ISIS, Communism, and the Lure of Violent Utopianism

ISIS, Communism, and the Lure of Violent Utopianism

Jihadi John is nothing new.

A. Barton Hinkle | March 9, 2015

“Nihilists! . . . I mean, say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.” So proclaimed Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski, and Americans stunned by the horror of the Islamic State’s barbarity could be tempted to think the same. The Nazis were totalitarian monsters, but at least they believed in something, no matter how evil. Whereas ISIS is simply—in Secretary of State John Kerry’s words—“inexplicable, nihilistic, and valueless.” Particularly mystifying to some is how people such as Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State butcher known as Jihadi John, could join such a movement despite growing up in comfortable circumstances in London and getting a university degree in computer programming. Nor is he alone. Many of those drawn to ISIS are intelligent, educated and economically well-off. What drives them to chop off people’s heads?

The horrible truth is that ISIS and its converts, such as Jihadi John, represent nothing new in the modern era. The movement is not inexplicable—a recent essay in The Atlantic explicated it well, albeit controversially. It is not valueless; it champions the values of one very strict reading of Islam. And it is not nihilistic. A nihilist is someone who believes there is nothing to believe in. The fanatics of the Islamic State, however, believe very strongly in the absolute rightness of their own Utopian vision for the world.

Absolute belief renders ISIS’ atrocities not only explicable but seemingly almost mandatory. After all, if you hold the keys to the perfection of life on Earth, then anyone who stands in your way is actively depriving everyone else of that outcome and thereby ensuring the continued suffering of millions. Eliminating such people therefore serves the good of all mankind. (And the grisly beheadings, crucifixions, immolations? They can be justified on the same grounds as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: They will shock and awe the enemy into an earlier surrender, and thus save lives in the end. Mercy becomes a justification for cruelty.)

None of this is new. A century ago another Utopian movement behaved very much the same.

https://reason.com/archives/2015/03/09/isis-communism-and-the-lure-of-violent-u