As'ad AbuKhalil is a bourgeois who styles himself a leftist intellectual, following the model of modernist as revolutionary aristocrat. At his worst he's an arrogant teenage boy who confuses love for himself with love for humanity, oblivious to the possibility of their confusion.

Chaos
Arab regimes (and Iran) often warn against change and revolutions: they try to scare us by warning of the potential for chaos. I say: we should work for the overthrow of all those regimes (Arab regimes and Iran) because chaos is far superior to those regime [sic]. At least, under chaos there is a stronger chance for change and sabotage (sabotage of oppression and injustice and occupation and conspiracies).

By that logic the half thought out invasion of Iraq was better for the future of its people than either a carefully planned and successful one or none at all, and a Pakistan in chaos, with nuclear weapons unaccounted for, is better than a stable dictatorship.

I read AbuKhalil as a reporter of fact, not as an intellectual. As an intellectual he's an ass.

I admire the brave Syrian communists that you struggled with against [sic] the Syrian repressive state, but you can state with a straight face that the struggle was for "democracy"? Is this a retroactive revisionism? Come on. Arab communists fought for social justice, workers' victory, the dictatorship of the proletariat, revolution, and liberation but not for democracy. Of course, no [sic] everyone wants democracy, even the lousy Muslim Brotherhood.

The age of Modernism is done.