ISIS and the Teabaggers

Andrew O’Hehir may be the only good reason to read Salon any more, but he’s a really good reason. The latest article begins,

Amid all the terror and panic and xenophobic hysteria of the Paris aftermath — which seems to have set the dial on the political Way-Back Machine to about 2002, at least for now — Republicans actually have a point. Maybe it’s half a point, because when Donald Trump or Ted Cruz (or Marine Le Pen) raise the contested question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy, they don’t really understand the basic terms of the question, let alone where it leads. …

,,,It gives me absolutely no pleasure to insist that on this question, as on others, the Islamist militants of ISIS and the anti-Islamic Western right have reached the same conclusion. To put it more bluntly, every major Republican presidential candidate (excepting one or two of Jeb Bush’s multiple personalities) largely subscribes to the political and philosophical worldview of ISIS, except when it comes to final eschatological questions about who ends up in Paradise.

Indeed, in both cases the idea that Islam and democracy are incompatible is more like an essential premise than a conclusion, and the kinship goes much deeper than that. Both sides begin with the same diagnosis, which is that Western civilization faces a fundamental, existential crisis, and arrive at closely allied prescriptions aimed at producing closely related outcomes. In one case, Western democracy is seen as a corrupt and decadent sham that will simply be destroyed (and perhaps, in some fantasy future, subjugated to Islamic rule). In the other, Western democracy is corrupt and decadent and so on, and it must be destroyed in order to save it.

Lots of people analyzing the GOP meltdown over terrorism have pointed out that ISIS wants us to be afraid; it wants us to be mean to the Syrian refugees and order up more drones and generally give the Middle East more reasons to hate us. That is why they do what they do. Terrorism is public relations.

This point about the ideological marriage of ISIS and the Republicans has been made in various ways by various commentators since the Paris attacks — I made it myself in the immediate aftermath, even if I “buried the lede” — but I don’t think it can be restated often enough. Strategists of the Islamic State want Western regimes to persecute and marginalize Muslim citizens, crack down on immigration and squander their financial and political capital on a military response that is unlikely to produce a clear-cut victory and highly likely to harden anti-Western attitudes in the Islamic world. A similar approach worked brilliantly for Osama bin Laden in 2001 — better than he expected, I would guess — and ISIS possesses a far more sophisticated understanding of Western politics and culture than Osama and the old-school al-Qaida leadership ever did.

Today’s Right also is opposed to democracy, except perhaps as it existed in the late 18th century — as government of, by and for white property-owning males. How conscious the Republicans are of their own motivations I do not know. By now the Right loves its buzzwords — freedom! — but doesn’t love or even understand what the words stand for.

As strange as this may sound, I do not doubt the faith that lies behind the right-wing distaste for democracy, or at least no more than I doubt the conflicted zealotry that lies behind militant Islam. Both sides correctly observe that the various strains of post-Jeffersonian democracy in the Western world have been plagued with problems from the beginning, and now face a dire crisis. Both the Western right and fundamentalist Islam yearn to pull their societies back toward a purer distillation of faith and a collective sense of purpose, and what could serve that purpose better than an apocalyptic “clash of civilizations”? They see the salvation of their respective societies in the rejection of the flabby ideal of democracy, explicitly or otherwise, and its replacement with a more virile, more godly and more effective system.

Yeah, pretty much.

13 thoughts on “ISIS and the Teabaggers

  1. While I think Salon has declined in relevance, the fact that Digby (Heather Digby Parton) of Hullabaloo also posts at this site is a mark in its favor.

  2. Well, theoretically if everybody would get onboard with loving and obeying Jesus we’d be in paradise. I guess it must be the freethinkers and liberals who are gumming up the works.
    What I find troubling is everything these rabid Repugs are railing against concerning the refugees is everything I’ve been taught to believe is what makes me an American. It’s like the huddled masses yearning to breathe free is just a bunch of meaningless bullshit. Maybe I’ve got too much emotional investment in America or have been overly indoctrinated with American ideals..but regardless of any shortcomings in my beliefs. I don’t hesitate to call the whole bunch of Repuglican or Democrat scumbags who are disingenuously whining about safety concerns a pack of cowards.
    Like the bumper sticker says…America will be the land of the free for only as long as it’s the home of the brave.

  3. Pingback: The ISIS Whisperers | Clarissa's Blog

  4. “Both the Western right and fundamentalist Islam yearn to pull their societies back toward a purer distillation of faith”

    Well yeah that’s what right-wingers do, and ISIS is about as right-wing as you can get. I’ve never figured out how the baggers in this country have avoided serious consideration of the similarities between them and the knuckle dragging Islamo-fasicts!

  5. The goal for both sides?
    A good old fashioned Theocracy.

    The means?
    Various forms of terrorism.
    The (“Christian”-dominated) GOVERNMENTS of Westerners terrorize the Muslims through bombings at a distance, trying to force them to quit terrorizing in the West; and the individual Muslims terrorized by the West, look for other like-minded people to form cells, and groups, and then terrorize chosen Western targets looking for them to stop terrorizing them in their Muslim countries!

    And who said there’s no such thing as a self-perpetuating machine, or that a snake can’t eat its own tail?

    You know what would help to stop any self-perpetuating machine?
    Don’t lubricate it.
    AKA: Stop the oil!

    And let’s stop holding-up evil regimes like the House of Saud, whose top families make all of the money from fossil fuel sales, but blame America and the West for their people’s perpetual poverty.
    But, even then…

    Oy.
    There really are no easy answers, are there?

  6. Did you know that ISIS has a glossy magazine?
    Neither did I.

    But, here it is – and yes, it’s from “Cracked,” a humor magazine, but it doesn’t claim that it’s a joke, and has the photo’s and excerpts to prove it – and it explains more about ISIS than all of the news from cable and print outfits in the US – and, probably, Yurp:
    http://www.cracked.com/blog/isis-wants-us-to-invade-7-facts-revealed-by-their-magazine/

    So, take this with whatever size grain of salt you want. But, it makes for some interesting reading – though, for obvious reasons, I wouldn’t want to go to any of their links. 😉

  7. “Lots of people analyzing the GOP meltdown over terrorism have pointed out that ISIS wants us to be afraid; it wants us to be mean to the Syrian refugees and order up more drones and generally give the Middle East more reasons to hate us. That is why they do what they do. Terrorism is public relations.”

    I think this is probably wrong in the sense that, unlike al-Qaeda, I don’t think ISIS *wants* us to attack them per se. Openly controlling territory makes you a much more concrete target than being a shadowy terrorist network without a state, and U.S. led bombing runs are already pushing ISIS back into its core strongholds. The logic of ISIS terrorism seems like a much more straight forward strategy of attempting to scare the targeted countries and their allies into giving up the fight, not expanding it.

    There’s almost certainly a lot less reason to worry about blowback here too, since the country is already hopelessly sunk in a very brutal civil war that’s killing a bunch of people. A U.S. led campaign against ISIS that also precipitated a cease-fire and the removal of Assad would probably be a very welcomed development in the country given the alternatives.

    • Brien — ISIS doesn’t want us to attack them. They want us to piss more people off in the Middle East so that they join up with ISIS. This is what I mean by terrorism as public relations.

  8. Right, I just don’t see that being a particular concern in Syria, with the status quo of a very brutal and seemingly endless civil war, as opposed to, say, Yemen or Pakistan or Iraq circa 2002. As long as anti-ISIS intervention doesn’t re-empower Assad anyway.

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