Osama bin Laden Meets Karl Marx

Ronald Bailey | September 13, 2007

Sarah Lawrence College political scientist Fawaz Gerges has an interesting op/ed in today's Christian Science Monitor about Osama bin Laden's recent list to the anti-globalization Left. To wit:

AFTER A THREE-YEAR absence, Osama bin Laden has resurfaced in another of his rousing videotapes, only this time with a new image and a new message. Projecting a younger look, Mr. bin Laden gives his most ideological address since the early 1990s with an assault on capitalism and liberal democracy loaded with Marxist and socialist terms. Indeed, this new bin Laden sounds more like Che Guevara, the Marxist revolutionary, than some of his rifle-toting Al Qaeda cohorts...

In the video, bin Laden addresses Americans and rails against the ills of economic exploitation, multinational corporations, and globalization. He tells them to liberate themselves from "the deception, shackles, and attrition of the capitalist system." Similar to his incitement of Muslims against their oppressive, "apostate" rulers and the meddlesome West, bin Laden now seems to be trying to galvanize Americans against their own harsh socioeconomic and political system.

"Poor and exploited Americans, unite against your capitalist laws that make the rich richer and the poor poorer," the former multimillionaire businessman tells the camera. Never before has bin Laden utilized the grandiose language of Marxism in his statements to the American people. And yet, he says, Muslims and Americans are alike; they are both victims of the capitalist system, which "seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of 'globalization' in order to protect democracy."

Whole Gerges op/ed here.

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The Artist Formerly Know as Tr|9.13.07 @ 11:29AM|#

Ahhhhh, I got the first post. This is totally sweet.

SPD|9.13.07 @ 11:31AM|#

Many of OBL's funders just tugged uncomfortably at the collars of their business suits.

|9.13.07 @ 11:33AM|#

Anti-capitalist, leftist rhetoric combined with anti-modernism, anti-semitism, and a return to a mythical past. Hmm, sounds familiar doesn't it?

|9.13.07 @ 11:34AM|#

All non-capitalist countries have no poor to speak of?

But of course there will plenty who buy it hook line and sinker.

|9.13.07 @ 11:39AM|#

OBL must have seen how many apologists Stalin has and decided to give anti-capitalism a try.

|9.13.07 @ 11:40AM|#

Prediction: Some addle-brained leftists will shortly develop a strange new respect for bin Laden as a revolutionay fellow-traveler in the ongoing class warfare against global monopoly capitalism. On the other hand, Gerges thinks this rhetorical shift could confuse his Islamist confreres.

Well, theres there is this diary on DailyKos which pretty much says that. Sad thing is, it actually got recommended by hundreds of people on that site. Basically says Osama bin Laden is no more evil than Ronald Reagan.

|9.13.07 @ 11:43AM|#

"Some addle-brained leftists will shortly develop a strange new respect for bin Laden as a revolutionay fellow-traveler in the ongoing class warfare against global monopoly capitalism."

Don't forget the dainty carbon footprint, for which he deserves extra credit.

|9.13.07 @ 11:47AM|#

"Anti-capitalist, leftist rhetoric combined with anti-modernism, anti-semitism, and a return to a mythical past. Hmm, sounds familiar doesn't it?"

Cesar, do you mean the Nazis? I'm not an expert on Nazi history or philosophy, so correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Hitler, while using some "socialist" talking points, a deadly enemy to the leftist Communists of his day and therefore probably a poor example of a "leftist" in his nation? I mean, Nixon was to the left of today's conservatives, but he was hardly a "leftist" historically and was the most conservative serious choice of his time...

|9.13.07 @ 11:48AM|#

Episiarch|9.13.07 @ 11:49AM|#

OBL must have seen how many apologists Stalin has and decided to give anti-capitalism a try.

Bingo. That whole "Islamofascist" meme is out there, and as we all know, everybody hates fascists and religious nuts. On the other hand, communists/socialists/leftist radicals are still very popular and quite heavily defended. He's just going for a new classification.

Remember, there's no crime that you can commit as a leftist idealist as long as the words you spout are that it was for good intentions.

|9.13.07 @ 11:50AM|#

This guy seems really tallented at convincing large swaths of naive people to do self-destructive things that result in tremendously expensive acts of heavy consequence.
If he keeps this sort of rhetoric up, we're doomed.

Most traditionalist are for command economies and against markets, US conservative rhetoric notwithstanding. Ask yourself if social conservatives believe that voluntary exchanges should rule the day in the areas of reproductive health care, pornographic literature or seditious pamphleteering...

George Tenet Fangirl|9.13.07 @ 11:52AM|#

From the article:

Similarly, bin Laden had never before made distinctions between the American people and their leaders

That's an utterly ignorant claim. See, for example, the 2004 tape where he said that "It never occurred to us that the supreme commander of the US armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face those great horrors alone . . . Your security does not lie in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands."

|9.13.07 @ 11:52AM|#

"On the other hand, communists/socialists/leftist radicals are still very popular and quite heavily defended."

Uhh, do you live on Mars? We have a presidential candidate willing to publicly call himself a libertarian, but none would dare call himself a "communist." And if you wanted to torch any social policy just get the label "socialist" attached to it...

|9.13.07 @ 11:54AM|#

Cesar-another way I could put this is, what was the large rightist groups in Germany 1930's-40's to which Hitler was so strongly opposed? I think he was the right there...

Prediction: some addled-brain libertarians will develop a strange new respect for bin Laden, since he denounced taxation in the West. The difference being, I'm kidding.

Anyway, bin Laden isn't trying to appeal to Americans. He's never tried to appeal to Americans.

He's trying to set himself up as the opposite pole to hyper-power America, and form alliances with a broader body of anti-American political groups, even those whose political ideologies are vastly different from that of al Qaeda.

|9.13.07 @ 11:55AM|#

Indeed, this new bin Laden sounds more like Che Guevara, the Marxist revolutionary, than some of his rifle-toting Al Qaeda cohorts...

Yeah, those Marxist revolutionaries never "tote" rifles...

|9.13.07 @ 11:56AM|#

Cesar,

From your link:

Below the break let us examine bin Laden's latest statement and find out what bin Laden thinks that he has in common with major corporations and neoconservatives.

Doesn't sound like statement of respect and solidarity to me.

Episiarch|9.13.07 @ 11:57AM|#

Uhh, do you live on Mars?

No, Pluto, but I don't seem to live as far out as you. Check your history departments, magazine columnists, etc. There are plenty of ex-Stalinists, ex-communists and other ex-whatever (and existing whatevers). Check your local campus. Bet you'll find an IWW chapter there, unmolested. Think you'll find a Nazi chapter?

Don't be an ass. Plenty of people still push Maxism, communism (in the form of extreme socialism), and other leftist tropes and are not considered pariahs. Lots of young people on college campuses go for it too. But fascism (in the form of Naziism) is universally reviled.

|9.13.07 @ 12:00PM|#

Mr. Nice Guy:

And if you wanted to torch any social policy just get the label "socialist" attached to it...

Which is why "progressive" has such a nice ring to it nowadays.

fyodor|9.13.07 @ 12:02PM|#

There's already leftists who see a moral streak to bin Ladenism, or at least see it as a natural or predictable result of western capitalism. See Ward Churchill. That's a pretty small, if relatively well-place, fringe, however.

|9.13.07 @ 12:02PM|#

Yes, the Nazis seized on socialistic rhetoric when they tried to generate mass appeal, too.

Sort of like Soviet Bloc nations calling themselves "Democratic Republics."

Or the extremist, nationalist, Stalin-worshipping, anti-Semitic Russian party that called itself the "Liberal Democrats."

That's what violent fringe parties do when they want mass appeal - attempt to portray themselves as being exemplars of a creed with a much broader appeal than their own.

Hint: it's not a good idea to fall for it.

|9.13.07 @ 12:07PM|#

Joe, the same link said he wasn't anymore evil than Reagan. Don't you think its just a little silly to compare a terrorist to a U.S. President, even if you don't agree with him?

|9.13.07 @ 12:08PM|#

Episarch
Yeah, those college history professors sure have a lot of clout! Nothing like those major politicians and pundits though, the one's who would not touch a socialist label with a twenty-nine and half foot pole, eh?

MNG-

I said leftist rhetoric, not leftist actions.

|9.13.07 @ 12:09PM|#

"Plenty of people still push Maxism,"
Do you mean Maxim? I don't push it, but the cover girls are sometimes very hot!

|9.13.07 @ 12:10PM|#

Bin Laden's not trying anything with that video, seeing as it's faked:

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9777136-7.html

|9.13.07 @ 12:11PM|#

MNG -
As Baily said, that's why we have the term "progressive." It even sounds nicer than "socialistic" because it implies that whatever it is they do is moving us forward. Isn't that a warm and cozy feeling?

|9.13.07 @ 12:12PM|#

I don't know how contemporary leftists can claim to be "progressive" in a literal sense. A lot of them are very anti-modern.

|9.13.07 @ 12:13PM|#

Cesar-I'm not sure his rhetoric was what would be considered left wing for his place and time...Planning was kind of taken for granted in Germany at the time (and othe places at other times, which Hayek talked about in his Road to Serfdom), but the right in those nations wanted planning to achieve some very different stated goals than the left. Did Hitler advocate government planning to achieve "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs?" or in order to "make for a more glorious Fatherland?"

|9.13.07 @ 12:14PM|#

MNG-

No, but he railed against big department stores (similar to railing against Wal-Mart today), international corporations and bankers, and "plutocrats".

Cesar,

Joe, the same link said he wasn't anymore evil than Reagan. Actually, it said that the people whose family members were killed on Reagan's orders probably find him as evil as bin Laden.

The article didn't call anyone evil - it dismissed the usefulness of such talk. Which is plenty dumb all by itself, but not an endorsement of bin Laden.

I mean, did you think the Daily Kos diary comparing someone to Ronald Reagan was supposed to be complimentary, and expressing "a newfound respect?"

|9.13.07 @ 12:15PM|#

It doesn't suggest newfound respect--but it does suggest moral equivalence, which is just plain stupid.

Episiarch|9.13.07 @ 12:16PM|#

Yeah, those college history professors sure have a lot of clout! Nothing like those major politicians and pundits though, the one's who would not touch a socialist label with a twenty-nine and half foot pole, eh?

Who fucking cares about clout? Address the point I made: you can work in any college as a "Marxist historian" or "Marxist economist" or plenty of other explicitly left-derived positions, even espousing shit that history has proven murderous, and nobody even blinks an eye. Try being a "Nazi economist" or Nazi anything.

When people like you argue that Marxism/communism has been vilified as much as Naziism, I can only laugh, except for that part of me that is appalled that you aren't even upset about it.

|9.13.07 @ 12:16PM|#

I think the term "progressive" has become the term of choice to escape the label of "liberal" not "Communist/Socialist" because no major political force in this nation has really tried to label themselves "Communists/Socialists." You may feel that many liberals or progressives are pushing something similar to or that will result in something like communism, but progressives/liberals not only don't see themselves thusly they also, if you laid out their programs and beliefs beside honest to God Communists, would not be equivalent to them...

|9.13.07 @ 12:20PM|#

Prediction: Every political and ideological movement will have a nutzoid fringe that is an embarrassment to the mainstream element. This includes libertarianism (and may be especially true).

For instance, there are even some nutzoids who believe it is just, necessary and honorable to imprison US citizens indefinitely without charge, that torture is an acceptable means of intelligence gathering, and that compliance with the Fourth Amendment is not compulsory.

|9.13.07 @ 12:21PM|#

what's wrong with the label of "liberal?"

Sorry Epi, I thought the point was found in your very words:
"everybody hates fascists and religious nuts. On the other hand, communists/socialists/leftist radicals are still very popular and quite heavily defended."

A few college professors does not make for "very popular" in any book. And of course religious nuts are actually "very popular" in this nation thank you. Pat Robertson, a major player in the GOP, thinks you can pray hurricanes away and that disasters are divine justice...Is there any self-avowed Marxist with that much money and political clout here?

Of course "Nazi-ism" is less "popular" than "communist/socialist/leftist radical." The former was a very particular movement that existed in one nation and was defeated with that nation, the other includes both Stalinist Russia and socialist Sweden...If the latter is still more popular than the former, then well duh.

MNG,

Hitler purposely and deliberately attempted to sell the Nazi program as socialistic, to appeal to unionists and other disaffected leftists. He put the word "socialist" into the party's name. He allowed an "unalterable" statement of principles that called for industry and department stores to be run by workers' councils to be put out in the 20s (nevermind that they did exactly the opposite when they came to power - we're talking about rhetoric). He gave one famout speech defining socialism in a way that equated his nationalist and racial beliefs with socialism.

Socialist rhetoric was a very important part of the Nazis' rise to power, even if the policies pursued thereafter were crony capitalist/corporatist.

|9.13.07 @ 12:22PM|#

Cesar,

Moral equivalence and stupidity, I'll grant you.

Respect for or solidarity with bin Laden are a different matter.

Can't we just replace it all with something like "Swedeists" and get it over with?

|9.13.07 @ 12:25PM|#

A Marxist historian is a very different thing than a Communist historian, Episiarch. You won't find anyone calling himself the latter.

George Orwell was a socialist and a Marxist. So is the British Labor Party, at least at its founding. Imputing the crimes of the Stalinists to groups and ideologies that passionately opposed Stalinism seems a bit off to me.

Chuck|9.13.07 @ 12:37PM|#

I'm just waiting for OBL to start saying that religion is the opiate of the masses. *Then* it should be worth watching.

VM|9.13.07 @ 12:37PM|#

Episiarch | September 13, 2007, 11:57am | #
Uhh, do you live on Mars?

No, Pluto,

oooh. dropped ball. The correct answer is "Uranus", of course.

Rookie move. You hate to see it happen.

[keed keed]

Episiarch|9.13.07 @ 12:40PM|#

oooh. dropped ball. The correct answer is "Uranus", of course

I felt myself wince as I clicked the Submit button. I feel like an amateur. I will go watch 6 hours of The Kids in the Hall and Strangers With Candy now to try and get my edge back.

VM|9.13.07 @ 12:52PM|#

Ooh - Epi, I gotta apologize, you've been singled out a few times today. I gotta say sorry! (hier and hier)

atrevete|9.13.07 @ 2:00PM|#

"everybody hates fascists and religious nuts. On the other hand, communists/socialists/leftist radicals are still very popular and quite heavily defended."

Exactly. Che Guevara's photo is on everything from t-shirts to coffee mugs. They sold them at Wal-Mart, for godsake. There's a popular high-end Chinese restaurant in our city called "Mao's". You think anyone would name their restaurant "Goebbel's"?

|9.13.07 @ 2:03PM|#

You think anyone would name their restaurant "Goebbel's"?

In East Asia, there are actually "Nazi" themed bars, believe it or not. I guess its acceptable there because they were never really opressed by them.

|9.13.07 @ 2:19PM|#

From an email I wrote Lew Rockwell a few months ago on this subject, well on the subject as it has evolved:

"Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis: German National Socialism." -- Hermann Goering,

I suppose long before Clinton, Blair, Neo-Liberalism, and forgettable European Social Democrats in the 70's, there already was a Third Way, German National Socialism.

|9.13.07 @ 2:43PM|#

I just want to know, how long before his (dark bearded) face starts showing up on T-Shirts.

|9.13.07 @ 2:57PM|#

what's wrong with the label of "liberal?"

Ask Michael Dukakis.

|9.13.07 @ 3:00PM|#

I'm not an expert on Nazi history or philosophy, so correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Hitler, while using some "socialist" talking points, a deadly enemy to the leftist Communists of his day and therefore probably a poor example of a "leftist" in his nation?

Mr. Nice Guy, joe: Hitler was a socialist / collectivist of the right -- the Russian communists were socialists of the left -- a slightly different class of people were ostensibly the "beneficiaries" of the subsequent looting, and Hitler allowed industrialists to run the factories building up the war machine versus the bureaucrats Stalin used, but both autocrats took whatever they wanted from people and used it to build up state power.

joe -- George Orwell started out as a socialist -- try reading "Down and Out in Paris and London" for an early example -- but if you read "Animal Farm" or "1984" it's pretty hard to say he continued as a socialist throughout his life, unless you mean the kind of "socialist" that Hayek turned into.

|9.13.07 @ 3:27PM|#

Warren - maybe on a few college campuses. In much of the country, you would risk a serious ass-kicking for putting one on.

Guevara wasn't responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans. I suspect in much of Miami, you would be risking a beat down wearing a Guevara shirt.

|9.13.07 @ 3:41PM|#

OBL is just not that funny.

Oh wait..... I thought you meant Groucho Marx. My bad

Paul|9.13.07 @ 4:37PM|#

Prediction: Some addle-brained leftists will shortly develop a strange new respect for bin Laden as a revolutionay fellow-traveler in the ongoing class warfare against global monopoly capitalism.

Nah, they'll just say "we told you so, this is what happens with the brutality of capitalism, it spawns Osama Bin Ladens".

|9.13.07 @ 4:44PM|#

Mr. Nice Guy,

Just look up "progressive evolution". The progressive policies from 1850 to 1930 emerged from some very ethnocentric assumptions. I dislike the progressive movement partly because they so callously talked about replacing or "reeducating" different groups of people.

|9.13.07 @ 4:52PM|#

prolefeed,

You are misusing the term "socialist." It does not mean "collectivist," but a subset of that term. It is oft-misused 'round these parts by people pushing an agenda of denying that totalitarianism can come from the right, but no, socialism and collectivism are not synoymns. Never have been.

Orwell was a socialist his entire life. Animal Farm is an anti-communist book, not an anti-socialist book.

You are vastly overusing the term, the way people used to overuse "fascist" to describe any authoritarian ideology.

Edward|9.13.07 @ 5:44PM|#

As Aaron Russo would point out--if Aaron were still with us (RIP)--Osama is just saying what the Bush admninistration handlers are telling him to say.

|9.13.07 @ 5:44PM|#

From Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens who is quoting Orwell's review of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom:

He wrote, "Professor Hayek's thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism and that in Germany, the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialism had already done most of their work for them....By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it.....In the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth.... That collectivism is not inherently democratic, but on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamed of."

Edward|9.13.07 @ 5:53PM|#

The real enemy of democracy comes not from the left or the right but from rigid dogmatism.

|9.13.07 @ 5:56PM|#

Nice ellispes.

Note the qualifier "In the negative part..."

Orwell agreed with Hayek that collectivism is not "inherently" democratic - the negative part - and stopped there.

|9.13.07 @ 6:05PM|#

joe: The ellispes? Why do you think I linked to the whole thing--just so you could come up with some kind of lame "gotcha"? Sheesh. May I suggest you continue reading the Hitchens section to which I so helpfully linked.

|9.13.07 @ 6:08PM|#

Might I suggest you quit dodging the central objection that I already raised - that you attempted to pawn off Orwell's statement that collectivism is not "inherently" democratic as a statement of support for the notion that it is inherently undemocratic.

And the remainder of the linked article acknowledges.

|9.13.07 @ 6:33PM|#

This just in: OBL has just purchased some acreage in Montana and is living in a small cabin writing anti-capitalist prose.

Paul|9.13.07 @ 6:50PM|#

This just in: OBL has just purchased some acreage in Montana and is living in a small cabin writing anti-capitalist prose.

That's Gary Busey.

|9.13.07 @ 8:30PM|#

Busey, you bastard!

Just for that, I'm going to go kick Sean Penn's ass.

|9.13.07 @ 9:15PM|#

joe: What the Hell are you going on about?

|9.14.07 @ 2:43AM|#

My brother was working on an skyscraper design in Miami. The owners said they wanted some 'controversial' art in the lobby area but hadn't decided what. So when my brother did the mock-up model for the proposal meeting with the client, he thought to himself, "I'll give you controversial," and put the Che Guevera portrait in the lobby as a stand in.

The client, who was Cuban, threw a tantrum and threatened to cancel the contract. My brother ended up getting banned from that particular project by his boss.

|9.14.07 @ 4:28AM|#

joe: What the Hell are you going on about?

Ron, joe's denying that Orwell turned on the inevitable brutal logic of socialism just like Hayek. He's trying to spin 1984 as being about the evils of communism but somehow praising socialism despite its ringing, unambiguous denunciation of collectivism. Joe is, as usual, convinced that socialism can work if we can just get the right people in there for a change, unlike every other time it has been tried where, by happenstance, authoritarians somehow got in power and left the good socialists on the sidelines.

He just can't wrap his head around the fact that ardent socialists like Hayek and Orwell reluctantly came to the conclusion that freedom works and collectivism fails catastrophically.

|9.14.07 @ 8:05AM|#

Osama B.L. turning Marxist ? It means one thing: his Saudi support is dwindling, and he and his pals are shopping for a new sponsor. I would blame that on the big weapon deal the Saudis got recently.

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