[lit-ideas] Re: How many are the Jihadists, and shall we worry about them?

---- Original Message ----- From: "Simon Ward" <sedward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Given that, we must assume that Pipes has calculated the number of fascists and communists, combined, who ever lived. How many is that, Lawrence? You can restrict it to committed individuals if you like, but we still need to know how many that is - how many who ever lived. And would that include communists outside the Soviet Union and Fascists outside Nazi Germany? Who get's to label the fascists? 

Lawrence will never answer this, because the facts get in the way.

It's easy to look up these numbers.
The Chinese Communist Party currently has 70 million members. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_China ) If you add all members, incl. members in the 1920s, 1930s, etc., then the CCP has easily had over 100m members.
The USSR had 19 million party members in the mid-80s. Total membership was probably 25-30m. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union#Membership )
Note that these are paid, card-carrying members of registered, functioning organizations.
Lawrence gets all excited with hope there are as many as "200 million" Islamofacists. That's utterly ridiculous, and it's easy to see why.
At best, al Qaeda has a few hundred members, perhaps a thousand. But certainly not 5,000. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Organization_structure_and_membership
Let's say there are 1,000 members of al Qaeda. How many of them are Lawrence's demons? Al Qaeda, like any organization, has an internal infrastructure. They have people who are drivers, do hiring, manage HR, travel, accounting, food, family issues, etc. Of the 1,000 snarling jihadis, only 25-50 do the actual snarling. The rest are doing laundry, processing invoices, delivering intra-office mail, and all the trivial boring things of any organization. (Source: You can read all about al Qaeda's internal structure in the 9.11 Commission Report.)
What about those Arabs in Saudi Arabia who snarl whenever they think of America? 

Okay, which America? Bush? Snarl, snarl. Pamela Anderson? Yum, yum!
It's one thing for them to hate the USA, but they are also taxi drivers, office workers, clerks, and all the other things that most people are. (And yes, Lawrence, they are also welfare slackers, just like you.) They may hate the USA, but they do nothing about it. Thus they don't count. There simply isn't an "army of 100m Jihadi, waiting to march across the Atlantic."
To put it another way, there are 50m rightwingers in the USA, but most of them just bark in the dark. They won't enlist and they won't give up their socialist pensions. 

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: