Neoliberal theorists conflated communism with Islam as an orientalist enemy.
Evidence
For the neoliberals, communism was not simply a competing European political movement; communism was ‘a pseudo-religion within the shell of the Russian state, a sort of secularized Islam’, in Roepke’s words, communists were emissaries of an empire bent on world domination. With this ‘Communist Pseudo-Islam’ there could not be ‘one world’, but only a mobilisation of Europe against the threat of fanatical hordes from the East. This assimilation of communism, totalitarianism and Islam recurred frequently in the writings of the neoliberals, who drew on orientalist tropes of inassimilable otherness to discredit their adversaries. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 125
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s orientalism and to the reader’s knowledge of Islamophobia discourse; also echoes the Enlightenment anti-Muslim stereotype thread from earlier reading. — connects to: Neoconservatives and Israel pushed Islamism as the post-Soviet enemy; Influential analysts equated fundamentalist Islam with communism and fascism — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the…, 17; Communism’s collapse left West and Islam as mutual perceived threats — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 246 (+9 more)
- SEED: Article angle: ‘the Communist Pseudo-Islam’ — how the genealogy of Islamophobic framing runs through twentieth-century anti-communist neoliberalism, not just post-9/11 politics.
Broader Connections
- Influential analysts equated fundamentalist Islam with communism and fascism
#corroborates(0.85) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 17 - Islam replaced communism as the U.S. constructed menace
#corroborates(0.85) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 302 - Liberal imperialists and neocons both frame Islamism as the new totalitarianism requiring Western expungement
#expands(0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 570 - Neoconservatives and Israel pushed Islamism as the post-Soviet enemy
#complicates(0.75) - Communism’s collapse left West and Islam as mutual perceived threats
#corroborates(0.75) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 246 - Western banks and Chicago-school neoliberals financed the rise of Islamism
#complicates(0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 241 - Practicing Islam functionally replaced Communism as the most threatening subversive activity
#complicates(0.70) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 476