more people who get it

Norm Geras asks:

What do all these people have in common?

Paul Berman, Peter Beinart, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, David Remnick, Thomas Friedman, Jacob Weisberg, Adam Michnik, Václav Havel, André Glucksmann, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Walzer.

Well, one thing they have in common is that they all crop up in a piece by Tony Judt in the London Review of Books, to exemplify something very bad that has been happening since 9/11, though Judt says the origins of the process go back before 9/11.

Here’s another thing that many of the people Geras and Judt cite (in different contexts) have in common: in early June, I cited them (and a few others) in a post called “People Who Get It,” where I wrote:

I’ve added Oliver Kamm’s name to my growing (casual and personal, not exhaustive or scholarly) list of people who get it—and not a Bushie among them—along with links to some of their representative work on the subject of, hmm—what to call it?—the fight against the newest totalitarianism:

Also on my list were the authors of the Euston Manifesto, Flemming Rose, Tony Blair, Alain Finkielkraut, and Aayan Hirsi Ali: anti-totalitarians all.

Back then I was calling it “the newest totalitarianism.” I often refer to it as  Islamofascism. It doesn’t matter what we call it: we know what it is. And Tony Judt, predictably, is exactly wrong. More about that another time.