Decades ago we were inundated by public announcements professing the heroically uncompromising morality of the issuer. That was after foreign armies crushed the National Socialist murder machine. Miraculously, in Germany – not unlike her allies and the occupied territories – eighty million anti-Nazis emerged. Besides their discovery of having resisted throughout, people thrived on instant amnesia. It was coupled to claims of not having noticed anything, therefore not even needing to forget the recent past.

Through the years books, articles, commentaries and private conversations affirmed that, for one thing, “it” could not have “happened here” and that it will never be allowed to happen anywhere again. Nowadays, one discovers that “it” has a special meaning. The word is comparable to what Clinton alleged “is” can mean as differentiated from what everybody else’s understanding of the term is is.

The “it” that was allegedly fed to history’s shredder had, as our times suggest, a highly restrictive and continually shrinking meaning. More than semantics are involved. It is all about security.

Undaunted opposition to National Socialism and its mutations meant only what it said it did. Those professing vigilant dissent indicated that they oppose Nazism till their last drop of blood. Once this commitment to a decency unfolded, the Nazi system was dead. Therefore, fighting it meant writing treatises delivering retroactive blows conforming to what became the new writ. What the commitment did not imply was risking annihilation by fighting any totalitarian dragon, as did St. George. Therefore, the exercise amounted to little risk and much approval for boldness against what was at best a weak and discredited enemy delivered shrink-wrapped and in the prone position.

As the result of the ignorance of the innocents, partisanship and the wish to occupy a moral high ground with no climb involved, an originally good cause has detracted from our ability to confront politically organized evil. It all commenced with a widespread and limiting mis-definition of totalitarian dictatorship.

This process started when National Socialism was allowed to be re-labelled as Fascism. The term redefined a striped tiger to be a tabby cat and moved NS further to the right than it was in practice. Suddenly the national version of Socialist collectivism landed entirely in the playing field of the (truly wrong) right. Doing so it wore the robe of an authoritarian Italian movement founded by an ex-Socialist. (Before he changed chariots, Mussolini was a leading figure of the international socialist movement.) With this – to the peril, people dislike quarrels over “mere words” – a lot of light was put between the leftist and rightist versions of totalitarianism.

The process was accompanied by another distortion. In the post-war Zeitgeist, the definition of “totalitarian” was squeezed into an extremely narrow mould. “Somebody” had an interest in creating the impression that anything to the right of Stalin was “right-wing” and that this was proof the totalitarian substance of the accused.

Totalitarianism has in the Western secular political tradition a rightist and a leftist branch. Here two things are to be noted. First, the difference between “left” and “right” is, in this context, of less significance than their shared totalitarian idea and the corresponding use of power. Second, totalitarianism is not limited genetically, geographically or culturally to Western-inspired secularism. Accordingly, Islam could also produce its own sectarian totalitarian mutation.

Another element adding to the confusion dwells on who had opposed whom and when. By the end of WW2, the USSR wound up having to fight Hitler, its original ally. This made it appear that Stalin’s system represents the opposite of Nazism, as it is easy to assume that those fighting an evil are pure. In fact, one of two gangs fighting for the same turf does not become an association of gentlemen by combating trash. To our discomfort, we need to realize that a colour other than black is not necessarily white. One of the delusions of recent times was the assumption that fighting the Nazis (after having been allied with them) establishes Communism’s democratic legitimacy. Correspondingly – to Leftists, Greens, anti-modernizers and those suffering of ennui – Jihadism’s anti-Western stance lends it legitimacy to those who see the source of all evil to be a consequence of industrial civilization.

By smearing everything to the right of the Left as totalitarian created a weighty psychological advantage. The same goes for the legitimization of Islamic fundamentalism based on its anti-Americanism, anti-modernism and general “anti-colonial” and pigment-oriented posture. However, it is significant that this moral disarmament happens with the consent of the intended victim. The trick of pasting unfitting labels on the enemy and the retouching of festering sores to become blemishes pays handsome political dividends. Thereby anything right of the accuser can be tagged “Fascist.” The word confirms that everything opposed to the Left – or the Jihadists now – is “good”. At least to the extent that the partisans of liberty who are shoved in the right-totalitarian camp are proclaimed as “bad.”

Comparing and rating the totalitarians of the right and the left by counting the bodies they piled up makes no sense. Having had plenty of time and more people to abuse, the Left wins by scoring scores of millions higher than the Right. (Here the writer is indebted to a young Polish soldier, an escaped POW, who was in addition a Jew and a Communist that his family hid. In the company of the Jewish lady who posed as my governess, Betty, Boleslav and I took a walk. It being 1944 Betty asked: Boli, tell me, what is worse, the Russians or the Germans? Boli: “The Germans do a superb job but their time is running out. The Russians will have unlimited time.”) He could have added that, to boast, the Germans, document everything they do. The Soviets are wise enough to wipe off their fingerprints. Accordingly, in public, the case against Communism is harder to make than against Nazism. Total Nazi defeat and the ability to peacefully transmute communist state capitalism run by functionaries into the individual capitalism milked by the new oligarchs, has much to do with this. Not entirely surprisingly, throughout Europe the display of Nazi symbols is forbidden. The display of Communist symbols from red stars to Che T-shirts, or the symbols of the rising Islamist threat are generally tolerated. Revealingly, a Hungarian wearing a red star in a country where it is a proscribed totalitarian symbol is appealing against a fine to the EU’s tribunal. No Nazi-fan would even bother to try.

Factors such as elaborated above help to explain, regardless of earlier anti-Nazi boasts, some contemporary errors limiting resistance to totalitarian encroachments.

Nazi crimes were committed in a limited space and it used its recorded evidence for propaganda. Thanks to the Axis’ defeat, Nazi crimes could be easily documented by the victorious democracies and the Soviets who were themselves liquidating their undesirables. Becoming anti-Nazi once attacked, the Soviets succeeded not only in being on the winning side but also in creating the impression of being an opposite of their opponent. Thanks to this, the concluded struggle against National Socialism was not made into a principled combat of all forms of totalitarianism. Here one might talk about a selective blindness regarding the totalitarian challenge. Confronting it meant fighting retroactively the Nazis who were a convenient because defeated foe. Therefore, even during the cold war, the USSR was regarded by some as just another state expressing herself quaint terms derived from its antiquated ideology.

Not entirely due to the total principled effort of all those menaced, the Soviet system collapsed. Today this helps to pooh-pooh warnings about extremist challenges that describe themselves in nutty terms. In the perception of politically unschooled and inattentive contemporaries that are by preference spectators and not actors, the Communist threat is proven by its demise to have been less than alleged. If so, why be alarmed now by “oddly dressed camel drivers who talk rambling nonsense and whose political argument is blowing themselves up in places whose name is hard to recall?” Well, there are two answers. Just because a program scores between “obscure” and “deranged” does not make it harmless. Second, the good fortune created by leaders who could not be fooled is no guarantee that the next threat will dissipate thanks to measures carried out below the surface.

Our ability to resist totalitarians as totalitarians and to fight off the enemies of Liberty is impeded. One reason is that the term totalitarian has been abused to include Nazis only and to exclude all other sworn enemies of freedom. Another handicap that camouflages threats and stifle resistance is the hither luck of prevailing against aggressors that shared – for outsiders – irrational programs expressed in deluded terms. Weird ravings made into a program create an adversary that is unlikely to be deterred by means other than military. This is hard to accept because the entire madness is outside of the categories shaped by the rationalism that is characteristic of advanced societies. Third, Islamic fundamentalism, while a religious-political force, seems to be a religious movement. The learned value to be tolerant of other, even add views, and the principle of religious freedom hinder resistance to a political agenda riveted to the religious one. That for the intended victim this agenda is hard to take seriously plays a contributory role. Just take matters such as reversing the Reconquista and re-establishing Moslem rule on the Iberian Peninsula. Outlandish? Yes. Not serious? No. The end of demands? Not at all. Even though today it will anger letter-writers, clear claims to southeastern Europe are about to follow.

It helps the Jihadists that the average person finds it difficult to believe what he is told by extremists. At the same time, the Islamist cause also gets valuable support from a theoretically unlikely source. This help comes from the revenge-seeking undemocratic Left which is, unless its tactical interests demand otherwise, aggressively secular and atheistic.

For the authoritarian left Islamism appears to be a chance to topple the system that had taken the USSR away from them. The positions of the Islamists are anti-Capitalist and anti modernist. Their expectation that, God willing, the godless order of industrialized societies is predestined to collapse has an affinity to Marxist terminology. It also predicted the pre-ordained crumbling of Capitalism due to its “inner contradictions” and the rising of its pauperized and “alienated” masses. Admittedly, regarding the new world order to follow upon the crash of the current one Islamist and leftist programs are incompatible. Therefore, in case of success, leftist expectations might be sorely disappointed. However, regardless of ideological differences, Stalin and Hitler have found it possible to cooperate because long tem differences can be ignored in the face of an existing common enemy. The increasing inclination of bin Laden to use anti-Capitalist phrases from the leftists’ script tells us something. Nor is the Left’s succour for peoples that had “suffered injustice” accidental. Internationally, help comes from China’s and Russia’s in the Security Council where steps to deny Iran her bomb are sabotaged. Local support in the West ranges from the advocacy of minarets for Europe to cover for radical imams to immunity from host-country laws such as in the case of leniency for honour-killings. The seeping in of the Sharia by accepting absentee marriages is also unfolding. A connecting link here is the (odd?) fact that in Europe the growing number of local Moslem politicians generally represent left-of-centre parties.

Given the significant role that leftist organizations play in the modernized regions of the world, their support is anything but negligible. It is combined with misapplied tolerance and a willingness to accept from Islamic persons the violation of otherwise high-held principles – women’s rights comes to mind. As a result more than one society finds it difficult to defend its order and way of life from the kind encroachments that are demanded to prove that it stands for “diversity” an is above prejudice.