Is Islamofascism Really Fascism?

The Stiletto ^ | August 18, 2006 | The Stiletto

[theothercheek]

The Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius asks, “Are We Fighting Islamic Fascists?” and answers a bold, “Yes and no.”

His argument for “yes” is pretty strong:

Ernst Nolte's "Three Faces of Fascism," a classic study of the social forces that created fascist movements in France, Italy and Germany during the 1920s and '30s … concludes … Fascism is "resistance to transcendence" … rebellion against the liberating but destabilizing transformations of modern society.

In the countries where it took root, fascism began as a middle-class assault on the liberal elites who were creating that era's version of globalization. Jews were a special target, but they were also symbols of a larger internationalist movement. ...

I do see many of these same factors in the growing popularity of radical Islam in the Middle East. ...

Today's Muslim radicals, like the Nazis in Germany, gain support by promising dignity for a people who feel shamed by defeat in war. That's the appeal of Hezbollah's leader, Hasan Nasrallah: The Arabs feel they have suffered 40 years of military humiliation from Israel. Nasrallah offers the tonic of defiance and, for the moment at least, a sort of victory. That makes him a hero, even though he brought on the ruination of Lebanon.

In many ways … [“Islamic fascists”] does capture the rage that fuels America's enemies. What is most pernicious about the movement is that, as with European fascism, it has made Jews the symbol for larger forces that confound angry Muslims. This is perverse: The corrupt elites who obstruct Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians and Saudis today are their own rulers and their legions of fixers and bagmen, not Israeli Jews.

And then, Ignatius blinks:

Yet I balk at the term. The notion that we are fighting "Islamic fascists" blurs the conflict, widening the enemy to many if not all Muslims. It's as if we were to call Hitler and Mussolini "Christian fascists," implying that it is their religion, not resistance to transcendence, that is the root cause of the problem.

The Stiletto thinks that Ignatius has it exactly backwards. European fascism has little or nothing to do with Christianity, whereas Isamofascism has everything to do with Sharia law – which is the root cause of the resistance to transcendence throughout the Islamic world. The proof is the inexorable spread of Wahhabism, an uncompromising, fundamentalist Islamic theology that originated in Saudi Arabia that seeks to “restore Islam from … innovations, superstitions, deviances, heresies and idolatries,” according to Jim Kouri, a top official of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.

Even the less orthodox Shia and Sunni Muslims – who are not considered Islamic enough by Wahhabis, BTW – living in Western countries resist assimilation. The result is that their allegiance to the tenets and practices of Islam is stronger than to the mores and cultures of the countries in which they live – whether they are recent immigrants, or first-generation citizens.

As columnist Cal Thomas notes so pithily:

The British are still shocked that people who are born in their country, go to their schools, have British accents and eat fish and chips would kill their fellow Brits. They do so because their allegiance is not to Britain, or to the Queen, but rather to their perverted view of God and the instructions from the hate preachers telling them to go bag some Jews, Christians, Westerners and other “infidels.”

Want more proof that resistance to transcendence at the heart of Islamic fascism is rooted in religious fanaticism? Consider this: The Taliban’s new terror tactic in Afghanistan is to torch newly built schools – even when class is in session and teachers and students die as a result. Why? According to Reuters: “Most of the schools attacked are co-educational. The Taliban banned girls from school during its 5-year rule and has warned teachers against allowing girls. Suspected militants recently shot dead a lecturer in front of his pupils after he defied them.”

Note: This is excerpted from the third item in "The Daily Blade" feature.

See also: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081701193_pf.html

http://www.commonvoice.com/article.asp?colid=5584

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CalThomas/2006/08/12/time_to_go_on_offense

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-08-18T095806Z_01_ISL318437_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-SCHOOLS.xml&archived=False

[The Iceman Cometh]

It has to be 'Fascism' because the real words that describe these type of people can't be said on the public airwaves.

[GSlob]

It's not even a fascism. It is baboonery.

[pcottraux]

Yup.

[T.L.Sink]

I can't recollect the name but someone in the American Enterprise Institute said that in Marxism or Communism the state owns all the means of production and eliminates private ownership and profit; but in fascism private ownership and profit are allowed PROVIDED they fully serve the ideology of the state.

By those criteria I'd say they're fascists AND Marxists, although they hate Marxism for religious reasons. Hey! I think I've got a new term: "Islamofascomarxists".

[FreeRep]

From Gamal Abdel Nasser's "Arab Socialism" in Egypt, to Saddam Hussein Baath Party (Socialist party) and to Ahmadinejad a Socialist demagogue politician, one can see the destiny of Arabs in very similar terms as the Nazis understood the destiny of Aryans. Fascist ideologues in a socio-economic system of religious/corporation social control, glorifying death, genocide of religious minorities and military glorification of martyrs. Fascists always have international supporters like the neo-democrats.

[GSlob]

I doubt that marxian analysis [economics first] even applies to cultures. "means of production" terminology is meaningless there. Culture [aka "civilization", "way of life" etc] is defined by how people relate to one another and to their groups in socially important situations - i.e. it is [predominantly] a sociological, not economical phenomenon. For example, their ownership of corresponding means of production tells us preciously little about the difference between a medieval dynast and, say, John D. Rockefeller Jr. But "if you're a boss then I'm a turd and if I'm the boss then you are a turd" [verbatim translation of a Russian saying] tells us a lot about the way of life which produced such a saying.

[Fenris6]

In the countries where it took root, fascism began as a middle-class assault on the liberal elites who were creating that era's version of globalization.

Wrong. In Germany, the SA was made up of lower class proletariats.

[T.L.Sink]

I would agree with you but a Marxist says that the economic "substructure" determines the entire superstructure -- including culture and the form civilizations take. As Engels said in his funeral eulogy of Marx in 1883, he was the first to prove that man is an economic being before he's a moral, political, religious or aesthetic one.

Dr.Marx would say you're only parroting bourgeois slogans that will be proved false as the dialectic of history hobbles along toward the classless society.

We believe it's bunk but the point is that millions still believe it's ideologically true.

[GSlob]

It's the other way around - the 'superstructure' of [Huntingtonian] civilization determines its possible types of marxian "substructure" and the forms these types could take, and it is indeed more enduring than any economic "substructrure". For example, "Britishness", "Frenchity", or "Russity" has lasted through several marxian economic formations, to say nothing of "Sinity".

[backhoe]

Allow me to rummage thru my files, and judge for yourself:

 

What Is 'Islamofascism'? A history of the word from the first Westerner to use it.

 

Hitler, the Mufti of Jerusalem, and Islamic Fascism

I’ve read about the alliance between Adolf Hitler and Muslim Arab leaders in World War II, and seen still photographs, but this is the first time I’ve seen actual video of Hitler meeting with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini—Yasser Arafat’s alleged uncle. From a German TV documentary, with English subtitles. (Hat tip: Justify This, who also created the Azzam Tamimi “shrieking jihad” video.)  link: 142 comments

TOTALLY DEVASTATING.

Shows that modern Islamism and the Palestinian movement are the DIRECT descendent of Nazism. More connections here:

http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/saddam_en.html

http://ninthstate.net/2006/05/15/the-nazi-arab-connection/

Found your post and link to vid at YouTube:
Hitler, The Mufti Of Jerusalem And Modern Islamo Nazism

Lot's of Key Nazi's photoed with Husseini and his "Hanzar Nazi/Muslim troops"

A good poster showing Nazi salutes then and now.

Hezbollah's Nazi roots (the left's common ground with Islamofascism)

 

[T.L.Sink]

That's an interesting speculation but it's NOT Marxist. The substructure is purely materialistic (in the philosophic sense) and is articulated in dialectical materialism which Marx correlated with historical materialism.

Incidentally, Marx viewed this process as a panoply that was not sudden but played out over succeeding generations. Thus, Marx actually described capitalism as "progress" at that particular stage of the dialectic.

The greatest revisionists of Marxism were Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Many cite some chapter and verse in Kapital or the Manifesto but they use it to promote their own immediate agenda. Capitalists often do the same in order to disparage Marxism. That's why some historians say facetiously but with truth that by many interpretations Karl Marx is not a Marxist.

[Louis Foxwell]

This thread is fascinating and erudite but gives far too much credit to the mafia running Iran and Syria. The problem is not politics or religion. It is thuggery.

[GSlob]

Of course, it is not marxist. I was born and grew up in the thucking USSR, and had marxism force fed into me by the state ideological apparatus 24/7/365. As a result, I got lifetime immunity. The standard expression is "been sniffing marxism again?"

[GSlob]

Civilization as a sociological phenomenon is no less material than a stone ax, and is more important [stone axes came and went, as important as they have been; civilizations endure, and there'll be no end to them apart from the termination of the humans as species]. Marxist dia-mat is as fellatious as the marxist ist-mat.

[theothercheek]

Good point. Ignatius is trying his best to fit a square peg in a round hole here. For him to even think of equating European fascism as a Christian phenomenon and what is going on in the Islamic world now is an act of intellectual dishonesty, if not desperation. Not only was Hitler an athiest, but fascists who happened to be Christian were a tiny, tiny minority of all Christians on the planet. In contrast, something like 75% of all Muslims support groups like Hamas and Hezbollah either actively (by sending money, going to jihadi training camps, or blowing themselves up along with as many innocents as possible) or passively (by sending their kids to madrassah-type schools or simply by letting evil triumph by saying nothing).

[theothercheek]

I am stunned and speechless. Someone should clue Ignatius in. Also, someone should tell CAIR to put a cork in it, given this history.

[backhoe]

CAIR is nothing more than a front group for terrorists and terrorism:
Background:

CAIR: Exposed here
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21528

CAIR Founded by "Islamic Terrorists?"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1452674/posts

The real CAIR
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32242

CAIR's Campaign of Lies
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1443177/posts

CAIR: 'Moderate' friends of terror
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/394

JIHAD IN AMERICA - ONLINE VIDEO
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/532360/posts

Need more?
Time to kick the tires & light the fires, folks- terrorism gathers across the World...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/838309/posts
_________________
( Just an Old Keyboard Cowboy, etc., etc...)

[theothercheek]

You'll find this interesting, too. An analysis of every press release CAIR put out after an Islamofascist/terrorist attack:

http://thestilettoblog.com/2006/07/31/the-daily-blade.aspx

[backhoe]

Thanks!