Posted on 09/25/2006 5:22:07 AM PDT by RKV
Make no apologies for the use of “Islamic fascism.” It is the perfect nomenclature for the agenda of radical Islam, for a variety of historical and scholarly reasons. That such usage also causes extreme embarrassment to both the Islamists themselves and their leftist “anti-fascist” appeasers in the West is just too bad.
First, the general idea of “fascism” — the creation of a centralized authoritarian state to enforce blanket obedience to a reactionary, all-encompassing ideology — fits well the aims of contemporary Islamism that openly demands implementation of sharia law and the return to a Pan-Islamic and theocratic caliphate.
In addition, Islamists, as is true of all fascists, privilege their own particular creed of true believers by harkening back to a lost, pristine past, in which the devout were once uncorrupted by modernism.
True, bin Laden’s mythical Volk doesn’t bath in the clear icy waters of the Rhine untouched by the filth of the Tiber; but rather they ride horses and slice the wind with their scimitars in service of a soon to be reborn majestic world of caliphs and mullahs. Osama bin Laden sashaying in his flowing robes is not all that different from the obese Herman Goering in reindeer horns plodding around his Karinhall castle with suspenders and alpine shorts.
Because fascism is born out of insecurity and the sense of failure, hatred for Jews is de rigueur. To read al Qaeda’s texts is to reenter the world of Mein Kampf (naturally now known as jihadi in the Arab world). The crackpot minister of its ideology, Dr. Zawahiri, is simply a Dr. Alfred Rosenberg come alive — a similar quarter-educated buffoon, who has just enough of a vocabulary to dress up fascist venom in a potpourri of historical misreadings and pseudo-learning.
Envy and false grievance, as in the past with Italian, German, or Japanese whining, are always imprinted deeply within the fascist mind. After all, it can never quite figure out why the morally pure, the politically zealous, the ever more obedient are losing out to corrupt and decadent democracies — where “mixing,” either in the racial or religious sense, should instead have enervated the people.
The “will” of the German people, like the “Banzai” spirit of the Japanese, should always trump the cowardly and debased material superiority of decadent Western democracies. So al Qaeda boasts that in Somalia and Afghanistan the unshakeable creed of Islam overcame the richer and better equipped Americans and Russians. To read bin Laden’s communiqués is to be reminded of old Admiral Yamamato assuring his creepy peers that his years in the United States in the 1920s taught him that Roaring Twenties America, despite its fancy cars and skyscrapers, simply could not match the courage of the chosen Japanese.
Second, fascism thrives best in a once proud, recently humbled, but now ascendant, people. They are ripe to be deluded into thinking contemporary setbacks were caused by others and are soon to be erased through ever more zealotry. What Versailles and reparations were to Hitler’s new Germany, what Western colonialism and patronizing in the Pacific were to the rising sun of the Japanese, what the embarrassing image of the perennial sick man of Europe was to Mussolini’s new Rome, so too Israel, modernism, and America’s ubiquitous pop culture are to the Islamists, confident of a renaissance via vast petro-weatlh.
Such reactionary fascism is complex because it marries the present’s unhappiness with moping about a regal past — with glimpses of an even more regal future. Fascism is not quite the narcotic of the hopeless, but rather the opiate of the recently failed now on the supposed rebound who welcome the cheap fix of blaming others and bragging about their own iron will.
Third, while there is generic fascism, its variants naturally weave preexisting threads familiar to a culture at large. Hitler’s brand cribbed together notions of German will, Aryanism, and the cult of the Ubermensch from Hegel, Nietzsche, and Spengler, with ample Nordic folk romance found from Wagner to Tacitus’s Germania. Japanese militarism’s racist creed, fanaticism, and sense of historical destiny were a motley synthesis of Bushido, Zen and Shinto Buddhism, emperor worship, and past samurai legends. Mussolini’s fasces, and the idea of an indomitable Caesarian Duce (or Roman Dux), were a pathetic attempt to resurrect imperial Rome. So too Islamic fascism draws on the Koran, the career of Saladin, and the tracts of Nasserites, Baathists, and Muslim Brotherhood pamphleteers.
Fourth, just as it was idle in the middle of World War II to speculate how many Germans, Japanese, or Italians really accepted the silly hatred of Hitler, Mussolini, or Tojo, so too it is a vain enterprise to worry over how many Muslims follow or support al Qaeda, or, in contrast, how many in the Middle East actively resist Islamists.
Most people have no ideology, but simply accommodate themselves to the prevailing sense of an agenda’s success or failure. Just as there weren’t more than a dozen vocal critics of Hitler after the Wehrmacht finished off France in six weeks in June of 1940, so too there wasn’t a Nazi to be found in June 1945 when Berlin lay in rubble.
It doesn’t matter whether Middle Easterners actually accept the tenets of bin Laden’s worldview — not if they think he is on the ascendancy, can bring them a sense of restored pride, and humiliate the Jews and the West on the cheap. Bin Laden is no more eccentric or impotent than Hitler was in the late 1920s.Yet if he can claim that his martyrs forced the United States out of Afghanistan and Iraq, toppled a petrol sheikdom or two, and acquired its wealth and influence — or if he got his hands on nuclear weapons and lorded it over appeasing Westerners — then he too, like the Fuhrer in the 1930s, will become untouchable. The same is true of Iran’s president Ahmadinejad.
Fifth, fascism springs from untruth and embraces lying. Hitler had contempt for those who believed him after Czechoslovakia. He broke every agreement from Munich to the Soviet non-aggression pact. So did the Japanese, who were sending their fleet to Pearl Harbor even as they talked of a new diplomatic breakthrough.
Al-Zawahiri in his writings spends an inordinate amount of effort excusing al Qaeda’s lies by referring to the Koranic notions of tactical dissimulation. We remember Arafat saying one thing in English and another in Arabic, and bin Laden denying responsibility for September 11 and then later boasting of it. Nothing a fascist says can be trusted, since all means are relegated to the ends of seeing their ideology reified. So too Islamic fascists, by any means necessary, will fib, and hedge for the cause of Islamism. Keep that in mind when considering Iran’s protestations about its “peaceful” nuclear aims.
We can argue whether the present-day Islamic fascists have the military means comparable to what was had in the past by Nazis, Fascists, and militarists — I think a dirty bomb is worth the entire Luftwaffe, one nuclear missile all the striking power of the Japanese imperial Navy — but there should be no argument over who they are and what they want. They are fascists of an Islamic sort, pure and simple.
And the least we can do is to call them that: after all, they earned it.
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/ NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
The term always worked for me.
Some friendly advice - adopt the combat mindset. Go on the offensive, do not just react. We need improve our ability to defend ourselves by improving our culture. We can all help that - speaking the truth about islamic imperialism is one way to start.
I prefer islamic imperialism myself, but islamofascism will do in a pinch.
Great article!
If they are so confident of a fulfulling future, why are they so quick to kill themselves?
Incidentally, I've been reading 'The Looming Tower', and a more unappealing group of total losers would be difficult to find. It turns out that bin Laden did essentially nothing in Afgahnistan against the Soviets, and nonetheless returned bragging that he could defend all of Saudi Arabia from the Iraqis, instead of inviting the Amerians in.
The Saudi intelligence head laughed him out of the room; thus his desire for revenge, against both the Saudi government and the Americans he felt were defiling the kingdom.
Tolik, could you add me to the VDH ping list, please?
Many thanks.
D
Third, while there is generic fascism, its variants naturally weave preexisting threads familiar to a culture at large. Hitler’s brand cribbed together notions of German will, Aryanism, and the cult of the Ubermensch from Hegel, Nietzsche, and Spengler, with ample Nordic folk romance found from Wagner to Tacitus’s Germania. Japanese militarism’s racist creed, fanaticism, and sense of historical destiny were a motley synthesis of Bushido, Zen and Shinto Buddhism, emperor worship, and past samurai legends. Mussolini’s fasces, and the idea of an indomitable Caesarian Duce (or Roman Dux), were a pathetic attempt to resurrect imperial Rome. So too Islamic fascism draws on the Koran, the career of Saladin, and the tracts of Nasserites, Baathists, and Muslim Brotherhood pamphleteers.
If I may suggest
Bolshevism in a Headdress
FrontPageMagazine ^ | 3/21/05 | Mustafa Akyol
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1373886/posts
And (one of the best books I've read on the subject)
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies
by Ian Buruma, Avishai Margalit
http://www.amazon.com/Occidentalism-West-Eyes-Its-Enemies/dp/1594200084/sr=1-2/qid=1159188565/ref=sr_1_2/104-1207478-3799909?ie=UTF8&s=books
I'm only following the lead of our leaders in DC
If they are so confident of a fulfulling future, why are they so quick to kill themselves?
You'll recall in the Looming Tower the group of arab "fighters" in Afgahnistan camping with white tents, they're told to lose the white tents or they'll be killed. Their answer is "But we've come here to die." This says alot about the terrorists and why they will lose. (and YES, this is a must read for anyone who's serious about this war)
You know better than that.
islam doesn't worship the God I know, islam worships the devil.
Sorry VDH, it's not "fascism", it's just Islam at its core. "Isamic fascism" or "islamofascism" is just Rove-speak. Rather like when Pharma coined the term "erectile-dysfunction"--not used in any medical text--to sell various "love potions". My problme with VDH is his obsession with TR/Wilsonian style "big stick" diplomacy; America's "special place in the world" etc. This will bankrupt and destroy America; empires ALWAYS fall and every nation seduced by the siren of empire has collapsed sooner or later. The smart thing for America to do is revert to a pre-1898 foreign policy and bascially:
1. Tend to it's own knitting regarding foreign affairs; 19th century America did not care if the Ottoman Turks mistreated Greeks or Rumanians, if the Tsar of all the Russias mistreated the Finns or Tartars etcc.
2. Economic autarky should be pursued, although this would entail something Americans have never attempted--an industrial/economic policy. The USA is self-sufficent (or could become self-sufficent) in most items. Execptions being certain trace elements for aerospace and certain gems like diamonds, both easily obtained from nations in Africa in exchange for food. Notice I didn't mention energy in this small list of exceptions. The USA is the Saudi Arabia of coal; the Nazi's quite successfully maintained their vast war machine on petroleum synthesized from coal, no doubt the US could do the same. If, theoretically, every source (ANWR, all offshore areas) were drilled for oil, the US could survive with nary a drop of imported energy. Those crazy kids in Seattle had a point; globalism really is evil, and the outside (i.e OLD world) has been nothing but a source of grief for the New World.
You sound like a Buchananite to me. With respect to 19th century foreign policy you remember the shores of Tripoli? Perhaps you recall our war with Mexico? And speaking of "big stick," the Panama Canal was built on land that belonged to Columbia until we engineered a revolution. While I wouldn't call the policies that led to those engagements Wilsonian, your historical knowledge is sadly lacking. As to autarky - what set of unconstitutional laws are you going to advocate to make that happen? It won't occur any other way.
"With respect to 19th century foreign policy you remember the shores of Tripoli? Perhaps you recall our war with Mexico? "
The Barbary Pirates episode was the one sad exception; wealth US merchants didn't want to pay "protection" to the Barbary Pirates, so Steven Decatur was sent to sort them out. Actually, it was Napoleon who really spelled "finis" to the Barbary Pirates. As for Mexico, that was just part of America's Manifest Destiny to spread from coast to coast. As for the Panama Canal, it fell within the Monroe Doctrine (we didn't want France or some other Old World power controlling access between the Atlantic and Pacific in our backyard).
Pardon me for being blunt - screw waiting for a Churchill. My personal take is that we need to deserve victory. That starts with you and me making America strong enough for the task ahead. We need to reject the culture that the socialists have tried to create, and restore the values which we were founded on. I have a bunch more to say about this, but I think I'll save it for my book. ;>)
Economic autarky should be pursued, although this would entail something Americans have never attempted--an industrial/economic policy.
Right. You mean like NK? Ecomomic self sufficiency is one of those really wonderful ideas that exist only inside the ivy covered wall of academia.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.