Behind every religious war is a political cause. That’s what gives an organization like al-Qaeda its support and that’s where new recruits come from. The modern jihad movement really got off the ground when the mujahideen fought the Soviets in Afghanistan (guess who provided money and training). Once you have a group that successfully uses the banner of radical Islam to fight off one foreign invader, it makes sense to use that same approach to tackle other problems—Israel and American influence. The event that sparked the enmity between al-Qaeda and the USA was actually the Persian Gulf War, when bin Laden objected to the presence of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia.
Sure, propaganda materials are going to paint the USA as a wretched hive of scum and villainy trying to turn the world into a giant cesspit of debauchery. It’s the role of propaganda to rally your side and the easiest way to do that is to make the enemy out to be evil.
Asserting that al-Qaeda is motivated by hatred of freedom has a jingoistic tinge that tends to cloud deeper analysis. We can likewise paint Neo-Nazis as people motivated by hatred of Jews, but that draws a line in the sand and prevents one from seeking a better explanation for why people join hate groups. Delving into the root causes of another’s actions paints a different picture from looking just at the superficial causes.
That comment rather illustrates the mistake I mean. Take that last point about neo-Nazis, it is exactly like what Orwell said, that there are people who do not understand that others can be motivated by racial frenzy. Some of Hitler’s early backers were simple crooks who thought they were using him for relatively prosaic political ends, but Hitler had his own ends that he pushed through with some force.
Similarly you say that when bin Laden condemns American decadence or depravity from an Islamic perspective, that’s just propaganda to advance a political cause. What if it is the other way around? What if bin Laden instead invokes political grievances to advance a religious agenda? You assume that it cant possibly be that, but: Look at that document again—bin Laden goes into the usual rap against America and the West, but what he asks for is submission to Islam, to Shariah. His aim is, in his own words, explicitly theocratic.
Take the obvious parallel of Hitler. Yes, you can point to the role of inflation, mass unemployment etc. as allowing his rise. But you cannot draw a line from those to the genocide of the Jews. Even if you ditch morality, a global conflict and the mass extermination of one of your most productive minorities is lousy business sense. The whole thing is completely inexplicable unless you turn it around. The aim was, always, the genocide of the Jews and global conflict, and the problems of Germany allowed Hitler a chance to implement that program. So it is with bin Laden.
You make my point when you say that ” bin Laden objected to the presence of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia.” But why did he object? Those weren’t an occupying army, they were there at the explicit request of the Saudi monarchy to prevent Saudi Arabia from being invaded. There was nothing like, e.g., the IDF in Gaza for him to point to.
The reason is simple: there’s an Islamic hadith that makes it clear that while People of the Book may be kept in subjection elsewhere, it is not permitted to allow any infidels into Arabia, the holy Land of the Two Mosques. It’s an explicitly religious motive.
This is what I mean that sometimes you just can’t see the box, cannot understand that other people see the world in a radically different way, that their hopes and desires are not like yours. You call this description of bin Laden’s motives “superficial”. Why? Because it isn’t one that is morally intelligible to you. But why should that mean that those motives are wrong? Isn’t it the exact opposite of superficial to think that people are capable of radically differing, and that not everyone is alike?
Take the obvious parallel of Hitler. Yes, you can point to the role of inflation, mass unemployment etc. as allowing his rise. But you cannot draw a line from those to the genocide of the Jews. Even if you ditch morality, a global conflict and the mass extermination of one of your most productive minorities is lousy business sense. The whole thing is completely inexplicable unless you turn it around. The aim was, always, the genocide of the Jews and global conflict, and the problems of Germany allowed Hitler a chance to implement that program. So it is with bin Laden.
Claiming Hitler’s end goal was solely the extermination of the Jews clashes very badly with many things I know about Nazi Germany, such as the Madagascar plans and details of Jewish emigration (as covered in The Wages of Destruction, most recently). Can you provide any cites of reputable historians who believe that killing Jews qua Jews was the sum total of Hitler’s end-ambitions rather than a side-goal on the way to a world German empire or other goals?
Aiyaiyai—I take twenty four hours break and I am knee deep in responses! My answer is simple: there is an explicit call for genocide laid out in a book called Mein Kampf, as well as an explicit racial theory that holds that Aryans are becoming polluted through interbreeding—that unless drastic action is taken, the Aryan will vanish from the world. This book, and similar incitements and theories, long predate Hitler even being a lunatic fringe candidate.
there is an explicit call for genocide laid out in a book called Mein Kampf, as well as an explicit racial theory that holds that Aryans are becoming polluted through interbreeding—that unless drastic action is taken, the Aryan will vanish from the world.
Hitler says a lot of things in Mein Kampf, why single that out? He also says a lot of things in its sequel. Politicians say a lot of things they don’t mean, much like political parties say a lot of things they have no real interest in in their platforms. And your model predicts he would want to kill all races, not Jews in particular. If your best evidence is ‘Hitler talked about killing Jews’, then I’m not convinced that it was the ultimate overriding goal of Hitler, and I find the detailed accounts in his other writings and works like Wages of Destruction much more convincing that he was more concerned with defeating America & the USSR than he was with the Jewish problem.
This is all said long before Hitler was even a lunatic fringe candidate, though I repeat myself. Was Hitler always obsessed with race and Jew-hatred? Yep. Did his actions seem in accord with this? Amazingly so.
Take your comment on the USSR—why did Hitler insist on breaking the pact and invading Russian in winter? The answer is that he regarded Communism as “Judeo-Bolshevism”, a Jewish plot against the Aryan race. Again, why did Nazism never take in the East when people began by welcoming the Wehrmacht’s advance? Because in Nazi racial theory, Slavs were untermenschen. The whole course of the war is completely explicable by thinking that the Nazis actually believed what they said.
This is what I mean about some people not being able to understand that others have a radically different view of the world. You need to explain away just about everything about the Third Reich to imagine that its animating principle was something other than fanatical racism. You have to explain nothing if you make the contrary assumption.
What do you think animated Hitler? For that matter, what do you think animates jihadis?
This is all said long before Hitler was even a lunatic fringe candidate, though I repeat myself.
Hitler said a lot of things long before he became a candidate. He loved to talk.
Was Hitler always obsessed with race and Jew-hatred? Yep. Did his actions seem in accord with this? Amazingly so.
Not amazingly so. The Jewish problem was a back-burner issue which was pursued with minor energy and in a variety of ways like allowing emigration and planning expulsion to Madagascar compared to much bigger issues like re-arming Germany, reducing unemployment, preparing for war with America & USSR, etc. Read through something like Wage of Destruction or Savage Continent, and one does not get the impression at all that killing Jews was Hitler’s top priority, or even fifth top priority. You keep stating this and I’m not seeing it. There’s only a straight line from parts of Mein Kampf to Dachau when you ignore everything else.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading… what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period. During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing—they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You keep citing these books but you don’t give any evidence from them.
The entire program was to saturate society with racial hatred and frenzy. Children in school were terrified by long harangues about racial purity and so on.
There seems to be nothing that I can say that will convince you, no piece of evidence from the entire action and behavior of the Third Reich that could possibly indicate to you that they meant what they said. The very idea of a Nazi empire was to establish lebensraum for “pure” Aryans to repopulate. Racial ideology wasn’t window dressing in that empire, it was the very cause and basis of that empire.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading… what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period.
They also talked a great deal about the threat from Great Britain, France, the USA, and the USSR. You’re completely ignoring this. If a word count were done, which would be bigger? I know what I expect. You’re arguing that Hitler talked about the Jews a lot, which is totally uncontroversial, but does not prove your point: that he talked about Jews the most of all topics that concerned him.
During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing—they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.
That’s the problem: all the effort and resources thrown into the concentration camps late in the game absolutely pale in comparison to the efforts put into the war and rearmament—they wrecked the German economy just preparing for WWII, never mind actually running it.
You keep citing these books but you don’t give any evidence from them.
The entire mass of Wages of Destruction, to focus on one, is devoted to marshaling the evidence and details about the reorganization of the German economy and Hitler’s grand strategic plan (as mentioned in his Mein Kampf sequel, which I note you’re not mentioning despite your interest in ‘what the actual Nazis said’) to fight the USA, in which the slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? There’s not any one detail that’s decisive, it’s the whole thrust of the reorganization of German society from the tiny inefficient farmer up to the industrial giants and his activities during the war which combine to show that Jews were a matter more of rhetoric than the overriding terminal end goal to which all of all Hitler’s plans were subordinate, as you claim.
The very idea of a Nazi empire was to establish lebensraum for “pure” Aryans to repopulate.
Which is different from a terminal end-all-be-all goal of ‘killing Jews’.
I think you’re engaged in just motte-and-bailey tactics here: you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews, and when you get any pushback, you retreat to some well-established fact like ‘a lot of Jews died’ or ‘there was a lot of anti-semitic education’ or ‘Hitler talked about the Jews a lot’, which do not show your main claim.
Just to take your last point, my response is that this is both a strawman and an argument from intimidation. Take this:
“you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews”
Did I? Where? I said that Hitler’s motivation was his fanatical racism and that the desire to murder the Jews was a large part of that—was, in fact, an inextricable part of that. His racism wasn’t the result of the war, it was the cause of the war. As you admit towards the end.
“You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.”
Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary “The Führer recognizes the enormous opportunity that the war provides”. Hitler needed the night and fog of war, not to mention the hysteria that war brings, to carry out his plans.
“What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? ”
Well, quote something from the book rather than just drop its title.
“he slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. ”
The mass murder of those considered racially inferior was purely tangential? Well, if that’s the way you think, then that’s the way you think. There is a simple answer to this: the Wahnsee decision was to exterminate the Jewish people, and then the Slavs (there is some evidence that Hitler wanted to depopulate Africa after Europe was conquered), and there were camps that were purely devoted to the business of mass murder, no slave labour involved—Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka. The Nazi camps were not like the labour camps of the Soviet Union, they were murder facilities. To argue that the mass murder in the east is tangential is completely ahistoric.
Since the civilized tone of debate has become strained here, I think I will leave it there.
See above—Hitler’s armies didn’t invade Russia until winter.
There’s no problem there whatsoever—Hitler always intended to march against Russia, not least to wipe out or enslave the Slavs. The pact just allowed him some breathing space.
Hitler invaded on June 22, was planning to be done before the frost set in, and was (I think correctly) worried about Stalin’s double cross at some point down the line.
A German invasion backed by a less insane ideology would have won as well, I think.
That’s a common misunderstanding. Barbarossa begins in June, but the push into Russia proper does not happen until the winter. Which is what was predictable if you start such an invasion in June.
Are you talking about the invasion plans? The original estimate was was for the Red Army to fold in a few weeks. Do you have any references for your claim that the Germans planned for a “Russia proper” push to happen in winter of 1941-42?
If you start an eastward invasion in June, you end up in Russia in Winter. Which is what happened. Which is why Hitler’s generals were against it. It’s not difficult to work out—Napoleon did the same thing.
First, in the context I don’t think the difference between Ukraine, Belorussia, etc. and Russia proper is in any way meaningful.
Second, the Russian town of Smolensk fell by late July. By August Novgorod was taken and the Germans got close to Leningrad. The battle for Moscow started in early October.
As opposed to Napoleon, the Germans planned a blitzkrieg—the “blitz” part is there for a reason.
Even if you ditch morality, a global conflict and the mass extermination of one of your most productive minorities is lousy business sense.
I don’t think Hitler considered them productive minorities. Today you have plenty of people who don’t consider the banking class to be productive.
Those weren’t an occupying army, they were there at the explicit request of the Saudi monarchy to prevent Saudi Arabia from being invaded
The lines between an occupying army and an army who just defends aren’t as sharp. He seems to believe that the US does exert political pressure on Saudi Arabia to do what the US wants.
It’s not easy to find Europeans who also don’t like US bases in their own countries without any religious justification.
But you cannot draw a line from those to the genocide of the Jews. Even if you ditch morality, a global conflict and the mass extermination of one of your most productive minorities is lousy business sense. The whole thing is completely inexplicable
Maybe not so inexplicable if you read Hitler’s own writings. He clearly says that his policy of ‘removal’ of Jews is due to their involvement with the banking industry which, in Hitler’s view, was one of the main reasons for Germany’s troubled state.
Of course that reasoning wasn’t justified but it’s not so clear to me that his terminal goal was eradication of Jews. Maybe he was convinced of his own lies.
Take that last point about neo-Nazis, it is exactly like what Orwell said, that there are people who do not understand that others can be motivated by racial frenzy.
Hate groups have been an object of interest to law enforcement and psychologists for some years now. Most members are socially maladjusted and have trouble dealing with their insecurities. The “racial frenzy” arises from group dynamics. It provides group cohesion and gives the members a shared sense of purpose. It may motivate the group action, but it’s not what drew people to the group to begin with.
I did read Orwell’s essay. He makes an excellent point about intellectuals failing to properly understand the powerful emotions that can motivate a group to unified action. I won’t contest the role of group identity and group dynamics. What I wish to examine are the motivations that lead people to associate with hate groups or terrorist networks in the first place.
Similarly you say that when bin Laden condemns American decadence or depravity from an Islamic perspective, that’s just propaganda to advance a political cause. What if it is the other way around? What if bin Laden instead invokes political grievances to advance a religious agenda? You assume that it cant possibly be that, but: Look at that document again—bin Laden goes into the usual rap against America and the West, but what he asks for is submission to Islam, to Shariah. His aim is, in his own words, explicitly theocratic.
Bin Laden himself may or may not have theocratic aims. My point was that without the political grievances, he just becomes some fanatic spouting rhetoric. With political grievances, he has supporters and recruits.
You call this description of bin Laden’s motives “superficial”. Why? Because it isn’t one that is morally intelligible to you. But why should that mean that those motives are wrong? Isn’t it the exact opposite of superficial to think that people are capable of radically differing, and that not everyone is alike?
I call it superficial because it just so happens to align perfectly with our own interests. It demonizes the enemy and provides a casus belli. What it fails to do is answer the question of why radical Islam has become so popular in recent decades.
“Bin Laden himself may or may not have theocratic aims” - May or may not?
“My point was that without the political grievances, he just becomes some fanatic spouting rhetoric. With political grievances, he has supporters and recruits.” Once again, this assumes that his supporters and recruits think in a way that follows yours. I have to just say [citation needed]. Let’s take one example: 99% of Afghans think that the punishment for apostasy should be death. The assumption that there is not a large support for theocracy is unwarranted, at best.
“I call it superficial because it just so happens to align perfectly with our own interests. ”
First of all, that’s a non sequitor. It is in my interest to think that the water from the tap is healthy. I still haven’t been sick yet. It’s in my interest to think my employer will pay me at the end of the month. Never failed yet.
Second, however, - who is this “our” in that sentence? And what interests? From my perspective, if Islamic jihad has a goal that is at least understandable to us, something like the Basque ETA or the IRA, then that’s something we can deal with. On the other hand, if its goals are like those stated by Hassan Nasrallah—“We want nothing from you, we want to eliminate you”—that’s another matter entirely. I would far, far, far rather deal with the first kind of an enemy, rather than the second.
To the subject of the bin Laden list of grievances, one of them is that the United States helped free East Timor from Indonesian rule, and end the genocide of the Christian nation there. To the Islamic fanatics, this is outrageous, because it is a matter of doctrine that no conquered infidel nation may ever be freed from Islamic rule.
Let’s take one example: 99% of Afghans think that the punishment for apostasy should be death.
That number struck me as surprisingly high, so I went looking for the source and I think it’s this. The 99% number is for “Muslims who favor making Islamic law the official law” in Afghanistan. The death-for-apostasy proportion is actually only 79% for pro-sharia Afghan Muslims (which is still 79% too high, but isn’t 99%).
Thanks—you’re quite right. That is the study I was thinking of, and 79% is still horrifyingly high—sorry for getting that wrong, and thanks for the correction!
Correct. In the field of politics, the stated reasons for an action are those judged most palatable and most persuasive to the audience. For example, very few countries will cite exploitation of natural resources as a reason for war. It’s always some humanitarian reason or a tortured reading of an ancient treaty that grants them the “right” to certain lands.
Once again, this assumes that his supporters and recruits think in a way that follows yours. I have to just say [citation needed]. Let’s take one example: 99% of Afghans think that the punishment for apostasy should be death. The assumption that there is not a large support for theocracy is unwarranted, at best.
It assumes that one should take notice that the hotbeds of terrorism happen to be places that were formerly subjects of imperialist policies or were treated as pawns during the Cold War. Do they hate America because of their religion, or did they turn to religion as an avenue for handling their grievances?
One line disproof: There have been a grand total of zero terrorist attacks on the United States from Vietnam, easily the most destructive and wicked war the US has ever waged—if people whose kids are still being born with birth defects don’t decide to fly planes into buildings, I think it is safe to say that something else is going on.
Again, this ignores the stated intentions and demands of Al Qaeda, to recreate the lost caliphate and enforce the most fanatical Islamic rule within it, a global Taliban style rule. It also ignores things like Al Qaeda’s stated support for the genocide in East Timor or Darfur.
You left out some possibilities. Perhaps religion both makes a counttry weak (and thus vulnerable to imperialism) and leads to terrorism? Or perhaps weakness makes a country vulnerable to imperialists, and also vulnerable to religious extremism?
And the other flaw in this reasoning is that there are a whole lot of places that were formerly imperialist subjects or were treated as pawns during the Cold War. They’re not all full of anti-Western terrorists now. Pretty much the only ones that are are the Islamic ones.
I think the following would all be examples of religious wars:
Crusades
Islamic wars of expansion (8th century)
Present-day jihad efforts
Israel/Palestine conflict
India/Pakistan troubles (especially during the Partition)
Ireland/England troubles
Thirty Years’ War
Of course politics has a role in all of these. Politics and religion intermingle all the time. So each of the above conflicts is political in some respects. But of course that doesn’t make politics the “real” cause.
Of course religious conflict can be used, consciously or not, as a cover for political conflict. But the reverse is also possible. And while the distinction between religious and political motives may be clear at the individual level, the problem of composition arises when you think about the motives for an entire movement.
Perhaps a graphic representation of the various models would help. Imagine two groups of people in conflict. In the past, the Blues oppressed the Greens. Now the Greens and Blues are bitter enemies and occasionally break into open warfare. There’s also a lot of religious hatred between the two groups that goes back a long way. Here are a couple ways this could work:
Scenario A: Religious differences --> Blues oppress Greens --> Greens resent Blues --> War
Scenario B: Blues want to oppress Greens --> Blues invent their religion to give themselves moral cover --> Blues oppress Greens --> Greens resent Blues --> War
In the real world, where there are other sources of conflict (like natural resources, race, foreign powers playing sides, etc.), it seems like a lot of information would be necessary before being confident that either scenario was the real one.
I do not think that any of your examples, nor any example I have ever looked at, really fits Scenario A. Perhaps the Partition of India or Greece/Turkey.* Religion almost never creates differences. Sometimes religion unifies people. The Greens and Blues, unified by religion, are able to stop fighting each other and attack the Reds. Perhaps this describes your first three examples. Maybe you should call these “wars of religion,” but they fit neither of your scenarios.
Scenario B is also rare. I would assign to it only the Thirty Years’ War. People rarely need cover.
Ireland is a race conflict, between the natives and the Scottish settlers. I think that this is a typical example. The core is a race conflict, but the names of the parties are religions so that people can change sides, if only a way that half-breeds can signify their allegiance.
Everyone knows that Israel is a settler conflict. If you think it is religious conflict, what is the religion of the Palestinians? The PLO was originally Christian and atheist. It would be odd to call it a religious conflict when the religion of one side changes (even just that of their leaders).
Yes, it takes information to decide, but the quite consistent pattern is that when I obtain information, I downgrade the religious hypothesis. Having such a pattern, I should change my prior.
* The ethnic cleansing between Greece and Turkey is interesting because it was largely done on the basis of religion, but in the name of race. After the partition, the new countries emphasized racial identity and a single language, but before there wasn’t much correlation between religion and, say, language.
maybe you should call these “wars of religion,” but they fit neither of your scenarios.
True.
Everyone knows that Israel is a settler conflict. If you think it is religious conflict, what is the religion of the Palestinians? The PLO was originally Christian and atheist. It would be odd to call it a religious conflict when the religion of one side changes (even just that of their leaders).
Good point.
the quite consistent pattern is that when I obtain information, I downgrade the religious hypothesis.
OK, I have noticed the same thing. But that hardly means the political motive is the main cause of all ostensibly religious conflicts (which is the claim to which I was originally responding).
Other ways in which religion could play a causal role in war include:
What if the doctrine of a religion is itself explicitly encouraging of violent approaches to conflict resolution?
What if the version of history promulgated by a religious community, perhaps encoded in its sacred text, casts the community as victims of perpetually untrustworthy outsiders?
What if the doctrine of a religion states that unbelievers cannot be expected to cooperate in Prisoners’ Dilemma-type situations?
If the Greens believed in a religion that featured the above characteristics (or some of them), surely that would be evidence in favor of the religious nature of the war?
Can you simply not conceive of people having a religious motivation for war?
Simply not conceive of people just believing that others can believe that the Jihadists have that motivation, without a motivation based in racial hatred against the Jihadists?
You have modeled other people so that what they say they believe, and say that their motivations are, are not their beliefs and motivations, which you think you have accurately identified.
It’s the role of propaganda to rally your side and the easiest way to do that is to make the enemy out to be evil.
But why would religious propaganda work on people whose true motivations are political?
Can you simply not conceive of people having a religious motivation for war?
I used to identify very strongly with right-wing Christianity. I can conceive of religious motivations for just about anything because I used to possess them myself. Name your favorite country and I can still crack open a Bible and make a theological case for starting a crusade. Deus vult!
The point I’ve been trying to make is that the causes that drive a nation to actually commit to a war are almost always the mundane political ones, while religion is used to drum up support and provide legitimacy to the cause.
You have modeled other people so that what they say they believe, and say that their motivations are, are not their beliefs and motivations, which you think you have accurately identified.
It may just be my own cynicism. When I see people giving all kinds of arguments about rights and morals in support of actions that coincidentally increase their personal wealth or power, I do question their motives. Quote Matthew 19:21 to a wealthy religious person sometime and the reaction will either be anger or an explanation of what Jesus really meant. By far the least common reaction is to actually renounce worldly possessions.
But those are the leaders. Followers of cults or extremist groups generally feel some cocktail of insecurity, depression, and maladjustment in their personal lives and come to like the sense of community offered. If they spend long enough in the group they will internalize the rhetoric and eventually escalate their beliefs to the point where they are willing to perpetrate violence in their name. Their scope, however, is often limited. You don’t see any such organizations muster enough power to wage war unless there’s enough animosity to swell the ranks or they can find a patron who uses their rhetoric for his own purposes.
But why would religious propaganda work on people whose true motivations are political?
Religion is strongly tied to community and culture. Even level-headed believers can get defensive when they feel their faith is attacked. It’s an appeal to emotion and group dynamics that is common to every sort of demagoguery.
Religious propaganda is there to drum up support, but there already has to be some animosity towards the object in question. Let’s take rock and roll. We’ve all heard the allegations that it’s satanic, immoral, etc. The thing is, plenty of people were already averse to it because they didn’t like it and objected to their children listening to “black” music. In a word, they wanted to hear about how bad it was. It’s a running theme that disagreeable things are branded immoral or heretical. It reinforces prior perceptions and makes those things anathema to the group.
If you have a grievance against a group, rumors inevitably pop up. We like to believe them, even if they’re ridiculous, because they reinforce our view that the group is evil. Start telling stories about their immoral sexual practices, child sacrifice, and devil worship and you can fan the religious flames. They’re not just jerks, but abominations keen on uprooting everything your group holds dear. Game, set, match.
May I make an assumption? I’m guessing you’re American—it’s that phrase about “right wing Christianity”. The problem is that America doesn’t have anything like real Christian fanaticism. It has some people who are upset about gay marriage and evolution and that’s it.
Europeans, on the other hand, have had the real thing in living memory. We’re not talking about “the Moral Majority” here, but the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or the Falange. This is the real thing, real fanaticism, and what you learn is that true faith, true belief does indeed inspire war.
This is what I mean when I say you cannot assume that other people think the way you do.
You’re proving what I see as the point of the grandparent. This hasn’t happened in America—unless you count the KKK, starting during the occupation of the South—because the actual causes were absent.
And then you get Nazis in World War II, and everyone says “I remember all that World War I propaganda. All the bad stuff I hear about what the Nazis did has got to be more such propaganda, because no human being could really be sucn an abomination.” Of course, the Nazis were.
Behind every religious war is a political cause. That’s what gives an organization like al-Qaeda its support and that’s where new recruits come from. The modern jihad movement really got off the ground when the mujahideen fought the Soviets in Afghanistan (guess who provided money and training). Once you have a group that successfully uses the banner of radical Islam to fight off one foreign invader, it makes sense to use that same approach to tackle other problems—Israel and American influence. The event that sparked the enmity between al-Qaeda and the USA was actually the Persian Gulf War, when bin Laden objected to the presence of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia.
Sure, propaganda materials are going to paint the USA as a wretched hive of scum and villainy trying to turn the world into a giant cesspit of debauchery. It’s the role of propaganda to rally your side and the easiest way to do that is to make the enemy out to be evil.
Asserting that al-Qaeda is motivated by hatred of freedom has a jingoistic tinge that tends to cloud deeper analysis. We can likewise paint Neo-Nazis as people motivated by hatred of Jews, but that draws a line in the sand and prevents one from seeking a better explanation for why people join hate groups. Delving into the root causes of another’s actions paints a different picture from looking just at the superficial causes.
That comment rather illustrates the mistake I mean. Take that last point about neo-Nazis, it is exactly like what Orwell said, that there are people who do not understand that others can be motivated by racial frenzy. Some of Hitler’s early backers were simple crooks who thought they were using him for relatively prosaic political ends, but Hitler had his own ends that he pushed through with some force.
Similarly you say that when bin Laden condemns American decadence or depravity from an Islamic perspective, that’s just propaganda to advance a political cause. What if it is the other way around? What if bin Laden instead invokes political grievances to advance a religious agenda? You assume that it cant possibly be that, but: Look at that document again—bin Laden goes into the usual rap against America and the West, but what he asks for is submission to Islam, to Shariah. His aim is, in his own words, explicitly theocratic.
Take the obvious parallel of Hitler. Yes, you can point to the role of inflation, mass unemployment etc. as allowing his rise. But you cannot draw a line from those to the genocide of the Jews. Even if you ditch morality, a global conflict and the mass extermination of one of your most productive minorities is lousy business sense. The whole thing is completely inexplicable unless you turn it around. The aim was, always, the genocide of the Jews and global conflict, and the problems of Germany allowed Hitler a chance to implement that program. So it is with bin Laden.
You make my point when you say that ” bin Laden objected to the presence of foreign troops in Saudi Arabia.” But why did he object? Those weren’t an occupying army, they were there at the explicit request of the Saudi monarchy to prevent Saudi Arabia from being invaded. There was nothing like, e.g., the IDF in Gaza for him to point to.
The reason is simple: there’s an Islamic hadith that makes it clear that while People of the Book may be kept in subjection elsewhere, it is not permitted to allow any infidels into Arabia, the holy Land of the Two Mosques. It’s an explicitly religious motive.
This is what I mean that sometimes you just can’t see the box, cannot understand that other people see the world in a radically different way, that their hopes and desires are not like yours. You call this description of bin Laden’s motives “superficial”. Why? Because it isn’t one that is morally intelligible to you. But why should that mean that those motives are wrong? Isn’t it the exact opposite of superficial to think that people are capable of radically differing, and that not everyone is alike?
Claiming Hitler’s end goal was solely the extermination of the Jews clashes very badly with many things I know about Nazi Germany, such as the Madagascar plans and details of Jewish emigration (as covered in The Wages of Destruction, most recently). Can you provide any cites of reputable historians who believe that killing Jews qua Jews was the sum total of Hitler’s end-ambitions rather than a side-goal on the way to a world German empire or other goals?
Aiyaiyai—I take twenty four hours break and I am knee deep in responses! My answer is simple: there is an explicit call for genocide laid out in a book called Mein Kampf, as well as an explicit racial theory that holds that Aryans are becoming polluted through interbreeding—that unless drastic action is taken, the Aryan will vanish from the world. This book, and similar incitements and theories, long predate Hitler even being a lunatic fringe candidate.
Hitler says a lot of things in Mein Kampf, why single that out? He also says a lot of things in its sequel. Politicians say a lot of things they don’t mean, much like political parties say a lot of things they have no real interest in in their platforms. And your model predicts he would want to kill all races, not Jews in particular. If your best evidence is ‘Hitler talked about killing Jews’, then I’m not convinced that it was the ultimate overriding goal of Hitler, and I find the detailed accounts in his other writings and works like Wages of Destruction much more convincing that he was more concerned with defeating America & the USSR than he was with the Jewish problem.
This is all said long before Hitler was even a lunatic fringe candidate, though I repeat myself. Was Hitler always obsessed with race and Jew-hatred? Yep. Did his actions seem in accord with this? Amazingly so.
Take your comment on the USSR—why did Hitler insist on breaking the pact and invading Russian in winter? The answer is that he regarded Communism as “Judeo-Bolshevism”, a Jewish plot against the Aryan race. Again, why did Nazism never take in the East when people began by welcoming the Wehrmacht’s advance? Because in Nazi racial theory, Slavs were untermenschen. The whole course of the war is completely explicable by thinking that the Nazis actually believed what they said.
This is what I mean about some people not being able to understand that others have a radically different view of the world. You need to explain away just about everything about the Third Reich to imagine that its animating principle was something other than fanatical racism. You have to explain nothing if you make the contrary assumption.
What do you think animated Hitler? For that matter, what do you think animates jihadis?
Hitler said a lot of things long before he became a candidate. He loved to talk.
Not amazingly so. The Jewish problem was a back-burner issue which was pursued with minor energy and in a variety of ways like allowing emigration and planning expulsion to Madagascar compared to much bigger issues like re-arming Germany, reducing unemployment, preparing for war with America & USSR, etc. Read through something like Wage of Destruction or Savage Continent, and one does not get the impression at all that killing Jews was Hitler’s top priority, or even fifth top priority. You keep stating this and I’m not seeing it. There’s only a straight line from parts of Mein Kampf to Dachau when you ignore everything else.
On the other hand, you get exactly that impression by reading… what the actual Nazis said, all the way to the top, and the experiences of people living through that period. During the height of the second world war, they insisted on using scarce resources like trains and troops to keep up the Jew killing—they were willing to risk their own war aims to complete this task.
You keep citing these books but you don’t give any evidence from them.
The entire program was to saturate society with racial hatred and frenzy. Children in school were terrified by long harangues about racial purity and so on.
There seems to be nothing that I can say that will convince you, no piece of evidence from the entire action and behavior of the Third Reich that could possibly indicate to you that they meant what they said. The very idea of a Nazi empire was to establish lebensraum for “pure” Aryans to repopulate. Racial ideology wasn’t window dressing in that empire, it was the very cause and basis of that empire.
They also talked a great deal about the threat from Great Britain, France, the USA, and the USSR. You’re completely ignoring this. If a word count were done, which would be bigger? I know what I expect. You’re arguing that Hitler talked about the Jews a lot, which is totally uncontroversial, but does not prove your point: that he talked about Jews the most of all topics that concerned him.
You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.
That’s the problem: all the effort and resources thrown into the concentration camps late in the game absolutely pale in comparison to the efforts put into the war and rearmament—they wrecked the German economy just preparing for WWII, never mind actually running it.
The entire mass of Wages of Destruction, to focus on one, is devoted to marshaling the evidence and details about the reorganization of the German economy and Hitler’s grand strategic plan (as mentioned in his Mein Kampf sequel, which I note you’re not mentioning despite your interest in ‘what the actual Nazis said’) to fight the USA, in which the slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? There’s not any one detail that’s decisive, it’s the whole thrust of the reorganization of German society from the tiny inefficient farmer up to the industrial giants and his activities during the war which combine to show that Jews were a matter more of rhetoric than the overriding terminal end goal to which all of all Hitler’s plans were subordinate, as you claim.
Which is different from a terminal end-all-be-all goal of ‘killing Jews’.
I think you’re engaged in just motte-and-bailey tactics here: you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews, and when you get any pushback, you retreat to some well-established fact like ‘a lot of Jews died’ or ‘there was a lot of anti-semitic education’ or ‘Hitler talked about the Jews a lot’, which do not show your main claim.
Just to take your last point, my response is that this is both a strawman and an argument from intimidation. Take this:
“you make the claim Hitler’s sole motivation was killing Jews”
Did I? Where? I said that Hitler’s motivation was his fanatical racism and that the desire to murder the Jews was a large part of that—was, in fact, an inextricable part of that. His racism wasn’t the result of the war, it was the cause of the war. As you admit towards the end.
“You know what would be even more effective for pursuing an overriding terminal goal of killing Jews and nothing else? Not starting that war in the first place.”
Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary “The Führer recognizes the enormous opportunity that the war provides”. Hitler needed the night and fog of war, not to mention the hysteria that war brings, to carry out his plans.
“What am I going to do, paste the whole book inline? ”
Well, quote something from the book rather than just drop its title.
“he slave labor camps of millions of people (only some of which were Jews) were a late solution for acute labor shortages and the killings purely tangential. ”
The mass murder of those considered racially inferior was purely tangential? Well, if that’s the way you think, then that’s the way you think. There is a simple answer to this: the Wahnsee decision was to exterminate the Jewish people, and then the Slavs (there is some evidence that Hitler wanted to depopulate Africa after Europe was conquered), and there were camps that were purely devoted to the business of mass murder, no slave labour involved—Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka. The Nazi camps were not like the labour camps of the Soviet Union, they were murder facilities. To argue that the mass murder in the east is tangential is completely ahistoric.
Since the civilized tone of debate has become strained here, I think I will leave it there.
Nitpick: Hitler invaded Russia in the middle of summer.
That answer has problems explaining the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
See above—Hitler’s armies didn’t invade Russia until winter.
There’s no problem there whatsoever—Hitler always intended to march against Russia, not least to wipe out or enslave the Slavs. The pact just allowed him some breathing space.
Sorry, whaaaat?
Hitler invaded on June 22, was planning to be done before the frost set in, and was (I think correctly) worried about Stalin’s double cross at some point down the line.
A German invasion backed by a less insane ideology would have won as well, I think.
That’s a common misunderstanding. Barbarossa begins in June, but the push into Russia proper does not happen until the winter. Which is what was predictable if you start such an invasion in June.
???
Are you talking about the invasion plans? The original estimate was was for the Red Army to fold in a few weeks. Do you have any references for your claim that the Germans planned for a “Russia proper” push to happen in winter of 1941-42?
If you start an eastward invasion in June, you end up in Russia in Winter. Which is what happened. Which is why Hitler’s generals were against it. It’s not difficult to work out—Napoleon did the same thing.
First, in the context I don’t think the difference between Ukraine, Belorussia, etc. and Russia proper is in any way meaningful.
Second, the Russian town of Smolensk fell by late July. By August Novgorod was taken and the Germans got close to Leningrad. The battle for Moscow started in early October.
As opposed to Napoleon, the Germans planned a blitzkrieg—the “blitz” part is there for a reason.
You are not making any sense.
Ok, no longer confused about what’s happening here. Exiting conversation.
I don’t think Hitler considered them productive minorities. Today you have plenty of people who don’t consider the banking class to be productive.
The lines between an occupying army and an army who just defends aren’t as sharp. He seems to believe that the US does exert political pressure on Saudi Arabia to do what the US wants.
It’s not easy to find Europeans who also don’t like US bases in their own countries without any religious justification.
This says that the only easily-found Europeans who dislike US bases in Europe have religious justifications. Is this what you meant?
Yes, somehow the sentence came out wrong. There are many Europeans who oppose US bases in their country.
Maybe not so inexplicable if you read Hitler’s own writings. He clearly says that his policy of ‘removal’ of Jews is due to their involvement with the banking industry which, in Hitler’s view, was one of the main reasons for Germany’s troubled state.
Of course that reasoning wasn’t justified but it’s not so clear to me that his terminal goal was eradication of Jews. Maybe he was convinced of his own lies.
Hate groups have been an object of interest to law enforcement and psychologists for some years now. Most members are socially maladjusted and have trouble dealing with their insecurities. The “racial frenzy” arises from group dynamics. It provides group cohesion and gives the members a shared sense of purpose. It may motivate the group action, but it’s not what drew people to the group to begin with.
Here’s one model of hate groups.
I did read Orwell’s essay. He makes an excellent point about intellectuals failing to properly understand the powerful emotions that can motivate a group to unified action. I won’t contest the role of group identity and group dynamics. What I wish to examine are the motivations that lead people to associate with hate groups or terrorist networks in the first place.
Bin Laden himself may or may not have theocratic aims. My point was that without the political grievances, he just becomes some fanatic spouting rhetoric. With political grievances, he has supporters and recruits.
I call it superficial because it just so happens to align perfectly with our own interests. It demonizes the enemy and provides a casus belli. What it fails to do is answer the question of why radical Islam has become so popular in recent decades.
“Bin Laden himself may or may not have theocratic aims” - May or may not?
“My point was that without the political grievances, he just becomes some fanatic spouting rhetoric. With political grievances, he has supporters and recruits.” Once again, this assumes that his supporters and recruits think in a way that follows yours. I have to just say [citation needed]. Let’s take one example: 99% of Afghans think that the punishment for apostasy should be death. The assumption that there is not a large support for theocracy is unwarranted, at best.
“I call it superficial because it just so happens to align perfectly with our own interests. ”
First of all, that’s a non sequitor. It is in my interest to think that the water from the tap is healthy. I still haven’t been sick yet. It’s in my interest to think my employer will pay me at the end of the month. Never failed yet.
Second, however, - who is this “our” in that sentence? And what interests? From my perspective, if Islamic jihad has a goal that is at least understandable to us, something like the Basque ETA or the IRA, then that’s something we can deal with. On the other hand, if its goals are like those stated by Hassan Nasrallah—“We want nothing from you, we want to eliminate you”—that’s another matter entirely. I would far, far, far rather deal with the first kind of an enemy, rather than the second.
To the subject of the bin Laden list of grievances, one of them is that the United States helped free East Timor from Indonesian rule, and end the genocide of the Christian nation there. To the Islamic fanatics, this is outrageous, because it is a matter of doctrine that no conquered infidel nation may ever be freed from Islamic rule.
That number struck me as surprisingly high, so I went looking for the source and I think it’s this. The 99% number is for “Muslims who favor making Islamic law the official law” in Afghanistan. The death-for-apostasy proportion is actually only 79% for pro-sharia Afghan Muslims (which is still 79% too high, but isn’t 99%).
Thanks—you’re quite right. That is the study I was thinking of, and 79% is still horrifyingly high—sorry for getting that wrong, and thanks for the correction!
Correct. In the field of politics, the stated reasons for an action are those judged most palatable and most persuasive to the audience. For example, very few countries will cite exploitation of natural resources as a reason for war. It’s always some humanitarian reason or a tortured reading of an ancient treaty that grants them the “right” to certain lands.
It assumes that one should take notice that the hotbeds of terrorism happen to be places that were formerly subjects of imperialist policies or were treated as pawns during the Cold War. Do they hate America because of their religion, or did they turn to religion as an avenue for handling their grievances?
One line disproof: There have been a grand total of zero terrorist attacks on the United States from Vietnam, easily the most destructive and wicked war the US has ever waged—if people whose kids are still being born with birth defects don’t decide to fly planes into buildings, I think it is safe to say that something else is going on.
Again, this ignores the stated intentions and demands of Al Qaeda, to recreate the lost caliphate and enforce the most fanatical Islamic rule within it, a global Taliban style rule. It also ignores things like Al Qaeda’s stated support for the genocide in East Timor or Darfur.
You left out some possibilities. Perhaps religion both makes a counttry weak (and thus vulnerable to imperialism) and leads to terrorism? Or perhaps weakness makes a country vulnerable to imperialists, and also vulnerable to religious extremism?
And the other flaw in this reasoning is that there are a whole lot of places that were formerly imperialist subjects or were treated as pawns during the Cold War. They’re not all full of anti-Western terrorists now. Pretty much the only ones that are are the Islamic ones.
Which do you mean:
(a) Political factors are the the main cause of every religious war
(b) Political factors are factors in every religious war
If (a), could you substantiate this? It seems like a very strong claim.
Edited for formatting
If you think that religious wars are real things, what do you think is the most clear example of one?
I think the following would all be examples of religious wars:
Crusades
Islamic wars of expansion (8th century)
Present-day jihad efforts
Israel/Palestine conflict
India/Pakistan troubles (especially during the Partition)
Ireland/England troubles
Thirty Years’ War
Of course politics has a role in all of these. Politics and religion intermingle all the time. So each of the above conflicts is political in some respects. But of course that doesn’t make politics the “real” cause.
Of course religious conflict can be used, consciously or not, as a cover for political conflict. But the reverse is also possible. And while the distinction between religious and political motives may be clear at the individual level, the problem of composition arises when you think about the motives for an entire movement.
Perhaps a graphic representation of the various models would help. Imagine two groups of people in conflict. In the past, the Blues oppressed the Greens. Now the Greens and Blues are bitter enemies and occasionally break into open warfare. There’s also a lot of religious hatred between the two groups that goes back a long way. Here are a couple ways this could work:
Scenario A: Religious differences --> Blues oppress Greens --> Greens resent Blues --> War
Scenario B: Blues want to oppress Greens --> Blues invent their religion to give themselves moral cover --> Blues oppress Greens --> Greens resent Blues --> War
In the real world, where there are other sources of conflict (like natural resources, race, foreign powers playing sides, etc.), it seems like a lot of information would be necessary before being confident that either scenario was the real one.
I do not think that any of your examples, nor any example I have ever looked at, really fits Scenario A. Perhaps the Partition of India or Greece/Turkey.* Religion almost never creates differences. Sometimes religion unifies people. The Greens and Blues, unified by religion, are able to stop fighting each other and attack the Reds. Perhaps this describes your first three examples. Maybe you should call these “wars of religion,” but they fit neither of your scenarios.
Scenario B is also rare. I would assign to it only the Thirty Years’ War. People rarely need cover.
Ireland is a race conflict, between the natives and the Scottish settlers. I think that this is a typical example. The core is a race conflict, but the names of the parties are religions so that people can change sides, if only a way that half-breeds can signify their allegiance.
Everyone knows that Israel is a settler conflict. If you think it is religious conflict, what is the religion of the Palestinians? The PLO was originally Christian and atheist. It would be odd to call it a religious conflict when the religion of one side changes (even just that of their leaders).
Yes, it takes information to decide, but the quite consistent pattern is that when I obtain information, I downgrade the religious hypothesis. Having such a pattern, I should change my prior.
* The ethnic cleansing between Greece and Turkey is interesting because it was largely done on the basis of religion, but in the name of race. After the partition, the new countries emphasized racial identity and a single language, but before there wasn’t much correlation between religion and, say, language.
True.
Good point.
OK, I have noticed the same thing. But that hardly means the political motive is the main cause of all ostensibly religious conflicts (which is the claim to which I was originally responding).
Other ways in which religion could play a causal role in war include:
What if the doctrine of a religion is itself explicitly encouraging of violent approaches to conflict resolution?
What if the version of history promulgated by a religious community, perhaps encoded in its sacred text, casts the community as victims of perpetually untrustworthy outsiders?
What if the doctrine of a religion states that unbelievers cannot be expected to cooperate in Prisoners’ Dilemma-type situations?
If the Greens believed in a religion that featured the above characteristics (or some of them), surely that would be evidence in favor of the religious nature of the war?
Can you simply not conceive of people having a religious motivation for war?
Simply not conceive of people just believing that others can believe that the Jihadists have that motivation, without a motivation based in racial hatred against the Jihadists?
You have modeled other people so that what they say they believe, and say that their motivations are, are not their beliefs and motivations, which you think you have accurately identified.
But why would religious propaganda work on people whose true motivations are political?
I used to identify very strongly with right-wing Christianity. I can conceive of religious motivations for just about anything because I used to possess them myself. Name your favorite country and I can still crack open a Bible and make a theological case for starting a crusade. Deus vult!
The point I’ve been trying to make is that the causes that drive a nation to actually commit to a war are almost always the mundane political ones, while religion is used to drum up support and provide legitimacy to the cause.
It may just be my own cynicism. When I see people giving all kinds of arguments about rights and morals in support of actions that coincidentally increase their personal wealth or power, I do question their motives. Quote Matthew 19:21 to a wealthy religious person sometime and the reaction will either be anger or an explanation of what Jesus really meant. By far the least common reaction is to actually renounce worldly possessions.
But those are the leaders. Followers of cults or extremist groups generally feel some cocktail of insecurity, depression, and maladjustment in their personal lives and come to like the sense of community offered. If they spend long enough in the group they will internalize the rhetoric and eventually escalate their beliefs to the point where they are willing to perpetrate violence in their name. Their scope, however, is often limited. You don’t see any such organizations muster enough power to wage war unless there’s enough animosity to swell the ranks or they can find a patron who uses their rhetoric for his own purposes.
Religion is strongly tied to community and culture. Even level-headed believers can get defensive when they feel their faith is attacked. It’s an appeal to emotion and group dynamics that is common to every sort of demagoguery.
Religious propaganda is there to drum up support, but there already has to be some animosity towards the object in question. Let’s take rock and roll. We’ve all heard the allegations that it’s satanic, immoral, etc. The thing is, plenty of people were already averse to it because they didn’t like it and objected to their children listening to “black” music. In a word, they wanted to hear about how bad it was. It’s a running theme that disagreeable things are branded immoral or heretical. It reinforces prior perceptions and makes those things anathema to the group.
If you have a grievance against a group, rumors inevitably pop up. We like to believe them, even if they’re ridiculous, because they reinforce our view that the group is evil. Start telling stories about their immoral sexual practices, child sacrifice, and devil worship and you can fan the religious flames. They’re not just jerks, but abominations keen on uprooting everything your group holds dear. Game, set, match.
May I make an assumption? I’m guessing you’re American—it’s that phrase about “right wing Christianity”. The problem is that America doesn’t have anything like real Christian fanaticism. It has some people who are upset about gay marriage and evolution and that’s it.
Europeans, on the other hand, have had the real thing in living memory. We’re not talking about “the Moral Majority” here, but the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or the Falange. This is the real thing, real fanaticism, and what you learn is that true faith, true belief does indeed inspire war.
This is what I mean when I say you cannot assume that other people think the way you do.
You’re proving what I see as the point of the grandparent. This hasn’t happened in America—unless you count the KKK, starting during the occupation of the South—because the actual causes were absent.
And then you get Nazis in World War II, and everyone says “I remember all that World War I propaganda. All the bad stuff I hear about what the Nazis did has got to be more such propaganda, because no human being could really be sucn an abomination.” Of course, the Nazis were.