Here’s a sampling from Jamell Bouie’s review of Markos Moulitsas’s book American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right:
Given the subject matter and his own influence, Moulitsas is sure to find a large audience for American Taliban. This wouldn’t be a problem if the book were a careful comparison of populist nationalist movements, highlighting similarities, underscoring differences, and generally documenting points of congruence between the U.S. conservative movement and populist nationalist groups around the world. But it isn’t.
Like Liberal Fascism, American Taliban is another entry in the tired genre of “my political opponents are monsters.” Indeed, Moulitsas begins the book with the Goldbergian declaration that “in their tactics and on the issues, our homegrown American Taliban are almost indistinguishable from the Afghan Taliban.” And he fills the remaining 200-plus pages with similar accusations. In the chapter on power, Moulitsas writes that “the American Taliban seek a tyranny of the believers in which the popular will, the laws of the land, and all of secular society are surrendered to their clerics and ideologues.” Which is, of course, why these American Taliban participate in the democratic system and hew to the outcomes of elections. Later in the chapter, Moulitsas argues that the right-wing hates democracy — they “openly dream of their own regressive brand of religious dictatorship” — loves war, fears sex, and openly despises women and gays. In the chapter on “war,” Moulitsas calls Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota a “high priestess of the American Taliban” — a veritable Mullah Omar, it seems! — and in the final chapter on “truth,” Moulitsas concludes by noting the foundational “kinship” between the two Talibans.
Now, it’s true that certain tendencies on the American right have analogues in fundamentalist Islam; for example, and as Moulitsas points out in his chapter on sex, right-wing conservatives share a hatred of pornography with fundamentalist Iranian authorities. Of course the similarities end there; conservatives boycott pornography, Iran punishes it with death.
I haven’t read the book and so I will not critique it. When I learned that Markos had chosen to write a book about the threat from the American Right, I was generally pleased and pleasantly surprised. It showed me that he understands what it really at stake in our country right now. But when I saw the cover and title of the book I was disappointed that it looked just like a liberal version of Jonah Goldberg’s idiotic screed: Liberal Fascism.
What matters, ultimately, is not the cover art or title, but the content of the book. And, to make just one observation about the critique above, the point I believe Markos is making is about what these conservatives would do with absolute power if they could attain it. It’s not about what they are doing right now under the constraints of the Constitution and their minority position. So, for example, the reason that social conservatives don’t put pornographers to death is not necessarily because they think that is too strong of a punishment; it may be simply because they don’t have the votes to make that the punishment.
The threat from the far right, which has now captured one of our two national political parties, is that they do not subscribe to what we might call the post-war consensus. The post-war consensus can be defined as the system that was set up during and after World War Two, which includes the Bretton Woods System, the establishment of the United Nations, the desegregation of the military and the country, the Civil Right’s Movement, court rulings defending the separation of church and state, the women’s liberation movement, liberal immigration law, gay rights, and so on. We can argue to what degree these social conservatives have accepted the civil rights of black people, but they don’t agree on how it was done, as Rand Paul exemplifies.
So, the question is, what would these conservatives like Joe Miller, Joe Buck, Rand Paul, and Sharron Angle do if given power? They are not all the same. Paul, for example, is likely to defend against too much government intrusion into our social lives. But, the rest of them are in a different category. And you can’t judge them by what they do now when they are powerless. You can’t say, “Hey, these people are engaged in the political process, they’re not cutting off anyone’s noses, so what are you so worried about?” That misses the point. For all their talk about returning to constitutional principles, the truth is that they want to repeal half of the later amendments. They don’t respect the Constitution because it prevents them from running the country as a theocracy or, at a minimum, as a country where Christianity is legally recognized as a favored religion. And that’s probably their most innocuous ambition.
I wonder if the governor and attorney general of Virginia would be pretty good examples of the steps these folks would take if there were to ascend to power?
They are. But imagine what they’d do if they didn’t have to worry about a judge striking down their work, or if they stacked the court with fellow-travelers, or if they didn’t need to worry about getting reelected because either they’d captured the vote-counting process or they just abolished other parties.
Imagine these people without consraints, and the difference between them and the taliban starts to vanish.
If the governor had his way gay people would be in jail, at the very least. They might also put scientists there as well, or something.
They might also bar women from working; after all, Governor McDonnell did say that feminism was one of the leading causes for the breakdown of the American family home.
I haven’t read the book either, and don’t intend to. So I don’t know whether Markos makes his case or if it’s just unsupported screed. This reviewer ignores the content question and just gives his own opinion, which is adolescent and useless. If he’s been around in 1935 he’d have been dispensing wisdom about how the Nazi Party and the Fascists hadn’t killed anybody, so what was with all the hype?
Anybody with any radar at all recognizes the uncanny similarity in feel between pre-fascist Europe and present-day America. The open racism/ethnic scapegoating, the worship of ignorance, the know-nothing fake nationalism, the acceptance of outright, obvious lies from the pols and the press, the radical attacks on the very idea of government, the militarism, the use of fear to justify a security state, the rise of grifters who openly market themselves and “saviors” and “messiahs”, the fervor for overthrowing democracy for a theocracy. All fueled by a time of economic downturn and insecurity and by liberal leadership seemingly incapable of redirecting the fear and anger into productive directions.
The teabaggers/GOP right in this country are not the Taliban, they are fighting to become what the Taliban dreams of being.
Slightly OT: can someone explain what prospect.org is, exactly? They market themselves as “progressive” yet seem to give an overabundance of space to dumbass “moderates” with nothing to say like the reviewer under discussion. Maybe that’s why folks like Dean Baker left them?
What you need to know about the book is that Digby laid into Bouie–a man who has already proved his ignorance when guest blogging for Yglesias–for his review of it.
Bouie is another one of those, like Yglesias, that pine for acceptance by the right as being reasonable Democrats. It’s sickening. And both of them don’t fully comprehend the history of the right in this country.
I’m sympathetic to Yglesias on some things.
Free trade for one, and looser municipal zoning for example. The real problem for Yglesias is that like Josh Marshall, he is very wrapped up in the world of the elites of the east coast and has to struggles to move beyond that mindset–often failing.
Well, there’s no Godwin law for the Taliban, so I guess it’s all Kosher.
So the question is what conservatives would do if they had the votes. And Markos’s answer is that conservatives would want a religious dictatorship. Not a state religion, like Norway or Greece, but a full-throated theocracy. And instead of looking for the closest parallel in terms of beliefs and environment, like, say, the Puritan’s Massachusetts Bay Colony, he thought the most fitting analogy was the Taliban.
I think it’s one of the most insulting and arrogant aspects of American thought often exhibited by the left to blindingly refuse to acknowledge the suffering of people when it suits our own political purposes. The Taliban have buried people up to their necks in sand and stoned them to death. Saudi Arabia’s theocracy refused to rescue girls from a school gym fire because they weren’t appropriately clad – they all burned to death. Unless this is literally what Markos is predicting if conservatives come to power, then he should find another analogy.
The parallel to the Taliban in the US on this score are the church folk who cheered on Abu Graib after they found out about it. And the neglect and murder during the aftermath of Katrina. And the refusal to end torture at Guantanamo. And Palin’s church’s celebration of murdering “witches”.
I think there is a good chance that the current conservative movement could spin out of control. We’ve seen how each successive wave gets more an more extreme. Now there is talk of repeal amendments to the Constitution. There are some in the conservative movement who have made economic arguments for slavery, or at least long-term indentured servanthood.
Yes, I think that there is a concern that this is literally what will happen if the more recent and extreme conservatives come to power. That the extreme language is not just tactical whipping up of the base.
Parallels?
Is the condoning of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo more like the Taliban or more like the Puritan legal code? What about Palin’s church? And are the Democrats who refused to prosecute these war crimes also like the Taliban?
Is negligent engineering and lackadaisical crisis management more like the Taliban or more like BP? Or is BP parallel to the Taliban?
The Democrats who vote to aid Israel after it starves the Gazans and murders them with cluster bombs – are they like the Taliban? And what about we who vote for these Democrats?
The only salient parallel I see here is that between people who can’t tell the difference between the Taliban and conservatives and people who can’t tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
But in this way conservatives and liberals are the same – we would all give in to our worst passions in an environment without constraints.
Obviously not. They are more like that Pakistani ISI.
I don’t understand the BP reference at all.
About the Democrat’s support of Israel, again more like the Pakistani ISI.
I’m not sure who you are calling liberals, but the whole idea of American government has to do with checks and balances of power. Most liberals would want to see that continue. The American Taliban want to control the courts, control the legislative process, control the executive and pursue their religious agenda.
Note that the American Taliban does not include all Republicans. Jim DeMint is in. Richard Lugar is out. Orrin Hatch waffles.
Is it not the objective of every politically-active person, party, or entity to seek control the courts, control the legislative process, control the executive and pursue their agenda, whatever the basis for that agenda may be?
First of all, this is not about “conservatives” in any form that would have been recognizable 50 years ago. It’s about rabid radicals who literally recapitulate the rhetoric of both the Taliban and the fascist movements of the early 20th Century. Neither of those movements explicitly previewed the horrors they would unleash once they came to power.
We study history largely to learn how ideas, ideology, and propaganda eventually play out in the real world. I assume Markos’s point is to fast forward a toxic ideology to its possible consequences, and in doing so to draw parallels to current regimes.
For all the sensitivity you seem to claim, you rather easily gloss over the murder of a few hundred thousand (conservatively) Iraqis for no purpose but the Right’s political agenda. Are the horrific deaths of Matthew Shepard and other gays and of abortion providers by movement theocrats less telling than the outrages committed by their Muslim counterparts? We can all come up with horror stories. What your argument seems to boil down to is, “it can’t happen here”. Some of us are honestly not so sure of that.
I understand we’re not talking about William Buckley anymore.
“Fast forwarding” to possible consequences was the approach that convinced many people to support the US invasion of Iraq. Is that the approach we’re adopting now? Can I also fast forward? If so, I choose Obama’s toxic ideology of assassinating US citizens abroad and using confessions under torture by minors by military commissions. I get all kinds of things when I fast forward what someone who holds that toxic ideology would do if he had the votes. Huh.
I guess you were fast forwarding when you claim I gloss over Iraqi deaths.
So now both of us are in a world of our own imaginings. That’s a really constructive way of having a discussion.
Back to my first comment way up the list. Markos’s book is a polemic. Polemics are not about having discussions; they are about hitting readers in the gut. And they are a legitimate form of political speech mostly underused by Democrats.
Only after the national narrative changes in tone to permit discussion can we have discussion.
And my take of the book is not that Markos is saying that this is what taken to the extreme the rightwing will become but that the rightwing’s polemic about Obama being a Liberal Fascist is utter bullshit but if you want to play that game…
What do you know about Liberty University? If you do, you’ll know that’s what they want the country to be like.
The book is a polemic. OK. Now get beyond that. Is the point of the polemic correct? Jamell Bouie acts as if only the right can have polemics.
I disagree and this is why. My library has every book Ann Coulter has written on it shelves and Glenn Beck’s and Michael Medved’s and Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. Next to those are Al Franken’s two political book and Markos’s Crashing the Gates and Taking on the System. We don’t have enough shelf space because we are reluctant to write polemics with catchy titles. It’s that simple.
As for the contents, Markos has telegraphed his points as diaries over the past couple of years. So I think I understand the gist of his argument, which makes Paul Hogarth’s review relevant:
I suspect, having read a lot of Markos’s opinions, that he does indeed expose the right-wing lie. And the pearl-clutchers will try to paint his exposure as an equivalent left-wing lie. I suspect that when I read it, it turns out to be a deconstruction of the Republican polemic instead.