American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
2010 September 12
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American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, & Power Bind Jihadists & the Radical Right
America’s main international enemy—Islamic radicalism—favors theocracy, curtails civil liberties, embraces torture, represses women, reviles homosexuality, subverts science & education, & reveres force over diplomacy. Markos Moulitsas shows how the American right shares those very same traits. He argues that our domestic jihadists are a greater threat into American democracy than any Islamic terrorist.
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Review by Book buyer for American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
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Excellent work. Points out the foolish macho nationalism affected by so called conservatives. The kind of “conservatives” who think nothing of running up debt, growing government, declaring illegal pre-emptive wars based on lies, and ruining the environment. barry Goldwater is spinning like a top in his grave that such people call themselves conservatives. The kind who are saps for the wealthy and global corporations because they are so scared of everything they can only react with bluster and anger and are easily used. As a multi combat tour Marine Corps vet and a proud progressive I have no problem seeing them get a little taste of their own medicine albeit with much more class and factual accuracy than anything they can muster up. It’s past time to fight back against ignorance and blind anger engendered by the fear of these corporate pawns.
Review by Gen. JC Christian, patriot for American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
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I don’t read books written by demonic pipe-smoking communists with well-trimmed beards. I don’t read books by homosexualist intellectuals with button-down collars who fill my head with vile carnality every second of the day. And, I don’t read books written by subversive eyeglass-chain-wearing foreigner-praising English teachers–why don’t they dump Shakespeare; he never wrote a play about the real Americans of the Heartland. Indeed, I take pride in the fact that I never read anything written by libislamunistofascists. The problem is syllables. There are too many syllables in their books. It all seems a little too Muslimy to me. It also gives me headaches.
That said, I felt a need to read this book by Markos Moulitsas. I believed that by reading it, I could learn something about the Great Orange Satan, something that could help me finally put an end to his subversive speech.
Unfortunately, the book offered up no weapons to defeat Markos–no Fiery Sword of the Terrible Cleansing, no Crusader’s Blade of Righteous Bloodlust, No Corinthians 4:6 night-vision sniper scope, nothing. Reading American Taliban just pissed me off.
How dare the author compare the American right to the Taliban. Sure, we both hate sex, reproductive choice, secularism, government regulation, homosexualism, and masturbation. We both want to establish godly governments that enforce scriptural law. And, we both justify our wars on the basis of religion. But the similarities end there.
We fight our wars in the name of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They fight their battles for Allah, a god who doesn’t even know how to transubstantiate or turn water into a party.
We want to impose God’s kingdom on Earth by passing biblically based sharia laws. The Koran serves as the basis of the Taliban’s law, and unlike the Bible, it offers no object lessons in which she-bears eat children or whole cities are smitten with hemorrhoids.
The Taliban punish OB/GYNs using crude, uncivilized methods like stoning. We shoot doctors from a distance with a modern high-powered rifle.
While we may demand that our women dress modestly, and enforce it by calling them sluts or blaming them when they are victims of rape, our burka is a more fashionable and procreation-friendly burka.
Those are just a few examples of how we’re dissimilar. I could go on about the differences between a crusade and a jihad; family values vs sharia; the unAllahed vs the unJesused, and morale sheep, adultery, and divorce vs temporary wives, etc, but I think I’ve made my point. The Great Orange Satan is wrong. We’re not like the Taliban. We’re God’s favored people.
Review by Israel Grey for American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
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Markos connects the dots on the obvious (to those that care to see it) facts that the right wing power bases are abusing America for the short term gains of millionairs, the ego of the religious extremists that make up their self defeating base and to generate wealth from advertising on their hyped up media empire. It is a fascinating and dangerous connect of thoughtless, emotional and ego-driven extremist that serve. Hopefully, the majority of Americans will reject the extremism and idiocy that is growing in blind, frothing support.
Review by Lars for American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
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If you’re wondering why there are so many one star, similar-sounding reviews written by people who’ve never posted a review for anything else before, here’s your answer:
“According to the online magazine AlterNet, a group of ‘Digg Patriots’ has ‘censored hundreds of users, dozens of websites, and thousands of stories from the largest social media website in the world. Alternet said an undercover investigation revealed that the group of about one hundred conservative members is able to bury 90% of articles by certain websites and stories within three hours of their submission.”- ABC News 8/6/2010
Here’s a little more food for thought:
“The ring leader of the group is Bettverboten, who issues multiple digg and bury orders everyday. She is a Digg power user who has dugg 70,000 articles and has 1500 submits of her own (18% have gone popular) in one short year on the site. She was previously known as Lizbett before her lifetime ban for offensive and inappropriate comments, and has two sleeper accounts waiting if she gets banned again at loquaciouslola and MsBoop. She is also on Twitter, although her primary focus is Digg, where she has acquired a huge following of power users who are likely unaware that she is gaming the system, and even calling to bury some of her mutuals.
The other primary members responsible for cheating are CaptCarrot, ChronicColonic, emmersonbiggins (rjwusa), SadLisa (mollydog), Janinco, allisonrose870, asami21, Benthedog, JeremiahLaments (RightWingAttila), libertyalways, phoenixtx, pray4sneaux, quirkopatra, raggsat98, Ramfire98, and ThePartystar. Digg and bury orders are issued multiple times everyday, with most of the members blindly following without question.
The rank manipulations are) not restricted to political articles either. Articles about education, homophobia, racism, science, the environment, economics, wealth disparity, world events, the media, green energy, and anything even slightly critical of the GOP/Tea Party/FoxNews/corporations are targets.”- AlterNet
These cowardly, fascistic mouth-breathers got caught on Digg, and now they’re here to bury a book they haven’t even read. I guess when you’re on the wrong side of history, you can either be a man and face the music, or double down on the stupid.
Review by Granite City Green Guy for American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right
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Many of the one- and five-star reviews here on this book are obviously linked to the reader’s political views. My objective rating is right up the middle, largely for two reasons: there’s little here that I didn’t already know and frankly the quality of the writing is somewhat lacking. Most of the material in the book will be familiar to anyone who has paid modest attention to the cultural and political landscape since 1980 and even the specifics will be old hat to anyone who might remotely be considered a political junkie. It is, in some ways, a rehash of mainstream political reporting on the American conservative movement of the last 30 years.
That said, American Taliban offers something to a larger audience, those who may not have paid much attention to politics between presidential elections or have for one reason or another avoided immersion into the morass of hypocrisy, duplicity, and deceit that has marked the right since at least the 1972 election. It’s all here: the secret organizations, the shady corporate contributions, the legitimate sounding foundations, the suburban churches, and all the wealthy white men who have led such organizations since the 1950s. Markos offers a sometimes compelling critique, arguing that the core values of these men (and sometimes the women) really do parallel those of the Taliban in many ways. This is not surprising, since theocracy and nationalism look fairly similar across time and space. The important thing for those who are unfamiliar with the details is the very clear case he lays out to demonstrate that while American conservatives love to talk about freedom, patriotism, the Constitution, equality of opportunity, and sometimes even social justice they really support none of these things. Instead, they operate within a massive and well funded political structure that was designed to maintain the power of a small, white, male, Christian elite at the expense of everyone else. The fact that they have sold this set of values cloaked in the rhetoric of patriotism and Christianity for so long is only testament to the general lack of critical thinking among the voting population as a whole.
The general problem with the book is its tone. While I can appreciate an Al Franken rejoinder to Rush or even a dryer James Carville memoir, Markos is not that kind of writer. His book reads not unlike a well-edited series of blog entries, chatty, engaging stories, some data, into which the occasional expletive or slang phrase is interjected to “keep it real.” This style has its place and may reach an audience with this book. But I would have been personally much happier with a more professional tone and a less partisan presentation of the information– which, in its own right, is a damning condemnation of American conservatism anyway. Why dumb it down by pushing the style more toward l33t speak than a presidential address? The lack of “seriousness” (if I may) will prevent this book from becoming anything more than another partisan tome; it’s easy to reject not on a factual basis but because of how it’s written. It will not be taken seriously by the mainstream media or others who actually influence the way the masses think. Granted, we may not need another Richard Hofstadter at this point but one would have wished for a more professional voice if only to make the book sound more credible to those not familiar with its content.
On the balance _American Taliban_ is an interesting compendium of anecdotes and data to support a straight-forward critique of the current state of American conservativism.As such it is damning and depressing. I wish millions would read it but I fear the particular approach taken will limit its influence to a smaller audience, including the kinds of people that are likely responsible for most of the one- and five-star ratings here at Amazon.
Recommended for: young voters, political neophytes, anyone that call themselves conservative and make under $500K/year