Hitchens: A Heritic or just premature in his views

What is fascinating about Christopher Hitchens' current status as the world's heretic leftist, is that he is doing so for the most pure authentic left wing reasons. He is not alone in this, there are a good number of other political figures who stand with President Bush on the War on Terrorism and the war in Iraq while disagreeing with all or most of his other policies. For example, former New York Mayor, Ed Koch takes this position although otherwise a typical "liberal" Jewish New Yorker. Same for conservative Democrat Zell Miller of Georgia.

Hitchen's key argument is that Al Qaeda, the Talliban and other fundamentalist militant Islamic groups are patent and aggressive clerical fascist zealots whose ideology and actions are utterly repugnant by any Democratic standard and particularly repugnant to the those who follow a left wing ideology based on Marxist and generally understood secular humanist philosophy. On one level, that of ideology, he is foursquare on solid ground. The Islamofascists are a model of the most ferocious sectarian bigotry. Their ideas and policies toward treatment of women are extreme even by traditional Muslim standards, neanderthal by any Western standard and insane by the current standards of progressive left wing thinkers and activists. Their brutal methods of government and their enthusiastic use of the most savage forms of terrorism and barbarism are obvious and unquestioned.

So why do most leftists go fruitcake at Hitchens forthright stand against Islamofascism? In part it is a pacifist strain that has become strong in progressive circles. Also, it that racism in a very subtile patronizing form has become part of the progressive mindset -- this is the sort of attitude that allows progressives to support or at least tolerate Third World dictators who cloak their one man rule in some form or another of leftist rhetoric -- Castro, Mugabe or Saddam qualify among many others. It is assumed that since they rule over people of color, their unpleasant and often inept dictatorships are unfortunately the best that can be hoped for by enlightened folk since the "cultural" level of their nations is too primitive to permit generally recognized Democratic forms of government. The reality that most of these nations are what Mr. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times calls "Kleptocracies" is shrugged off as unpleasant reality.

Even though the Islamofascists make previous clerical fascists states like Franco's Spain or the Mullah's Iranian Islamic Republic look relatively liberal and open, most leading leftists ignore this reality because they think the USA is the enemy and anybody -- no matter how repulsive otherwise -- who is anti-American is OK and worthy of toleration if not out and out support. Since the USA is the sole super power in today's world, it is hated for all sorts of good and valid reasons but even more for all sort of bogus ones. This visceral irrational anti-Americanism permits otherwise sane left wing folk to take crazy political positions, to get into bed with the crazy people like the Talliban or the blood splattered murderers of Al Qaeda. Their infantile and irrational anti-Americanism allows them to suspend their political sense and support people and policies that are utterly foreign to their actual ideology.

Has this happened before? Sure, in the 1939-1941 period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, Communists and many other left wing activists (but not the Trotskyites) forgot the obvious evil of Hitler and worked for "Peace" and working class solidarity along side their working class National Socialist comrades. At least that's how they played it until Hitler betrayed his loyal ally Stalin and invaded the USSR in June 1941. This period is the most shameful in the history of the Left. Yet to someone like Hitchens it is almost the exact model for the current reality where most Left wing people are quite openly and enthusiastically standing up for the Islamofascists.

This post was propted by a long report on a three hour lunch with Hitchens and a British journalist. I found Mr. Johann Hare's article in today's Independent (London UK) worthwhile and more perceptive than most. Mr. Hare's article has an undertone of mixed emotions. The first is a queasiness that Hitchens may in fact be right and his only sin is being provocatively "premature" in his opposition to Islamofascism. The second is that contrary to the current fashionable opinion, it is possible that in the long term history may come down on the side of Hitchens. The third is a grudging admiration for Hitchens in daring to take on the strong if irrational tendency on the Left to ignore or excuse the obvious flaws in the ideology, the ways and the means of the Islamofascists.

It is a wise man who is prepared to accept that he may in fact be wrong or at least "late" getting to the party. Most importantly, he honestly understands that Hitchens position is rooted in the traditions of the Left, not in any way an example of the gradual slide to the right that marks so many political careers. Hitchens is not a "neocon" although he agrees with them on this issue.

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