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How the right played the fascism card against Islam
Via Lucianne:
Albert Scardino
Guardian
Fascism is coming back into fashion, at least in the propaganda wars. For the right, it comes in the shape of a new word: "islamofascism". That conflates all the elements into one image: suicide bombs, kidnappings and the Qur'an; the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan; Iranian clerics and Hitler. The term seems to have appeared first in the Washington Times in a reference to Islamist fundamentalists. Coined by Khalid Duran, a Muslim scholar seeking to explain Islam to Jews, the word was meant as a criticism of hyper-traditionalist clerics - who in turn denounced Duran as a traitor to the faith.
| The ummah takes the place of the Party. The Caliph and his temporary stand-ins are Fearless Leader, all-wise and all-seeing. The jihadis are the Blackshirts and Brownshirts. The Arabs are the Master Race, who are at the top of the heap of the Master Religion. Salafism is the Party ideology. The Defense of Islam equates to the drive for Lebensraum. Gangs like Zarqawi's and Basayev's exterminate those who don't follow the Party line. Qutb's writings fill the function of Mein Kampf. Your friendly neighborhood holy men fill the functions of the block leaders, the Kreisleiters and the Gauleiters. Pretty accurate description, I'd say. |
Usage has gathered momentum among commentators and academics who seek a verbal missile to debilitate those who disagree with them. They have adopted it as a sort of Judeo-Christian war cry - look for it soon in the title of a neo-conservative think tank conference.
| Probably so. I think "Salafism" is actually easier to pronounce than "Islamofascism." The problem is the political implications, since it'll offend the Soddy sensitivities and drive the price of oil up another $10 a barrel. |
For the left, the term "fascist" lost its power in the 1970s, when it was sprayed on every authority figure in sight, from the Nixon-Kissinger White House to university provosts to the neighbourhood cop.
| Cried wolf one too many times? Or was it hundreds of thousands too many times? |
To make Bush-Hitler comparisons work requires more nuanced historical references - to the night of the long knives, for example, as Sidney Blumenthal did about the dismissal of Colin Powell.
| Powell survived the experience. Ernst Roehm didn't. It's normal for cabinet members to submit their resignations after an election, and Powell had stated prior to the election that he was ready to move on. Then again, truth has never been Sid Blumenthal's strong point, has it? |
Unfortunately for liberals, those references don't work as efficiently as islamofascism does for the right, because to imagine the appropriately creepy picture requires a familiarity with German history of the 1920s and 30s. Nazism is better known for its death camps than for Leni Riefenstahl or the Reichstag fire, so analogies between the Nazis' early years and current Republican party behaviour seem hollow, no matter how strong some parallels might be.
I dunno. Analogies between the Nazis' early years and current behavior on the left are just as hollow. Events are like bricks No. That's wrong. Lemme start again: Ogres are like onions... No. That's not it. Let's just say that just because an event occurred on one occasion with a given set of results doesn't mean that a similar event occurring on another occasion, under different conditions, will have the same results. America and France both had revolutions, with many of the same ideas and even a few of the players involved in both. One revolution gave us Washington, Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams. The other gave us Robespierre, Napoleon Bonaparte, continental war, and eventually Louis Philippe. Leni Reifenstahl in Hollywood might have directed Jean Harlow movies.
The left fixes on Naziism as the epitome of fascism, but it was a superset of the political system. It grew up in the anarchy into which Italia had fallen during WWI. Il Duce was the modern incarnation of Caesar. The movement adapted itself to similar conditions that existed in Europe at the time, taking root in lotsa different countries: Spain, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, France and Austria among them. There was no equivalent of the Night of the Long Knives in any of them that I know of. The best Il Duce could come up with was the assassination of Matteotti. Stalin, on the other hand, did carry out the Yezhovshchina, which (literally) decimated the Red Army on the eve of WWII, and which presents a much closer parallel to the Night of the Long Knives only longer, and with more casualties. So blood purges seem to be much more associated with dictatorial states than simply with fascism. The same applies to the Reichstag fire, but its inclusion in Albert's argument is so silly it can be dismissed out of hand. |
Christopher Hitchens, a former socialist who now sits on the other end of the political see-saw, sprinkles islamofascism about like paprika. He and Andrew Sullivan, a voice of the right, both wrongly receive credit in some quarters for coining the term.
| Hitchens is still a leftist. I disagree with most of what he believes society should be. After the WoT's over I'll probably go back to calling him names, and he to calling me names if he notices my existence. He's realist enough to recognize the evil of the enemy that's facing both ends of the political spectrum, something Albert's apparently not bright enough to grasp. Neither Hitchens nor Sullivan, to my knowledge, has claimed credit for inventing the term "islamofascism." Bill Quick invented the term "blogosphere," and I'm the inventor of the Surprise Meter, but neither invention earns us royalties. |
Long before September 11 2001, Duran was commissioned by the American Jewish Committee to produce one side of an interfaith project. Duran responded to attacks on his book, Children of Abraham, by deriding those who sought "to impose religious orthodoxy on the state and the citizenry". In that sense, he said, extreme islamism is "islamofascism."
| Pretty accurate description, huh? Especially given the striving for the caliphate and the roving bands of fascisti who're now shooting up the entire world. |
It took a couple of years for the word to seep into frequent usage. By then its meaning had expanded. Last year, Sullivan cited "five elements that make it particularly dangerous", including the "broken, medieval societies" that foster it, the "unquenchable extremism" of its motivation, and "the destructive technology" its adherents seek. Use of the term to describe Muslim clerics and stateless terrorists has neatly pre-empted any chance of labelling Bush a fascist - no matter how many suspects are kidnapped by the US authorities and tortured; no matter how impervious the border; no matter how effective the use of propaganda to destroy the opposition; no matter how many countries are invaded on false pretenses; no matter how strongly a minority religion may become a mark of guilt.
| Since the one term's accurate and the other's frivolous, the frivolous usage doesn't come off well, does it? |
Poor, poor Al, we've left him w/nothing, the VRWC has co-opted one of his favorite words.
Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-02-04 |
