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Title: Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman ISBN: 0-393-05775-5 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.87 (30 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Very edifying and thought provoking, but not convincing
Comment: Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism is a wonderfully written little tome. The prose is poetic and emotive and makes for an engrossing read.
Berman's thesis is that contrary to what Fukuyama has said, the Twentieth Century is decidedly not over. The Western totalitarian regimes that took root after World War I in Europe may all have been vanquished, but their Eastern counterparts-namely radical Islamism and Baathi pan-Arabism-are still around and becoming more dangerous. He draws striking parallels between the different ideologies and finds that their main intersection is a rejection of liberal thought and society.
Apart from this interesting idea, the great value of this book is its brilliant explanation of radical Islamist philosophy and its origins. Less inspiring is one of Berman's key premises: that all totalitarian systems-including Islamism-incorporate a cult-like mass death wish. Although this behavior might be self-evident from history, he doesn't seek to explain it. He merely chalks it up to human irrationality and proclaims that liberalism's failure is not accepting that masses can act outside of reason.
Perhaps I'm just too liberal, but he didn't convince me. I also find it ironic that after criticizing liberals for desiring neat, little explanations for everything, it is in fact such a tight package that he presents in this book. But Berman must be given credit for being an honest (and consistent) leftist. Unlike his pacifist brethren, once he spies an illiberal, nihilistic, totalitarian menace half-way around the world, he wants to destroy it with government's might.
Berman applauds the invasion of Iraq, but not its justification. He prefers preemptive war in the name of Wilsonian internationalism over a realist response to an actual threat. To me this seems like pax Americana under another name. We can invade and impose our values abroad, Berman seems to say, as long as we impose the "right" values.
Rating: 5
Summary: Eye-opening account that takes our enemies at their words
Comment: "Faith is propagated by counting up deaths every day, by adding up massacres and charnel houses." So said an Algerian religious-political figure quoted by Paul Berman, whose effort here is to get people who believe in liberalism and liberal society to throw off the blinders of multicultural sensitivity and see and hear the real deeds and words and intentions of Islamic extremists as they call for our death and destruction. This small but powerfully reasoned book draws two inescapable conclusions:
1) That "Islamic fascism" is not just a metaphor drawn from European culture (as one might speak in reverse of a French jihad against American fast food), but the actual importation of mid-20th century European fascism, with all the same characteristics as Nazism, Stalinism, Franco's Spain and other such movements: intolerance of any other way of life within its borders, an obsession with purity (which requires ever more total enforcement), the notion of a Gotterdammerung-style clash between the pure and the infidels, and last but not least, a virulent anti-Semitism which in some cases, such as that of a Nazi racial theorist who wound up on Nasser's payroll, is quite literally imported from Europe. The implication, clearly, is that Islamic fascism has to be broken just like European fascisms were.
2) A willful blindness on the part of liberal society to recognize that our enemies really do say and think what they're saying and thinking. Both sides in politics still try to see rational motivations for what is in fact an irrational mass movement in love with death. The right, thanks to its business ties with the Saudis, is only slowly acknowledging how the terror really stems from those supposed friends and allies, since why would good business partners do such a thing? The left refuses to entertain the idea that events like 9-11 could have a maniacal religious motivation, since any blow against the US must, by definition, be part of the struggle of the oppressed against global capitalism, and therefore must be ultimately rational (and regrettable yet understandable, if not indeed downright admirable). (For a perfect example of how resistant the left is to criticism of the view that it's All About The U.S., read The Nation's review of this book, which spends most of its energy angrily attacking a couple of pages that skewer Noam Chomsky as the perfect exemplar of the Grand Unified Evil-America Theory of all history.)
Whether it's an eye-opening (and far from unsympathetic) exegesis of the writings of the extremist author Sayyid Qutb, or a look at 1989, the year of democracy's supposed triumph, from the Islamic point of view (they saw it as their triumph over the infidel invading Soviets-- and were they entirely wrong?), Berman gives the facts underlying the news we read every day a new perspective. The good news is, liberal society did defeat fascism once, twice, multiple times. The bad news, the fight almost always started later than it should have, and long after someone like Berman had made it clear that a Mein Kampf-- and a Hitler-- really meant what he said.
Rating: 1
Summary: A worthless, dishonest book from an apologist for Israel.
Comment: Here's a typical example of why Berman's book is not just politically reactionary, but worthless: There's a nine-page put-down of Noam Chomsky, primarily for the latter's response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but also for other things Chomsky has said, on topics ranging from Cambodia to linguistics. And in these nine pages, there's not a single actual quote from Chomsky! (By the way, since Berman's book not only contains no footnotes but no index either, I'll tell you that the anti-Chomsky screed starts on page 144.)
Most of Berman's other attacks on leftists also contain either no quotes or short quotes (usually not even full sentences) without citations that would allow the reader to locate the context of the quote.
Berman does extensively quote certain Islamist writers (though again without citations). This makes me think that he knows that Islamist ideas (or at least the ones he quotes) will, unlike leftist ideas, not appeal to those he is trying to win over to his position, which is essentially support of Western capitalism in general and Israel in particular.
Those who are looking for a balanced refutation of both Islamism and its Western imperialist pseudo-opposition would be much better served by starting with Tariq Ali's "The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity" (ISBN 185984457X).
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Title: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria ISBN: 0393047644 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan ISBN: 1400040930 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0679642811 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power In a Violent World by Jean Bethke Elshtain ISBN: 0465019102 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Anti-Americanism by Jean Francois Revel, DIARMID CAMMELL ISBN: 1893554856 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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