The Real Enemy

As market fundamentalism smashes itself on the rocks of the business cycle, and as we see a neo-con President actually start to act like a 70s style Keynesian, I begin to wonder if natural social cycles of some sort are going to ruin other types of fundamentalism, particularly religious fundamentalism. Because if there is a real enemy to peace in this world it must be fundamentalism in all its forms, where people have somehow been taught that all things revolve around one thing and that one thing must not be compromised upon.

Religious fundamentalism is created by injustice (real or perceived) and is sustained by conflict. Once a religious fundamentalist movement has been created, it requires a continuing supply of conflict in order to legitimize it. That's why you can never count on the leaders of fundamentalist movements to take any steps to try to end whichever conflicts that fuel them. The end of the conflict is the end of the need for fundamentalism, and this is just as true in the evangelical megachurches of Colorado Springs as it is in the mosques of Peshawar. You can't keep people chanting simplistic blather and standing around in huge buildings for years and years on just a good public speaking style. You need (as Hitler and Goebbels obviously knew) to convince them that they are under constant threat and that your uncompromising, angry, militant ethic is the only thing that will save them.

America's Christian fundamentalists are fed a constant supply of threats to "their way of life" and those range from the threat of having gay men carrying away your sons, to being overrun by dangerous, wild-eyed feminists, to having your daughters marry a "heathen" that will bring the rest of his foreign family over from God knows where to destroy the fabric of American society and (shudder) ruin Christmastime. Now that the US economy is tanking and the Administration is about to switch, they will be taught that the Democratic Party is the enemy. Look for the next act of terrorism in America to be perpetrated by a white, Christian American guy that thinks he's saving his nation and his religion from the peril of liberalism....of course he won't be called a terrorist, being a white Christian American. Tim McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and every KKK member that ever hurt a black man were all terrorists, but we never called them that did we? Wonder why!?

Muslim fundamentalists in the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia have of course been studied ad nauseum over the last 15 years or so and I don't have much to add to that body of knowledge except to say that the same rules apply to them, and that is that they need conflict to thrive. And thus of course it is easy to thrive for those of them that live in countries filled with traumatized people that live in constant fear for their lives. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example, has created a perfect set of circumstances to promote and sustain religious fundamentalism, i.e. dangerous faction-based fighting combined with a lack of basic, functioning services like water, electricity and schools. Religious fundamentalists LOVE that kind of situation, it makes their jobs so easy. And every society has its potential enforcers just waiting on the sidelines for the chance to randomly brutalize people in the ways that the new gangs of Baghdad have been doing. They should never be given that chance, they should never be given the chaos and despair that allows them to roam freely.

Another situation that has ensured the creation and sustenance of Muslim fundamentalism was the "displacement" of Arab Palestinians from their homes and lands during the creation of Israel and the subsequent controlling of their whereabouts and movements ever since. Nobody likes to have their land stolen from them. And there's nothing like decades of living in refugee camps followed by many more years of forced isolation to give people that feeling of being ridiculously, immorally pushed around. And speaking of Israel, that society's Jewish fundamentalists do their part to ensure a constant state of threat and danger by undermining any reforms or moderate trends that might diffuse the constant state of conflict with neighboring countries. People like Israel's Shas party would hate for there to ever be peace with Israel's neighbors because that would spell the end of the Shas Party. Can you imagine how scared those Shas Party guys must have been when a small group of Israeli pilots refused on humanitarian grounds to bomb a Lebanese village during the conflict in August 2006? There is no greater threat to conflict-based fundamentalism than when regular people refuse to commit the acts of violence that perpetuate the threats that fundamentalism feeds off of.

As for the rise of home-grown Muslim fundamentalism in places like Britain, France, Holland, and Germany...I place the blame for that squarely at the feet of whoever came up with Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary renditions, waterboarding, etc. When people are made to understand that they and their family members can be secretly kidnapped from a place like downtown Stockholm and taken somewhere and tortured with no charges and no due process...and you add in that their parents may well have moved them to these countries specifically to escape those very same kinds of injustices...well what do you expect?

To end on a happy note, I'd just like to say that a different future is possible than the clash of civilizations BS that we have been presented with over the last 7 years by western governments and wacked-out terrorists alike and that is for all of us to follow sensible, moderate, tolerant, and cooler heads. But to get that we have to make people stop wanting conflict and start wanting reconciliation. 'Any takers?