ISIS is a Revolution

[Recursion]

https://aeon.co/essays/why-isis-has-the-potential-to-be-a-world-altering-revolution

Very good piece.

There are striking historical parallels in the history of modern revolutions ever since the Jacobin faction of French revolutionaries, led by Maximilien Robespierre, introduced the political concept of ‘terror’ and decapitation by guillotine; this extreme measure for the defence of democracy was seen as a divine form of violence. For a decade, at the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution consumed its own like bloodied sharks, all the while fighting a fractious coalition of great powers that sought to destroy it. Yet it thrived. United and transformed into an imperial mission to reform and save humankind – as all revolutions since have endeavoured to do – revolutionary forces conquered nearly all of Europe before the Empire’s fall. And ever after, commitment to ‘total war’ in the service of some indomitable moral and spiritual force has continued to inspire nearly all revolutions.

A series of revolutions inspired by a vision of social equality and universal brotherhood swept through Europe in 1848. Their failure has many parallels to what, in hindsight, is the wishfully misnamed (by mostly Western commentators) Arab Spring. Beginning in Sicily in January of 1848 and cascading throughout much of Europe by March and April, from Denmark to the borders of Russia, the revolutions spread through social networks and word of mouth even more widely and rapidly than did the Arab Spring through social and commercial media. Like the secular forces leading the Arab Spring, those of the 1848 revolutions showed little political unity or practical knowledge about how to create a new moral order, upon which the survival and success of every revolution depends.

Reactionary nationalist elites in concert with the Church muscled into that gap, creating a new morality of nationalism with all the quasi-religious trappings of flags, ceremonies, anthems, parades and imaginary kinship symbolising common roots in blood, soil and ethnicity. This new political morality aimed to bind to traditional elites the loyalty of peasants and workers who might otherwise again aspire to break down social hierarchies and political boundaries in the name of universal brotherhood. The 20th century’s titanic global struggle between fascism and communism is part of this legacy. It is far too early to tell what the ultimate legacy of the failure of the Arab Spring will be.

The current rivalry between Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State echoes that between the anarchists and Bolshevists. Beginning in Russia in the 1870s as a movement against the power of the state and capital, the anarchist movement soon spread throughout Europe and on to the Americas. Between 1881 and 1900, assassins closely linked to the anarchist movement had killed the Czar of Russia, the President of France, the Prime Minister of Spain, the King of Italy and the Empress of Austria. In September 1901, the anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated the US President William McKinley.

[liberalnarb]

1. They're evil disgusting people

No respect for them here.

[CJCRANE]

2. "The War On Terror" and "The Arab Spring" were both constructs

designed to hide something else.

[CJCRANE]

3. ISIS is a very well funded and well trained revolution.

The footsoldiers may believe the rhetoric but the financiers have something else in mind.