Monday, March 17, 2008
UNIVERSALIST TOTALITARIANISM vs. NATIONALIST IMPERIALISM
Over the last few days I've been haunted by the thought that those who criticize me for an overly-zealous condemnation of Islam and Islamism will take my relative silence on the matter of China's suppression of Tibetan nationalism as an instance of inconsistency and hypocrisy. "This proves your opposition to Islamism is based on a fear founded in ignorance, since you do not fear or condemn Chinese political violence nearly as much, and you know so much more about, and have so much more personal familiarity with China and Chinese culture," I can hear them saying.
While I can obviously understand such a critique of my stance, I think it's wrong, and this is why: What's going on in Tibet is essentially an expression of nationalism and, at worst, of good old-fashioned imperialism, while Islamism is a very real form of totalitarianism. Over the last thirty years, since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the ascendancy of Deng Xiao-ping and the moderate reformers and modernizers in China, the Chinese Communist Party's role in Chinese society has become less and less totalitarian. Yes, they still demand and enforce a monopoly on political power, and do intrude far too much into the cultural life of the Chinese people, but it would stretch the definition of "totalitarianism" to the breaking point to call the CCP "totalitarian" today. Huge areas of personal life for the vast majority of Chinese people have been released from the yoke of "total control" and it is all but impossible to see a return to the truly totalitarian days of the Cultural Revolution and before.
Islam, on the other hand, purports to be a formula for the guidance of every aspect of human life, and Islamists aim to impose that totalitarian formula upon the whole world. In this regard, it makes the same kind of totalitarian and revolutionary universalist claims that communism did in its day as an active state system. Those in power in China are not motivated in their actions in Tibet by a revolutionary ideology that seeks to impose itself upon the whole world. No one who really understands China's modern history or the current state of the CCP believes that China's policy in Tibet is seen by those who formulate and implement it as a step on the road to some kind of ultimate goal of world dominion. As I explained in this post, I feel very sure that what's happening in Tibet is the CCP carrying out what it perceives as its Han Chinese nationalist mandate. Islamists, on the other hand, by their words and deeds, are motivated by a universalism that seeks to impose their world-view on the whole world, and that world-view can be called "totalitarian" with no risk of doing violence to the meaning of the word.
So, in summary, I condemn what's happening in Tibet because it runs afoul of basic principles of self-determination and liberty, but the case of Tibet is unique to the fact that Tibet sits on the border of China and is subject to an arguable case for Chinese sovereignty. There is a near-zero threat of Chinese intervention in affairs outside its border motivated by anything other than very mundane and non-ideological considerations of national interest (viz. Sudan). And there is no threat of waves of Chinese suicide bombers infiltrating the West to commit mass murder in the name of "Chinese-ism." Islamism, on the other hand ... well, you get my point.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:29 AM
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