The anomaly of Barbarism: the brutality of Islamic terrorism has many precedents | Hacker News Reader

The anomaly of Barbarism: the brutality of Islamic terrorism has many precedents

laphamsquarterly.org

22 pointsnkurz14 comments

I love history, so I had to like this. Lots of great references. Good work by the author.

Having said that, there was a certain amount of smugness and hand-waving I have to call out. The thesis appeared to be "ISIS? Nothing new here." which I would mostly agree with. Where we run into problems is when the author tries to address criticisms of the thesis.

Was the U.S. on some mission to install democracy? I know Bush said so. But many folks simply wanted people in other lands the opportunity to vote before deciding to initiate overwhelming destructive force on their society, because that was where events were headed. Point being, there are many ways to look at Gulf 1 and 2. (This is why it's best when making historical analyses to stay away from anything in the last 20-30 years. Too many ways to spin things. Too many people invested in various narratives that are still alive -- and it's not necessary to the work of an essay like this.)

I was particularly troubled by the author not actually owning up to the one unique feature of ISIS: a trans-national groundswell of people with a violent nihilism. The eschatology was covered, but comparing ISIS to people believing in UFOs? Meh. Not so much.

In the latter part of the essay, the weaknesses in the beginning are intensified. We move from the ISIS-not-so-unusual thesis to "Your Pollyanna view of the merits of one civilization over another is what is causing a lot of the chaos". Maybe. Maybe the countries of the west have trapped themselves through the use of free trade and open markets into a situation where some types of societies just can't continue to exist. It's one thing to blame all this military intervention on those simple-minded do-gooders. It's another thing entirely to talk about how the world keeps shrinking, the power of the individual keeps growing, and the rise from poverty for billions of people mean that lots of folks who never had to integrate into a modern world are now stuck doing so.

All of that is to say that there is another argument. If the author had honestly acknowledged that argument, I'd rate this a 8 or 9. As it is, looks more like a 5 or 6. Still - well done. You just can't tell one side of the story if you want to do honest analysis. This was much more an opinion piece masquerading as analysis.

Agree with you, and to add that i think the author got trapped in trying to find historic analogues, instead of pointing out what is different this time.

> "ISIS? Nothing new here." which I would mostly agree with.

There is novelty, mainly the wahabbi-funded campaign to recruit immigrants , many of whom second generation, to commit terrorism in their own countries.

Also the author falls into the ISIS propaganda itself: despite those heavily publicized acts of gory violence, ISIS is not a threat to the west, but to the people of Syria and other regions. It's false to compare ISIS with the rise of nazism (just look at the fact that half the population of syria has run away from them). It's generally pointless to compare barbarism between different time periods.

In general, the author seems to push forward his opinions instead of making a honest effort to understand what's going on.

Quite interesting that people could only see barbarism outside, only the straw in the eyes of others: How is that possible than an North American entity talking about barbarism totally ignores the extermination of native Americans?

Is there any better year 0 than after almost all Indians have been killed and their land stolen?

And yet, totally ignored by the author. History is written by the winners. Goering used to say that they only wanted to do in Eastern Europe what (North)Americans had already accomplished.

If you go to Mexico most people is Indian or mixed blood, you can see in their faces. On the US less than 1% of the population is Indian.

So you go to latin America and you hear about all the abuses of Spain, the Spain that forbid slavery in 1512. They care because they are the descendants of the Indians.

The same happened in Australia, they exterminated the native population and now nobody cares.

This article reads like so much propaganda. Probably every post-apocalyptic movie about the US shows it descending into warring right-wing militias, many ambitious enough to make a state. Many surround themselves with pseudo-patriotic reactionary Civil War and Christian imagery, and engage in all sorts of terror.

If you look at worldwide terror, the US & UK are way in the lead in generating it. Wanna stop terrorism? Start there. And they have some vaguely democracy-flavored institutions, so most HN readers can have way more of an effect.

(Would US citizens enjoy Chinese foreign policy hacks discussing a North America they ravaged like: "A functioning state that enjoyed a reasonable measure of local support and could keep the peace would be a sufficiently challenging objective for [Eastern] policy"?)

"Perhaps what our culture lacks, in the end, is the ability to understand itself."

Unfortunately I think this is very true.

I'm not sure but I think our liberal thinking became money thinking. And when a lot of decisions are based on money the human factor is lost. Then it becomes hard to understand what our culture is about.

A small example is the way we build. A lot of buildings are made cheap, for status, and so on. This alienates us because we as humans don't fit in. But it can be hard to tell why we got the feeling we don't fit in. The ability to understand is lost.

> There have been moments of regression, some of them atrocious, but these are only relapses into the barbarism of the past, interrupting a course of development that is essentially benign. For anyone who thinks in this way, ISIS can only be a mysterious and disastrous anomaly.

I don't understand this bit.

Surely someone who thinks this way would see it as just another atrocious relapse.

Without mention of who's funding it, the article almost makes the case that ISIS is a historic inevitability.

> This strange metaphysical fancy lies behind the fashionable theory that when people leave advanced countries to join ISIS they do so because they have undergone a process of “radicalization.” But who radicalized the tens of millions of Europeans who flocked to Nazism and fascism in the interwar years? The disaster that ensued was not the result of clever propaganda, though that undoubtedly played a part. Interwar Europe demonstrates how quickly and easily civilized life can be disrupted and destroyed by the impact of war and economic crisis.

The reason people go join ISIS is because they feel their needs are not met by modern society. Certain needs such as the need to feel important and powerful, to have some sense of metaphysical meaning are not met by modern society. Especially for some Muslims living in the West who have not yet integrated fully into Western society. For them Islam frames their identify and the metaphysical meaning of their lives.

ISIS in theory and propaganda offers a way to have those needs met. The same reason people supported Nazis, the British and the French made Germans feel as if they were a powerless underclass under continuous economic tyranny. Nazism made them feel powerful and important again, it gave them a sense of community and meaning.

The West has worked hard to make Muslims feel impotent, and their religious class has exploited this rhetoric to gain and maintain social power, ISIS then co-opted this rhetoric and promises to make them feel powerful, at least in theory. Its acts of brutality reiterate this idea.

The only way to deal with this is either get rid of Islam, and help Muslims frame their needs in terms of Western society. Or to re-frame Islam in a way that is compatible with modernity, capitalism, and modern society. The second being a much harder goal.

I suppose you might be saying that, as a matter of fact, (it happens that) their needs are not met by modern society. Or are you saying it's all our fault as usual?

I'm probably missing something but how has the West worked hard to make Muslims feel impotent?

Totally agree with your final point. There's not much sign if any that a re-framing of Islam is going to take place. Ever tried asking a Muslim if there is any bit of the Koran that should be ignored or altered?

"Pew Poll Finds Overwhelming Support For Executing People For Apostasy In Afghanistan and Other Muslim Nations"

https://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/03/pew-poll-finds-overwhe...

> Or are you saying it's all our fault as usual?

I dunno. Do all people have the right to feel important and powerful, even when don't work in the framework of capitalism and modern economics to do so? Is that not their own fault for not integrating into the modern system like China, South Korea, or Singapore have?

> I'm probably missing something but how has the West worked hard to make Muslims feel impotent?

Various wars, alliances, propping up Israel, and British Empire before that. Muslims in general don't want to see other Muslims attacked by non-Muslims. They are fine if Muslims attack each other though.

Report on the Pew Poll: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01...

Majorities of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan support the death penalty for leaving Islam

Not "other Muslim Nations" as the blog author claims.

And:

Pew notes that many respondents said sharia should apply only to Muslims and, just as importantly, that "Muslims differ widely in how they interpret certain aspects of sharia, including whether divorce and family planning are morally acceptable."

A refreshingly well written and researched piece. The most accurate account of the causes of the situation in the Middle East I can recall reading in years.

Those precedents don't seem to include e.g. My Lai or any other act of barbarism committed by western countries.

Worth pointing out that this is a pretty standard John Gray article. His central thesis is basically "progress is a myth"

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