I blame Paul Berman, Christopher Hitchens and, of course, Tony Blair. They became the enemy within: the intrepid jihadists parachuted behind the lines into the citadels of the liberal left and proceeded to disseminate ‘kosher’ Islamophobia using the rhetoric of defending ‘liberalism’ against ‘illiberal’ outsiders. They would wrap the language of Jean-Marie Le Pen into fresh, halal, packaging of left-wing radicalism. One could add Fareed Zakaria for good measure, although it has always been a chore to distinguish him from his neo-con friends. Or we could have started with Salman Rushdie, the Orientalist from the Orient, the man who blurred, if not obliterated, the lines of distinction between Marx and Jerry Falwell. And why not Netanyahu, the first politician to make Fascism respectable in Jewish circles. But why don’t I start with Matti Bunzl, an Austrian anthropologist who worked for a while in Chicago, before moving to head the Wien Museum in Vienna, the city’s main museum.
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