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ISIS: A new totalitarianism?

ISIS: A new totalitarianism?

Adam J. MacLeod

As liberal democracies assess the threat that ISIS poses and try to understand what motivates those who are attracted to it, an analogy springs to mind. Like the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century — Nazi and Communist — and like North Korea today, ISIS aspires to attain complete control of those whom it governs, and to totalize all moral and legal norms within the territory that it controls. And like Communist regimes, ISIS is more than willing to kill its own people, particularly dissenters. It employs the tactics of totalization to achieve the strategic goal of eradicating all pluralism, all differences, all distinctions and duties that it has not itself specified and dictated.

Yet if ISIS is totalitarian then it is a different species from those we have fought before. The Communists totalized the norms and institutions of society in order to consolidate power. ISIS consolidates power in order to totalize norms and institutions. The object is not to make everyone completely subject to a ruling class, as it is for Communists. Rather, the goal is to make everyone completely subject to a particular interpretation of Islamic law, including the ruling class.

Professor Swain, Vanderbilt and expressing a view
Blogs

Professor Swain, Vanderbilt and expressing a view

Adam J. MacLeod

Students at Vanderbilt University are targeting Carol Swain, a professor of law and politics at Vanderbilt (and a member of the James Madison Society, of which I also am a member), because she has criticized Islam — in other words, because she has her own views on matters of civic importance.

I do not share Professor Swain's view that Islam itself is the problem. It seems to me that many Muslims disagree with the peculiar jurisprudence of Al-Qaeda and ISIS supporters, and I am not in a position to discern which groups or individuals have the best interpretations of the Koran and Hadith. So, I am not prepared to paint with as broad a brush as Professor Swain uses. But it doesn't matter whether I agree with her. She is a reasonable, accomplished scholar expressing a view that reasonable people hold. And even if I thought her view were unreasonable, she has a right to express it as long as it does not amount to defamation or some other legally-cognizable harm.

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