Ghost of a flea

Revolutionary nihilism

Avi Lewis reporting from Washington DC on Al Jazeera's English network. Charles Johnson offers a summary.

To think this is "news" even the CBC could not choke down. One slip struck me in particular: Reverend Farrakhan? Tim Russert does not know better; should not Al Jazeera? Also making a cameo in this sophomore sociology assignment/Stürmer media is Canadian embarrassment, Eric Margolis. No trouble judging this lot by the company they keep.

Narcissists and playboys such as Osama bin Laden* have drunk from the well of Lawrence of Arabia and see themselves as romantic heroes of the very Orientalist fantasy decried by their "progressive" allies in the West. OBL has read Frank Herbert's Dune (or so I assume for rhetorical purposes), imagined himself to be Paul Muad'Dib and named his band of merry men after the name his role model was known as in sietch, "Usul", "the base (of the pillar)", "al Qaeda". These Islamist revolutionary failures cannot even conjure up their own stupidity but must instead live their stupidity vicariously; ersatz Jacobins in the style of recent Austrian resentiment or in a pantomime version of the centuries dead glory of Saladin, himself a Kurd appropriated for ersatz Arab glory.**

The enemy abroad is by turns barbarously ignorant or a cave-dwelling comic opera evil but can under no circumstances be taken seriously for his accomplishments or his ideas. Our own fifth columnists are another matter.

When Palestinians living in the West - and their academic allies - spout the same rhetoric of grievance one is forced to concede they might mean it, that their calls for blood are not entirely coerced and that their holy men are indeed representative of popular sentiment. The will of the people truly is to throw candy to their children in celebration of the death of the children of their cosmic enemy. Their aims really are circumscribed by a seventh century psychotic fugue and have nothing whatsoever to do with the years 1948, 1967 or 1973 let alone the collective would be piety of Western onlookers.

Where is the Palestinian Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine?*** Where is the Palestinian Burke or Voltaire? If some Dark Ages Dianetics manual is the best they can manage for inspiration there can be no surprise at their barbarism and penury and no one to blame for their condition but themselves. Though, if some democratic successor government is of a litigious turn of mind, it might consider suing the likes of Avi Lewis. Such men claim to speak for an oppressed people; they do not. These men oppress Arabs, condemning them to despotism and ignorance. These men take no pleasure but in hating themselves and could care less who else pays for a masturbatory nihilism.

* Who is dead.
** And also the product of Western romanticism and apologism for the failure of Western resolve and for those who would excuse Western corruption and martial incompetence of the day. Bin Laden was right to call the current farce a Crusade but for entirely the wrong reasons.
*** That is to say, genuine revolutionaries.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at April 8, 2008 04:47 AM

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