What Was Yasser Arafat?
Or, to be more exact, what Western political category fits him best? The western categories do not always fit non-western political figures exactly, and some of our categories are less precise than we might like. Still, there is one that comes close. In my second post, I asked this same question about the Palestinian Authority. A look at the dictionary definition that I quoted there will show you that the Palestinian Authority can fairly be called a fascist organization. It follows that its founder and leader, Yasser Arafat, can also fairly be called fascist. For those who want to disagree, let me pose this question: If Arafat was not a fascist, what was he? No other western category comes close. That almost no one on the left, where “fascist” is a common epithet, wants to admit this publicly shows how much we need a new Orwell, how much we need a man of the left willing to speak the plain and obvious truths. That Arafat was also a terrorist is even less disputable, though that is almo
