A Critical Look at the Left's flirtation with Islamic Fundamentalism. Issue 19, Winter/Spring 2008

The latest issue of Communicating Vessels carries the article "Are We All Hamas and Hezbollah? A Critical Look at the Left's Flirtation with Islamic Fundamentalism". The publication in question is a zine with a focus on art and culture. Unlike a good many other publications, it proudly bears no ISSN or ISBN code and is still cut, pasted and copied together. Occasionally CV does pieces of a more overtly political nature. This latest is a good solid internationalist critique of the campus Trotskyist left, namely the International Socialist Organization and Left Turn, and their "critical support" for ultra-nationalist bourgeois religious fundamentalist gangs like Hamas and Hezbollah. It goes beyond this however into the origins and nature of these organizations that the issue-hoppers of the ISO and Left Turn so gladly support.

The article itself involves the personal experience of the author, and the involvement of the flirtation with the fundamentalists could have been gone into in greater detail, as could the connection and the left's demonizing of the pro-Israel lobby in the US. The author targets the shallow thinking that sought to externalize the source of the Afghan and Iraq wars making it the fault of our own bourgeoisie's Israeli client state and the equally shallow thinking of those who believe it is necessary to support a "side". Rather than finding revolutionary internationalists in these areas and supporting them it is easier for the left to support those who create the "facts on the ground", easier to support fundamentalist thugs simply because they are fighting a US backed state. For these "socialists" when they fail to defend their ideas and their actions they do not hesitate to fall back on how they are with the masses in their struggles and anyone who criticizes them is not in the traditional swaggering activist ruse.

His account of an anti-war protest in Portland in 2006 is typical of the state of what passes for being anti-war:

The energy was unmistakably anti-Israel and anti-America. Don't get me wrong. I am no lover of Israel or America. But there seems to be a complete lack of proportion and balance. Voices of solid anti-nationalist, internationalist...were absent. That was to be expected. It was about tolerance and multiculturalism. A respect for diversity. Valuing the differences of those present. I kept thinking that this respect for "diversity" only went so far. If I would've gotten up on the podium and denounced all organized religion and all nation-states, I got the sense that I would've been violently ejected from the stage or booed off of it for being intolerant of diversity. Similarly, if I would've denounced the state of Israel and Hezbollah from the podium, I suspect I would've experienced a large amount of hostility. So much for "diversity" and the airing of perspectives.

What do the leftists of the ISO or Left Turn do when they are confronted by someone calling for genuine proletarian internationalism? The author continues relating his experiences:

I was amazed at how many people there were willing to "side" with the right-wing and reactionary Hezbollah against the equally right-wing and reactionary government of Ehud Olmert. I spoke to two members of the International Socialist Organization and they both expressed support for Hamas and Hezbollah. According to them, we need to support those who are fighting the imperialists and Hamas and Hezbollah are doing that. They thought my perspective of internationalism and solidarity against all despots (not just the big visible ones like Israel and America) and organized religion was a cloudy and impractical idea. I tried explaining what happened during the Iranian revolution of 1979: sectors of the left and other radicals worked with Islamic fundamentalists to overthrow the shah. Once the mullahs took over they executed secularists, leftists and others who didn't agree with their Islamic absolutism. I told them if a situation like that happened again, they as well as others would be some of the first to be hanged. They weren't hearing any of it. I was wasting my breath. I talked to others and argued my viewpoint. Some maintained a stunned silence as I spoke. It was as if I was breaking a taboo by advocating against religious fundamentalism and nation-states as a whole. Other people repeated the nonsense about having to support a force like Hezbollah in order to level the playing field in the area.

Indeed such practical support for the forces "fighting" imperialism is in reality an abstraction divorced from reality, one in which the experiences of proletarians does not intrude, one that no amount of leftist posturing about the "real" movement can cover. Indeed, the Ayatollah was himself, once considered by leftists to be a champion of anti-imperialist struggle. This is why such leftists might talk socialism but in reality their activism and supposed "realism" are simply an elaborate means of covering up for their own meager existence as the Democratic Party's own loyal left-wing voting bloc.

We look forward to hearing more from Communicating Vessels in the future. ⁽¹⁾

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