Why do the radical left support the Jihadists?

Have you ever wondered how groups like “Queers for Palestine” can exist? Or why good-hearted, kind, left-leaning middle-class westerners are supporting Jihadists in the Middle East?

Why do Western liberals so often support totalitarian regimes and cultures?

The sight of left, and even centre-left leaning people, marching week in and week out in support of Palestine/Hamas/Hezbollah/the ‘resistance’ is confusing to many thoughtful people. After all, don’t the ‘queers for Palestine’ know that they are supporting people who view their identity and lifestyle as fit only for hell? And who see it as their god-ordained moral duty to hasten their journey to hell, by throwing them off the nearest building and stoning them? 

This is not a new phenomenon in our culture. Throughout the 20th century left leaning liberals have supported regimes whose fundamental values are at complete odds with their own liberal ideals. The most obvious example is the persistent support of communism/socialism in the Soviet Union, even in the face of the documented horrors of Stalin’s reign (cf “Stalin’s War”). If being responsible for the deaths of around 100 million people is not enough to deter well-meaning liberals in Western democracies, then massacring a mere 1400 and trying to drive 9 million Jews out of the Middle East is no impediment to liberal support for the Jihadist’s of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

It is easy, but wrong, to think that all these people are either stupid or evil (though it’s entirely possible that many, if not most, lean in that direction!).

The answer is that there are core elements of our western, Judaeo-Christian culture and worldview that make us susceptible to manipulation by totalitarian regimes. This is because we all tend to project onto others our own world view. We think everyone we meet is really just like us. So, what does ‘just like us’ look like?

Firstly, in our culture we value truth and honesty. Telling the truth, being honest to all people, irrespective of our connection to them, is what we are taught from an early age. Of course we lie, but lying is a bug, not a feature of our culture. In Stalinist Russian culture (and by this I include Putinist Russia as a contemporary expression of this culture) lying is a feature, not a bug. In particular, lying to outsiders to advance the interests of your empire, is not just tolerated, but is seen as virtuous. In Islam, there is a concept of  taqiyya (تقیة). This ancient feature of Islamic practice legitimates deceit in order to protect, or advance, the interests of Islam. There is also in Islam a general principle, particularly in Jihad, of the end justifying the means “This was a momentous incident, for it would set a precedent: if a group was guilty of fitnah, all bets were off, all moral principles could be set aside. Good became identified with anything that redounded to the benefit of Muslims and Islam, and evil with anything that harmed them.” (Robert Spencer, p 15, Jihad from Muhammed to ISIS). As Western liberals we all assume that everyone has a basic commitment to tell the truth. However, in other cultures, truth is very much subordinated to other priorities. 

Secondly, we value justice for, and protection of the weak, vulnerable and marginalised. This is a core value of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and it is now a defining value in our culture. Combined with a disregard for the truth, see above, this means that we are easily seduced into instinctively siding with the marginalised, the underdog, the weak, even if this is at the expense of our own wellbeing (this is what Canadian psychologist Gad Saad referred to as “suicidal empathy”). So a queer leftist might believe in the desperate plight of the historically oppressed, dispossessed, marginalised, weak and vulnerable Palestinians and will therefore align with them, side with them, even if this contradicts their own identity claims and worldview. 

Thirdly, we believe that people are fundamentally good, and only do evil when they are responding to evil done to them. So, when viewing the horrors of Oct 7, western liberals have to believe that this was a response to multiple generations of unthinkable evil and oppression, because they cannot imagine themselves committing anything approaching such evil unless they had been provoked by extraordinary evil. Of course the fact that this is gaslighting and victim blaming on a grand scale, entirely escapes their notice - consistency is not a requirement of the intellectual operating system of most humans!

Finally, we are acutely aware of all the failures and shortcomings in our own culture. Our western worldview, with its focus on sin, on individual failure, on repentance, makes us very ready to admit to our own failings. Our opponents highlight these failings, and offer us utopian solutions, or at the very least what seem simple, obvious solutions. So in the case of Marxism or communism - some people are rich, others are really poor. Poverty is really bad. Capitalism is responsible for the problem. Marxist revolution is the answer. Or today, the Palestinians are poor and suffering. Israel as a colonising, capitalist invader is the problem. The answer is Jihadist revolution. If we can only rid the middle east of those pesky problematic Jews, then peace would reign, and the Palestinians would flourish and build a civilisation just like ours. 

Having read this far, you might ask yourself, “so what do we do about this?”. Well, the first step has to be to understand exactly why people hold the views they do. The next step is to affirm the good intentions and values behind their choices. Then, and only then, are you able to help them see the ways in which they have been deceived, or co-opted by groups who are in fact deeply destructive of the very culture and worldview which has led them to support them.

Let me know what you think!