{"id":184,"date":"2006-06-01T02:46:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-01T10:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=184"},"modified":"2006-06-01T02:46:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-01T10:46:00","slug":"enzensberger-takes-on-jihad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/enzensberger-takes-on-jihad\/","title":{"rendered":"Enzensberger takes on Jihad"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hans Magnus Enzensberger, poet, essayist and anthologist, has just published a booklength essay on radical Islam, Schreckens M\u00e4nner<\/span>, (Suhrkamp Verlag). I have not yet read the book, only just perused a longish interview<\/a> with HME in the center-right German weekly Die Zeit<\/span>. The book is clearly an extension of a 2005 essay, “The Radical Loser,” published in the weekly Der Spiegel<\/span> (an English version put up by signandsite<\/span> can be found here<\/a>). Although early on a recognizable lefty, HME (maybe to differentiate himself from the other elder post-war literary heavyweight, G\u00fcnter Grass, who has loudly kept faith with the left) long ago drifted toward a center-right position, that rhymes well with his patrician demeanor. From what I can gather from the interview, HME’s essay moves from the analysis of the individual psychology of a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist to general conclusions about a culture HME sees as that of vengeful losers. Not having the book, I can only wonder how much, if at all, HME engages Abdelwahab Meddeb’s excellent booklength essey, The Malady of Islam<\/a>. Will try to get into more detail once I’ve gotten ahold of HME’s book. Meanwhile, here is the English-language summary (well, they pick just one little point \u2014 RAF is not the Royal Air Force but the Rote Armee Fraktion, better known as the Baader-Meinhoff gang) of the Zeit<\/span> interview brought to you by the good people from signandsight<\/span>:<\/p>\n

“When it comes down to it, the death cult<\/b> is not exactly a vital strategy. The day will come when people tire of it.” But until that day, Hans Magnus Enzensberger<\/b> talking to Josef Joffe about his essay ‘The radical loser<\/a>‘, sees<\/a> hard times approaching. “Every form of resistance has an internal price for our societies. We lose something by implementing it. But when the conflicts come to a head and become deadly, this is a price which society <\/b>has always been prepared to pay<\/b>. I do not yet want to talk about a war like the US government. But it is a very real conflict. Of course I am annoyed by the security measures in airports. But it was those stupid RAF people<\/b> that brought that on us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Hans Magnus Enzensberger, poet, essayist and anthologist, has just published a booklength essay on radical Islam, Schreckens M\u00e4nner, (Suhrkamp Verlag). I have not yet read the book, only just perused a longish interview with...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}