Islam and Marxism and Unmetabolized Rage

In his article in City Journal this week, Theodore Dalrymple commented on the ongoing and evolving alliance between Islam and Marxism:

Islam, the Marxism of Our Time
Some troubling signs in Europe

Two of the men that the German police arrested in early September for plotting a series of huge explosions in the country were young German converts to Islam. It is impossible to know how many such German converts there are, but it is thought to run into tens of thousands, principally men; in the nature of things, it is also uncertain how many of them are attracted to extremism, but few people are so attracted by moderation that they are converted by it.

...

All this suggests that Islam is fast becoming the Marxism of our times. Had Fritz G. and Daniel S. grown up a generation earlier, they would have become members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang rather than Islamic extremists. The dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems, has given way before the establishment of the Caliphate as the transcendent answer to some German youths’ personal angst.

This is good news indeed for Islamists, but not so good for the rest of us.

Dr. Sanity, in ISLAM AND MARXISM - A MARRIAGE MADE IN ALLAH'S SOCIALIST PARADISE, picked up on the discussion and added some texture to the argument.  She suggests that the alliance between Marxism and Islam, two ideologies which seem to stand in complete opposition to each other, is more a marriage of convenience than a true alliance of convergent interests.  In this framework, their alliance would be seen as akin to the de facto alliance between al Qaeda's Sunni radicalism and the Persian Shia radicalism of Iran:

The self-righteousness of the neo-Marxist fascists is such that they strongly believe they are justified (even in their "antiwar" personas) to violently attack and/or intimidate any who disagree with them.

It just so happens, that these tenets (multiculturalism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism) represent three of the four pillars that are the foundation of an evolving epistemological, ethical and political strategy that the socialist remnants in the world have conceptualized and implemented to prevent their ideology from entering the dustbin of history.

And, what is most interesting is that, even as they encourage and enable Islam with the first three pillars; the Islamofascists are aiding and abetting them by using the fourth pillar- Terrorism.

We can think of the four pillars as the reason why we are witnessing a socialist revival (e.g., Hugo in the western hemisphere recently) and the rapid advancement of the Islamic Jihad all around the world.

Dalrymple's article suggests that Islam has inherited the mantle of Marxism; but I am suggesting that the two have united in a marriage-of-convenience; and that this union is the 21st century reincarnation of the failed, anti-human, anti-progress ideology formerly known as Marxism.

As we peel back the ideological cores of both systems and look more closely at the individuals drawn to such ideologies, there is a deep level at which Islamism and Marxism merge in important ways.

[A digression about primitive rage:  From the early days of Psychoanalysis, continuing into the 1960s, and often part of the training of therapists and psychoanalysts today, there was a heavy emphasis on dealing with the transference and counter-transference issues that arose from the libidinal connection that formed between patient and therapist.  A common concern of young Psychiatric Residents has traditionally been how to handle and interpret overt expressions of sexual interest from a patient.  Most adequately trained therapists become quite adept at understanding their patient's seductive and sexual behavior as libidinal transference derivatives and learn to tactfully and carefully interpret the stirrings that can potentially cause so many problems in the intimacy of the therapeutic setting.  At the same time, for many therapists there is a significant deficit in their training; dealing with the patient's aggression and primitive rage has traditionally been relatively neglected in training (though since the late 60s has been the focus of much more attention) primarily because it is so difficult to deal with using the necessary dispassionate therapeutic stance.  Anger and rage are designed to push the therapist out of his neutrality and the temptation to move out of such a stance can be overwhelming; when an enraged person directs his primitive rage at you, it is most disconcerting.

Rage is fundamentally different from sexual expression. An enraged person is unavailable for interpretation.  Their frustrated anger, focused on the imagined source of their frustration (even if only in the transference) destroys all that can be good and supportive in the relationship.

I offer this digression for a reason.  In point of fact, people who have not adequately metabolized their rage have difficulty modulating and reality testing their anger.  You can interpret unconscious determinants in a sexually provocative person because the libidinal tie is not threatened and can tolerate the disappointment that all interpretations contain.  It is impossible to interpret unconscious determinants in an enraged person because their rage destroys whatever libidinal ties have been built up in the relationship.]

Young people who are enraged tend to be drawn into delinquency, drug and alcohol use, and criminality, all as ways to manage and discharge their intolerable internal states.  Imagine how awful it is to feel that everyone has disappointed and failed you; imagine the rage of children who feel betrayed and let down over and over again.  Such young people are also drawn to ideologies which explicitly support their need to externalize: 

I am enraged; it is intolerable to know that my rage stems from my own failures and the failures of those people who have formed the nidus of my internal object world [usually parents]; my failures must be caused by someone else and their behavior [Jews, Americans] justifies this rage I cannot get rid of; now I have a place to discharge and rid myself of this rage. 

In reality, since the primary source of the rage is internal, such discharge only works temporarily, necessitating new situations in which to justify and discharge the renewed built-up rage.

Both Marxism and Islamism, with their emphasis on Utopian goals which promise to end disappointment and deprivation while directing condoned rage against the external world of oppressors, share this structure.  They facilitate defensive externalization, allow for the free expression of primitive rage, and promise a Utopian consummation, either in an earthly paradise where all desires, material and sexual, can be achieved, or in the heavenly Paradise where the 72 virgins await.  This is the attraction of Islam and Marxism to so many disaffected young people.

In college, I dabbled in radical politics.  I went to many anti-war demonstrations as a teenager.  I enjoyed the frisson of rebellion that the Psychedelic 60s was shrouded within, yet a single incident awoke me to the reality that I would never be a good Marxist.  I had been intrigued by Trotsky, the idea of constant revolution was fascinating to someone who wished to resist falling into the predicted and predictable path I feared I was on.  On campus was a well established group of young Trotskyites, the Young Socialist Alliance.  They were involved in various protests, which were always enjoyable, not least for the presence of many nubile, young radical women who approved of radical young men.  One fateful day I stopped by the YSA table to find out more about them.  I made a joking reference to the previous weekend's demonstration and discovered that the leader of the group was a young man who was incredibly humorless.  He proceeded to lecture me (hectored me, perhaps) with a diatribe on how much commitment was necessary for the revolution to succeed and how there was no room for humor in the revolution; this was deadly serious business fighting the oppressors and jokes had no place in it.

I thought he was a complete jerk; I also thought he was a very dangerous jerk.  This was the kind of person who would have no trouble condemning someone for thought crimes.  If that was the kind of person who was attracted to Marxism, perhaps I wasn't as much of a radical as I fancied.

Years later I can still recall him, with a Che Guevara beard, intense eyes, and a complete lack of humor or humanity.  Any revolution that condemned humor was not a revolution for me. 

Rage at a cruel and withholding universe (often a derivative of infantile frustration) is difficult to tolerate.  Most of us, with good-enough parenting, come to temper our infantile frustrations (which have roots in our infantile grandiosity which is so painful to give up) by using our loving ties to our parents to metabolize the rage which would otherwise be so destructive.  Those unfortunates who cannot do so via love are left enraged and searching for ways to offload the rage to an external victim.  Ideologies that enable such offloading attract the angry and the failed and it is through this pathway that Marx (the angry, anti-Semitic hater of religion) and the Islamists (descended from Qutb, the angry, anti-Semitic hater of secularism) find their true identity.