Islam and the end of the Left

The Left, long accustomed to seeing itself as the vanguard of history, has been definitively rejected in its strongholds: first in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union where it once controlled entire states, and now by the Arabian secret societies and terrorist organizations which formerly took it as their ideological creed. It is now rotting garbage in the dustbin of history, and survives artificially only in the sheltered precincts of western academia and bohemia the way a dying sect lingers in isolated deserts. Although still capable of mischief, as David Horowitz warns us, the Left has lost all physical power of self defense. Its Bolshevik core is dead. Should the United States Armed Forces somehow be overcome by the Islamists, the Left would be helpless to prevent its inquisition, torment and extermination at the hands of a vengeful Muslim world.

The hollowing out of the Left -- the death of its Bolshevik core -- is one of the great unwritten stories of the late twentieth century. The decline of the cadre of professional revolutionaries at its center was simultaneously matched by the inrush from the periphery of the network of sympathizers, fellow travelers and "useful fools" which it once adopted as protective coloration. It was a classic case of the inmates taking over an asylum from which the keepers had fled. To appreciate the difference one can compare the Communist cadres faithfully depicted in For Whom the Bell Tolls or And Quiet Flows the Don or even Silone's Bread and Wine with the freak show of autonomists, zapatistas, rage-against-the-machine cultists, transgender spokespersons, abortion rights activists, militant gay and lesbians and tattered academics that characterize today's Left. The former, who seized power in the vast spaces of Europe and Asia, were practical revolutionaries who lived by strict democratic centralism. The latter have never even heard of Party discipline, confining their 'militance' to marching with their ass cheeks protruding from spangled underpants or affecting obnoxious attitudes while wearing adolescent masks. The current Left even lacks the capability to establish a viable underground organization -- child's play to the generation of Borodin, Tan Malacca and Ho Chi Minh. The organizational memory has gone clear out of its core. The Red Brigades of 1969 could probably not be created today. To experience any real militancy, today's Left wing activists must attach themselves as pathetic dogs to Islamic causes like the International Solidarity Movement. There, they can indulge their fantasy of advancing world socialism while objectively dying for Osama Bin Laden or Yasser Arafat. The circle is complete. The roles have been reversed. The heirs to moribund Bolshevism have now become the "useful fools", the protective coloration of a dynamic militant Islamism.