{"id":378,"date":"2021-08-28T17:53:52","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T21:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2021\/?page_id=378"},"modified":"2021-08-28T18:08:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T22:08:20","slug":"the-right-wingers-who-admire-the-taliban","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-2021\/the-right-wingers-who-admire-the-taliban\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right-Wingers Who Admire the Taliban"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
OPINION<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

MICHELLE GOLDBERG<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

New York Times,<\/em> Aug. 27, 2021<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>
Credit…<\/span>Mark Peterson\/Redux<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

\n
\n
\n

As the Taliban swept through Afghanistan in August, a Gen Z alt-right group ran a Twitter account devoted to celebrating their progress. Tweets in Pashto juxtaposed two laughing Taliban fighters with pictures meant to represent American effeminacy. Another said, the words auto-translated into English, \u201cLiberalism did not fail in Afghanistan because it was Afghanistan, it failed because it was not true. It failed America, Europe and the world see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The account, now suspended, was just one example of the open admiration for the Taliban that\u2019s developed within parts of the American right. The influential young white supremacist Nick Fuentes \u2014\u00a0an ally<\/a>\u00a0of the Arizona Republican congressman Paul Gosar and the anti-immigrant pundit\u00a0Michelle Malkin<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0on the encrypted app Telegram: \u201cThe Taliban is a conservative, religious force, the U.S. is godless and liberal. The defeat of the U.S. government in Afghanistan is unequivocally a positive development.\u201d An account linked to the Proud Boys\u00a0expressed respect<\/a>\u00a0for the way the Taliban \u201ctook back their national religion as law, and executed dissenters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe far right, the alt-right, are all sort of galvanized by the Taliban essentially running roughshod through Afghanistan, and us leaving underneath a Democratic president,\u201d said Moustafa Ayad, executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank devoted to countering violent extremism. They\u2019re looking at Afghanistan, he said, \u201cfrom a standpoint of us getting \u2018owned,\u2019 in the parlance of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that right-wing American extremists have been inspired by Muslim militants; several white supremacists\u00a0lauded Al Qaeda\u2019s attacks<\/a>\u00a0on Sept. 11. The difference now is that the far right has\u00a0grown<\/a>, and the distance between the sort of right-wingers who cheer for the Taliban and conservative power centers has shrunk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

The Florida Republican Matt Gaetz may be a clown, but he\u2019s also a congressman who was close to the previous president. On Twitter earlier this month, Gaetz\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0the Taliban, like Trump, as \u201cmore legitimate than the last government in Afghanistan or the current government here.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the United States embarked on a war that would, in time, sell itself as a battle for democracy. Back then, liberal democracy was almost universally venerated in America, which is one reason we had the hubris to think we could export it by force. Many, especially on the right, worried about the threat that jihadism posed to a modern, open society. The tragic journey of the last two decades began with the loudest voices on the right braying for war with Islamism and ended with a right-wing vanguard envying it.<\/p>\n

At least before the devastating terrorist attacks on Thursday, there was a subtler form of satisfaction with the Taliban\u2019s takeover among more respectable nationalist conservatives. They don\u2019t sympathize with barbarism, but were pleased to see liberal internationalism lose. \u201cThe humiliation of Afghanistan will have been worth it if it pries the old paradigm loose and lets new thoughts in,\u201d Yoram Hazony, an\u00a0influential<\/a>\u00a0nationalist intellectual whose conferences feature figures like Josh Hawley and Peter Thiel,\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0earlier this month.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What old paradigm? Well, a few days later\u00a0he tweeted<\/a>, \u201cWhat went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan was, first and foremost, the ideas in the heads of the people running the show. Say its name: Liberalism.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fox\u2019s Tucker Carlson, the most important nationalist voice in America, seemed to sympathize with the gender politics of Taliban-supporting Afghans. \u201cThey don\u2019t hate their own masculinity,\u201d\u00a0he said<\/a> shortly after the fall of Kabul. \u201cThey don\u2019t think it\u2019s toxic. They like the patriarchy. Some of their women like it too. So now they\u2019re getting it all back. So maybe it\u2019s possible that we failed in Afghanistan because the entire neoliberal program is grotesque.\u201d<\/strong> (By \u201cneoliberalism\u201d he seems to mean social liberalism, not austerity economics.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n