>From the NY Sun Article:
The same ideological blinkers are in evidence when, in
"Multitude," Messrs. Hardt and Negri say that Osama bin Laden "asks for legitimation by presenting himself as the moral hero of the poor and oppressed of the global South." In fact, bin Laden presents himself as no such thing; he is and declares himself to be a religious zealot dedicated to the imposition of Islamic law and the chastisement of the secular West. It is only in Messrs. Hardt and Negri's eyes that every violent movement in the world is ipso facto a liberation movement.
[...]
Kirsch certainly scored a point here.
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I wonder.
It's remarkably common to read critiques of Hardt and Negri that wind up, sooner or later, walking down what might be called the Hardt, Negri, bin Laden road - linking the ideas of the authors to bin Ladenism.
Kirsch takes that sentence about bin Laden's implicit request for "legitimation" as the ultra-violence Robin Hood of the "global south", rejects it based upon our typical interpretation of AlQ's motivations, (we tend to emphasize the religious zealotry and forget the calls for zero American manipulation of political and cultural events in the Arab world) then leaps with quantum abandon to the assertion that Hardt and Negri see every violent group in the world as "ipso facto a liberation movement."
Now, unless someone can find for me a statement by these gentlemen that explicitly says "attention, attention! all violent, anti-Western organizations are liberation movements" or words to that effect, my advice for the army of haters is to quite thoroughly sod off.
.d.