ISIS and the far right want the same things

Hardly had people the chance to cry out their sorrow, that the jackals were already gorging on the cadavers of the victims of Islamic State’s terror in Paris to promote their version of the apocalyptical war of civilisation, and to justify their hatred of refugees and Muslims.

It is ironic that the Islamic State and the European far-right share the same design: the erosion of our freedoms to make way for a scare-mongering authoritarian state. It was the civilised response to the refugee influx that angered Islamic State, which has systematically tried to disseminate propaganda that blurs the distinction between immigrants and terrorists, aimed at fuelling the same fears exploited by the far right. It seems that what Islamic State really wants is the triumph of the extreme right in Europe.

It has become more than clear that Islamic State does have a political design and one should be wary of the sensational idea that Islamic State is just a cult inspired by pure, metaphysical evil that is alien to the geopolitical realities in which it is rooted. Islamic State is flourishing in the vacuum left by the insane invasion of Iraq.

It’s also a prime actor in the ongoing civil war between Sunni and Shiites in the Middle East, which is fuelled by the export of Wahhabi ideology from Saudi Arabia where it found fertile ground in the brutal legacy of Baathist Syria. Contributing to the mess are the neo-Ottoman aspirations of Erdogan’s Turkey, which is attacking the Kurds at the forefront of the war against Islamic State while they heroically defend Kobane against the hordes slowly advancing into their territory. 

So before stepping in this explosive scenario, European nations must review their cosy economic relations with those state actors who are contributing to the big mess and to also recognise their own role in creating this mess.

Contributing our share of bombs to the mess may well play in ISIS’s hands which may be desperately seeking a confrontation with Christian armies on Muslim lands. Is this a recipe for impotency? Perhaps. But we can surely do more to help those moving out of this hell and to work hard for a negotiated solution to stop the daily carnage in Syria. Helping countries like Tunisia build their economy to bolster their democracy may do more wonders than a couple of bombs in Syria, which probably only end up lining the pockets of the arms industry.

Both Islamic State and the far right seem keen on reducing politics to a clash of identities and rival fundamentalisms, which covers up other conflicts and aspirations for emancipation and equality. This is in my opinion the greatest mistake of western liberals who offer a welcoming hand to refugees (and rightly so) but fail to come to grips with economic inequality: this globalist perspective of simply seeing migrants as just a disposable reserve army of labour may be disguised as being “very multicultural and liberal”. But ultimately it ends up fuelling the tensions exploited by both the far right and Islamic State.

Multicultural societies cannot disregard those common values which came as a result of past struggles for the emancipation by workers, women, gays and other groups like migrants. And we cannot ignore that migration in the absence of integration results in ghettoes and sweatshops which create tensions that fuel the orchestrated clash of fundamentalisms. Tensions are inevitable. The challenge is to agree on a basic set of values. This is an ongoing task of societies as they evolve and change.

That is why we cannot ignore economic inequality as a primary issue. The alternative may well be a neoliberal global dystopia: like rich emirates who refuse Syrian refugees and yet rely on cheap labour from the East; where capitalism and medievalism co-exist so easily.

Even western liberal states can degenerate into oligarchies where rampant capitalism co-exists with authoritarianism for the security of elites while ensuring a cheap supply of labour and resources.

That’s why ultimately, our challenge in the West is to stand up for the universal values ushered in by the French revolution in 1789: the vision of liberty, equality and fraternity that once also seduced young educated militants in Arab countries.

Instead Islamic State may well succeed in its design to kill two birds with one stone; undermining democracy in Europe by pumping up paranoia and burying any remnants left by the Arab spring.