Odd Claim of the Day

I have very fond recollections of The Pity of War and even find myself recommending it to people now and again. It seems to me, though, that every time I hear what Niall Ferguson has to say about, well, just about anything these days I start to feel like the book must have been terrible. After all, this is a guy who says, "radical Islamism is good at recruiting within our society, within western society generally. In western Europe, to an extent people underestimate here, the appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities."

Like Dan Drezner, I'm left wondering what empirical support Ferguson thinks he has for this claim. Or, to put it another way, "is good at recruiting" compared to what. Just earlier, he was making an explicit analogy with Marxism. But Communism had a huge following in the West, millions of people (mostly, but not exclusively, in France and Italy) voted for parties adhering to the Moscow-dictated line, and then there was another giant bloc of anti-Stalin Marxists. Indeed, I'm fairly sure that to this day you're going to find substantially more followers of Marx than of bin Laden or Qutb living in the West.

Comments

NF has manoevred himeself into the position of having a public opinion on everything, and thus unmoored himself from the areas of British history on which he is genuinely knowledgeable. Plus he seems to produce a book about as often as Stephen King, which can't be done with history books without a drop in quality. He needs to go away for 4 years and write a good book on the British in Egypt 1870-1956, which would be both interesting and not untopical, and would stop him from bullshitting about the EU as the new Byzantium, or Islamism as the new Marxism etc etc.

Posted by otto | September 25, 2006 5:22 PM

This fairly long essay by historian Paul W. Schroeder, "Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War," doesn't address Ferguson's "The Pity of War" directly but IMO ought to raise grave doubts about that book:

http://www.asu.edu/clas/polisci/cqrm/papers/schroedercounterfactual.pdf#search=%22paul%20W.%20Schroeder%20%22

Posted by Larry | September 25, 2006 5:49 PM

Regarding followers of Qtub in the west, FWIW, you can find them everywhere: just take Qtub's forays into apologetics and substitute "Christian" for "Islam" and prepend the words "Islam and to a lesser extent" to "Judaism", and you pretty much have the way many on the Christian right feel, even if they are, for various reasons, relatively less prone to killing the same number of people on average as the Islamic fundamentalists.

Posted by DAS | September 25, 2006 6:23 PM

The appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities? Am I missing something? I'll bet there is not one non-Muslim in the world who finds radical Islamism appealing.

Posted by Paul | September 25, 2006 7:09 PM

The appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities? Am I missing something?

Yes. Niall Ferguson's flirtation with Jolity Farm.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 25, 2006 7:39 PM

The appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities? Am I missing something?

Yup. Here's the key passage from earlier in the interview, cited at Drezner:

Posted by DivGuy | September 25, 2006 8:15 PM

Yup, that's right. Radical political Islam is leftist!

It's leftist the same way that George Michael is like George Patton.

That's just Ferguson using "sounds like" language.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 25, 2006 8:40 PM

"Radical political Islam is leftist."

It seems like this ground was already covered by Shelby Steele back after 9/11. He used the case of John Walker Lindh to "prove" that Lindh's overly permissive (aka "lefty") parents were to blame, and that Lindh's life story was somehow an indictment of the liberal, chardonney drinking left. Because the Taliban is on the left. Or because there was a bunch of lefty kids running off to fight with Al Quada. Or something.

Posted by Jim E. | September 25, 2006 9:55 PM

How about Chavez? Supporting radical political Islam is a great way to stick it to US hegemony.

Posted by LiberalatWar | September 25, 2006 10:09 PM

Just a quibble - the Communist Party in Italy was not in the USSR's good graces.

Posted by James | September 25, 2006 10:51 PM

"How about Chavez? Supporting radical political Islam is a great way to stick it to US hegemony."

Yeah, but thats an alliance of convenience, and then only with Iran. Not Salafism or Qutb-inspired groups. Which isn't Ferguson's point. Its rather that people are converting to or are seduced by radical Islam in substantial numbers.

Now certainly there are cases of this happening, but it is a fringe phenomena. Islamist parties aren't exactly getting a lot of traction in Germany and Britain.

Posted by Ben P | September 25, 2006 11:09 PM

I'm left wondering what empirical support Ferguson thinks he has for this claim. - Matt Y.

Am I missing something? I'll bet there is not one non-Muslim in the world who finds radical Islamism appealing. - commenter Paul

It would be nice to believe willful ignorance was not a central feature of the leftist personality. Nice, but not - on the evidence here - well supported by the facts.

All together, now, chilluns:

1. Go to the search engine of your choice.

2. Type in 'muslim converts Europe' as the search predicate.

3. Read at least the top 10 items returned.

Now tell me with a straight face that this Ferguson guy is a clueless dolt.

I'm fairly sure that to this day you're going to find substantially more followers of Marx than of bin Laden or Qutb living in the West.

Sure. But Marxism has Western roots. Movements that genuinely become mass movements typically have origins within the - broadly construed, to be sure - socio-political matrix within which they arise.

The only exceptions I can think of are religions. The center of gravity of Buddhism is not in India anymore. Ditto for Christianity and the Middle East.

Marxism had pretensions to universality, but it never appears to have put down really deep roots anywhere but in the West. China wore a coat of Marxist paint while Mao was alive and sloughed it off like the foreign thing it truly was while the old bastard's body was still warm.

As for radical Islam's potential appeal to Western leftists, it is obvious to me what the potential for appeal to leftist Americans is - radical Islam is an alternative form of alienation from the American national culture. Jihadism's got it all, really; it's angry, it's arrogant, it's self-righteous, it sanctions violent revolution (Up Against The Mosque Wall, Motherf---ers!), it's blind to its own faults, it's about remaking the world into an existential utopia and - key selling point - it's foreign!

It's a cliche - because it's true - that American liberals like their cars, their films, their wine, their cheese, their politics and their philosophy imported because they disdain the domestic stuff in each case. One can expand the list to include their religion(s), too, at least for those sinistral-Americans who profess to having one. The number of native-born Americans who account themselves Buddhists and also voted for George Bush, I think you'll agree, could probably all meet for lunch in a phone booth.

Discuss among yourselves.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 25, 2006 11:56 PM

Dick,

I did what you said. The first article from last year in the Christian Science Monitor turned up the following sentance:

"Although there are no precise figures, observers who monitor Europe's Muslim population estimate that several thousand men and women convert each year. Only a fraction of converts are attracted to radical strands of Islam, they point out, and even fewer are drawn into violence. A handful have been convicted of terrorist offenses, such as Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" and American John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan."

So, in other words, this is a fringe phenomenon. Europe has a population of approximately 400 million people, remember. In 20 years - if this trend stays steady - that adds up to a couple hundred thousand people. And thats assuming all those who convert stick with it, which is also a highly questionable assumption. I would guess many more people convert to Islam in the United States every year.

Of course there are going to be people like Richard Reid and John Walker Lynd. But it is going to remain a very marginal phenomenon.

Posted by Ben P | September 26, 2006 12:44 AM

Dick Eagleson, you are yet another data point in support of the claim that one of the defining traits of American conservativism is that it alone believes it can define what is and is not American.

As for radical Islam's potential appeal to Western leftists, it is obvious to me what the potential for appeal to leftist Americans is - radical Islam is an alternative form of alienation from the American national culture. Jihadism's got it all, really; it's angry, it's arrogant, it's self-righteous, it sanctions violent revolution (Up Against The Mosque Wall, Motherf---ers!), it's blind to its own faults, it's about remaking the world into an existential utopia and - key selling point - it's foreign!

Take out love of the foreign and replace with mouth-breathing jingoism, and you've got my impression of the conservative movement. Whatever, this is all form without substance. The only substantial point you're making is that leftists love foreign things for their foreign-ness, presumably because we all hate America. A blithe comment that belies the fact that you know nothing about the modern American left.

For one thing, most all the leftists I know are localists -- ever hear the slogan "buy local"?

Second, you're going to have to work a bit harder to convince me that Orientalized aesthetic tastes have anything to do with a proclivity for violent, jihadist restoration of the mythological good ol' days. Have a look at the Christian right if you want to see some actual, substantive ideological parallels.

Bottom line: the fact that some people who vote Democrat also have the ability to enjoy foreign films is politically unremarkable. The fact that you think pluralist consumption habits makes a person un-American and prone to suicidal radical Islamism is also pretty dumb.

The only way you've got a point is by making all your claims definitionally true: if Dick Eagleson gets to define by fiat what being a real "American" is, then yeah, I would probably love to be alienated from that.

Posted by StJoe | September 26, 2006 12:57 AM

Hey Eagleson -- what kind of atheist (the "sinistral-Americans" who do not profess a religion) gives up French wine to become a jihadi? (Let alone proscuitto.) And I guess people who adhere to the imported religion of the Church of Rome, like my sainted mother, are also potential jihadis.

Also, your stereotypes of angry hippie students and brie-loving liberals seem based more on old Dave Berg cartoons than current observation. I believe the most recent true believers who were going to remake the world into a theory-derived Utopia all worked for Coalition Provisional Authority.

Posted by Delicious Pundit | September 26, 2006 12:59 AM

"So, in other words, this is a fringe phenomenon. Europe has a population of approximately 400 million people, remember. In 20 years - if this trend stays steady - that adds up to a couple hundred thousand people. And thats assuming all those who convert stick with it, which is also a highly questionable assumption. I would guess many more people convert to Islam in the United States every year."

Actually, now that I look at my math again, its even less - say between 50,000 and 150,000 people who convert over 20 years.

Posted by Ben P | September 26, 2006 1:53 AM

BenP,

Granted, conversion of white Europeans to Islam is relatively fringey now and active participation in incidents of jihadi violence by such people is even more so. For now. But participation in incidents of jihadi violence is a fringe phenomenon within all of Islam. As we are ceaselessly reminded - not least by many posters to this blog - there are at least a billion Muslims in the world. Al Quaeda, Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas, all of the nutbar factions in Palestine - what do they add up to? 100,000? A cinch. 1,000,000? I doubt it. So active jihad is the project of somewhere between 1/100th and 1/10th percent of all Muslims.

But it doesn't take large numbers of violent zealots to make big trouble. I still remember the late 70's when the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades and Action Direct were bedeviling Western Europe. Hell, I was in Italy at the time of the Aldo Moro kidnapping and murder. Their numbers were miniscule compared to the ranks of present-day jihadis. Yet there they were - products of, but totally alienated from, their national cultures and polities - doing their best to kill and destroy in the name of some Marxist utopia.

The key to your hypothesis of unconcern is "if this trend stays steady." But it isn't steady. The relative trickle of current converts is a veritable torrent compared to 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago. What will it be 20 years hence? I don't know. But the one thing I don't expect is for the conversion numbers to be "steady." I think they will either be vastly greater or back down near zero. "Steady" seems to me the least likely outcome.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 4:02 AM

Uh Dick, if they convert to Islam, doesn't that make them Muslim? Again (after a good night's sleep) what am I missing?

Posted by Paul | September 26, 2006 5:26 AM

Dick Eagleson, you are yet another data point in support of the claim that one of the defining traits of American conservativism is that it alone believes it can define what is and is not American.

For the record, I'm not a conservative. Just to forestall future unwarranted assumptions, I'm also not a theist of any kind. I was a liberal when I was young and stupid. Then I wised up enough to know I wanted no more of that. Meeting actual hard-core leftists seems to have that effect on a lot of people. In my early 30's I was a Libertarian. After a few years I figured out that their actual highest value was ideological consistency, not liberty. Hell, relativity and quantum theory aren't consistent either, but they're both real and both work. If the universe doesn't mind a bit of necessary inconsistency, who was I to get pissy about it? Now, I'm off the conventional charts of political philosophy - details far too time-consuming to go into here.

As for "definitions" of what is American, I'm a "quant." I don't have to define, a priori, what is American, because it would never occur to me that it would make any sense to do so. I just have to look around at what most Americans do and believe and keep tallies. I do observe that much of what typical Americans do and believe is strongly at odds with what those of the Left do and believe.

Is the Left, therefore, "un-American?" Statistically, yes, it is. You're freaks and fringies and so is your politics. Now this was also true of me back in my Libertarian period - and is likely even more true now, given my idiosyncratic current views. What separates me, then and now, from the "reality-based community" is that the latter simply flat-out refuses to acknowledge this. If there is a single most common delusion of the American Left it is that it is somehow a "popular" movement. It's not. It never has been. But it has an apparently unshakeable belief otherwise.

mouth-breathing jingoism

Myself, I'm a nose-breathing jingo.

The only substantial point you're making is that leftists love foreign things for their foreign-ness, presumably because we all hate America.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but, yes, exactly.

A blithe comment that belies the fact that you know nothing about the modern American left.

I suspect I know more than you do. I've been an observer of the American Left - sometimes from a closer vantage than I truly cared to have - for a long time. The 60's are part of my personal back trail, not something I have to look up in the campus library. Hell, I had an uncle who was a lifelong Socialist. Campaigned for Norman Thomas back in the day. Served prison time in WW2 as a draft resister.

most all the leftists I know are localists

I think that's spelled l-o-c-u-s-t-s. (rim shot) Okay, couldn't resist. Seriously, I live in L.A. Lots of leftists here. Couldn't say I know of a genuine "localist" in the bunch.

Second, you're going to have to work a bit harder to convince me that Orientalized aesthetic tastes have anything to do with a proclivity for violent, jihadist restoration of the mythological good ol' days.

There's hardly a deterministic hard-wired connection, granted. I merely point out that consistently "Orientalized" - or "Europeanized" - tastes reflect a concomitant distaste for the norms of one's native culture. The origins of alienation are various. But the condition itself seems to be a de facto prerequisite for immersion of anyone born and raised in the mainstream American culture into either the moonbatty American Left or the comparably alien project of Islamist jihad.

Have a look at the Christian right if you want to see some actual, substantive ideological parallels.

There are a few genuine would-be theocrats among the Religious Right. Their enthusiasms do not seem to command widespread allegiance among conservative evangelicals. But the Left needs demons as badly as Mars Needs Women, so I expect those who profess Christianity and vote Republican will continue to be viewed as snake handlers or worse by the Left. The alleged parallels with Islam are unimpressive to me.

Bottom line: the fact that some people who vote Democrat also have the ability to enjoy foreign films is politically unremarkable.

Considering the politics of many foreign - particularly European - films, I cannot but agree.

The fact that you think pluralist consumption habits makes a person un-American and prone to suicidal radical Islamism is also pretty dumb.

Said habits are not defined by their "pluralism" but by their implicit - and often explicit - disdain for things apparently regarded as redolent of icky American-ness.

As for "prone"-ness to radical Islam, it is simply another direction certain people might take who depart from the same points of alienated origin as the typical Lefty. I still think the preponderant tendency will be for, say, Chomsky to attract more admirers than Qutb or Khomeini, but the latter worthies will find some takers.

The only way you've got a point is by making all your claims definitionally true: if Dick Eagleson gets to define by fiat what being a real "American" is, then yeah, I would probably love to be alienated from that.

As already noted, neither Dick Eagleson nor anyone else is likely to have much luck attempting to define that which is American by fiat. The thing is what it is. I look at the thing and, in general, like what I see. The American Left looks at the same thing and is repulsed.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 6:01 AM

Hey Eagleson -- what kind of atheist (the "sinistral-Americans" who do not profess a religion) gives up French wine to become a jihadi? (Let alone proscuitto.)

Not very many, I suspect. Not too many dog lovers are likely to be recruited by Islamic Jihad either. That doesn't mean the number will be zero in either case.

But these sorts of scenarios were not what I mainly had in mind. Those statistically most likely to be attracted to Islam will be disaffected young fools of the same basic mindset as those attracted to Leftism.

To be sure, a handful of mature adults do make radical alterations to their religious beliefs evey year - acquiring some where there were none previously or swapping religious particularities in some fairly unusual way. A few even become Michael Stipe-ians and lose their religion. But people like these are, and will remain, of very marginal significance in the larger picture of Islamic gains in Western nations.

And I guess people who adhere to the imported religion of the Church of Rome, like my sainted mother, are also potential jihadis.

Technically, I suppose, the case can be made that every religion other than those of Native Americans is "imported" in the strict sense. But Catholicism is, like most other flavors of Christianity, one of those American norms the alienated and/or trendy will tend to avoid like the plague. Probably no need to call the FBI and have mom put on any watch lists.

Also, your stereotypes of angry hippie students and brie-loving liberals seem based more on old Dave Berg cartoons than current observation.

First, it's been my observation that hippies aren't generally very angry and that angry students - while they are often Leftists - are not generally hippies.

As for the liberal thing, I live in L.A. As Lillie Von Schtup once said about something else entirely, "Oh, it's TWUE, it's TWUE!"

I believe the most recent true believers who were going to remake the world into a theory-derived Utopia all worked for Coalition Provisional Authority.

Funny, I thought they all worked for Howard Dean.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 6:26 AM

Uh Dick, if they convert to Islam, doesn't that make them Muslim? Again (after a good night's sleep) what am I missing?

What I'm missing, unfortunately, is any notion of which part of which post this is a response to. Help me out here, guy.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 6:30 AM

I'll give the man credit for quantity, I'll say that. His basic point seems to be that it just feels like radical political Islam is leftist, and no amount of evidence will dissuade him.

I could just as easily call radical Islam a rightwing movement and cite all the times that Republicans have allied with conservative Muslim countries in the UN to block family planning and such programs.

Basically, under Dick's methodology, you can call everyone in the world a leftist based on one strand of commonality - Idi Amin's anti-colonialism makes him a leftist, Hitler's public works projects make him a leftist - Dick has effectively defined the term out of existence.

The point, though, for people who like to use reason and evidence, is that radical political Islam grows out of a specific historical time and place, and one where terms like "left" and "right" don't properly apply.

Posted by DivGuy | September 26, 2006 7:41 AM

But you miss another perceptive comment: "the United States has at least two religions, one being religion per se, the other being the civic religion of the Constitution. These are powerful integrative forces."

The integrative force of the Constitution is being destroyed by our Decider in Chief.

Posted by Arun | September 26, 2006 7:51 AM

I was less than impressed with the Pity of War. The conventional wisdom in a field is not always right. However, there are usually fairly good reasons why the CW has become accepted. Given that, a book that challenges one CW position can be insightful, enjoyable, and stimulating. But a book that goes through and, in all 10 of the areas it investigates, decides that the CW is dead wrong and the author is the unique source of the real truth looks less like disinterested investigation and more like an attempt to make a splash and strike an iconoclastic pose.

On a more specific note, I found that an awful lot of the data he used either seemed cherry picked or else didn't really support the thesis he claimed that it did. It's been years since I read the book so I couldn't give any examples, but I remember being underwhelmed with the back-up to his arguments in quite a few places.

Posted by Doug T | September 26, 2006 8:27 AM

Pity of War is a decent enough book, but some of its conclusions are just plain batty, evidence more of Ferguson's desire to get a chair at Oxford than to depict objective reality. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember his claim that the Central Powers actually won the war economically struck me as particularly crazy. Yes, they did well, especially German "war socialism" -- for a time. But the side that ends the war starving and/or eating "bread" made out of turnips and newspapers certainly did not win the war of materiel.

Posted by Ben Cronin | September 26, 2006 9:05 AM

Those statistically most likely to be attracted to Islam will be disaffected young fools of the same basic mindset as those attracted to Leftism.

can provide us with these statistics, or should i assume that your statement is utterly fact-free ? also, can you define "Leftism" ?

Posted by cleek | September 26, 2006 9:18 AM

Said habits are not defined by their "pluralism" but by their implicit - and often explicit - disdain for things apparently regarded as redolent of icky American-ness.

I use pluralism as roughly opposed to nativism. In other words, there are people who like things not because of their intrinsic otherness, or their nativeness, but because uh... they like them. Their origins are not really front and center or part of the allure. Could it be that there are left-leaning people whose enjoyment of "imports" has something to do with the fact that they reject nativism altogether?

And what about me, where one side of my family comes from outside the United States? If I like cultural material that comes from there, does that mean I am anti-American? It would certainly put me in a statistical minority, but I'm less inclined than you to find significance in that. Maybe you could wrap your head around the notion that pluralism is itself an American value.

My attitude is that where something geographically emerged from, and even what tradition produced it, doesn't matter all that much. I tend to care about things like, you know, substance.

What about my philosophy? How long do people in America have to love it before it becomes American? Does reading de Tocqueville make you un-American? How about being a student of American Legal Realism or the Critical Legal Left?

I'm sure if you wanted you could find some way to characterize any or all of these as un-American because your concept of what is American is just bafflingly self-serving. From where I stand, you are employing a tautology, which means yes, you are just defining Americanism by fiat without reference to any necessary or sufficient conditions, or even any particular factors. You claim you "looked around and tallied" stuff, but the categories you are shoving stuff into appear arbitrary and self-justifying.

Posted by StJoe | September 26, 2006 9:47 AM

"Those statistically most likely to be attracted to Islam will be disaffected young fools of the same basic mindset as those attracted to Leftism."

More logic from the right of the "Hitler was a vegetarian; therefore all vegetarians are Nazis" variety.

Posted by rea | September 26, 2006 9:50 AM

A gem from no-data Dick:

"The key to your hypothesis of unconcern is "if this trend stays steady." But it isn't steady. The relative trickle of current converts is a veritable torrent compared to 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago."

That is, if they aren't overtaken by the exponentially-growing number of Elvis impersonators.

Posted by Urinated State of America | September 26, 2006 10:20 AM

This fairly long essay by historian Paul W. Schroeder, "Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War," doesn't address Ferguson's "The Pity of War" directly but IMO ought to raise grave doubts about that book:

Actually, Schroeder does directly address Ferguson's book in a footnote:

The problems this [i.e. ignoring the "Austro-Hungarian problem"] causes are illustrated by Niall Ferguson’s recent revisionist and controversial book on World War I, The Pity of War (New York: Basic Books, 1999). Ferguson actually makes some sound and important, if not really new, points about the origins of the war, mostly directed against the prevailing German-war-guilt thesis. The trouble is, however, that because like most other historians he virtually ignores Austria-Hungary and Eastern Europe, he not only misunderstands the origins of the war but advances an unsound counterfactual argument that a German victory would not have been so bad for Europe or the British Empire—indeed, that it might have averted later disasters--and that Britain would have done better to stay out of it. Critics have generally ignored the sound points in his case and pounced on the unsound ones in reaffirming the conventional verdict about Germany as the main architect of the war..

Schroeder's a strange case, as his version of the origins of the war is both idiosyncratic and at odds with what is more or less the consensus position (as a reading of his article makes clear). The key things to note about Schroeder are 1) that he is a historian who is deeply influenced by IR theory, and tries to look at the history of european international relations from a broad, systemic viewpoint; and 2) that in general he's going to come at things from a more or less "Austrian" viewpoint. He goes to great lengths to deny that he is a Habsburg sympathizer, but I think it's hard to read his body of work without coming to that conclusion.

I do think that Schroeder's right that Ferguson neglects the Austro-Hungarian issue, which is, as he correctly, I think, states, the key issue here. What I find problematic is the contention that Austria-Hungary's political position was actually as desperate as they thought it was. While Schroeder's willing to say straight out that the Russians were basically making a mistake in viewing their "honor" in protecting Serbia as being worth going to war over, he is unwilling to consider that the Austrians' similar desire to protect their "honor" and "status as a Great Power" was perhaps misguided.

Anyway, though, the problem with The Pity of War is that it's a purposefully iconoclastic book, and that such books generally end up containing a lot of unsound premises that are there basically in the service of saying something outrageous. The idea that Britain should have stayed out, which seems to be one of the key points to the book, seems to me to be both mostly irrelevant, and terribly misguided. While the fate of the British as a result of the war was, indeed, a great deal of decline in their position, it is ridiculous to accept that Britain staying out of the war while the Germans crush France and Russia would improve its position. It is further ridiculous to imagine that any serious British politician would consider such a thing, and it ignores the fact that Britain had already basically put its honor on the line on behalf of France due to the Anglo-French naval agreements whereby the French fleet moved almost wholly into the Mediterranean and the British were responsible for defense of the French coast from the High Seas Fleet. And beyond all that, the Belgian issue made British interference pretty much inevitable.

And if we look at the actual British statesmen involved, it's simply impossible. Even if, by some chance, we find a Liberal cabinet unwilling to intervene, all that means is the exit of the Liberals, and a new government of the Tories and hawkish Liberals that would still go to war. There was no majority in Parliament for staying out of the war. it would've been politically impossible.

Envisioning a domination of Europe by Wilhelmine Germany is also a deeply unpleasant thought. I suppose one can always bring in the Nazis, and say that anything is better than the Nazis. But while this is true, it seems a ridiculous reason to criticize British policy in 1914. Is the argument really that British statesmen in 1914 should have kept Britain out of the war because a German victory would have prevented Nazism from arising? This is argument from hindsight at its absolute worst.

As to the arguments about the war ruining the British Empire, this was more foreseeable, but at the same time, the British had good reason to fear that staying out of the war would also be harmful to imperial interests. It also manages to fail the one test the "Hitler" argument passes, since I don't think most of us today view the survival of the British Empire as a particular moral good.

So, anyway, boo to Ferguson. A clever man, but usually wrong.

Posted by John | September 26, 2006 10:29 AM

The transformation of Ferguson from 'tele-don' into ra-ra-neoimperialist is quite strange to watch. He had a column for various newspapers in the 90s, but stuck to his actual speciality: economic history, primarily German.

His interest in Empire seems bound up with the fact that it sells, particularly in the US, where he not only got his NYU and Harvard chairs, but also a place on the rubber-chicken and pundit circuit. He hasn't done primary history for years -- and I'll be generous and count as 'primary history' his practice of sending off graduate research assistants to do the spadework in the archives.

That said, he's held for a long time the belief that Britain's entry in 1914 was far from inevitable. My take, with some background knowledge on his work, is that he doesn't see the forest for the trees: the day-to-day uncertainty of government memos doesn't outweigh the general sensibility towards war.

One can extrapolate a few things from that, not least his sense that the Great War unnecesarily robbed Britain of its empire.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | September 26, 2006 11:13 AM

Re: But the one thing I don't expect is for the conversion numbers to be "steady."

On the rate of conversion: 30 years ago Islam was barely present in Western Europe or North America (excepting the Black Muslim sect in the USA) so opportunities for conversion simply did not exist. Nowadays that has changed so it is normal and expected to see an uptick in the number of converts. That doesn’t mean this acceleration will continue indefinitely. Many foreign faiths congratulate themselves when they start picking up converts in new territories. My own rather foreign Eastern Orthodox faith has given itself a few pats on the back in this regard as more Americans, like myself, discover the Eastern Church. And yet eventually the rate levels off and the new religion normalizes into society and becomes unexceptional. Indeed, a surge of converts inevitably transforms the religion itself (at least locally) forcing it to assimilate toward the surrounding culture, which is the only way it can retain its converts and continue to attract new ones. In the US we have seen this process with a large number of immigrant religions: with the Roman Catholic Church most prominently, and also wit h Judaism and more recently with Eastern Orthodoxy. Buddhism is currently undergoing this process and Islam is too: most Islamic converts remain quite American in outlook and attitude, creating an American Islam that will no doubt cause the stricter Middle Eastern imams to knit their brows and mutter into their beards (much as they do over the Europeanized Balkan Islam where this process of acculturation is advanced by several centuries.) Also to be noted here: most converts to Islam come to the religion through family (i.e., marital) connections, not through some profound personal revelation. And even the latter generally do not end up radicalizing or abandoning their native culture wholesale (example of this: conservative writer Stephen Schwarz).

Re: I merely point out that consistently "Orientalized" - or "Europeanized" - tastes reflect a concomitant distaste for the norms of one's native culture.

Oh good grief! So anyone who appreciates foreign things is un-American or Anti-American? Then I suppose most of our Founding Fathers were of that ilk too as many of them has a liking for things French (i.e., Jefferson, Franklin) or British (e.g, Hamilton).

Posted by Jonf | September 26, 2006 2:00 PM

I'll give the man credit for quantity, I'll say that. His basic point seems to be that it just feels like radical political Islam is leftist, and no amount of evidence will dissuade him.

Not sure if "the man" here is me or Ferguson. In my own case, I don't disagree that Ferguson has identified some correspondence between certain aspects of Salafism and secular leftism, but these do not seem, to me, to be of critical significance. From my atheist perspective there's a lot of leftism in Christianity too, especially Catholicism. That doesn't make the Pope and Noam Chomsky fraternity brothers.

The "leftness" or "rightness" of jihadist Islam is not really something I think it useful to spend a lot of time analyzing. My point about potential converts was not that they might embrace radical Islam because it so closely resembles leftism of whatever stripe - it doesn't - but that the attitudinal predisposition of being alienated from and oppositional toward one's native culture and social order strike me as a common precondition among those likeliest to go in either a leftist or a jihadist direction.

I could just as easily call radical Islam a rightwing movement and cite all the times that Republicans have allied with conservative Muslim countries in the UN to block family planning and such programs.

Yes, you could. In fact, I think you just did.

Basically, under Dick's methodology, you can call everyone in the world a leftist based on one strand of commonality - Idi Amin's anti-colonialism makes him a leftist, Hitler's public works projects make him a leftist - Dick has effectively defined the term out of existence.

As noted, you have seriously misunderstood my thesis here.

The point, though, for people who like to use reason and evidence, is that radical political Islam grows out of a specific historical time and place, and one where terms like "left" and "right" don't properly apply.

If we were considering the origins of radical Islam, you might have a point. But the matter under discussion is the spread of radical Islam in places where it did not originate. Rather a different thing, nie?

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 2:07 PM

can provide us with these statistics, or should i assume that your statement is utterly fact-free ? also, can you define "Leftism" ?

Not sure what you would accept as facts. I have personally conducted no massive surveys of American Islamic converts of non-Middle Estern origin. I would certainly read any such effort by anyone having the inclination and resources to do so with great interest.

Such anecdotal evidence as exists appears to me to suport my general hypothesis. John Walker Lindh, as an example, appears to have been a seriously disaffected type with two rather clueless and distant parents. The fact he did not, himself, adopt some form of leftism as a self-definitional form of opposition/rejection of his parents is almost certainly because they were, themselves, quite lefty.

If your parents are country club Republicans, becoming a lefty is a satisfactory form of adolescent rebellion. It is even a common and time-honored one. If they are lefties themselves, then one, perforce, must investigate other options.

In Mr. Lindh's case, he eventually found Islam. Under only slightly different circumstances it is easy to imagine him becoming notorious as a Columbine-style rage killer rather than as "Johnny Jihad."

The case of Adam Gadahn (ne Pearlman), the "American Al Qaeda" who scored a meaty supporting role in one of OBL's recent vid-screeds, seems remarkably parallel. His parents were evidently 60's hippy types. His father is described in one press account as a "psychedelic musician." His non-traditional bohemian upbringing does not appear to have engendered much amity between Gadahn and his parents. He is said to have left their home to live with his grandparents at age 15.

So there you have it. Alienation from parents who were hippy-dippies and at least one of whom, if his name is any indication, is Jewish. How much more perfect a form of adolescent rebellion can one imagine than to become an Islamist jihadi?

Defining Leftism is too large a project to undertake within the context of this comment thread. I will merely reiterate that one pervasive aspect of the Leftist mindset - in its American incarnation - is a significant, even profound, alienation from and disdain for the icons and commonplaces of mainstream American "square" culture. A certain pervasive depressive cynicism is also notable. Getting into the specifics of the politcal aspects of the ideology is more than I have time for today. Suffice it to say that I view the politics as, in may ways, secondary to the underlying attitudinal foundations of Leftism. It is not, in crucial ways, even a politically-based mindset. I view it more as a personality type-based phenomenon. I see both the personality and political components of Leftism as horrendously dysfunctional.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 2:54 PM

I use pluralism as roughly opposed to nativism.

No, you use "pluralism" in an attempt to deny a type of anti-nativeness - something quite different from a simple rejection of nativism.

In other words, there are people who like things not because of their intrinsic otherness, or their nativeness, but because uh... they like them.

Right. Like, I'm not really a racist, I just don't happen to ever associate with any black people.

Their origins are not really front and center or part of the allure.

Yeah, they often are. But even beyond that there is the matter of what these things are not that is critical.

Could it be that there are left-leaning people whose enjoyment of "imports" has something to do with the fact that they reject nativism altogether?

As noted, pluralism, anti-nativism and a broad a priori rejection of the norms and artifacts of one's native culture are not an equivalence class.

And what about me, where one side of my family comes from outside the United States? If I like cultural material that comes from there, does that mean I am anti-American? It would certainly put me in a statistical minority, but I'm less inclined than you to find significance in that. Maybe you could wrap your head around the notion that pluralism is itself an American value.

Again, it's not about what one embraces, per se, but about what one rejects or disdains. Genuine pluralism is an American value. Americans lap up physical and cultural artifacts from everywhere in vast quantities.

Especially anything having to do with food. We are the most exuberantly diverse eaters on the planet. All Your Native Cuisine Are Belong To Us.

Also filmmakers, actors and actresses. "Give me your avant garde, your festival winners, your smoking hot babes and your auteurs yearning for big fees. I lift my lamp beside William Morris's door."

The American pluralist calculation is, "Do I like this? Yes? I'm going for it." The attitude I criticize runs more along the lines of, "Is this square, bourgeois, non-"edgy," conventional, or otherwise fatally tainted with Yankee Doodle? If so, I will have nothing to do with it."

My attitude is that where something geographically emerged from, and even what tradition produced it, doesn't matter all that much. I tend to care about things like, you know, substance.

So do most lefties. Unless the "tradition" and geography in question happen to be, you know - American.

What about my philosophy?

Depends upon what it is. Anything with a significant admixture of Marxism or multiculturalism is fundamentally not congruent with the basics of the American idea.

How long do people in America have to love it before it becomes American?

If you can eat it, as noted, no time at all.

Does reading de Tocqueville make you un-American?

Quite the contrary. Makes you proud to be an American. Also makes you regret what's happened to France over the last several decades. They simply aren't making them like my man Alexis d'T anymore.

How about being a student of American Legal Realism or the Critical Legal Left?

Solipsism in the service of monstrosity, sir.

I'm sure if you wanted you could find some way to characterize any or all of these as un-American because your concept of what is American is just bafflingly self-serving. From where I stand, you are employing a tautology, which means yes, you are just defining Americanism by fiat without reference to any necessary or sufficient conditions, or even any particular factors. You claim you "looked around and tallied" stuff, but the categories you are shoving stuff into appear arbitrary and self-justifying.

There are none so blind...

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 3:42 PM

On the rate of conversion: 30 years ago Islam was barely present in Western Europe or North America (excepting the Black Muslim sect in the USA) so opportunities for conversion simply did not exist. Nowadays that has changed so it is normal and expected to see an uptick in the number of converts. That doesn’t mean this acceleration will continue indefinitely. Many foreign faiths congratulate themselves when they start picking up converts in new territories. My own rather foreign Eastern Orthodox faith has given itself a few pats on the back in this regard as more Americans, like myself, discover the Eastern Church. And yet eventually the rate levels off and the new religion normalizes into society and becomes unexceptional. Indeed, a surge of converts inevitably transforms the religion itself (at least locally) forcing it to assimilate toward the surrounding culture, which is the only way it can retain its converts and continue to attract new ones. In the US we have seen this process with a large number of immigrant religions: with the Roman Catholic Church most prominently, and also wit h Judaism and more recently with Eastern Orthodoxy. Buddhism is currently undergoing this process and Islam is too: most Islamic converts remain quite American in outlook and attitude, creating an American Islam that will no doubt cause the stricter Middle Eastern imams to knit their brows and mutter into their beards (much as they do over the Europeanized Balkan Islam where this process of acculturation is advanced by several centuries.) Also to be noted here: most converts to Islam come to the religion through family (i.e., marital) connections, not through some profound personal revelation. And even the latter generally do not end up radicalizing or abandoning their native culture wholesale (example of this: conservative writer Stephen Schwarz).

Let us sincerely hope things follow in this happy pattern. Given that a very high percentage of recent Muslim expansion in the U.S. takes the form of Wahabbi mosques staffed by foreign-born, non-English-speaking imams given to preaching separatism and hatred of infidels to congregations of non-acculturated recent immigrants, I think I am justified in having my doubts that things will turn out so innocuously. They certainly cannot reasonably be said to have done so in Britain, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere in Western Europe.

Re: I merely point out that consistently "Orientalized" - or "Europeanized" - tastes reflect a concomitant distaste for the norms of one's native culture.

Oh good grief! So anyone who appreciates foreign things is un-American or Anti-American?

An unreasonable and illogical inference from the stated premise sir. Does no one study Aristotelian logic anymore? Or has "Critical Legal Studies" claptrap utterly carried the day? One more time: it's not about what you like, but what you don't like and why. Good grief, I love all kinds of foreign stuff. Salma Hayek comes to mind.

Then I suppose most of our Founding Fathers were of that ilk too as many of them has a liking for things French (i.e., Jefferson, Franklin) or British (e.g, Hamilton).

They had a liking for things French, to be sure, but it was unaccompanied by a reflexive disdain for things American.

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 26, 2006 4:01 PM

Matt, why do you let your precious electrons be wasted by a stupid fucker like Dick Eagleson. Shit, Dick, I'm surprised you can supress your fear of the converting-Muslim hordes long enough to waste our time with your inane ramblings. Though probably you don't really care about this imaginary-converting-Muslim horde, you've just found a convenient way to be annoying. I mean really, you have all. You start out with a patronizing claim saying liberals don't know their facts, and then when you are completely crushed on the fact front, you retreat to your imaginary authority to grant Americanhood to whoever you wish.

Sadly, while you do not have that authority, I do. You are not a real American. Real Americans are not big fat pussies who endlessly generate imaginary worries about how Europeans are going to convert to Islam. A nut like you is about 50 thousand times more likely to convert to a scary-father-figure religion like Islam than your average European is. So get lost, Dick. Go back to Iran or Pussistan, or wherever you're really from. We don't need cowards like you.

Posted by Walt | September 26, 2006 4:23 PM

This concluding passage of Schroeder essay doesn't seem to me to support Urinated State's statement above that Schroeder is a "Hapsburg sympathsizer" (horrors!), or that he is contending "that Austria-Hungary's political position was actually as desperate as they thought it was":

"The power whose final break with the Concert principle proved decisive, Austria-Hungary, was also the last and most reluctant to abandon it, because it was the one most dependent it and on collective international support and restraint to survive. This is evident before 1914. One of Foreign Minister Aehrenthal’s chief aims in 1908 had been to revive the old Three-Emperor’s League and the moribund Austro-Russian entente in the Balkans by a deal with Russia over Bosnia and the Straits. Even in 1914 this idea was far from dead. The original Austrian proposal for reversing the current disastrous trends in the Balkans called for political rather than military action and was changed only in the wake of the assassination (though how much difference this would have made is debatable.) During the July Crisis itself Austro-Hungarian leaders hoped against hope that Russia might let it get away with a local war against Serbia, and if Russia did, they intended to use the opportunity to seek a fundamental rapprochement with Russia through negotiations for a joint solution to both the Balkan and the Ukrainian problems. There is a tragic appropriateness about Austria-Hungary’s breaking at last with the Concert principle and thereby destroying itself and Europe with it, like the blinded Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple, just as there is about Tsarist Russia’s acting upon the shibboleths of its honor and its alleged historic mission of protecting the Balkan Slavs rather than its true state interests, thereby signing its own death warrant.
To argue for the inevitability of World War I on this ground is, to repeat, not to blame
Britain, Russia, and France for it while exonerating Germany and Austria-Hungary, or to
characterize the former as more blind and reckless than the latter. It is an attempt to root the disaster deep in a political culture which all shared, which all had helped to develop, and upon which all acted in 1914, Germany and Austria-Hungary precipitating the final descent into the maelstrom. It is to see the origins of the war as finally a tragedy more than a crime, inevitable by reason of wrong beliefs, hubris, and folly too broadly and deeply anchored in the reigning political culture to be recognized, much less examined and changed. The tragedy of its origins thus connects with the tragedy of the war itself in its hyperbolic protraction and destruction,evoking, like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the verdict, 'All are punished.'”

Posted by Larry | September 26, 2006 6:11 PM