Jamie Glazov. United in Hate: the Left's Romance With Tyranny and Terror.

Dyrenfurth, Nick

Jamie Glazov. United in Hate: the Left's Romance With Tyranny and Terror. California: WND Books, 2009. pp. xiii+264. ISBN 9781935071600

On the face of it, a scholarly study of the relationship between the far left and political Islam is a worthwhile, if not urgent endeavour. There are of course striking similarities between these ostensibly disparate ideologies. Each aspires towards a form of utopia. In practice, however, communist and Islamist regimes have produced highly repressive societies hallmarked by pervasive state control over daily life; freedom of speech and political association are non-existent whilst human rights violations are widespread. Historically, secular communist regimes and Islamic theocracies both regard Westernstyle liberal democracy with barely concealed contempt.

Thankfully most of the communist regimes that blighted the lives of billions of human beings during the past century no longer exist or exist in name only. Yet, just as a section of the Western Left turned a blind eye towards or, worse, excused the horrors of twentieth century communism, today some Leftists either support, or adopt an uncritical stance towards, radical Islamists. Some depict Islamism as a form of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist politics. For instance, Tad Tietze, writing for left-wing Australian journal Overland in 2011 argued that "building united fronts with Islamist currents around specific issues is an inescapable part of any potentially successful Left politics in the Middle East."

So why would ostensibly anti-racist, pro-gay, pro-feminist leftists give succour to a political movement characterised by anti-Semitic racism, homophobia and misogyny, and thus opposed to core Left principles? Jamie Glazov's United in Hate attempts to make sense of this incongruous state of affairs. Glazov is a Russian-born son of Soviet dissidents who fled to America in the early 1970s. His politics are fiercely conservative, evinced by his editorship of the online Frontpage magazine, a publication of his mentor, one-time radical leftist David Horowitz. Indeed, United in Hate takes its cue from Horowitz's earlier title, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left.

Glazov's major task is to detail the gross hypocrisy of many Western, mainly American leftists who demonise their own societies yet fall silent on the subject of non-Western totalitarianism. Whether it is radical American Jewish intellectual Noam Chomsky cavorting with anti-Semitic organisations such as the militant Lebanese Shi'a Muslim group Hezbollah, or British politician George Galloway's admiration for various Arab dictatorships, a cavalcade of leftists have subscribed to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" ethos. Yet Glazov goes further and details a longer lineage of Leftist apologists for tyranny, running from support for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro and Ho Chi Minh.

Unfortunately United in Hate is undone by its polemical style, penchant for hyperbole and dubious historical interpretations. The book's first sentence declares: "Throughout the twentieth century, the Western Left supported one totalitarian killing machine after another." Yet Glazov never really tells us who comprises this Left. Does it include anti-totalitarian social democrats, or democratic socialists such as George Orwell, all fiercely opposed to fascism and communism? With the exception of Harry Truman, Glazov seems to believe that Democrat administrations have appeased totalitarian regimes. Lyndon B. Johnson's prosecution of the Vietnam War would seem to contradict such a reading.

United in Hate is littered with specious arguments. "The Left ... had tried passionately to prevent the liberation of Iraq" he claims. Yet most moderate Left and social democratic parties opposed the 2003 Iraq war not out of any love for Saddam Hussein but because they believed that insufficient evidence existed to prove that his Ba'athist regime possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, and argued that any military action should require the backing of the United Nations. Laughably Glazov denounces the crimes of Hussein but fails to mention that the Reagan Republican administration actually supported his regime in its war against Iran during the 1980s. Remarkably we are then told that Bill Clinton and assorted leftists "succeeded in making the United States vulnerable to 9/11".

At that, perhaps my major quibble with this book is the repetitive conflation of social democrats (in North American parlance, the Right's dreaded 'liberal-Left') with far-Left revolutionaries. For example, I agree with Glazov's claim that certain elements of the Left have indeed "formed a tacit alliance with ... Radical Islamists" as evinced by my quotation of a local leftist earlier. Yet he then proceeds to tell us that their ranks include former Democrat US President Jimmy Carter. Yes, Carter has controversially met with Hamas and officials such as Khaled Meshal, but he also led the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He is hardly some radical leftist.

Too often valid arguments are ruined by hyperbole. For instance, Glazov makes a good point as regards the black and white/good and evil fundamentalism at the heart of Islamist and far-left ideology: "Like Islamists, Leftists have a Manichean vision that rigidly distinguishes good from evil. They see themselves as personifications of the former and their opponents as personifications of the latter, who must be slated for ruthless elimination." I personally disagree with the political views of Noam Chomsky, who Glazov holds up as the archetypal leftist, but I have never seen him or his ilk call for the liquidation of their ideological enemies. This is a nonsensical claim.

A number of Glazov's political and historical interpretations are, to say the least, questionable. With nary a skerrick of evidence we are told that "fascism and communism were centrally involved in the birth and development of Islamism". At no stage is Glazov careful enough to distinguish between the behaviour of a minority of militant Islamists and the peaceful majority of Muslims who abhor religiously motivated violence. To suggest that "[t]he hatred of joy and laughter is . connected to the dearth of toys and games for children in the Muslim-Arab world" is plain silly. Some would even say this book is Islamophobic.

United by Hate is a missed opportunity. In part this owes to the author's own politics of hate. An uber-conservative warrior, Glazov has no sympathy for even the mildest form of social democracy. He is all too eager to paint the entire spectrum of left-of-centre politics as morally bankrupt or worse. To my mind, a disinterested observer of the far-left/Islamist nexus would gain far more by perusing the work of British Marxist scholar-cum-blogger Norm Geras, also a fierce critic of left-wing hypocrisy and double-standards but whose broad political sympathies still reside with that side of politics.

Dr Nick Dyrenfurth

Work & Organisational Studies

The University of Sydney