Strange Bedfellows

The Metamorphosis of Marx

They say that politics make strange bedfellows.  Never is this more evident in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.  There is a strong current of support for Palestinians and Islamic causes generally in the West.  Often-times the support comes from "progressive" components of the political spectrum.  But echoes can also be found in residual anti-semitic groups, the main stream media, and the universities. 

Strangely, what is being defended and implicitly promoted is a cause which has overtly fostered and promoted the killing of innocents to make a political point and to terrorise others.  It is a cause notorious for its authoritarianism, its subjugation of women, its maltreatment of homosexuals, and its authoritarian subjugation of all under its sway.  How come?  How does it come about that Western feminists, homosexuals, libertines, and the licentious apparently are relaxed and comfortable supporting and advocating for those who would snap their necks in a second if they had the chance? 

One possible cause is ignorance and condescension.  Often times progressives in the West are so ideologically hidebound they remain remarkably ignorant of actual humanity and reality.
  The rationalisation runs something like this: all human nature is intrinsically good, therefore all humans are decent, upstanding, respectful, life-honouring, and noble.  All contrary beliefs and actions exist only because of external causes, such as poverty, oppression, and exploitation, over which these oppressed folk have little no control.  If these external conditions are changed, ignorant beliefs and brutish practices will fade away.  Change the circumstances and nirvana will break forth.  What is offensive in Islamic ideology will dissipate.  The need for Islam (and religion generally) will evaporate.  Palestinians in the West Bank will end up being the mirror image of a cardigan wearing, intellectual in the sociology department of Progressive College, New York.

At this point we need to acknowledge the perverted genius of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that misshapen child of the Enlightenment, who proclaimed that man was born perfect, but corrupted by society. His disciples are now legion.  We hear the muttered mantras throughout the Western Commentariat--"We are all Rousseauians, now."  Indeed, you are. 

A second cause is related to this prevalent ignorance.  "Soft-Marxism" remains an extremely powerful force in Western minds.  When the avatar of the perfect society failed with the collapse of the Soviet Union the Marxists did not fade away.  The ideology morphed into other outlets.  For some reason, Marxists or those whose world-view was consciously or unconsciously shaped by Hegel and Marxism, were not persuaded by Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man.  Nor were they persuaded by Samuel Huntingdon's Clash of Civilizations.  For these lingering Marxists--hugely influential in colleges and the media and the Commentariat--the belief in inevitable secular progress remained firm.  History continues to move forwards to a great and glorious climax.  The path remains the well-trodden highway of revolution.  Since progress is inevitable the basic commitment of Marxism and its fellow travellers remains to tearing down authority, structure, and powers so that the inevitable progress of history towards ultimate consummation can be hastened. 

This explains what homosexuals, feminists, and minority grievance groups find in common with other oppressed minorities, such as Palestinians.  These groups blame all their ills upon external oppressors.  They find natural ideological kinship with other minority oppressed groups such as Muslim enclaves in Western nations.  Instead of "workers of the world, unite!" the ideological slogan morphs into "oppressed peoples of the world, unite!"

As Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey put it

In the classic Marxist drama of history, the oppressed were the proletariat (urban factory workers); in the newer multiculturalist ideologies, the oppressed are women, blacks, or homosexuals.  In classic Marxism, the proletariat will rise up against their oppressors--the capitalists; in the updated form, people of various colors and genders are likewise called to harness their rage and do battle against their oppressors--usually white male homosexuals. 

The politically correct campus today offers countless variations on the Marxist theme, but the common core of all these variations is revealed by the way they overlap and complement one another.  The University of California at Santa Barbara offers a course listed as Black Marxism, linking Marxism and black liberation.  Brown University connects black and homosexual liberation in a course called Black Lavender: Study of Black Gay/Lesbian Plays.  UCLA relates Hispanic ethnicity with homosexuality n a course listed as Chicana Lesbian Literature. . . . As a result of this massive politicization of  education, college students are being taught to apply Marxist categories to law, politics, education, family studies, and many other fields.  [Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999), p. 233.]

Given this backdrop it is not surprising at all that the Commentariat instinctively rushes to support embattled Muslim enclaves wherever they are found.  Stupid, to be sure.  Naive, without a doubt.  Myopic, unquestionably.  But, understandable nonetheless.  Marxism always was amongst the most stupid and foolish of ideologies and philosophies.  We expect nothing less from its modern step-children.

Western support for Islamic terrorism, for the "right" of Palestinian rockets to rain down incessantly upon Israel without Israeli retribution, for Islamic alls for the obliteration of Israel from the map, while grotesque is both expected and understandable, given the idolatries that wrack its collective psyche.  It serves to unveil the modern Western mind, exposing how perverted and corrupt it has become.