Define Books Supposing Terror and Liberalism
Original Title: | Terror and Liberalism |
ISBN: | 0393325555 (ISBN13: 9780393325553) |
Edition Language: | English |
Characters: | Noam Chomsky |
Paul Berman
Paperback | Pages: 240 pages Rating: 3.86 | 539 Users | 49 Reviews

Present Appertaining To Books Terror and Liberalism
Title | : | Terror and Liberalism |
Author | : | Paul Berman |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 240 pages |
Published | : | May 17th 2004 by W. W. Norton Company (first published April 1st 2003) |
Categories | : | Politics. History. Philosophy. Nonfiction. War. Terrorism. Religion. Islam |
Relation In Pursuance Of Books Terror and Liberalism
One of our most brilliant public intellectuals, Paul Berman has spent his career writing on revolutionary movements and their totalitarian aspects. Here he argues that, in the terror war, we are not facing a battle of the West against Islam—a clash of civilizations. We are facing, instead, the same battle that tore apart Europe during most of the twentieth century, only in a new version. It is the clash of liberalism and its enemies—the battle between freedom and totalitarianism that arose in Europe many years ago and spread to the Muslim world.The author considers the wars against fascism and communism from the past, and draws cautionary lessons. But he also draws from those past experiences a liberal program for the present—a program that departs in fundamental respects from the policies of the Bush administration.
"A fluid and lucid essay by one of America's best exponents of recent intellectual history."—The Economist
Rating Appertaining To Books Terror and Liberalism
Ratings: 3.86 From 539 Users | 49 ReviewsCriticism Appertaining To Books Terror and Liberalism
Paul Berman's work is enlightening and interesting. It is more of an essay on the philosophies behind radical Islamism and its various iterations. It also compares radical Islam to totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century (communism and fascism). He calls them all ideologies of death and says they are a continuum of hatred and death that try to knock out liberalism (democracy and the like). This is all very interesting in that his thesis is that liberalism (the philosophy on whichBerman gives us a bird's eye history of the intellectual currents that drove totalitarianism across the globe. From the ashes of WWI, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, totalitarianism was thought to have been defeated, but Berman shows us that these movements are alive and kicking in modern mutations. Baathism, Islamsism, Wahabbism, Salafism etcc are all descendants of European totalitarianism. The depressing tendency of the liberal minded to excuse, deny, or otherwise fail to oppose these
A striking book written in between 9/11 and the 2003 Iraq War about the nature of the extremist Islamic threat and where it fits in broader strains in history. The central argument is that extremist Islam is best understood as one of the mass totalitarian pathologies or death cults that we have seen before in the 20th century: Fascism, Nazism, some forms of Christian extremism. I've heard this argument before but no one brings it home better than Berman. The main mechanism by which political

Ah, the war on totalitarian, nepotistic regimes that were created with the aid of foreign powers!I had a fantastic time arguing with Berman at almost every step of this book. But when I stopped arguing, and thought about how the Iraq War's legacy I was, metaphorically, crushed.Written and published when the memory of the Islamic terrorist attack, 9/11 was freshly seared into the West's collective memory, Berman attempts to raise the subsequent "War on Terror" to a war on the undemocratic Saddam
There's a lot I could say about this book, but I'm saving it for MFSO. We'll need something to chat about in those languid, post-coital moments.
This is a very interesting and provocative book that puts totalitarianism into historical perspective during the late 19th and 20th century Europe. Then the author goes on to explain how this manifests itself in acts of terrorism today.It is important to note that Liberalism in the title is not synonymous with political liberalism as we know it in the United States. The title has to do more with economic liberalism, neo-liberal or laissez-faire economic policies in Europe.
I followed the threads of this essay without a sense of where I was being led, but when I had finished it, I did feel that I had learned something, even though I am unsure of how much I agree with Berman. Berman offers a new angle of analysis of the so-called War on Terror without proposing a definitive or detailed solution.The author refers to "liberalism" in the sense of Western democracy, an ideology that unites Americans and Europeans; the word is not used at all in reference to the
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