Occidentalist Mimicry

Penguin Books, 165 pgs.

After spending the better part of this week researching two books, and reading another, about how the British viewed their empire, I needed a respite from the intellectual back-biting of Orientalism versus Ornamentalism.

I read Occidentalism.

This book is not as well-known as its predecessors, and certainly not as long. I am a little hesistant to call the two other "O-isms" predecessors because the authors of Occidentalism never mention Said or Cannadine--the two authors of Orientalism and Ornamentalism, respectively. That being said, however, you can be sure that Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit have read the aforementioned academics' works.

Occidentalism, in short, was written as a short philosophical history of how the West--read Anglo-America--is perceived by its enemies. The enemies of the West are plenary; though the West, today, is hated most in and around the ancient Orient--the Near East. But, at various times throughout history the West has been at ideological odds with Germany (the World Wars), Japan (World War II) and Russia (the Crimean War, the Cold War, etc.)

What this book takes pains to point out is that the "Occidentalist" ideologies of the East are quite similar and, in varying ways, are borne out of the application of Western ideologies. And, one ideology in particular--that of the Islamist--is really not anything new.

One might say that the thoroughgoing similarity between essentially all Occidentalist ideologies is their understanding of the West as a materialist and unheroic society--that is, an individualistic society rooted only in self-maximizing "values."

The anti-capitalist, anti-imperial, movements of the East--including Marxism which actually had its start in Germany--are derived out of the reaction of these cultures to the rise of trade on the world scale. For example, Maoism in China became the cause celebre for many leftists in the 1950s and 1960s because, as our two authors point out, "...Mao saw himself as the champion of the entire Third World...all those who hated the bourgeois West, Maoism promised a way out of capitalist alienation, urban decadence, Western imperialism, selfish individualism, cold reason, and modern anomie." (p. 41) This marked the rise of the country against depraved city life. But, it also represented certain Eastern values being adapted to Western anti-imperalist ideologies (national socialism). Essentially, it is the East versus the West with the help of the West.

The difficulty of defeating our enemies in the world, then, is not just involved in their "resolve" versus ours. The foundational principles of freedom, equality, and democracy, as they exist today--mostly in the West--represent a comparatively new way of looking at the world, liberalism. This, perhaps, is the best way to order societies that are based upon trade and merchant economics--it allows for the reign of inegalitarianism. Additionally, the promulgation of liberal ideas is the surest way to continue to put the West squarely at odds with the highly-heroic, highly-spritual, cultures of the East.

Generally, we in the West fear war. War, as it is said, is bad for business. In the cultures of the East--especially the Near East--war is the means by which individuals and, more importantly, whole cultures can defend their honor. This is an ideology that is quite foreign in the West, but one that is replete within the orthodox Muslim cultures of the Near East and the Samurai culture in Japan.

(Consider why members of Hezbollah believe they can defeat Israel in an open War. They "win" only by defending their honor; and there is no honor in retreat.)

The West, for all intents and purposes, has no honor--no heroes. In the eyes of its enemies, the West has traded the truth of the "country" for the invidious lies of the "city." (However, it is a bit ironic that many anti-Western movements in the East have been founded upon nationalism--a strictly Western innovation.) The mind of the West, as it were, is seen as a "...truncated mind, good for finding the best way to achieve a given goal, but utterly useless in finding the right way." (p. 76) Societies, then, that are built upon individuals over and above communities are inherently evil.

It's science versus tradition, creed versus ritual and the rational versus the spiritual.

In our current war against Islamic fascism, it is important--in spite of what the reactionaries say--to know our enemy. In this way, it is pivotal to understand that only certain aspects of the Islamist ideology are new. Much of it predates Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and even the Muslim Brotherhood; the larger part of it is rooted in Occidentalist thought.

We in the West were being called materialist infidels long before Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar were born. They, and those like them, see the world the way the Manichaeists in Ancient times saw it--in black and white. For many of them, it's darkness versus light.

And so, as long as we are different from our enemy, we will be legitimate targets. Their defense, however, is one of mimicry--a path which we are not prepared to follow.