HOME :: PUBLICATIONS :: What Happens to Poisonous Ideologies Over Time?, by DR. LAINA FARHAT-HOLZMAN

What Happens to Poisonous Ideologies Over Time?

by DR. LAINA FARHAT-HOLZMAN January 5, 2010
In the face of the near-terrorist attack on Christmas Day, we need to take a big look at what happens to such nasty narratives over time.
 
Human beings do not live by bread alone. They also need values, and as David Brooks so wisely reminds us; they need narratives – stories that tell them who they are and where they fit in their community. People without narratives are often suicidal and are, fortunately, few of us.
 
Like all human institutions, narratives differ from tribe to tribe, nation to nation. And over time, nations and the people within them change narratives, with good or disastrous consequences.
 
  • Communism. The 20th century was a time of sweeping new narratives that changed the behavior and lives of people. Communism emerged from the Russian Revolution and attempted to sweep away all prior values. This narrative, which espoused economic equality (no more rich and poor), universal brotherhood (no more nationalistic chauvinism), and gender and religious equality (no more abuse of women and pogroms against Jews) attracted passionate advocacy.
 
Unfortunately, it turned out to be none of those things; instead, the USSR was a totalitarian empire that intimidated most of its “citizens” into conformance.
 
  • Nazism. Nazism, National Socialism, offered the post-World War I depressed Germans a resurgence of national pride, a restored economy, and a promise of a brave new world in which Germans would rule. The problem with this was it drove from Germany the very scientists, artists, and writers who had made Germany great and let loose something else that had no name before the Nazis systematized it: genocide of what they considered “inferior races.” This cost them dearly.
 
  • Islamism. During this same period, another ideology was born that inflames the world today: Islamo-Fascism (or Islamism), a form of Islam that combines the ideologies of literally-practiced Islam and totalitarian Nazism and Communism, both of which were much admired by this sect’s founders. The Muslim Brotherhood, spawned in Egypt, is the godfather of every Islamist organization at work in the world today.
 
Their narrative is that Islam should once more prevail over all other religions; that Muslims should rule and all others either convert, be enslaved, or be exterminated; and that any deception in furtherance of this narrative is authorized by Allah. The long-range plan is to take over the world. This ideology with its accompanying death cult is most dangerous to ordinary Muslims themselves, who are intimidated and fear for their children being sucked in by these poisonous pied pipers.
 
What does history tell us about the outcomes of such poisoned narratives? Because they are all so extreme, they eventually succumb to corruption, bad decisions, implosion, or destruction by their neighbors. The Nazi empire collapsed in 1945, after Germany turned Europe into a charnel house. Today’s Germany has a different narrative that has made it peaceful, prosperous, and responsible. Narratives can change.
 
Communism collapsed from within, fortunately without open conflict with the West. The former Russian Empire is working on new narratives – not fully functional as yet, but a great improvement over the old one.
 
The Islamist narrative has provoked war with the west and great stress within the Muslim world itself. We hear that the Islamic Republic of Iran (not a spin-off of the Muslim Brotherhood, but a cousin) is in great disarray, with a population fed up with the narrative and the clerics who rule them. In Pakistan, too many otherwise educated people live in denial that Islamism is the problem. They maintain conspiratorial nonsense that the daily attacks on them are American or Israeli plots. Fortunately, the military know better.
 
Narratives that preach hatred, promote death cults, and fail to promote an economy backed by rule of law that can make them flourish are doomed to collapse. Narratives that promote the persecution of women, punish freedom of thought, and promote violent intimidation of their populations and their neighbors are heading for the trash heap of history. They are unsustainable.
 
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.

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