“The war we fight today is more than a military conflict,” Bush told thousands of veterans at the American Legion convention. “It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.” ~MSNBC
The ideological struggle waged by revolutionary Marxism against revisionism at the end of the nineteenth century is but the prelude to the great revolutionary battles of the proletariat, which is marching forward to the complete victory of its cause despite all the waverings and weaknesses of the petty bourgeoisie. ~V.I. Lenin
And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat. ~V.I. Lenin
The military defeat has been completed. It will be the ideological struggle that will be the most important. ~Janos Kadar
Who talks like this? “Decisive ideological struggle”? It sounds very much like the sort of thing a preacher of an “armed doctrine” would say; it sounds very much like something a revolutionary propagandist would say. It obviously is not a conservative thing to say. It is the language of Marxists that Mr. Bush is using quite freely. Of course, those of us who have been familiar with neoconservatism as a revolutionary, basically leftist doctrine with historic roots on the Left will not find it surprising that an adherent of the same doctrine would eventually use the same language and mentality. But I will say more.
If we are in the “decisive ideological struggle” of the century, that will probably mean that from time to time there will have to be “corrections” made on the home front as well–no sense winning the ideological struggle elsewhere and letting it slip at home–and casting this as the “decisive ideological struggle” will allow whoever is responsible for defining the content of “our” side in this ideological struggle to write off dissenters against policy as deviationists and thought criminals for opposing the struggle with their dissident views. There is something deeply, deeply wrong with all this “ideology” talk that seems more than a little totalitarian in its own right and certainly more than a little creepy. This is part of the reason why I am viscerally and intellectually opposed to the free and ignorant use of the word fascist in connection with any current foreign policy questions, because it seems to partake of the same style of rhetoric and the same eerily leftist views of who the enemy is. This is the view of the enemy as the eternal fascist, who is everyone and no one, because the propagandists decide who a fascist is and can redefine the term as and when it suits them.
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August 31st, 2006 at 6:29 pm
jsinger008
Three comments, related to this post and other recent posts:
1) Related to your posts regarding pessimism, you should know that while I still consider myself a classical liberal/neo-con, your thinking is slowly seeping into my consciousness, such that I find myself thinking about you when I come across an interesting discussion of order/tradition (see below) and I read Islamic fascist and I think to myself, “no, that is not a good description of the enemy”.
2) I’m reading a wonderful novel that takes place during the turn of the century in the Austro-Hungarian Empire called “The Radetzky March”. I thought of you reading this passage:
The assistant district commissioner came and delivered his report. Yesterday there had been another meeting of Czech workers. A Sokol gymnasts’ celebration had been announced; delegates from “Slavic countries”—Serbia and Russia were meant but never named in officialese—were due tomorrow. The German-language Social Democrats were likewise drawing attention. A worker at the spinning plant had been beaten up by other workers, supposedly—and this was confirmed by reports from agents—for refusing to join the red party. All these things worried the district captain, they pained him, they upset him, they wounded him. Anything the disobedient segments of the populace undertook to weaken the state, insult his Majesty the Kaiser directly or indirectly, make the law even more powerless than it already was, disturb the peace, offend decency, scoff at official dignity, set up Czech schools, elect opposition deputies—all those actions were aimed at him personally, the district captain. At first he had merely belittled the nations that demanded autonomy and the “working people” who demanded “more rights”. But gradually he was getting to hate them—the carpenters, the arsonists, the electioneers. He gave his assistant stringent orders to instantly break up any meeting that dared to pass a resolution. Of all the words that had lately become modern, he hated this one most of all—perhaps because it needed to change just a single tiny letter to turn into the most disgraceful word of all: revolution.
3) The current issue of the Weekly Standard has a great Ralph Peters article about the enduring power of tribal feelings and magic as opposed to the forces of globalization. Of course, I draw different lessons from a piece like this than you, but I thought of you while reading it and I think you’ll find it amusing that many of the themes you discuss on your blog are swirling around smack dab in the middle of the weekly neo-con house organ.
I for one am glad you haven’t stopped posting. Cheers,
- Jeff
August 31st, 2006 at 7:13 pm
jlbarnard
I guess I’m a little confused about where conservatives are coming from nowadays. I understand this split between the neo-cons, with their “liberal roots,” and classical conservatives, who would never have engaged in this Rumsfeldian brand of lunacy. But I don’t quite understand, especially in the context of these posts against the reductive tendency to label, your own tendency to equate contemporary leftism with Soviet-style ideological warfare. You say things like “eerily leftist,” when you seem to mean “eerily Soviet.” The serious branch of the American left is in total agreement with your points — reducing all enemies to misnomers is ludicrous and counterproductive. I’ve written extensively about this myself, and I found my way to your writing because our arguments on these matters, as far as I can see, resonate quite well with one another. As you’ve noted many times, attempting to fit the current situation into old binary models is doomed to failure because the binary structure simply isn’t a reality. Whether the words themselves seem to be of leftist or “fascist” origin seems immaterial, since all these labels are rather archaic. In the context of these remarks, I think it’s fair to say the neo-cons are defined by their reductivism, and intelligent opposition, from either side of the spectrum, comes from the acknowledgement of difference and complexity. I agree, the rhetoric is creepy — I would say outright frightening, especially given Bush’s saber-rattling speech today, about doling out the “consequences” to the Iranofascists. But there is nothing “leftist” about it.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Daniel Larison
Mr. Singer, Mr. Barnard, thanks for all your comments. If I can address Mr. Barnard’s objections first, let me say that when I am using leftist here I am using it in the sense Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn used it in Leftism Revisited in the particularly excessive, ideological and totalitarian forms of revolutionary politics of the modern age. He was admittedly relying on a binary model, but in his criticism of the tendencies that he defined as leftism I think he hit on the reasons for our aversion to all forms of ideology. What K-L was calling leftism was every ideology that sought uniformity at the expense of the variety and complexity of life. Certainly Leftism Revisited was a strongly polemical work, but I believe it had some very good insights into the evils of all uniforming ideologies. This is the same evil that Burke criticised when opposing the “terrible simplifiers,” and it is in this spirit that Kirk described conservatism as anti-ideology.
I acknowledge that there are humane and reasonable people who may align themselves with “the left” politically, whether they prefer to be called liberals, progressives or greens, who would want no part of any such revolutionary ideology or the coercive state socialism typically associated with it (the most consistent among them rebel against precisely these things in both of the last two administrations), and I should have been more precise and clear in what I was saying. Indeed, I think our common opposition to the reductive and oversimplifying effects of ideology as such are important reasons for why we object to the neocons and their wholehearted embrace of such ideology. You are correct that it is the particularly Soviet, indeed Leninist, character of the language that I was objecting to, and I could have simply said that. To the extent that the categories of right and left are still operative, however, I would say that Leninism is a particularly virulent strain of what might still be generically called “leftism.” But keeping distinctions clearly in mind should be a priority if there is any chance of challenging the abuses of language that these people employ.
September 1st, 2006 at 8:13 pm
Daniel Larison
Mr. Singer, thanks again for the comments and the good excerpt about the district captain. I can really sympathise with that character. I shall have to look into reading this novel. The resolution/revolution line was particularly fun.
I’m pleased that my criticisms of “Islamic fascism”/Islamofascism are making sense and are having some impact. No one would be more pleased than I if every neoconservative out there would recognise that these terms are inaccurate and are a kind of abuse of language. What worries me about this language is not just its sloppiness and inaccuracy, but that it seems to reflect a completely bizarre understanding of the nature of the war. Many of these people have gone from “axis of evil” presuppositions and now operate with the a priori belief that Iran is necessarily the great enemy of our time, when this is the sort of important judgement that needs to be justified with real arguments and not appeals to our fear of fascism. I think the use of these terms reflects an intensification of the doctrinaire attitude more and more neoconservative writers seem to be adopting towards every aspect of the foreign policy debate. They have always had certain fixed commitments and strong views on foreign policy and they have always been very ideological, but there is if anything a greater inflexibility now than before–oddly enough, this seems to be even more pronounced at National Review than at the Weekly Standard.
Ralph Peters’ willingness to contemplate withdrawal at all and his recognition of deeper cultural attitudes and mentalities, though rather belated, are welcome. I am glad that the Standard is giving some space to some of these themes, which again seems to put them ahead of NR. It is an indication that, as deeply implicated in this entire project as they are and as responsible for much of it as they are, they may at least be willing to keep thinking and rethinking in some cases. I have much less problem with people who draw different lessons from the realities of the world than I do than I have with people who simply refuse to acknowledge that those realities exist.
I would be interested in hearing more about what Peters has to say about “tribal feelings” and “magic.” I suspect where I would differ with Mr. Peters would be regarding the extremely negative view that he seems to take of such things (which has led him in a roundabout way to despair of Iraqi democracy), as if “tribal feelings” and belief in magic were the abnormal things and the world of the “procedural rationalisation” that Beneton dissects so brilliantly in Equality By Default was the normal one.