New Imperialists : Ideologies of Empire

62 The New Imperialists
aggressive than the McCarthyist propaganda of the early 1950s, is aimed
at winning the hearts and minds of the public; its target is anyone
opposed to imperialism.
In the U.S.A., for instance, the extreme right expects specialists on the
Middle East to be anti-Islamist, anti-Arab, pro-American, and pro-Israel.
The neoconservative line was outlined by President Bush after 9/11:
“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” In this political
environment, academic freedom, like all civil liberties, is readily violated.
1 There seems to be no end to this war. The unprecedented spread
of the capitalist market in the last two decades has been associated
with unceasing wars, genocide, poverty, hunger, violence against women,
homelessness, violence against children, and destruction of the environment.
It would not be far-fetched to claim that the new imperialism has
the cultural and physical potential to drag the world into world wars and
genocide just as the older form did.
Preventing new imperialist disasters is by no means easy. It demands a
large-scale mobilization of the peoples of the world, something like the
worldwide anti-war protest of 15 February 2003, although in the form of
active, unceasing, and global social movements. It also requires considerable
struggle amongst those opposed to war. We need to find the best
ways to overcome imperialism, fascism, and their never-ending wars.
Post-structuralists have created an important body of knowledge
about modes of oppression often ignored by other theoretical positions.
This consciousness is, no doubt, a step forward for those who struggle to
build an alternative to imperialist domination. I contend, however, that
post-structuralism, especially its critique of essentialism and binary
thinking, undermines its ability to offer an adequate explanation of the
desperate situation in which we live, let alone map any alternatives. I just
used the word “explanation”; that many post-structuralists reject the
concept of explanation but may consent to alternatives such as “understanding”
or “interpretation” anticipates some of my criticism.
My approach here follows the lines that Karl Marx charted 160 years
ago. My position is Marxist-feminist, and I engage in radical criticism
that is not “afraid of the results it arrives at,” and is “just as little afraid of
conflict with the powers that be.” 2
Today’s anti-Islamism demonizes a billion Muslims into potential
terrorists, zealots, fanatics, violent patriarchs, or hate-mongers. This
totalization of Muslims into enemies of the West is as dangerous as the