Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis was written by Bat Ye’or and published in 2005 by Associated University Presses. The author had already published other books on this and related subjects, mostly in French and translated into English, Hebrew, and Russian. Her general terrain has been the transformation of Europe in its ill-conceived alliance with the Arab world; she dates the turning point in 1973 (the oil crisis), but also alludes to Charles De Gaulle’s foreign policies in the 1960s.
Her argument is easily summarized: European elites made common cause with Pan-Arab elites, establishing the EAD (Euro-Arab Dialogue) to further the aims of 1. Muslims interested in re-establishing the caliphate that would compensate for its losses in Spain and Southern Europe during the late medieval and early Renaissance periods; and 2. A mostly French elite that wanted to challenge US supremacy in the world after the second world war.
The result was an aggressive (as opposed to a peaceful) multiculturalism. I.e., Ye’or holds to the school of international diplomacy that rejects Wilsonian internationalism/the United Nations for Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis.
The outcome of the Eurabian cultural offensive has been intensified immigration of non-assimilating Muslim immigrants into Europe, and the propagation of what she calls the “Andalusian myth” that the misnamed Western civilization itself owed everything to Muslim arts and sciences, and nothing to ancient Greece and Rome, the Byzantine Empire, “the Judeo-Christian heritage,” or to all societies prior to the propagation of Muslim religion from the 6th century onward. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Islam.)
Scholars such as the late Edward Said have been prominent adherents to Eurabian thought: their goal, she states, has been to attack the legitimacy of Israel, to undermine Christianity, to devalue the United States, and to establish a condition of “dhimmitude” (limited freedoms characterized by servility to the Muslim master and the Sharia law) in all regions where militant jihadists seek hegemony. Her book, written after 9-11, accentuates the cultural offensive or a one-sided “dialogue” between the West and jihadism in which the West has yielded its achievements to the claims of militant Islam and putting cultural pluralism (her “peaceful multiculturalism”) in dire jeopardy. These policies are supported, the author notes, by ambitious Muslim elites, some of their striving middle classes, communists everywhere, and nazified social movements of the far Right. (She does not include, obviously, those European politicians and social movements who oppose sharia law as advanced by Muslim immigrants.)
Wikipedia dismissed her claims as a “conspiracy theory”; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurabia. But it is well known that Wikipedia is controlled by the same “postcolonial” leftists who oppose Israel and the West as hopelessly imperialist and repressive. Eric Hobsbawm himself could have written this curt dismissal of Eurabia as entirely lacking in academic merit. (See https://clarespark.com/2012/12/08/hobsbawm-obama-israel/.)
A daring work such as Bat Ye’or’s should be judged on its documentation as well as its predictive value. With Iraq now threatened by ISIS a.k.a. ISIL, Eurabia deserves a second look. (You will absorb her argument if you read the introduction and conclusions. The book has endnotes and multiple appendices.)
For a CV, see http://www.dhimmitude.org/d_bycv.html.
The Clare Spark Blog 
Reblogged this on Neoconservativism and the West and commented:
Clare is on the money. Prophets are never believed in their own time.
Comment by wien1938 — November 15, 2015 @ 3:33 pm |
“and nazified social movements of the far Right” How is it that the National Socialist German Workers Party was right wing lie keeps getting repeated?
Comment by Geoff Rogers — July 10, 2014 @ 3:26 pm |
What is your evidence that there are no Nazified movements of the Far Right? Let me explain what characterizes right-wing populism: 1. hatred of Jews, symbol of modernity; 2. opposition to the labor movement, as populism is a petit-bourgeois radical movement that hates “the money power” that they associate with modernity and class struggle; 3. coalition with monarchists/monarchists who were appalled by the Weimar Republic; 4. a love for primitive “Germany” that supposedly emanated from the Teutoburg Forest. Perhaps this comment was misled by the word “Socialist” in the name of the Nazi movement, but “Socialism” in that context referred solely to the willingness to sacrifice oneself on behalf of the “people’s community”. Nazis were virulently anticommunist, which it viewed as a Jewish imposition. Nazis would be purged of “Jewish” influence, hence fit to institute a New World Order, grounded in German/Nazi leadership and domination.
Comment by clarelspark — July 10, 2014 @ 3:34 pm |
The Nazis take their name from the name of their party, “Nazional Sozialismus” (“National Socialism”) which is nationalist socialism. It was the German version of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, which he founded in 1917, referring to the ancient Roman symbols of authority, the fasces, a sheaf of wheat bound with an axe. He had been a leader of the Italian Socialist Party, which had opposed Italy’s participation in World War I (against Germany), on the Marxist grounds that the war was between capitalist nations. (Mussolini was also the editor of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper Avanti.) The party was internationalist. He changed his mind and founded the Italian Fascist Party in 1917, as nationalist socialism. The German party was the Nationalist Socialist party, Nazional Sozialismus. The Bolshevik Communists were international socialists. That there were fights between Communists and Nazis shows nothing about the Nazis being “right-wing.” They were left-wing, socialists, – one of the legacies of this socialist party was the Volkswagen, the “PeopleCar.”
Comment by pathena — August 5, 2014 @ 4:28 pm
Pathena’s is a common misconception on the Right. Hitler was competing with communists for the soul of the working class, and his early supporters the Strasser brothers, were certainly left-wing populists: one of them perished in the Night of the Long Knives, and the second left the coalition. “Socialism” to Nazis signified self-sacrifice on behalf of the “people’s community” which must be Aryan. Jews were considered “anti-race” by Hitler in the widely read Mein Kampf. Moreover, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the German Right (an group of big businessmen and aristocrats) in order to destroy the very numerous German Left–both communists and social democrats. It is simply wrong and misleading to label Nazis as leftists. Each fascism in Europe was unique and rooted in its context, as I have written here:https://clarespark.com/2013/04/21/fascism-what-it-is-what-it-is-not/.
Comment by clarelspark — August 5, 2014 @ 4:37 pm
The problem is that people keep trying to overlay the term “right wing” on both sides of the Atlantic and expect it to mean the same thing. It doesn’t. Right wing in Europe is not the same thing as in America. Just as “conservative” in Europe is not the same as in America. Ditto for “liberal”. HOWEVER, the extreme right on both sides seem to often share a commonality on racial issues.
All in all, fascism is more a Left Wing phenomenon. Fascism is what socialists become when they’re desperate to hold on to power. Or need to exploit populist hot buttons for short term agendas. Fascism rejects internationalism. That’s the only startling difference.
All in all, I think its the Left Wing who once again attempts to drive the discussion by controlling the definitions and terminology. I say we stick the tar baby on them, because they have a lot more in common with it than we do – in America at least.
Comment by albert8184 — August 6, 2014 @ 5:08 am
Fascism differed in each fascist country. They were all anticommunist, hypernationalist/racist, and statist. Some collapse the New Deal into the fascist countries of the 1920s and 30s into the term “bureaucratic collectivism.” I agree that the history of monarchy and aristocracy existed in Europe, not America and that made a big difference. I have been writing about the European fascisms and criticizing those rightists in America who mistakenly take fascism to be a left wing phenomenon. That is a grotesque use of language.
Comment by clarelspark — August 6, 2014 @ 1:58 pm
Calling Fascism a “right wing” ideology in Europe makes much more sense than calling it a “right wing” idieology in America. Given that Europe had long been on a trajectory of collectivism/authoritarianism, under medieval feudalism and the church…. and then under revolutionary “enlightenment” in the post-church age culminating in the development of socialism…. “right wing” makes sense under the classic definition of “conservative traditionalist”, as coined during the time of the French Revolution.
But, that being said, it is not at all ridiculous to refer to fascism in Europe as a Left Wing aberration. A sort of ugly misdirection of the intent of Marx. And misdirected I might add, as a deliberate tactic of politicians for rank populist motives. Hitler was no right winger in the American sense. He co-opted much of Marx’ vision without giving him credit for it. In my mind, the only reason that Fascism is really a “right wing” philosophy in Europe is because it is an extention of some very old and very “traditional” European mindsets toward racism, anti-semitism and anti-liberalism and suprematism rooted in martial grandeur, state pageantry and ancient rememberances of Rome.
But fascism certainly isn’t “right wing” in the American sense. The KKK of the 1920s was the closest thing America ever had to a “right wing” fascism… but who could really call it that when the KKK didn’t embrace either the most important economic dictums of fascism… As an anti-capitalist, anti-Judeo-Christian philosophy that called for massive state intervention, fascism is difficult to describe in the “right Wing” in the American sense.
When the American conservative supports the ideas of Von Mises… it is very difficult to say that the Nazis were also “right wingers” in the American sense. And I feel the definition of fascism as a “right wing” movement by the American Left is a DELIBERATE subterfuge designed to misdirect, misinform, and demonize their opponents. A classic tactic of the Left.
Comment by albert8184 — August 6, 2014 @ 8:27 pm
What are your evidences that Bat Ye’or Thesis is not a conspiracy theory?
By example, do you know evidence that “European elites made common cause with Pan-Arab elites” (like declaring war to Israel, expell every Jews, convert to Islam, stop economic/diplomatic relation with Israel)? Can you quote an eurabian treaty? Bat Ye’or forecast (chapter 8) that everybody in Europe will be teatched Arabic language, is it fulfilled?
Comment by Nicolas Krebs — June 29, 2014 @ 3:09 pm |
Have you read this book? Have you checked her documentation, including the appendices? Have you asked the same questions of conspiracy theories from the Left that accuse “the Right” of seeking solely to obstruct “progressive laws” initiated by this President and his supporters in Congress, the press, and in the universities?
Bat Ye’or’s book was about the intention of certain elites in Europe and the Muslim world. The book was published in 2005, and written by 2003. As for Israel, she makes no secret of her Zionism. You might be interested in the blog I wrote about my research in the Ralph Bunche papers at UCLA while he was active in the United Nations. See https://clarespark.com/2014/06/18/how-ralph-bunche-sold-out-and-failed-in-palestine/. Are you aware that Count Bernadotte, like his successor Ralph Bunche, advocated the right of return for “Palestinian refugees”? Given that the Islamic world has been hostile to Israel as a modern, democratic intruder in “Muslim” space, who exactly would be expelled or destroyed if the jihadists got their way?
Comment by clarelspark — June 29, 2014 @ 3:35 pm |