold.
Now, unlike your analogy to the USA, the Islamist movements with support from people...like Hamas and Hezbollah have had that support because they fundamentally address the politics of the oppression of their base. That is, the masses support them because they are the very ones OPPRESSED, where after 9/11 people gave their support because of short sighted feelings of Nationalism...it was not in their interest.
That being sad, it is just merely untrue if you believe that it is the Big Bourgeoisie or just Feudalist Landlords who are the leadership of these organizations. As I have said before these Islamists don't merely have a base with the People, but are only possible in existence because of a great many of the intelligstia, who have been historically the leaders of many of these movements....the Iranian Revolution isn't where Islamist thought begeins.
Now does that mean we should support them? I haven't even said that...I merely said lets be honest on who they are and what our relationship to them should be. Whatever happen to "to rebel is jusitified," should Baathists or Islamic Jihad Army put down their guns against US Imperialists merely because they are not Communists? If that is the case...what will be elft of resistance in Iraq...it won't be there.
Posted by: ShineThePath | June 10, 2007 at 01:04 AM
ShineThePath said:
"Now, unlike your analogy to the USA, the Islamist movements with support from people...like Hamas and Hezbollah have had that support because they fundamentally address the politics of the oppression of their base."
s
So lynching women and homosexuals is addressing the oppression of the masses of people? Being agents of (and being created by) the CIA, is addressing the oppression of the masses of people?
It was not without reason that Lenin said that "a revolution is measured by the degree to which it liberates women." These fundamentalist forces are actually reactionary regimes which oppress the masses of people in the middle, and happen to occasionally come into contradiction with their imperialist masters.
ShineThePath said:
"should Baathists or Islamic Jihad Army put down their guns against US Imperialists merely because they are not Communists?"
They should be overthrown by genuine liberation forces in the Middle East, just like the USA. This include many other forces besides communists, such as national liberation forces, etc.
Posted by: Red Heretic | June 10, 2007 at 01:48 AM
oops.
"These fundamentalist forces are actually reactionary regimes which oppress the masses of people in the middle"
Should actually read:
"These fundamentalist forces are actually reactionary regimes which oppress the masses of people in the Middle East"
Posted by: Red Heretic | June 10, 2007 at 01:50 AM
Ok, Hezbullah was not an agent of or created by the CIA. The fact that any particular force may have had interests in common with and accepted aid from the U.S. and its various agencies does not make them agents of the U.S. The real world is more complicated than that, and making comments like this about Hezbullah being a CIA agent organization is not going to get your other political arguments much respect.
Follow the logic of the logic... Lenin and the USSR, agents of the German imperialists. Clearly.
Posted by: Not True | June 10, 2007 at 02:03 AM
Absolutely correct is the person under the moniker of "Not True." The treatment of Islamists as "puppets" who have just "come in conflict" with the US Imperialists is just an incredible lie, a lie popular amongst the left but is just not true...This line is not Maoist at all, it neglects the internal contradictions which produce such movements and ignores the complex relation the US ever had, if they indeed had, with Islamist organizations. Lenin rode on a German train, and there are people to this date convinced he was a conspirator of German Imperialism....
But Red Heretic, it merely shows your philistine attitude to this all...CIA might have given funding to a select few groups (very few), but you bunch them all together as the same.
Furthermore...I am not going to be baited in defending any of that shit you put above, that is defending Iranian Theocracy is not my thing, but is it not you who are not acknowledging the many Islamic Feminist struggles in the Middle East that reject the national-chauvinistic model of what "women's liberation" should look like? Why not also note the many Islamist, including Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and Hezbollah's work with the class oppressed? The painting of Islamism as just a uniformed political movement is once again inadequate.
The fact is Islam defines the primary contradiction in the Middle East, against the Kemal type nation-states, secularized and in the pockets of Imperialists. Who have more or less oppressed, tortured, and murdered for the last century in that region...so when we speak of these things, lets remember the taste of Kemal, Nasser, Hussein, and others is fresh in peoples' minds.
And if "genuine" liberation forces do suddenly sprout from the ground, and materialize out of nothing...then I'll support them, but till then I give my support certainly to the many brave soldiers in Iraq who plant an IEDs on the route of an American Humvee.
Posted by: ShineThePath | June 10, 2007 at 03:56 AM
And what of the woman question, Not True?
Posted by: ZACK | June 10, 2007 at 04:29 AM
Aztecs sacraficed Human Beings...yet if I where to take a time machine back, I give my support to Aztecs over the "horrified" Spaniards.
Posted by: ShineThePath | June 10, 2007 at 04:59 AM
On the Aztec question, historian Friedrich Katz has an article, "Rural Uprisings in Preconquest and Colonial Mexico" (which appears in an anthology he edited, "Riot, Rebellion and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico." Basically he argues that the small body of Spanish conquistadors who initially invaded Mexico tipped the balance of power between the Aztecs and their non-Aztec subjects, (who not only had to had over their surplus product to their overlords but also their children for mass ritual sacrifice) sparking a popular revolt against their rule. Certainly the Tlaxcalans who made common cause with the Spaniards and provided the vast majority of troops for the seige of Tenochitlan were waging a legitimate war of national liberation.
In retrospect we can see that there was a profound miscalculation involved here, but we must not ignore the legitimate popular opposition to the Aztec reign of terror that greased the wheels for Spanish domination. The Aztec regime was cruel beyond measure, even by the prevailing standards of the society it ruled. Those in possession of time machines would have to make a pretty complicated argument to the Tlaxcalans who seized the opportunity to rid themselves of the Aztec yoke.
Posted by: Christopher Day | June 10, 2007 at 08:34 AM
Well put, Chris, and of course that’s one of the reasons why the Spaniards could crush the Aztec regime in a mere two years.
Posted by: Chuck Morse | June 10, 2007 at 10:27 AM
It is totally bizarre that bringing up the truth about the roots of Hezbullah, etc. as something more organic than just being creations of the USA leads to me being asked a question that implies that I am rationalizing or legitimizing bad politics on the question of patriarchy on the part of those organizations.
It seems like cheap rhetorical trick rather than an approach of struggling for the truth.
Anyways, as long as we are on the subject, the stance of Hamas, Hezbullah and other Islamist forces is not monolithic, and shouldn't be treated as such. What can be said is that all these forces are interested in preserving patriarchy in some form (like every other non-communist or non-feminist political force in the world), and that we should oppose them and criticize them for that.
Posted by: NT | June 10, 2007 at 12:46 PM
Quick Response-
Yeah I am aware of all that Chris Day, my point is to answer that "non-sequitur" that the GOP candidates couldn't answer, knowing what I know now, I would have supported Aztec resistance to Spaniards, despite all their cruelity.
Just as now...with no strong leftist resistance presence in Iraq, I support the existing insurgency.
Also I just like to point out that there ARE Islamist feminists, though they don't hold command of organizations such as Hezbollah.
Posted by: STP | June 10, 2007 at 05:31 PM
Not True said:
"Ok, Hezbullah was not an agent of or created by the CIA."
First of all, I wasn't speaking SPECIFICALLY to Hezbollah, but rather speaking generally of the nature of the overwhelming majority of these forces.
Now, with that said, let's talk about Hezbollah's origins. It is well known that Hezbollah is a proxy army of Islamic Republic of Iran (and of course the Ayatollahs), which have spent the overwhelming majority of their history on great terms with the US imperialists and the CIA, and helped the US imperialists and the CIA fight Iraq. These are not anti-imperialist forces at all. Rather, they are agents of the bourgeoisie that have simply come into contradiction with the US imperialist bourgeoisie.
Shine the Path said:
"Lenin rode on a German train, and there are people to this date convinced he was a conspirator of German Imperialism...."
The difference is that groups like the Taliban the Republic of Iran actually did serve US imperialism. Whether or not conspiracy theorists want to make up bullshit about Lenin is a whole different story.
Shine the Path said:
"Furthermore...I am not going to be baited in defending any of that shit you put above, that is defending Iranian Theocracy is not my thing, but is it not you who are not acknowledging the many Islamic Feminist struggles in the Middle East that reject the national-chauvinistic model of what "women's liberation" should look like?"
This is ridiculous! So suddenly, because there are feminist women in the ranks of organizations which are overwhelmingly characterized by the lynching of women and homosexuals, we should support them? What you are doing here is taking obscure secondary lines which exist internally in these reactionary organizations, and blowing them out of proportion to be the overall line and nature of these organizations.
By this logic, everything just becomes a post-modernist narrative, because anyone can just pick and choose what secondary line they want to pick to be the overall line of that group. It doesn't matter if the marines are notorious for raping women, there's a few feminist women in the marines, so they're liberators of women!
However, there ARE some Islamic forces which actually ARE secular and actually do want the liberation of women. Suheir Hammad is a great example of this sort of line. However, this is NOT the line of Hezbollah, of the Republic of Iran, or the Taliban. When I speak about Islamic fundamentalist forces/"Jihad", I'm not talking about Suheir Hammad style lines, I'm talking about the lines of those types of organizations. Perhaps I should have been more clear about this.
Posted by: Red Heretic | June 10, 2007 at 06:23 PM
Look, I support the right of peoples to resist conquest and occupation, but the content of what they are defending or wish to install in its place MATTERS. One important reason it matters is that it effects the likely outcome. A movement or a culture that treats women like chattel is fighting with one hand tied behind its back and this has a lot to do with why the Mid East is still so dominated by gangsters in the pocket of U.S. imperialism. Ideas matter. When they motivate peoples actions they become a material force. And that is as true for bad ideas as for good.
I support the right of every Iraqi, no matter how backward in outlook, to fight the invaderss and drive them from their homes. But I won't pretend that their backward ideology (and this characterization certainly does not apply to all the resistance forces) isn't damaging both to the immediate prospects of the resistance itself and to the larger objective of human liberation.
Posted by: Christopher Day | June 10, 2007 at 08:06 PM