United in Hate

We got an email from one of our tipsters, KGS. He’d read our Bruce Bawer post about the hostile reception his new book received from a Norwegian feminist (of the orthodox Communist denomination). Reading about Bawer’s experience prompted this response from KGS:

You know, that piece about Bruce Bawer by Fjordman reminds of a powerful video at Front Page of Jamie Glazov speaking about the same things concerning the Left. I highly advise watching it… it’s still viewable at the top of the page.

And indeed it was still at the top.

The speech turned out to be in two parts. I’d decided just to look at the first video but his story was so intensely personal that I was hooked into watching the second section also. That is the one I chose for this post, though I recommend both.


The occasion for his talk was Mr. Glazov’s promotion of his new book, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.

In the first video, he relates some of his background, of having been born “a slave” in the USSR to parents who were dissidents against Communism. The arrest of his father on trumped-up charges was imminent; most likely he would have been arrested and sent away had there not been “ a tiny window of opportunity” during the détente created by Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. As a result of that thaw, some dissidents were permitted to leave and the Glazov family was among them. Arriving in New York when he was five, Jamie Glazov most vividly recalls being able to “smell the freedom”.
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After watching both parts of his speech, I was intrigued enough to see what other readers were saying about his book. Here is the second comment left on the Amazon site by Steven Clark Bradley, who seems to be an author himself. His remarks closely reflect Glazov’s themes:

[…]…The title says it all and the diabolical linkage that Jaime Glazov reveals between those who kill for god and leftists who kill because they think they are God. I really admire the way Mr. Glazov compared apparent contradictions, bringing out very clear and convincing proof that tyrants and fanatics have a natural affinity for one another.

Glazov…speculates as to why the leftists, who talk of rights for their fellow believers, find it so easy to wrap their arms around Islamic terrorists, the most gay-hating, woman-hating and minority-hating force on earth today. He also pondered why “progressives” heap admiration upon regimes under which they themselves would be eliminated. Why would Liberal women, who have a long history of talking about helping themselves right up to the highest rungs of the social ladder, ignore the suffering of millions of women living under gender-based Islamic oppression?

…United In Hate’ is not just another book written about Islam, nor is it a book that only rehashes histories about Stalin or Lenin. Jamie Glazov has written a book that goes beyond actions or words to expose the motivations of why these two natural enemies, Radical Islam and the Liberal Left, are caressing each other in a warm embrace of death.

[…]

The Left’s hatred and rejection of Western civilization, its freedoms and values, begins with an acute sense of alienation from it, and unable to “fit in” the Left believes radical societal change, regardless of the consequences, is necessary. After all it’s the West’s fault that the Left has no sense of purpose or direction. Although the Left vehemently argues against this premise, its words and actions prove Dr. Glazov’s case.

The ideological descendents of the communist/progressive Left that spent its capital hoping the West would lose the Cold War to the Soviet Union are today’s leftist core. Based on their hatred for the United States, the Left has forged a symbiotic relationship with radical Islam, whose hatred for America equals theirs. Both make it clear that they consider Western civilization evil and unworthy of preservation. Violent revolution is the Left’s path to change; the Jihadists’ follow the path of war and annihilation.

Some might think Dr. Glazov has taken a wrong turn in his analysis of the radical Left’s agenda and beliefs. If so, they should read the scurrilous quotes of Michael Moore extolling the virtues of the “Iraqi freedom fighters,” or Ward Churchill’s and Jeremiah Wright’s crowing after 9/11 that “America’s chickens have come home to roost.” Or, they should examine the genuflexing before the world’s tyrants by the likes of Jimmy Carter, Sean Penn and Tom Hayden. Dr. Glazov’s take on the radical Left is correct and as sharp as a tightly focused laser.

Definitely a book to go on my reading list. Fortunately, our small county library presents both liberal and conservative books for their patrons, unlike the Democrat-controlled library system in the near by university town. Only the politically correct tomes are permitted to appear on their shelves, or at least that used to be the case when I had occasion to visit there. It was kind of like Barnes and Noble, but without Starbucks.

Since things are more polarized than ever, I doubt their Leftist book policies have changed.