27. Terror and Liberalism

27. Terror and Liberalism – by Paul Berman

In Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman ties together the most irrational and deplorable movements of the previous two hundred years with a yarn of rebellion, out to negate the whole of liberal society.
This doesn't mean liberalism is blameless though. If not for the simpleminded, progressive ideology of liberals, authoritarians might be taken at their word: as irrational and illogical. Instead, it is liberal thinking that undertakes the impossible task of making autocratic movements logical, almost sensible, given a litany of affected provocations. For example, the suicide march of Palestinians reached the ears of liberals in America as a cult of death and usury which they then managed to defend as acts of a heavily persecuted people with no other choice but to encourage their children to blow themselves up. This attempt at imputing reason on Palestinian terrorism has garnered international sympathy and led journalists to describe Israel as a Nazi regime and worse than Apartheid. This is despite Israel’s offers of peace and land concessions turned down at every negotiation.

Berman captures the mindset of liberalism in the example of the French socialists in the 1930s. The party was divided between Leon Blum, the Prime Minister, with a larger faction led by Paul Faure. The “Paul-Fauristes” were pacifist on Hitler’s advance because they imagined Germany had been wronged by the Treaty of Versailles and thought Germans in Slavic countries poorly treated. They preferred conciliation on Hitler’s demands to a repeat of Verdun, a WW1 battle between the Germans and French that claimed 800,000 north of Verdun-sur-Meuse (France). Fauristes wanted nothing to do with the anti-Fascist movement[i], led in part by Blum, and instead sided with Phillippe Petain when he signed an armistice with German leaders in Paris in 1940 that effectively conceded France. Faure took up a post in Vichy, the capital of remaining France, under Petain[ii].

So how do these movements arise? Berman quotes from Tariq Ramadan, a modern Muslim philosopher and grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In his book, Islam, the West, and the Challenge of Modernity (2001), Ramadan insists that the cultural traits of Muslims are heterogeneous to those of westerners. For instance, the story of Abraham ordered to kill his son Isaac by God emphasizes Abraham’s skepticism in the Old Testament but only his obedience in the Koran. Such cultural references, says Ramadan, show the non-overlap of western and Muslim society. Ramadan takes issue with Albert Camus’s exposition of cultural traits, namely the ancient instinct to rebel, underlying totalitarianism in Camus's The Rebel, and concludes that this applies only to western civilization. Berman disagrees and postulates that no civilization is insulated, rather modern people are “hyphenated.” He points to the western educations of, and influence of western writers, on Islamist leaders such as Hasan al-Turabi (University of London). This "hideous schizophrenia" (as Sayyid Al-Qutb called it) is also in full force in the Muslim world. Particularly instructive is Nazism’s influence on al-Banna and Marxism’s on al-Qutb, the most influential Islamic thinker of modern times.

Berman turns his attention to Frank Fukuyama’s The End of History and western liberals who declared the 20^th century a “short” one, beginning in 1914 and ending in 1989. The timeline is supposed to represent the rise and fall of fascism, coming of age with WWI and ending with the fall of the Berlin wall. In fact, Berman tells us, 1989 is premature for the end of totalitarianism which still inflicted terrors in the Balkans in the 1990s and continues in the Muslim world, South America, Africa and parts of Asia. Fukuyama presumed democratic liberalism to be the final stop in evolving social and political thought; one in which men didn’t have further ambitions, a society “that yearns for ignoble things”, a “dismal place[iii].” This is clearly Berman's fear for humanity: a warped outlook that dulls our opposition to totalitarianism and stifles our protection of nascent liberalism around the world.      

Martin Bright’s review.

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[i] “French Socialist Leaders Appease Hitler.” By Richard Goodman. October 20, 2012. http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewMasses-1939jul04-00011

[ii] “The Battle of France.” Wikipedia. October 20, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France

[iii] Page 164 - “Terror and Liberalism.” By Paul Berman. October 20, 2012.