From Useful Idiot to Useful Infidel: Meditations on the Folly of 21st-Century “Intellectuals”

Abstract

Lenin allegedly referred to the thinkers and activists ready to cover up for his crimes against his own people as “useful idiots.” Today, some intellectuals sacrifice their integrity as intellectuals not for a professedly progressive egalitarian movement, but in order to protect radical Islam, one of the most regressive and authoritarian movements imaginable. This article refers to such people as “useful infidels,” showing how their excessive self-criticism is exploited by Islamists to incriminate the West in the evils of modernity. The result is a perversion of human rights discourse and a marriage of pre-modern sadism and post-modern masochism.

Keywords:

• cognitive warfare
• demopaths
• human rights complex
• Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome
• memes
• moral inversion
• Schadenfreude
• self-degrading Jews
• useful idiot
• useful infidel

Notes

Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba, 1928–1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

On John Esposito's ardent anticipation of a wave of Middle East democracies, see the remarks made in Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001), 48–52, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubPDFs/IvoryTowers.pdf; on Juan Cole's insistence that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, see Ryan Mauro, “Juan Cole Gives Iran the Benefit of the Doubt,” PJMedia, September 29, 2009, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/giving-iran-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-denied-to-bush/; on Noah Feldman's democratic airbrushing of Islamism in his Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), see the review by Shammai Fishman in Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 4, no. 1 (2010): 141–144. The list of apologists and their many deeds could go on for pages. Much of this rhetoric centers around the fear of what many call “Islamophobia.” See Islamophobia Studies Journal, http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia/islamophobia-studies-journal. Others, myself included, feel that this is a term largely used by people who are themselves afraid to criticize Islam, and assault anyone who does: Piers Benn, “On Islamophobia-phobia,” New Humanist, 2002, http://rationalist.org.uk/524.

See the remarks of John Brennan, the President's National Security Advisor, and Eric Holder, the Attorney General, discussed in Richard Landes, “How PC Talk Paralyzes Us: Holder before the House on Islamic Radicalism and Home-Grown Terrorism,” The Augean Stables, May 17, 2010, http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2010/05/17/how-pc-talk-paralyzes-us-holder-before-the-house-on-islamic-radicalism-and-home-grown-terrorism/.

Richard Landes, “Self-Criticism and Identifying Demopaths: A Pressing Agendum for the Humanities in the 21st Century,” The Augean Stables, April 8, 2008, http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2008/04/18/self-criticism-and-identifying-demopaths-a-pressing-agendum-for-the-humanities-in-the-21st-century/.

Lee Smith, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (New York: Doubleday, 2010).

Roger Nash Baldwin, Liberty Under the Soviets (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928); for a brief version of the argument, see the same author's “Freedom in the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.,” Soviet Russia Today (1934), http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/blog/baldwin.pdf. Baldwin recognized the problem only after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had been signed in 1939.

Charles Jacobs, “Why Israel, and Not Sudan, Is Singled Out,” Boston Globe, October 5, 2002, http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2008/08/08/from-the-archives-dr-jacobs-argument-on-msm-coverage-of-human-rights-abuses/.

On the “Human Rights” NGO giants, see the critique of NGO Monitor, http://www.ngo-monitor.org/.

See the discussion in Bernard-Henri Lévy, Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism (New York: Random House, 2009), 137–141.

After a talk at Yale on matters of international law, Goldstone surprised those he spoke with by ardently adopting the principle that he expects more of Western nations and Israel: “I think it's more heinous when a rabbi or a priest commits adultery.” Aside from the left-handed compliment to Israel (as a “priestly” nation?), this obviously misses the point. Even if we agree that a priest's or a rabbi's misbehavior is more reprehensible, that hardly makes the action of the priest who commits adultery more heinous than that of the layman who commits mass murder. And none of this should have an influence on a “judge.” The sloppiness of the thinking here—Goldstone's words were quite emotional—suggests that reason plays less of a role in moral judgment than some idealistic passion. Richard Landes, “The Coke-Lite of International Law: Goldstone Speaks at Yale,” The Augean Stables, January 28, 2010, http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2010/01/28/the-coke-lite-of-international-law-goldstone-speaks-at-yale/.

Exodus 5:21.

Pascal Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism, trans. Steven Rendall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, The Two Thousand Year Old Man, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQWDxrKS1Z4, at 6:26.

Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, trans. F. Rosenthal (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), III: 311–315, 271–274. For an analysis of current Arab political dynamics using a combination of Ibn Khaldun and sociological theory, see Syed Farid Alatas, “A Khaldunian Exemplar for a Historical Sociology for the South,” Current Sociology 54 (2006): 397–411.

Adam Seligman, The Problem of Trust (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 135–137.

Richard Landes, “When Cain is the ‘Other': On the ‘Other’ in the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” The Augean Stables, December 22, 2008, http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2008/12/22/when-cain-is-the-other-on-the-other-in-the-arab-israeli-conflict/.

For an excellent analysis of this phenomenon, see Bruckner, The Tyranny of Guilt (see note 12 above). The post-colonial field of Subaltern Studies gives epistemological priority to the voice of the oppressed. There is little to no investigation (that I am aware of) of the problem of what Nietzsche called “ressentiment” or, more generally, the problem of “envy” as a factor impacting the epistemological value of the voice of subalterns.

Haroon Saddiqi, “Looking for Accountability in the Gaza War,” The Star, October 15, 2009, http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/710335.

For the critique of the Goldstone Report, see the many articles gathered at Understanding the Goldstone Report, http://www.goldstonereport.com; for the way in which the Report's obsession with Israeli misdeeds—and its systematic neglect of Hamas’ violations of its own civilians’ right to be spared from the ravages of war—combine to reward the victimizer and further victimize the victims, see Richard Landes, “The Goldstone Report Part I: A Failure of Intelligence,” and idem., “The Goldstone Report Part II: A Miscarriage of Human Rights,” MERIA 13, no. 4 (2009), http://www.gloria-center.org/meria/2009/12/landes1.html.

CNN's “Fareed Zakaria interviews Goldstone” of October 4, 2009, http://www.seconddraft.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=619:cs-fareed-goldstone&catid=57:see-section-msm-what-they-say-a-how-they-say-it&Itemid=134, at 5:55.

http://www.tikkun.org/index.php.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/.

There is a (perfectly believable) story about Sidney Morgenbesser remarking to Lionel Trilling that his motto (as a completely secular and unidentified Jew) was “incognito, ergo sum.” What has happened since 2000 is the emergence of such previously incognito Jews “as Jews” to denounce Israel; hence the term “alter-Juif.” See the volume of Controverses 4 (2000) devoted to the problem: http://www.controverses.fr/Sommaires/sommaire4.htm.

Anthony Julius, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 546–559.

For the best single discussion of the problem, see Alvin Rosenfeld, “Progressive” Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism (New York: American Jewish Committee Publications, 2006), http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF%7D/PROGRESSIVE_JEWISH_THOUGHT.PDF. For an introduction to the controversy, see the Wikipedia entry: “Progressive Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Jewish_Thought_and_the_New_Anti-Semitism; and Bruce Bawer, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 2010), 22–30.

One of the most recent contributions, Bawer (see note 22 above), is well worth reading. See also Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West (New York: Basic Books, 2007).

Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World (San Francisco: Harper-Torchbooks, 1956); see also Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957); and Richard Crossman, ed., The God that Failed (Harper & Brothers, 1949).

See Hollander, Political Pilgrims (see note 1 above); and the discussion of the millennial dimension of fellow traveling in Richard Landes, Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 11.

Daniel Pipes, The Rushdie Affair (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2003).

Paul Hollander, The Only Super Power: Reflections on Strength, Weakness, and Anti-Americanism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), ch. 5.

On anti-Americanism and its “twin brother” anti-Zionism, see Andrei Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), especially chap. 5. Ironically, the Israeli Left today acts as if it must atone for a useful idiocy it has not committed: supporting Israel when Israel was wrong. This has become requisite for them, in order to curry favor with those Leftists who actually are guilty of fellow-traveler-type well-intentioned lies.

On the Sharon and the Intifada, see the Mitchell Report, 2009, 7, http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rpt/3060.htm. On the Pope's comments and the Muslim reaction, see R. Landes, “The Pope's Remarks about Islam: The Joke Too Few Get,” Augean Stables, September 29, 2006, http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2006/09/29/the-popes-remarks-about-islam-the-joke-too-few-get/. On the issue of intimidation, see the most recent study, Paul Marshall and Nina Shea, Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

For the latest analysis of this, see Michael Prell, Underdogma (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2011).

On the Russian death cult of terror, see Anna Geifman, Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010); on the Jihadi death cult, see Laurent Murawiec, The Mind of Jihad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Seth Farber, Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2005).

For a good example of this dynamic at work, note the case of John Mearsheimer. Speaking to a Palestinian audience (!), Mearsheimer contrasted the bad Jews (the “new Afrikaaners”) with the “righteous Jews” (who fit the profile of self-degrading Jews as we have delineated it), all in John Mearsheimer, “The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners,” speech of Thursday, April 29, 2010, to the Jerusalem Fund, http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/10418.

John Mearsheimer, ibid.

See the comment made by Europe1 news anchor, Catherine Ney, to the effect that the picture of Muhammad al Durah “erases, replaces the image of the boy in the Warsaw Ghetto.” See Richard Landes, “On the Hidden Costs of Media Error: Muhammad al Durah and the French Intifada of 2005,” The Augean Stables, November 15, 2005, http://www.theaugeanstables.com/essays-on-france/paris-notes-fall-2005/.

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Richard Landes

Richard Landes is a professor of history at Boston University. His two most recent books are: Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred Year Retrospective on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, edited with Steven Katz (New York University Press, 2011). He maintains several websites, and blogs at The Augean Stables.