The West’s Oslo Syndrome

Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/17/2008
Frontpage Interview guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. FP: Kenneth Levin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Levin: Thank you, Jamie. A pleasure to be with you.

FP: I want to talk to you today about how the Oslo Syndrome infects the West overall. But let’s first begin by you telling us what the Oslo Syndrome is itself.

Levin: The Oslo Syndrome, taking Israel’s Oslo agreements with Yasir Arafat and his PLO as a model, refers to the inclination of some within populations under chronic attack to take to heart the indictments of their attackers, however hateful or absurd, and to insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that sufficient concessions and self-reform will appease the attackers and end the threat. It is particularly found within minorities that are subjected to continual marginalization, denigration and assault by the surrounding majority, or small states under chronic siege by their neighbors. But, as the aftermath of 9/11 has demonstrated, even segments of powerful nations can react in this way when confronted by a threat for which there is no simple or quick solution.

FP: So the Oslo Syndrome has infected the American, and wider Western, response to the existential threat posed by Islamo-fascism, right? There is a widespread refusal in the U.S. and in the West to acknowledge the threat is there. What is the psychology behind that refusal?

Levin: The basic psychological motivation involves the powerful wish to be in control of one’s fate and, more particularly, people’s wish to believe that they can extricate themselves from painful and threatening situations.

The paradigm on the level of individual psychology is the psychology of chronically abused children, which typically means those abused by parents or parent surrogates. Such children almost invariably blame themselves for their predicament. This is often attributed to children’s naivete, but children are not that naive. The son of an alcoholic father who comes home in a drunken rage several nights a week and beats him knows he’s being abused. But he will typically suppress that awareness and choose to believe that if he only behaved better he would be treated better. To understand why, consider the child's options. He can recognize the reality of his predicament, his essential helplessness, and resign himself to that reality. Or he can delude himself into believing that he is somehow "bad" and that if he becomes "good" his father will reciprocate and his situation will improve. The latter requires his enduring the "guilt" of feeling he is "bad" but preserves the fantasy that he has control over his situation and so fends off hopelessness. Children tend to avoid hopelessness at all costs, and adults do the same.

To either deny the threat of Islamo-fascism and see 9/11 as the work of a small group of terrorists who can be put out of business by issuing Interpol arrest warrants, or to blame America for 9/11, attribute the attacks to America’s being "bad," however that is defined, and insist that sufficient American reform and amends will end the threat, serves that same psychological impulse. The self-delusion serves to reduce an existential challenge to one manageable and resolvable by relatively easy steps entirely within the target’s own control.

Now clearly there were significant segments of American, and broader Western, society, including, for example, large portions of academia and what might be labeled the wider intellectual and cultural elite, who were predisposed to blame America first well before 9/11. Particularly in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union and end of the cold war, those sympathetic to the anti-capitalist line have embraced even more fervently a variation on that perspective that had been gaining popularity at least since the 1970's. This has entailed the advocacy of internationalism and international institutions and championing of non-Western and anti-Western causes, as well as, of course, the denigration of Western capitalism and culture, especially American capitalism and culture.

One can argue that such voices were obviously predisposed either to diminish the significance of the 9/11 attacks or to blame them on American policies. But this is hardly sufficient explanation for why those cadres within American and broader Western society who had previously subscribed to such views insisted on construing 9/11 through the prism of their established biases. People can embrace ideological orthodoxies from the unworldly retreats of academia but rapidly change their views when ugly realities intrude on their ivied retreat and confront them with deadly threats.

Many within Western elites, and indeed within broader Western societies, including in America, have, in fact, clung to their former construction of reality in the wake of 9/11 and of subsequent terror attacks across Europe, north Africa and Asia. They have done so in the face of explicit statements by Islamo-fascist leaders and their cadres of their intentions and aspirations and of the fact that their ultimate grievance is not with any particular Western policies but rather with the existence of Western society and the challenge it presents to the supremacy of Islam as the Islamo-fascists understand it. That so many in the West hew to their former perspectives despite the agenda spelled out by the Islamo-fascists, and despite the wide support Islamo-fascism enjoys in the Muslim world and among Muslims in the West, is not simply a consequence of these Westerners remaining true to their old ideological perspectives. Rather, it is indicative of how the hold of those perspectives has been reinforced by fear of the Islamo-fascist threat and by these people's wish to avert their eyes from that threat and pretend it either does not exist or is readily manageable.

For Western acolytes of anti-Western perspectives, and for the much wider circle of supporters such views now enjoy in terms of attitudes toward the Islamo-fascist threat, it is much easier to hate George Bush, blame all the threats confronting America on his policies, and see salvation in reforming those policies and talking to the Islamo-fascists and offering economic aid and other forms of redress, than to acknowledge the genuine nature of the threat and blame the perpetrators of worldwide Jihad.

Consider the ease with which those on the political Left who take this stance are willing to compromise what have traditionally been core leftist values to appease Islamo-fascism. Such compromises include the widespread silence on the abuse, indeed frequent murder for reasons of "honor," of women; the similar silence on the abuse and murder of homosexuals; the ready compromise of separation of church and state in order to provide Islamic teachings a privileged place in some schools and public universities and other public institutions; the similar ready compromise of free speech and granting to Islamist groups rights of censorship. Such abandoning of core values is just one indication of the degree to which the soft line on Islamo-fascism taken by those who have long espoused views critical of the West is not merely a function of devotion to old ideological verities but reflects a desire to assuage the Islamo-fascist threat.

FP: There are obviously many historical precedents to this current phenomenon, correct?

Levin: Of course. We have seen it all before. To cite but one example, when in the nineteen-thirties Churchill and like-minded leaders in the United Kingdom warned of the growing threat of Nazi Germany, many voices downplayed the threat, insisting that the Germans were no less traumatized by World War I than were Britons and had no desire for a general war. Many also declared that Nazi claims on territories lost in the war were reasonable and ought to be accommodated even if Hitler was violating international agreements by seizing such territories by military means. In addition, when Churchill and others urged British rearmament to face the growing threat, some in the United Kingdom, particularly on the Left, argued that Churchill and others were really promoting rearmament to facilitate a fascist coup in Britain.

Media attempts to quash full coverage of German aggression and atrocities and the growing German threat could also be seen in pre-war Britain. For example, for some time before the start of the war, Churchill, perhaps the most articulate writer and speaker on Nazi aggression and crimes, was literally banned from BBC broadcasts.

The refusal to recognize the threat presented by Islamo-fascism is also reflected in the widespread promotion, particularly by the Left in America and Europe but also by the so-called "pragmatic" right, of "talks" with regimes associated with Islamo-fascism. Such talks are presented as the civilized approach to the threat, a reaching for mutual understandings that will avoid hostilities and make everyone happy. Those who promote such talks, whether Barak Obama or the Republican "pragmatists" of the Iraq Study Group, refuse to recognize that the other side is continuing to pursue a militant course and uses talks as a means of advancing its murderous agenda essentially unchallenged in any serious way by its interlocutors. Such talks also, of course, provide those aggressive regimes with increased legitimacy both domestically and abroad.

The most blatant current example is Iran’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons even as it has for years talked to Western interlocutors about its nuclear program and has faced no meaningful challenge to that program.

Again, the not so distant mirror of the nineteen-thirties is illuminating. Even at the end of his life, well into World War II, Chamberlain believed that his talks with Hitler and his appeasement policy before Munich, at Munich, and after Munich, were a virtuous and essentially cost-free if ultimately futile effort to avoid war. In fact, appeasement had allowed Hitler additional time to strengthen his forces, entailed lost opportunities to stop Hitler on the field of battle well before his unleashing of a general war, undercut those within Germany who were working to undermine the Nazi regime, and contributed substantially to the vast slaughter that ensued.

FP: Can you talk a bit about the predilection, among those that are suddenly targeted but don't want to acknowledge the threat, to scapegoat more directly threatened groups?

Levin: Yes; an integral element of the response of those who are targeted but wish to downplay the threat, wish not to recognize it for what it is, is, again, the embrace of a delusional rationalizing of the threat in an effort to make it feel more manageable. One element of this tack is to say that we, or our government, has triggered the threat by offending behaviors and so if we reform and make amends we can end the threat. Another element is to identify others as the "real" targets of the aggressors, in this case of the Islamo-fascists, and to conclude that forcing those other targets to satisfy the attackers will spare us the threat.

One saw this, for example, in the response of various commentators to 9/11. Even though Osama Ben Laden, in his post-9/11 speeches, typically listed Israel at most as third in his bill of grievances against the West - certainly behind the Western presence in Saudi Arabia and the sanctions against Iraq - numerous commentators insisted that Israel was the key irritant to the Islamo-fascists. They argued that if Israel were forced into sufficient concessions or were sacrificed entirely then the threat to the West would end. Despite all the terror unrelated to Israel that has ensued, and despite myriad statements by the Jihadists regarding grievances and aspirations that have little to do with Israel but explicitly threaten the entire West, this blaming of Israel and willingness to sacrifice Israel still remain very popular in many Western circles, particularly in Europe. The same delusional and bigoted slant can also be seen in the report of the Iraq Study Group.

Another scapegoat in the present context, if less explicitly targeted than Israel, are those many individuals living under regimes associated with Islamo-fascism who desire to see their societies liberated from their fascist overlords. The casting of those overlords by voices in the West as legitimate interlocutors with whom we can do business entails abandoning the Islamo-fascists’ domestic victims. It is noteworthy in this regard that the mainstream media, not only in Europe but in America as well, are virtually devoid of coverage of those reformist, liberal activists who courageously challenge their Islamo-fascist rulers.

Again, the nineteen-thirties offer an instructive mirror. In the context of the Munich agreement, Britain and France in effect demanded that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland to Hitler. They did so out of the delusional belief that this would satisfy Hitler and end the Nazi threat. At the same time, voices in the West viciously attacked Czechoslovakia, accusing it, in claims far removed from the reality on the ground, of having abused the Sudeten Germans, of standing in the way of world peace, and of deserving to lose the territory. In addition, very little practical consideration was given to those non-Germans who were living in the territories being handed to Hitler, even if some small amount of lip service was paid to their plight. And when Hitler later seized the rest of Czechoslovakia, there were few acknowledgments, at least by Munich's architects, of how Czechoslovakia had been betrayed.

Also, even after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, many around Chamberlain were prepared to respond with Munich-like appeasement to Hitler’s claims against Poland and his insistence that the Danzig corridor, which gave Poland access to the sea by cutting across German territory, was an intolerable affront to Germany.

Of course, those eager to believe that Hitler could be appeased, to embrace delusions that diminished the threat posed by Hitler and that exempted themselves from the threat, did not limit their indifference and coldness to the plight of the Czechs, Slovaks and Poles. They were likewise disinclined to see the abuse heaped upon German Jews - their being stripped of their citizenship, excluded from civil society, deprived of their property, physically attacked and often murdered - as reflecting a barbarity that might target them as well. This led to a predilection to see the Jews as a special case, somehow deserving of the abuse. In effect, among people who wished to downplay the Nazi threat and to delude themselves regarding the risk posed to them, Nazi anti-Semitism tended to increase anti-Jewish sentiment rather than trigger any sympathy for the Jews.

FP: What must the West and Israel do to cure themselves of the Oslo Syndrome?

Levin: For those emotionally invested in averting their eyes from threatening challenges, it is often only painful blows from the aggressors they have been seeking to appease that will oblige them to give up their delusions, and even such blows can fail for a time to force them to confront the reality of their predicament.

Even after the Nazis' invasion of Poland in September, 1939 and Britain and France's declaration of war against Hitler's Germany, the two allies failed to take any action against Germany's then vulnerable western front. Instead their policy was one of Sitzkrieg, also called the "phoney war," in which they did virtually nothing to challenge Germany militarily, while Chamberlain and those around him still hoped to come to some understanding with Hitler that would win "peace." Even the sinking, in October, 1939, of the British battleship Royal Oak, with the loss of more than 800 lives, did not shake the British government from its self-delusions. The non-war in the West ended at Hitler's initiative, when he attacked Norway in April, 1940; and Chamberlain continued to hold onto power, and his delusions, until the Nazi invasion of the Low Countries the following month.

One can see a reprise of that mind-set in Britain's response to the terror attacks in London in July, 2005. Far from triggering a general acknowledgment in Britain of the nature of the Islamo-fascist threat, it has led many elements of British society to embrace even more fervently their rationalizations of Islamo-fascism and its terror and their determination either to avert their eyes from them or appease them. We see this in elements of the British government, including branches responsible for the United Kingdom's security; in British schools and universities; in British media; among leaders of the Church of England and other British religious bodies; and in other British institutions, as well as in the views of a substantial portion of the British public.

For those in our own country who've assiduously refused to look squarely at the threat, perhaps nothing short of additional catastrophic terrorist attacks at home will shake them from their delusions; and no doubt for many not even such further disasters would suffice.

In Israel, Arafat and his PA's walking away from the Camp David negotiations in the summer of 2000 and their launching of a terror war against the Jewish state disabused many Oslo enthusiasts of their delusions. But some Israelis, including leading political figures, continue to embrace those delusions even today.

Obviously, it would be much better if people were roused from their denial of the threats facing them by some means other than their suffering additional murderous assaults. While many in the West and in Israel would remain impervious to such efforts, it is the obligation of Western and Israeli leaders to convey to their citizens as vividly and effectively as possible the nature of the threats, the challenges they pose, and the efforts required to counter them.

It is their obligation to state repeatedly the aspirations of Islamo-fascism as articulated again and again by its advocates: the goal of asserting the supremacy of their brand of Islam both within today's Muslim nations and across the wider world. It is our leaders' obligation to acknowledge and convey the depth and breadth of the support this agenda enjoys within the Arab and broader Muslim world as well as in Muslim communities in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere. Our leaders must focus the public's attention on the means used by Islamo-fascist forces to win adherents and subvert governments and institutions, both Muslim and non-Muslim, that they regard as obstacles to their agenda. Those means go well beyond direct support for terror and lie primarily in indoctrination in Islamo-fascist orthodoxy via media, mosques and schools across the Muslim and non-Muslim world. Our leaders must inform the public of the nature of such indoctrination and of its promotion and financing by, in its Shi'a form, Iran and its allies, and, in its Sunni form, elements of the Saudi leadership and of the leadership of the Gulf states as well as other Sunni groups.

Aroused by the events of 9/11, our own government has responded much more vigorously to the Islamo-fascist threat than has any other Western government. But by the measure of what is required, it too has fallen woefully short. Its embrace of the mantra "war on terror" and reluctance to identify the enemy more directly, or to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the enemy's support across the Muslim world, have been major missteps. So too has been its failure to speak consistently to the public of the enemy's agenda, its methods of indoctrination, the message of that indoctrination, and its financing not only by nations and groups openly hostile to us but by those our government characterizes as "allies."

Part of the government's motivation for avoiding speaking more clearly of the Islamo-fascist threat has ostensibly been concern about arousing anti-Muslim feeling that would target the innocent as well as the culpable. But in fact the government has done a great disservice to those both in the Muslim community in America and in communities elsewhere in the world who genuinely oppose Islamo-fascism and are our natural allies. It has done so not least in the "outreach"by branches of the federal government - including branches charged with protecting us, such as the FBI, the defense department, the federal prison system - to domestic Muslim groups supportive of Islamic terror organizations and the agenda of Islamo-fascism. The government has repeatedly, in effect, lent legitimacy to such groups while largely ignoring and undercutting moderate Muslim groups and their leaders.

No doubt these misguided policies have been driven in significant part by more than a few people within the government choosing not to acknowledge the nature of the threat and wishing to believe that domestic organizations supportive of Islamo-fascist terrorist groups and their agenda can be appeased.

Again, it is not that the government's conveying a clear-sighted and well-articulated message of the threats we face and the means required to counter them would necessarily assure that those afflicted in America with our domestic version of the Oslo Syndrome would be shaken from their delusions. But many would; and, in any case, it is the only means available to counter those delusions short of the impact of future 9/11's.

FP: Thank you for joining Frontpage Interview Dr. Levin.

Levin: Thank you, Jamie.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com..