What accounts for hatred of the West by people who voluntarily spent years here?
One of the stranger things about East–West relations these days is the schizophrenic attraction to, and hatred of, Western culture that characterizes many foreign leaders and celebrities.
Did these mixed-up folk idealistically flock to the West, and then end up bitterly disappointed that their experience did not match their dreams, in the infamous manner of Sayyid Qutb (“The America That I Have Seen”)? The Egyptian intellectual Qutb leveraged his subsidized residence in Colorado into an unhinged and racist screed against Western popular culture; among his targets were provocative women, “primitive Negroes,” rampant divorce, and heartless capitalism. Qutb’s two years in the U.S. were the font of his anti-Western and Islamist thought, which he developed as a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. His work in turn inspired much of the anti-Americanism of al-Qaeda specifically and current radical Islam in general.
Mohamed Morsi was briefly president of Egypt and is the currently jailed head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whose attempt to create an Islamic theocracy (in one-election, one-time fashion) was thwarted by a military coup. In his year-long tenure, Morsi sought to institute Islamic law and to bargain for the freedom of the terrorist killer responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Omar Abdel-Rahman, serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison. Morsi labeled Israelis “bloodsuckers” and the “descendants of apes and pigs,” as well as claiming that Israel had no right to the territory it has occupied since 1948.
In short, Morsi’s Brotherhood sought to reify Qutb’s anti-Western views in a theocratic government in the Middle East. Morsi apparently was so suspicious of the West that he used a scholarship from the Egyptian government to go to the University of Southern California from 1978 to 1982 and lived well in culturally liberal Los Angeles. Then, in a tough academic job market in the early 1980s, Morsi landed an assistant professorship at California State University, Northridge. He returned home in 1985 after eight apparently successful years as an American academic. Perhaps he was vested and now receives a Public Employees’ Retirement System pension while in prison in Egypt. Two of his children were born in California and remain U.S. citizens. Why would the Muslim Brother wish to live in Los Angeles, of all places, or have his children tainted with American citizenship.
Perhaps critics of America go through a sort of rite of passage, like the current Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who is seeking to fool the United States into greenlighting Iran’s nuclear program. The 1980s were a chaotic — and dangerous — time in Iran, especially for its entrenched elite, to which the Zarif family belonged. An Islamist reign of terror killed or exiled millions of Iranians on mere suspicion of lacking proper Islamist zeal. The war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq saw hundreds of thousands of poorly equipped conscripted troops obliterated at the front. The wealthy and connected Zarif clan had already, during the increasing unrest that led to the toppling of the Shah and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, sent the 17-year-old Javad far away to a tony prep school in the Bay Area of California.
The young Zarif must have loved American free speech, academic freedom, and the freewheeling popular culture of the West Coast. Otherwise why would he have spent eleven years on an easy, subsidized path through American academia (a BA and MA from San Francisco State; a second MA and a PhD from the University of Denver) when his revolutionary nation was in extremis?
Many of the world’s leading anti-Western public figures were trained in the West, seek Western medical care when ill, and in general adopt Western customs that they claim to hate.
By the time he returned to Iran in 1988, Zarif had chosen to spend years in America — avoiding the Iranian theocracy’s reign of terror and nihilistic war with Iraq back home. He is now the theocracy’s point-man in trying to end U.S. sanctions and thereby prepare the path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. His fluent English and his American savvy charm the naïve — even as he insults his American interlocutors with glib lectures on the limitations of the American political system and the pathologies of American culture in which he once indulged.
Note that Zarif can speak so knowledgeably and in English because he is a product of the system he now seeks to thwart. The smooth Zarif goes mum, however, when asked about Iran’s practice of stoning homosexuals, executing women accused of adultery, jailing and executing apostates, banning free speech and assembly, incarcerating foreigners, rigging elections, and subsidizing terrorist murderers. He certainly would never have gone to America if Americans had treated Iranians the way his Iran now treats Americans — and indeed its own people. One wonders whether Zarif’s fury at the U.S. will force him to seek the revocation of the Great Satan citizenship of his two children — or whether their blue passports are too valuable as insurance policies for when Iran goes through the next round of revolutionary purges, and Zarif might once again need a parachute to land back in Godless America?
The list of Westernized anti-Westerners could easily be expanded. Mohamed Atta, one of the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, spent over a decade in Germany, apparently not under coercion. In fact, lots of the 9/11 hijackers had come into the U.S. under expedited student-visa programs and indulged their appetites before purging them on hijacked suicide planes.
The Pakistani playboy cricketer Imram Khan made millions in Great Britain as a celebrity athlete, married an heiress to the Goldsmith fortune, and has children who are British subjects. Recently, the retired Khan has reemerged as a Pakistani politician, spouting anti-Western platitudes and running for various offices on a platform that includes reaching out to the Taliban and institutionalizing Islamic rule. Khan is infamous for his stirring up of global protest and riot over the phony 2005 Newsweek story that American guards had supposedly flushed a Koran in a toilet at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. Khan now seems to be intent on banning the Western lifestyle that he enjoyed as a rich, famous, and notoriously promiscuous athlete in Britain.
In truth, many of the world’s leading anti-Western public figures were trained in the West, have Westernized children and other relatives, seek Western medical care when ill, and in general adopt Western customs that they claim to hate.
There are lots of explanations for these moth-to-flame pathologies. A sense of inferiority can permeate the psyche. After a Zarif or a Morsi has lived in the West for some period of time, paradoxical reactions can ensue. Too seldom do we see a simple sense of gratitude for getting a chance at a liberal education and constitutionally protected freedoms unknown at home. One common Qutb theme is a sense of self-loathing for having been “corrupted” by the West. Morsi did not run home after a year at USC. Khan does not discuss his Western party-boy behavior when he meets with the Taliban. They assume that it was a debased Western culture, not their own appetites, that made them stray from Islamic purity.
They assume that it was a debased Western culture, not their own appetites, that made them stray from Islamic purity.
There arises anger as well: Why is Pakistan or Iran such a mess and California in comparison is not? A man from Mars might point out that the former places do not have constitutionally protected human rights, consensual government, protections of private property, free markets, equality between the sexes, meritocracy in lieu of tribalism, religious tolerance, and cultural and religious diversity, but the U.S. does, and that makes it a far safer, wealthier, and more humane place. Instead, a sense of inferiority prompts victimization and blame-gaming: Iran or Egypt or Pakistan could have had wealth comparable to America’s if not for imperialism, colonialism, and corporate exploitation.
Finally, the young people sent here for university training do not get out much during their stay in the West. They do not often go off campus and meet normal, unapologetic Americans. Most elite foreigners who come to the U.S. do so to be branded with American degrees, and they spend most of their time in the fantasyland that is now the typical academic environment. They are exposed to a mostly left-wing homegrown anti-Americanism; their own similar views are fertilized and rarely questioned, and their appetites can be satiated, while their guilt is indulged, on the sybaritic campus. Two reactions then follow: They decide that if the Americans they associate with do not defend their own culture, then that culture is not worth defending; and they eventually develop a contempt for Westerners who do not, as they do, feel proud of their own civilization.
A final note of warning. Naïve Westerners believe that they can welcome any and all foreign elites into their universities, and that the resulting exposure to liberal values will only make them sympathetic to the West. But more likely the opposite is true. Such familiarity instead breeds contempt, for a variety of both understandable and sick reasons. Liberals assume that exposure to postmodern liberal culture will make a foreign national become liberal in their own Western sense, and therefore a friend and ally. Any anti-American sentiment is presumably based on the observation of American right-wing behavior abroad, which can be corrected by liberal nostrums. In truth, liberals are clueless that people like Zarif and Morsi, to the degree they are not complete cons and hypocrites, hate the U.S. not for what it does, but for what it represents and what it brings out in people. In other words, an openly gay couple in San Francisco or a young single woman in skin-tight jeans and a halter top in Georgetown would offend a Zarif or a Morsi just as much as, or perhaps more than, a U.S. frigate sailing the Mediterranean to maintain the postwar world order.
As a general rule, when we encounter Westernized anti-Westerners, we should expect that the more they know about who we are at home, rather than what we do abroad, the angrier they will become.
This is the fruit of allowing virtual all K-12 and all universities in the US be worldview propagandists for Progtard Control. The Progtard Control worldview is adolescent, self-destructive and promulgates chaos.
If a poor soul going thru these institutions mistakenly has an inborn love in his or her heart for the worldview of Liberty’s Freedom, then that person will fail school and be removed. In his or her place will perhaps be a foreign student who will learn the Progtard Control worldview, later rise to highest positions in their foreign government, and use everything they ever learned about the Progtard Control worldview to destroy the US.
Good article . The elitist problem again ?
Conclusion, the American elite will sell the rope to the enemy and hang us all.
Call me simplistic…. The explanation I offer is that we are seeing evil. Evil smiles and has a sweet voice. Evil looks sophisticated and dresses nattily. Evil loads the gun and helps up point it at our head.
Irresistible Divine Will, The Law mandating the Souls evolutionary march over a period of inconceivable time. Hedonist, selfish, violent ideology will impede, but the Divine Will is a wave that Mankind as a whole will successfully ride.
An example of this worldview fight can be had in Nevada. Our current Progtard RINO governor wants to find redemption by over-funding Progtard Education. Progtard Vegas, seeing an opening, is forcing the hand of RINO Republican Northern Nevada to inflict a Gross Receipts Tax on business, thereby ruining the state. It’s a two-fer… burn money in Progtard Toilet Ed, and increase taxes on business unto their ruin!
Realize, that the worldview of Liberty-Freedom creates a very economical education environment. The things to learn are actually finite in number, and easily doable. Learning the multiplication table thru 12 is enough, no more is needed to confuse. On to the next math challenge. Our alphabet requires us to learn 26 letters, no more are needed. On to phonetics, never “look-see” idiotic retardation. The Gettysburg Address can be memorized, it is a short speech. Nothing is infinity complex, except Progtard Ed. (which is confounding by design, and ruthlessly cruel to all minds so subsumed.) So by comparing worldview, it is clear Progtard Ed consumes money and makes good potential rioters and cat-eating-mice-saluters of its so-called graduates.
Liberty-Freedom worldview education is quite economical, quick and produces citizens, more like the Jedi. They love and fight for the Republic. (Progtard rube-made citizens want crazy democracy mob rule. Ugh!)
Here is the point: Because no news agency in Nevada can explain our governor is subsumed by a worldview cult of Progtard Money-Burning-Sub-Education-Enviro-Whack-Everything… his plan to raise business taxes is simply suicide on a statewide basis. Rather, the best news agencies in Nevada argue the SIZE of business tax to feed the Progtard Money-Burning Education Beast, insuring — nay rather — Guaranteeing a rube-citizenry riot-prone.
Sadly, no news outlets in Nevada can call out the big picture: Liberty-Freedom worldview is kind and good and beats the hell out of anything that challenges liberty or freedom or our Republic. The exact opposite: the anti-christ of all good is the mystic church-state Idiocracy of Progtard Control. So far, the Progtards are happy to see they win, because never has come the day the two worldviews are explained in the raw.
I suggest we can teach them HOW to think but fail miserably at WHAT to think.
This article is true. But what is also true is that the State Department, many US schools and other institutions continue to accept and attract foreign students. The Fulbright Scholarship is one of them. Its core mission is the development of other countries through education of their deserving citizens. I believe that they see the value of this policy. Even if the scholars turn out to be less than friendly to the USA, the Qutbs, the Morsis and the Javids turn out to be a minority within a minority, and more of the students turn out to be assets in their own countries and promote goodwill with the USA. Are these not reasons enough to continue bringing in young people to your country?
“” hillary clinton twitter””. To paraphrase— ” the clinton’s are the herpes of politics, there is no cure, only suppression”. Or jail…
“” NDP wins stunning majority””. Oh Canada– Will tax the wealth.
Well at this time it looks to be a surely free flowing ‘shooting party’ on all things ‘West’ from hypocrites who use its institutions and values to berate us interminably. I’d hope it is apparent that timidity in the face of all that is dangerous to the Western body politic.
A few days ago the Iranian foreign minister was interviewed by Mr. Rose. A highly intelligent and educated Iranian who took from the West to ‘give’ to Iran. But it is disconcerting to know that indeed we gave him the ‘rope’ to perhaps hang us but the sad thing is that anti-Westerners know apparently much more about us than we of the enemy who pronounce from their relatively closed and autocratic societies. They then use the ‘strength’ of our societies to then inject ‘weakness’ into our affairs. It is an understatement to say that is a good ‘transaction’.
What about Jordan? Abdullah and Rania have western educations and they are pretty reasonable and friendly as far as I can tell. But yeah I believe that people who are not friendly to the US should not be let in. I guess what I would say I believe you’re half right. Some people will be angered by western culture and reject it further, but some will be partially or fully converted.
Westerners can no longer assume Islam is a religion of peace when the world is telling and showing us something very different. The more the left assume there is no danger to the western world from Islam and that those who kill in the name of Islam are not Muslims, the more we need to stand guard. Why? Because the left is assuring with their own actions that radical Islam is Islam.
When terrorists are arrested the left tells us they have nothing to do with the great religion of Islam and then demand they are given a Quran, prayer rug, halal meat and be allowed to pray five times a day.
Two Muslim males from the states try to attack civilians at a free speech rally in Texas and the liberal elite claim it was ” incitement ” by racist haters of Islam. Well, there you have it. The media will carry the TNT for the Islamists by giving them air cover for their radical causes. By not showing the cartoons in question and by saying such cartoon offends Muslims they are assuring once again that radical Islam is Islam.
How much must we surrender to these anti Western thugs who only desire our death and destruction? Because if we don’t want to offend Muslims, we must be ready to hand over most of our freedoms in that cause. Write a book that offends Muslims, well now you asked for it. Make an art exhibit that shows the subjugation of women under Islam, you have just created one billion enemies. Teach the holocaust in European schools? You just offended Muslim students and that course must be removed. Draw a cartoon that offends Muslims, you brought it on. Stop the genocide of Christians in East Timor by Indonesian Muslims as the UN did, well they paid for it in Baghdad at their headquarters in 2003 and the Bali bombings in 2002. You see, if you don’t want to make Muslims mad and at the same time want to claim terrorists have nothing to do with Islam, each time you bend to the will of Islamists you assure radical Islam is Islam.
The West w/ it’s multicultural. moral relativistic insanity, refusing to say a culture that respects free speech is superior to one that beheads you if you offend, is suffering from the sickness of hyper inflated tolerance for the intolerant. Crazy Orwellian that Pam Geller is attacked for her bravery & anti-Jihadist stand while the media defends the savage aggressors who want to silence us, submitting to Sharia Law.
Are they much different than my American born, America hating blood relatives? They never grew up past the brainwashing they got as kids thru the media and the colleges. Snotty little leftist Utopians. Most have Daddy issues. But they live like parasites off their country.
And grow up to elect anti-Western, anti-American, Daddy-obsessed Barack Obama as president.
“They decide that if the Americans they associate with do not defend their own culture, then that culture is not worth defending; and they eventually develop a contempt for Westerners who do not, as they do, feel proud of their own civilization.” (vdh)
Case in point. The media’s slander against Pam Geller for courageously standing on principle for our First Amendment right, for not subjugating our constitution to Sharia/blasphemy laws, for not allowing violent intimidation to curtail the truth (the new hate speech) about Jihadists, Our enemies respect us less when we don’t stand stalwart for our cultural/Constitutional rights & identify w/ our Founding framers. Yes, wimpy, weakness provokes & the media’s kowtowing to Sharia law & the Jihadist savage aggressors who kill cartoonists only encourages more violence & tyranny against free speech, truth & our cultural heritage.
Jesus you people are angry….the Professor made some insightful and valuable points in his article. We have been educating foreign elites for a hundred years, and on average I will bet it serves our national interest. His point is that just because someone attends university here does not mean they morph into a Burkean/Paine lover of freedom. They are scared, jealous and intimidated by the tidal wave of individual liberty that we claim as our inheritance. It’s sacred to us, and becomes so for most who come here, just not for everyone. So the Prof is right, a smoothie does not mean a friend. I think we are grow up enough to deal with that.
There is this thing called ‘stupid’. What we mostly deal with in life is simple stupidity referred to mostly as ‘kinda stupid’. ‘Kinda stupid’ undergoes a metamorphosis when a totalitarian radical religion is combined with a high level of liberal education. It then becomes ‘unbelievably stupid’.
Excellent article as usual, from VDH.
Under the same banner, another detrimental practice should be mentioned, namely, the virtually unbridled
indeed, encouraged flow of immigrants and -theoretically- limited visa students from previous hellholes from eastern Europe and other socialist-minded nations. These people, whose views and agendas are no longer welcome in their home countries, have infiltrated most universities in parts of western Europe but mostly in the United States, generally in key administrative and professorial positions. For some reason, this trend has substantially increased in the past 10-15 years, long after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Many of these undesirables have been part, or their parents have been part in the failed socialist and/or
communist experiment at home; though it must be noted that even 40-50 years ago, high level party members were allowed to send their children to western schools. Why? One needs to remember that one of Stalin’s agenda was to infiltrate American politics and education.
And how is it important today? On one hand, the worldwide communist organizations are still following the old instruction to undermine western civilization and capitalism, and this time, very famous people with very large bank accounts help the cause. Just one example from many would be a glimpse at the Club of Rome, the Club of Madrid, and the Club of Budapest.
On the other hand, our long-compromised university system -along with a compromised immigration system – make for an easy absorption of much the same. Whether its origins are Marxism or Islamism or anarchism, the concentrated efforts of destruction aided by our liberties will not be properly addressed, until we face the masochistic tendencies we brought upon ourselves.