politics

Phenomenal book!! Berman explores the failure of the left to recognize totalitarianism throughout the twentieth century and believes that the failure continues to the present day. Once again, the European left and the American left refuse to recognize the existence and threat of totalitarianism (the Arab version) in both its Islamic and Baathist forms.

Berman notes that Bush has failed to articulate a case for war in Iraq (because he is fundamentally inarticulate), but insists that liberalism itself requires that we defeat totalitarian mass murderers including Sadaam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, because of our commitment to freedom and tolerance for all people, not simply for ourselves.

Paul Berman, a gifted essayist and intellectual historian who could be justly described as a social democrat (or democratic socialist), has provided one of the best, most carefully considered, and powerfully written post-September 11 books with Terror and Liberalism. Shortly after 9/11, the Village Voice published a collection of comments by leftish intellectuals on the terrorist attacks and the looming American counterstrike in Afghanistan. Of all the respondents, only Berman came across as truly sane, insightful, and unreflexive. His analysis here follows up on that promise.

The first of two key ideas that Berman wishes to convey in this book is that the Islamist terrorism we witnessed on 9/11 only the latest manifestation of a very familiar phenomenon, that of totalitarianism. Islamism and its proponents, Berman argues, are not medieval, but very modern, having much in common with communism and Nazism--from its myth of the Golden Age to the "cult of death" that arises from utopian absolutism. In this general approach, Berman is in agreement with Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes, who also argue that Islamism is better understood as a modern political ideology than as an expression of traditional Islam.

That is not to say that Berman sees nothing unique in Islamism. To the contrary, he finds much that is original and even profound in its seminal thinkers, discussing the work of the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb at length. Berman's willingness to take the Islamists' ideas seriously, rather than dismissing them offhand as medieval, bears much in the way of understanding.

Make no mistake, however; Berman's "understanding" is not, as is the case with so many misguided liberals, a path to exculpation and self-disarmament. Berman's second key idea is that many western thinkers, both left and right, have fallen into a certain conceptual trap that cripples what should be our proper, vigorous, and militant response to these new totaliatarians. This trap, in Berman's analysis, is the assumption that such extremism is rationally explicable, usually based on a few key factors. For "realist" thinkers of the right (he singles out Nixon in the opening chapter), these factors are material: geography, resources such as oil, etc. "Realist" thinking, Berman observes, is what helped us get into our current mess. Although he does not state this explicitly (and he should have), Berman suggests that the "realist" approach only confirmed for Islamists what they already suspected: that America and the west were in decline, spritually degraded, in love with their creature comforts, and ultimately unwilling to sacrifice for their dessicated ideals. (Recall, for example, the Pakistani fighting for the Taliban who said, "The Americans love Pepsi Cola, we love death").

On the left, the factors which explain all are American (or western, or Israeli) power and the evil interests and pathologies which it serves. By this argument, of which Berman holds up Noam Chomsky as the exemplary proponent, no act, no movement, no sentiment directed against the United States is too extreme or violent to defy American guilt as the cause. American guilt increases, pari passu, with the craziness or violence of the acts and ideas that are directed at America. Berman provides a fascinating recounting of the intellectuals' response to the Israeli-Palestinian violence of early 2002 as a demonstration of his argument.

Berman insists that yes, irrational, totalitarian mass movements do exist, and their "root causes" do not lay at the feet of the liberal democracies. Facing up to Islamism, or any other form of totalitariansm, requires an appreciation of the darker depths of the human psyche. Camus is a better guide than Chomsky. Human societies do not operate like Newtonian physics, in action-reaction fashion. Terrorists are humans too, with free will; they are not just amoeba responding predictably to our stimuli.

Berman's brief book is one of the best written post-9/11. His argument is powerful and convincing, and deserves an audience across the political spectrum. Only rarely does he stumble, mostly in the last chapter where his partisanship comes to the fore (for example, he repeats the myth that John Ashcroft ordered a nude statue at the Justice Department to be covered; this legend became popular not because it was true, but because it fit liberal elites' judgment of Ashcroft as a dangerous zealot). As a right-of-center fellow, however, I was deeply impressed and affected by Berman's trenchant essay.

This book is a thoughtful, thorough and insightful study of totalitarian thought. Berman writes convincingly of his opinions and thoughts on totalitarian and how it is related to the Islamist movement that is raging through the Middle East. He writes about how the current Islamist movement came to being and why. He tells of the reasons why bin Laden is fighting the war against us ~~ not because we're greedy corporate Americans but because we are a threat to his and his people's vision of utopia. He also delves into the Israel and Palestine's problems. He also explains the history behind communism, facism, and socialism. Berman also talks about Western Europe and their ideas on democracy as well as United Nation's ineptness in dealing with different problems.

This is perhaps one of the most rewarding reading I've done lately. I don't know much about Islam and what causes Muslims to declare a jihad against Westerners. Then again, I don't know much about the history of the last fifty years or so. And this book has whetted my appetite to know more and how liberalism is related to the current events going on today, even with the Bush's administration. It is also a great way to learn more about the Islamist movement that is going on in the Middle Eastern countries as well as Arabic countries. It is an eye-opener for me and it does help me understand current events better.

This is one book that I will definitely pass onto my friends and family. I think everyone who is curious about world affairs and likes essay-type writing, will enjoy this book. It will provoke thought and conversation among your friends and family. It will help you see the world in a different light, even if you don't agree with the author's perspective. But he makes his arguments in a convincing way ~~ and the book is easy to read, very well-written and with thoughtful, concise reasoning behind every word.

7-15-04