Identifying with the Enemy

We're being treated to Senator and Presidential hopeful Chris Dodd (D-CT) defending the Iranian ("Death to America!") regime from being unfairly accused of killing our troops by the nasty Bush.

The evidence is overwhelming but he want's to wait for something more concrete.

This disgraceful politics goes hand in hand with identifying with the enemy:

Psychiatry is familiar with an odd syndrome called "identification with the aggressor." It's sometimes called the Stockholm Syndrome, after the behavior of air passengers taken hostage by PLO terrorists at the Stockholm Airport in 1973, who, when they were rescued, came out singing the praises of their murderous captors.
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In London, during the Hezbollah war in Lebanon, demonstrators from George Galloway's Respect Party (an offshoot of the Socialist Workers' Party) carried signs reading "We are all Hezbollah now." They literally adopted the aggressors' point of view. This has been happening all over Europe, where the Left still reigns supreme, and on American university campuses as well --- probably for the same psychological reason.
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Notice that this is exactly what the Left did during the Cold War. I do not remember a single passionate demonstration against the Soviet Union, which had nuclear-armed missiles aimed directly at Europe and the US. Instead, the most extreme and feverish passions were aimed straight at the United States, the country that led and protected the West from Soviet aggression.
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The real oddity is that the Left has enthusiastically joined the new fascists. We no longer hear the old trope of "blaming the victim" from feminists. Rather, feminists on the Left have joined Islamofascists in blaming the United States --- for being the fire brigade that is trying to put out the fire. The Left even defends women being pressured to wear the burqa, the ancient sign of women's submission and sexual slavery in the most retrogressive kind of tribal Islam. Shari'a law prescribes exactly how women are to be physically slapped for failing to obey fathers and husbands. Feminists are silent.

The Left claims to value "peace" above all things; but that means that self-defense ranks nowhere. It's not an option --- at least not when Republicans are in office. If we leave out self-defense against Iranian nukes or El Qaida truck bombs, there is no option except submission. That is what "identification with the aggressor" comes down to. It is a Stockholm Syndrome for millions of people --- most of the readers of the New York Times and the UK Guardian, just for starters.
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They are driven by paranoid rage: They are in fact the aggressors.

But when it comes to assaults on their country, the Left blames the victims. The most militant Leftists seem severely damaged psychologically. The recent suicide by the militant lesbian President of UC Santa Cruz may be only the tip of the pathological iceberg.

Many radical Leftists seem to suffer from a basic twist in character. They constantly confuse aggressive and defensive actions by their own country, on whose freedom and protection they depend every hour of the day. They constantly indulge sworn enemies of our freedom and well-being. They constantly push for government actions that seem plausible on the surface, but which inevitably hurt the very people they are supposed to help. It happens over and over again.

When I was young I thought the Left was just confused, but now I'm increasingly drawn to the idea that there is a deep, if unconscious, malevolence at the bottom of the history of disasters inflicted by those people. They are dangerous.

More here on political psychology of leftists.