Mike writes:
“What is an ‘Islamo-fascist’? Which Islamic fascist state are you referring to when you use this term?” –MikeCannon; WDH Forum
Mike asks an excellent question and, presuming for the time being that he is actually interested in a serious answer, and didn’t just write the words rhetorically in a petty effort to trivialize and demagogue a serious issue, I’ll address it.
In response first to the second part of his question, regarding the presumed necessary existence of a fascist “state”, this once again reflects a degree of “WWII thinking”, and it’s nature as a formal “conventional war” against an established, nationalistic state, with a more or less homogeous citizenry, a formal centralized government, and clearly defined geographical borders.
In contrast, the present conflict is characterized by it’s “asymmetric” nature, in which the formal military and political structures of one or more distinct nation-states are pitted against a more loosely-organized, militarily inferior, trans-national guerilla-style force, that is organized around and draws it’s identity from an ideology or cause, rather than on the basis of a geographical identity.
For al-Qaeda, Hezbolla, the Taliban, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the theocratic regime of Iran, and dozens of other jihadic organizations, that central, organizing ideology is the Islam of Muhammad – and their goal is to bring all nations, and all peoples, once and for all into “dar Islam”, or the House of Islam – in order to fulfill the divine mandate of Islam, as “revealed” by the revered “last, final, and most perfect prophet of Allah”, Muhammad.
This is not to say that there are not nation-states who are not either directly or indirectly sponsoring or assisting such trans-national organizations in their goals and objectives – thus effectively engaging in the conflict themselves informally or remotely, or “by proxy”. Clearly there are, either for ideological (Iran, Syria) or economic (Russia) reasons.
A core idea to aysmmetric warfare is that the militarily-inferior combatant will seek to exploit strategic, propaganda, and political weaknesses in order to counter their opponent’s advantage of superior military and economic forces.
Writer Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes that “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 a contemporary Islamism, that openly demands implementation of Shari’ah [Islamic] Law, and the return to a pan-Islamic and theocratic caliphate.”
Like the Nazi fascists of the 1930’s, the leaders of groups like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Iranian mullocracy, are authoritarians who “brook no dissent in their efforts to [forcefully] impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.”
The common denominators, writes Hanson, “are extremist views of the Qur’an (thus the term Islamic), and the paired goal of seeing authoritarianism imposed at the state or governmental level, by force if necessary (and thus the notion of fascism).”
The result, as former Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat puts it, is “Nazism with a religious twist”.
The old fascism is back, writes Hanson. The pairing of the two words conveys a precise and accurate meaning – the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini, but driven now by the radical fundamentalist creed of jihadic Islam.
“Mein Kamphf”, or “My Struggle” – Adolph Hitler’s personal autobiography and manifesto outlining the political ideology that became Nazism – sell’s well in the Arab world under it’s translated title, “Jihadi” (or, “struggle”).
In the Palestinian-occupied territories, says Shoebat, “Mein Kampf” is a perennial best-seller, second only to the Qur’an itself.
Anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred is a basic tenent of classic fascism, writes Hanson, both then (in the 1930’s) and now. So is a generic hatred for unbelievers (“infidels” in Islam), homosexuals, and blacks (a point making even more interesting the apparent attraction that Islam, and even radical Islam, has for an increasing number of American blacks.)
Even now, Hanson points out, it is hard to distinguish between the slurs spun against Jews – commonly referred to as “pigs and apes” by Arab media, as well as in the Qur’an – and the vitriolic venom used in the propaganda of Joseph Goebbels.
Envy and false grievance are symptomatic of the Islamo-fascist mind.
Islamists, writes Hanson, as is true of all fascists including the Nazi’s, “privilege their own particular creed of true believers by harkening back to a lost, imagined pristine and triumphant past, in which the devout were uncorrupted by modernism.”
Islamists, like their Nazi cousins, focus on blaming others for the aggregate failures of their own social culture and ideology.
Their hatred comes not entirely so much from a distain for freedom, or democracy – as it does from a resentment and hurt pride for the obvious successes of those non-Islamic cultures where concepts such as liberty, human rights, individualism, and private property are valued, that contrast the relative failures and collectivistic inabilities of authoritarian Islamic societies.
The radical, Islamist fascist, Hanson points out, “can never quite figure out why the morally pure, politically zealous, ever more obediant [Muslims] are losing out to the corrupt and decadent democracies”.
Classic fascism, and Islamo-fascism, writes Hanson, “feeds on emotional insecurity and a sense of failure.”
Instead of examining their own philosophical or ideological shortcomings, and seeking to raise themselves up, the Islamist is easily “deluded into believing that contemporary setbacks are caused by others, and can be erased through even more zealotry”, and thus seeks instead to tear down and destroy the obvious illustrative symbols of their own failure and impotence – the Westernized societies.
Thus the United States becomes the “Great Satan”, and Israel a “Little Satan”, whose immediate destruction becomes an ultimate and immediate imperative to the radicalized Islamist.
Fascism – and Islamo-fascism – is not quite, as Hanson puts it “the narcotic of the hopeless, but rather [it is] 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.”
In the Islamist ideological tradition, which comes from the literal example of Muhammad and his early followers, “war is deceipt”. Treaties are made to be broken, and truces are forged merely to give one time to gather strength and arms for the next assault.
Hitler broke every agreement he made, from the “peace in our time” pact in Munich, to the Soviet non-agression pact. He even slaughtered the leadership of his own S.A., whose ranks of over 3 million “brown shirts” brought Hitler to power – considering them a potential threat to his authority and global ambitions.
The Japanese sent their fleet to sink US ships in Pearl Harbor, even as their ambassadors sat in Washington and talked about a “new diplomatic breakthrough”.
An out-numbered Muhammad signed a non-aggression treaty with the tribes of Mecca at al-Hudaybiyah in 638, only to declare it “null and void” barely a year later after he had gathered sufficient forces, and had negotiated a secret surrender with certain turncoat factions within Mecca.
Hezbollah, and Hamas, on the brink of crushing military defeat, repeatedly make “peace” with Israel, then rebuild, resupply, and re-arm their militias for the next planned battle – all under the protection and not-so-watchful eye of international “peacekeepers”.
According to Hanson, al-Qaeda’s al-Zawahiri in his writings spends a great deal of time excusing al-Qaeda’s distortions of reality and scripture, by constantly referring to scriptural Qur’anic notions of “tactical deception”.
The late “father of terrorism” Palestinian Yassar Arafat was often famously quoted as saying one thing in English, and entirely the opposite thing in Arabic. Even the clever and himself perpetually pervaricating W.J. Clinton, Esq. was taken in by the siren lure of “peace in our time”, and his own historical legacy.
Because of a certain squeamishness and societal “political correctness” in not wanting to appear to be going to war with the spiritual faith of over 1 billion people, politicians have been regrettably drawn toward the less-exact phrase of “war on terror” in order to encapsulate and describe the current conflict.
Terrorism however is a tactic, not an ideology. World War II was not “the war on blitzkrieg”, or “the war on naval combat”, it was a war against the violent, expansionist ideology of German National Socialism, or “Nationalsozialismus”, better known as “Nazism”.
“Islamic fascism” then, or “Islamo-fascism”, is then the accurate and appropriate phrase to properly describe the agenda and ideology of radical fundamentalist Islam, and it is that agenda which is driving much, if not most, of the terroristic efforts being today perpetrated and planned by its adherents – both in Iraq, and around the world.
