> From: "Ed Herman" <hermane at wharton.upenn.edu>
> and Global Violence). And here comes our friend Chip Berlet,
> proving that Islamic radicals are the new global "expansionist"
> menace, fascist, an international movement, the proof beyond 9/11
> based heavily on textual analysis, barely mentioning any
> institutional problematics that might make their threat second or
> third order, and of course keeping U.S. expansionism--I wonder if
> Berlet thinks the word applies to this country?--and its dynamic
> relation with Islamic radicalism, pretty much out of sight. What a
> wonderful fit to the needs of the imperial center!
Maybe I'm getting old and lame, but Herman seems to be going over the top here. There's a certain ultramoralism in the Left, a negative neonationalism, if you will, which tends to assume US = Great Capitalist Satan. The question of whether al-Qaeda is a variant of fascism ought to be an interesting and productive one, i.e. ought to show how multinational Rightwing ideologies are formed and spread. Then there's the question of whether the US really is the imperial center anymore, given the US' parlous trade/current account/investment position. We need to start coming up with answers, instead of training our artillery on each other.
-- Dennis