Sunday, May 14, 2006
(10:09 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Objectively Pro-Fascist
It seems to have gone out of style for the moment, but during those early, urgent days of the War on Terror, many right-wingers enjoyed using this George Orwell quote: "Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other." Thus, people opposed to the Iraq war, for example, were objectively pro-Saddam.A thought occurs to me, though. These right-wingers obviously have no sympathy for communism -- in fact, this whole terrorism thing is basically a consolation prize for them now that their treasured communist enemy is no longer a major threat (even China is not usually considered a threat qua communist). Interestingly, though, in World War II, if the pacifists were objectively pro-fascist, then the Allies were objectively pro-Stalinist. Our hagiographic accounts of World War II (surely what these right-wingers were trying to invoke with the Orwell quote) would have the Allies on the side of freedom and democracy -- yet they allied themselves with what would be considered the foremost enemy of freedom and democracy for the next several decades.
So what can we say that the current crop of Orwellians were disavowing? Is Andrew Sullivan objectively pro-death squad? Is Donald Rumsfeld objectively pro-insurgency? Or is the whole administration objectively pro-bin Laden, objectively pro-al Qaeda, since they hampered the effort to track down the real perpetrators of 9/11 in favor of their idiotic Iraq adventure? Maybe they're even pro-9/11 attacks, since they viewed those attacks as an opportunity to sell the Iraq War. So during the early stages of the War for the Hearts and Minds of the Middle Eastern Street, one might say that the so-called "good guys" were in some sense allied with the terrorists, even if there was no explicit conspiracy -- recall, for instance, how eagerly everyone waited for a new tape from bin Laden, almost as though he were a respected thinker or elder statesman, since his speeches would further justify our desire for war. And now, of course, the US -- or rather, the US military -- has a very serious terrorist problem to deal with, as opposed to a single, unrepeatable attack.
In the context of World War II, it does seem like a pacifist position would not have worked, and even if Orwell was wrong to vilify the pacifists in his situation, he did "have a point." But this time, of course, the pacifists were totally right.
