As he points out in a wonderfully compact paragraph, the greatest novels about modern tyranny “all powerfully depict totalitarian society’s assault on…personal love.” But as Huxley, Orwell and Zamyatin all remind us, total tyranny is impossible; subversion invariably sets in. Erotic passion overcomes both the seduction of tyranny and the tyrant’s threat to annihilate all those who fight him. “And that is why love presents such a threat to the totalitarian order: it dares to serve itself.” The compulsion to extinguish spontaneous love, as Jamie tells us, is the point of intersection between the ideologies of the Left and the jihadis. for example the details of the will of the leading 9/11 terrorist, Mohammed Atta. No women were to be present at his funeral, and were to be banned from ever visiting his grave. Moreover, his shame about his own body was spelled out: “He who washes my body around my genitals should wear gloves so that I am not touched there.” |
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