"FANTASY IDEOLOGIES"

Some rambling thoughts: This article came out last year, but I hadn't seen it until now, and at any rate it is worth reflecting on again given the bombing of the UN embassy in Iraq (via Straussian.net). Harris's argument is that the terrorist attacks on 9-11 (and al-Qaeda operations in general) are more accurately described as enactments of what he calls a "fantasy ideology" than as acts of war in a traditional sense. Harris argues that al-Qaeda is best understood in the same way that Italian fascism should be understood, as a kind of collective political tale of glory that is in some sense a reaction against the ordinary world of causation and which employs a different ontology (in al-Qaeda's case, that God causes events). The argument is subtle and interesting and you should take a look at it if you haven't already. It also meshes quite well with Thomas Nephew's discussion of Sayyid Qutb's borrowings from French fascist thought.

One aspect of Harris's argument that is troubling, however, is that the other "fantasy ideologies" that he mentioned (most prominently: antebellum southern pro-slavery thought, Italian fascism and national socialism) were only defeated after horribly destructive battles that pitted democratic nation states against nation states (or an asserted nation, in the case of the south) that were led by people in the thrall of the fantasies. The scars that these battles left have lingered for decades. Ultimately, it has proven impossible to entirely "eradicate" either southern racist ideology or fascism as terrorist forces, so we should suspect that the language of total victory in the current war on terrorism is misleading even if it is comforting. "Fantasy ideologies" are endemic to modern life, apparently. Moreover, to the extent that such "fantasy ideologies" have lost ground after the military conflicts, it has been because of national commitments to a rejection of them, not merely because of intervention on the part of international organizations or foreign countries.