British Lefties: ISIS 'Has Progressive Potential'

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Monday, November 17, 2014

Courtesy of Order Order, a sparkling example of the sort of demented wishcasting that one only finds on the European hard-Left. The following resolution was debated at the British “Left Unity” conference on Saturday:

    “Despite the atrocities it has carried out and its attack on the Kurds, IS nevertheless represents an attempt to break fundamentally with the structure of religiously and ethnically divided nation states imposed on the region by Britain and France at the end of the First World War… Unlike a continuation of the framework of western-imposed nation states, it therefore, theoretically, has progressive potential.”

    

    “The Caliphate represents an alternative political vision that is gathering support amongst Muslims across the Muslim world because… it stands for replacing the brutal regimes in which they live with a political system based on Islam that sets up an accountable executive, an organised judiciary, representative consultation, inal motions and amendments for the rule of law and citizenship; such a state could only be a stabilising force for the region and the European Left has to acknowledge and accept the widespread call for a Caliphate among Muslims as valid and an authentic expression of their emancipatory, anti-imperialist aspirations.”

This is what cultural self-loathing looks like. It is one thing to ask what the Romans have ever done for us, but it is quite another to endorse the barbarians because they are wearing anti-Caesar buttons on their tunics. One really does not have to be an imperialist to recognize that not only were those who staffed the British and French Empires in 1918 infinitely superior to the monomaniacal savages who are currently running about Mesopotamia, but that their predecessors in the 19th, 18th, 17th, and 16th centuries were preferable, too.

Former prime minister John Major described ISIS last week as an execrable “13th century” outfit. He is absolutely right. For self-described “progressives” to indulge the gang because they don’t much like Georges Clemenceau is, frankly, little short of deranged. A “stabilizing force”? “Progressive potential”? “An accountable executive, an organised judiciary,” and “representative consultation”? Pass the machine guns, dear.

Is “Left Unity” fringe? Certainly. Does ISIS hold a greater appeal in Europe than it should? Apparently, yes:

    One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.

    The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24.

    A recent Ifop poll placed French president Francois Hollande’s approval rating at just 18%.

If this poll is correct, then, ISIS is only slightly less popular than the elected president of France. Meanwhile, “7% of British citizens responded favourably to ISIS.” Ugh.