More on Westerners Who Join ISIS

This column by Lee Smith raises some interesting points about Westerners, particularly teenage girls, who run off to join ISIS. Smith notes that there is more approval in Europe for ISIS than there is in the Muslim world, with 27% of French citizens between the ages of 18 to 24 giving their approval. Smith notes that “when teenage girls turn away from One Direction and embrace ISIS, it means the West is losing,” with which I would agree. He also believes that this is because the West no longer offers young people anything meaningful or worth fighting for, while ISIS does both. “Europe is devoid of values worth living—or dying—for.” No doubt this is part of it, but at the same time I would argue that, even if young people in Europe feel a void, they still wouldn’t run off to join ISIS if leftist rhetoric were different. If our society was still heavily Christian, the predominant view would be that it would be sinful to join such a group. If it were Buddhist, it would be that joining such a group would produce bad karma. Under communism with religion regarded as the opiate of the people, it is hard to imagine anyone joining ISIS. A leftism purged of the nonsense of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and Islamophilia would also be strongly against a group like ISIS. Moreover, with its general support for underdogs, the left would strongly propel people toward helping the Kurds and not ISIS. It is because the left has the particular character it does these days that young people think that joining ISIS is a reasonable thing to do.

Why aren’t more people joining the Kurds to help out? Haven’t we been told that leftists support the Palestinians because they are the underdog? An interesting point is made in this article in Commentary, which points out that while there are Muslims going off to fight for ISIS, no one goes off to fight for the Palestinians. Apparently, there is less support for it in the Muslim world than we have been led to believe. Also, of course, leftists here in the West, no matter how much moral support they might want to give, have no intention of going off to help Hamas fight. That is something they just won’t do, partly because they have no military training and partly because they are generally against war. So, Hamas cannot count on them for anything other than money and moral support. But the Kurds cannot count on them for much, either, despite their being underdogs. It is really too bad that the Kurds cannot, for a day or two, control our media in order to tell everyone in the West how little they think of our leftists.

Comments

[Steve Burri]

A mind boggling phenomenon.

[John Pepple]

Especially the Jewish girl who did it.