Clerical fascism
Hitchens says why it’s valid to compare fascist and jihadist ideology even though ‘it’s quite the done thing, in liberal academic circles, to sneer at any comparison between fascist and jihadist ideology.’
Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. (“Death to the intellect! Long live death!” as Gen. Francisco Franco’s sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined “humiliations” and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression – especially to the repression of any sexual “deviance”—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.
He left out the fact that both are obsessed with purity, which is important, because that obsession is probably foundational to some of the other obsessions, and to the overall strenuosity and humourlessness of both.
He points out that there are also differences; but the commonalities are decidedly worth paying attention to.
Hitchens is a hero for our times.
The obsession with purity is also a feature of the totalitarianisms of the loony Left – parodied so well in the Life of Brian.
There’s a brilliant chapter on how Islamism has apporpriated the entire conspiracy theory of the fascist tradition, including the Freemason
mania of the original counter Enlightenment in Nick Cohen’s What’s Left? Available now at a ridiculously low pricein a fine book store near you.
Slightly off-topic but I was just thinking how much I enjoy this blog and the prevailing attitude of reasonable skepticism. And I realized that I wasn’t completely clear on the attitude here about the Iraq disaster. So I did I search on “Iraq.” And to my surprise I found absolutely NO — nada, zero — references to the sorry state?
Is that possible? Could it be there THE major event in world history for the past 4 years has gone unmentioned here?
I don’t much care for the term “Islamofascism” because it seems like a slogan more than an accurate term. But Walter Laqueur makes a fairly compelling case for calling some forms of religious totalitarianism clerical fascism in his book on the subject.
Hey, I want a PR slut! Why doesn’t Continuum have any PR sluts?
David, it’s not quite possible, there is some stuff about Iraq here, but there’s not a huge amount. I’ve avoided it partly because JS and I saw it somewhat differently, also partly because there’s plenty about it elsewhere and I wanted to focus on other things.
David Sucher – I have seen threads here ‘skewed’ off topic unavoidably by current events and I have to admit that the quality of responses can go down – a bit like with rolling news, there’s less room for analysis. During the truly ghastly July War in the Lebanon 2006 there was almost a month’s worth of very heated, very emotional and sometimes very unpleasant stuff going on here, including posts from myself and it started mirroring Harry’s Place and CiF at their worst with their interminable nasty foul tempered, polarised exchanges. I like B&W the way it is because it attracts far fewer drek merchants and trolls…less heat abit more light, to use the cliche. Finally, most importantly, I guess the topics around here are more likely to be about the influence in public life, academia and media of the authors of books like “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place” than the Gulf War itself…
Ok, both are totalitarian ideologies. So what?
The problem with “Islamofascism”, and Hitchen’s defence of it, is that a term that could have been at the beginning purely descriptive (just another way to say Islamism is baaaad) now is being used as a bona fide analysis of the phenomenon. We MUST react to the threat that way because Al Qaida and Hamas are the same as Mussolini’s Fascist party and Iran is the new Nazi Germany. And that obviously preclude any possibility of dialogue or peaceful resolution because: who would negociate with Hitler?
But hey! traditionally the media is always ready for whoever can make the complex appear simple so Hitchen’s obvious talent (a frightening intelligence allied to a certain lack of subtlety) easily find an outlet here.
Arnaud, you seem to be very willfully missing – or at least dodging – the point. Not only the point of what Hitchens says, but also the point that Marieme Hélie-Lucas made in this article right here at B&W: Islamo-fascism is not merely a term that indicates ‘Islamism is bad.’ It is a term that correctly indicates the specific ways in which political Islam is bad. The religious fundamentalist Islamic political movement is both in substance and in method an ideology which very closely mirrors fascism. Basically, it replaces the national identity at the heart of fascism with religious identity, but is otherwise frighteningly similar.
Saying “No it isn’t!” in a snarky fashion does not constitute a counter-argument to all the parallels that have been pointed out. And just because Hitchens himself is a rabid warmonger about it doesn’t mean that the term Islamofascism is not substantially descriptive, nor does it mean that everyone who uses it is necessarily a warmonger.
That said, I would like to know where you think the “possibility of dialogue or peaceful resolution” could possibly come from with regard to the political Islam movement under discussion here? Do you think there is any way for anyone to reach out to Osama bin Laden, for example, and persuade him to compromise or negotiate? Really? I’d love to hear why and how you think that might be possible.
I think it is incredibly useful – for the purpose of preserving the real possibility of peace, negotiation and outreach – that we maintain clear terminology to distinguish between two groups: Ordinary people who are primarily concerned with getting on with their lives and families who happen to be Muslim, and the religious/political fanatics who oppress the former while simultaneously claiming to speak in their names. The latter – call them something besides Islamofascists if you insist, but don’t just call them Muslims – will accept nothing less than destruction of their enemies within and outside of Islam. They fight for the political power to carry out their vision, and that vision is horrific: enforcement of the brutalities of sharia law, vicious and total oppression of women and gays, murder of apostates, and so on. We see these results wherever these extremists actually gain political sway: in Afghanistan’s taliban rule (which is returning, thanks to the idiocy of the Bush administration in marching off to Iraq and abandoning the Afghans), in various ongoing bloodbaths in North Africa, and increasingly in Iran now that the moronic foreign policy of the U.S. has bolstered the formerly-waning power of the Revolutionary Council. The people who actively seek that kind of totalitarian political power are not people with whom one can establish meaningful negotiation or dialog. Such ideologues demand every concession, but concede nothing themselves except in the face of force.
And a hint for political leaders: The path to winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims and possibly even help them rise against their Islamofascist oppressors does NOT start with bombing the hell out of them. Or their neighbors.
Fanatics, fundamentalists, islamists, we have plenty of terms at our disposal to distinguish between the peaceful Muslims and the extremists (Hey, extremists! Here’s another one! You can even follow Richard’s example if your stomach is strong enough and use the word “moslems” to design… well I don’t know what or who exactly. But I digress…)
We don’t NEED “islamofascism”, G. It is not “useful”. Not only is it a misleading term, it also tries to bypass any attempt at reasoning by appealing to our emotions.
Yourself you fall into the same trap with your Bin Laden analogy. Osama Bin Laden is not Hitler. (He is not a head of state. He doesn’t have all the resources of a hyper-industrialized country behind him. His resources are not tanks and warplanes and guns, his weapons are people and we give him every day an endless supply of them.) I agree that we can’t reach out to him, but the point is, we are not fighting Osama Bin Laden. OSL is somewhere in the mountains in Afghanistan or Pakistan and there isn’t much allied activity over there. (That’s probably because suddenly we have decided to wage another war out there, the War on Drugs, there is only that many wars a poor country like Afghanistan can support, I suppose…) By all means, let’s make war on Al-Qaeda! But that’s not what we are doing, is it? We are waging war on “terror”, another nebulous and emotive term.
We can all wrap ourselves in our self-righteousness and mumble “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” until we are blue in the face, we can use phrases like “war on terror” and “islamofascism” to conceal and hide the reality of the situation until popular opinions in the West get tired with the constant war mongering and the casualties and forces us to either even more simplistic solutions or an unilateral retreat from the Middle East and from any kind of peace process in the region.
Or we can pull ourselves up and do the dirty work. And it will be dirty because, yes, they are not nice people, it’s true. They are worthy of our contempt. But they do have popular support and we do keep saying that we want democracy in the Middle East.
Look at what’s happening in Palestine! We will have to, sooner or later, find somebody to talk to there and, in all probabilities, it is going to be Hamas because years of pig-headed policies have made sure there is nobody else there with any political credibility!
(Oh! And they do have legitimate grievances. Come on, are we going to wait until the 1950s to recognize that the Treaty of Versailles was a mistake AGAIN?)
Arnaud, I never said bin Laden was Hitler: I said he wasn’t open to negotiation. You acknowledge that this is what I said and what I meant, and then you go on to rant about a bunch of things that you claim also come along with the use of the term Islamofascist. Do you have any evidence for this beyond your own overheated reading into the term?
See, here I am, using the term Islamofascist, but I don’t support the so-called war on terror any more than I support the war on drugs or anything else that uses an abysmally bad analogy to push abysmally bad policy. But you still haven’t given me even one single reason to think that the analogy between fundamentalist political Islam and fascism is a bad analogy. Bin Laden, of course, does not have the resources of a nation and military. But why is it that fascists are only fascists if they actually come to power? Haven’t there been fascists who failed to or had not yet taken over a government? Weren’t they still fascists before they took over? Does gaining control of a nation somehow magically transform their stated ideology, goals and methods from something else to fascism?
And if you’re looking for Islamofascists who have come to power, you don’t have to look very hard. The Islamic Revolutionary Council of Iran, unlike al Qaeda, does in fact have the resources of a nation and military at its command. That does not mean, of course, that the only way or the right way to deal with Iran is to go to war. In fact, war is the stupidest of possible solutions to the problem of Iran: But that doesn’t change the nature of the dominant political forces in the Iranian government, which are certainly fascistic in ideology and action – down to the government-supported, self-appointed “morality police” Brownshirts beating people in the streets.
Islamofascism is a good term because it offers insight into what is actually happening. In fact, one of the insights offered by understanding fundamentalist political Islam as essentially fascist is the recognition that it is a political movement that is simultaneously very oppressive and yet can enjoy very broad popular support – especially at first: The Islamic Revolutionary Council had enormous support when they swept into power, yet a majority of young people (and a large minority of ordinary Iranians of every age) seem to hate the IRC now – just as many people who cheer for al Qaeda would actually hate it if their country were taken over by extremists of the same ilk.
We can’t reach out to the ayatollahs, but we can reach out to those people who resent and resist their oppression. Recognizing BOTH aspects of this is important. You cannot negotiate with or appease fascists, because theirs is an ideology that demands ever-more power and total submission to their collective will. But you can support the resistance to fascism in various ways. (How does one say Vive la Résistance! in Farsi?)
Unfortunately, the Bush administration blew a golden opportunity to aid and support the once-blossoming pro-democracy/anti-theocracy movement in Iran by invading Iraq for no good reason. Actually, Bush blew it before the Iraq invasion with that abominable “Axis of Evil” rhetoric. But that doesn’t mean others – the U.N., the next U.S. administration – can’t reach out to the people struggling against Islamofascism in Iran and elsewhere.
And, in case you didn’t read my last comment carefully, I already said in so many words that you don’t win the hearts and minds of people by bombing them: Why then, given the political perspective I demonstrated with that and other comments, would you assume that I don’t think that Palestinians have legitimate grievances? You seem to read far, far more into the use of the term Islamofascism than is at all warranted.
Perhaps the problem isn’t the terminology, but your own energetic leaping to conclusions based upon it. You insist that merely using the term is automatically war-mongering rhetoric, but I don’t see why or how. All those assumptions seem to be coming from you, not from the term “Islamofascism” and its historical roots, its current uses, or my use of it. Hitchens didn’t invent the word after his bizarre post-9/11 conversion to a bloodthirsty, Bush-apologetics spewing nut case: The term already existed, and seems to be used as much because it accurately conveys the nature and behavior of the political ideology as for any rhetorical purpose. Your insistence that it also automatically conveys all sorts of other things seems to be just that – your insistence. You keep insisting, but I remain unconvinced.
Then again, if Mike Huckabee is comfortable using the word “Islamofacism,” maybe I do want to pick another term to use, even one that isn’t quite as rich in well-grounded shades of meaning…
OB,
It wasn’t so much a criticism as an observation. And I’m not sure if I got it across very well.
I was complimenting this blog for being head’s up and aware of the danger of Islamic extremism — by whatever name — while still being against the war.
(And of course it’s news that there is a difference of opinion on the Iraq War on this blog. In my own smug way I assumed that everyone sees it now as disastrous and unwise adventurism — even if possibly and originally as well-intended.)
There are many otherwise completely intelligent bloggers who in their opposition to the war have gone overboard and minimize the danger of Islamic extremism by bringing up Timothy McVeigh. the Stern Gang and the Spanish Inquisition as if “well we all have our own extremists.” Many people seem — this is my observation and I have no way to prove it — to be unable to hold these two thoughts simultaneously: the Iraq War was a calamitous mistake AND there is a real danger from Islamic extremism.
I’d have to say you’re right, David. It’s like having strong words to say about the dangers of extremist political Islam automatically makes one an extremist right wing war-mongering ideologue in some people’s minds. That’s a pretty blinkered, either/or sort of view that simply doesn’t reflect reality.
And as to the possibility that the invasion of Iraq was originally well-intended (or that it had anything to do with Islamic fundamentalists), I haven’t seen a more convincing exposé of the perfidious motives of the Bush administration than this one from 2004 – and I haven’t seen a single thing since then that in any way contradicts or undermines the damning story Klein relates.
Heck, G, where would civilisation be without pretty blinkered, either/or sorts of views that simply don’t reflect reality?
Sorry G, maybe I should be less snarky and try to explain myself more clearly and at length (that’s a warning by the way: loooong post!). But first let me tell you that I assume nothing about you or your ideas that you won’t tell me. My point on legitimate grievances was intended for a larger readership (Is that alright? That sounds awfully self important to me!…)
There were two points in my previous post and only one of them really addressed “islamofascism”.
Anyway.
There are similarities between fascists and muslim extremists, only a fool would deny that. But my point is
a) These similarities arise because both are totalitarian ideologies so, yes, they tend to use similar tactics, fairly well known and proved ones I may add. All totalitarian states hunt and kill theirs heretics (they probably learnt that from the Vatican); all totalitarian states and wannabee dictators use youth as storm troopers; totalitarian ideologies, when they come to power, usually do so with popular support; totalitarian states use cult of the personality; they try to restrict their population’s access to external news feeds, yes; they create scapegoats to deflect popular criticism. Did we call Stalin’s USSR or Mao’s China communofascist countries? We didn’t because there was no need, merely pointing out the failings of communist ideologies and the horrors engendered by their application was enough. Have we truly become so infantilized that we can now longer do the same with islamism?
b) Islamofascism is more than useless, it’s misleading, it’s reasoning by analogy. And yes, it’s being tainted by the people who use it (this happens, people, grow up. We cannot reclaim every misused term; for some n****r will for ever be an insult). Whatever its origin it’s now been turned into a blatant appeal to our more emotional side. There is nothing wrong with being angry with islam (certainly not!) but it should not stop us from thinking. I am not saying you are being blinded by the term, G, you probably know more about the issue (of islamic extremism) than I do but not everybody takes the time to inform themselves the way you do. Out there in the greater public sphere, fascism is a loaded word and it’s not being used with a lot of caveat that I have noticed.
Hitchen’s piece is a bit like these theological learned treatises that religious people sometimes trot out to prove that there is more depth to christianism than what the ordinary people believe (and Hitchen himself rages enough against the practice): to a certain point they don’t matter because that’s not what the people in the street believe. If you can convince the voters that there is an islamofascism, they will not focus on the caveats, they will first vote for war and second, if the war goes nowhere and produce no positive results, they will lose interest and ask for disengagement.
There was a great post at the WAAGNFP blog a few days ago about how the American liberal left (or what Americans call left anyway) keeps accepting debating the Republicans with their own tainted terms and the consequences it has on the political discourse. It was about the word “safe” but I think that, up to a point, people who use islamofascism commit the same mistake. It’s a bad analysis of the phenomenon and it’s bad politics.
Finally, to address your criticisms, there are differences between fascism and islamism. Whatever Hitchens says for instance, the focus on purity on which both insist is not the same or even comparable. Islamic purity is not racial, not only a way to differentiate between “us” and “them”; it is a goal, both attainable and conveniently fuzzy, carrying with it a double load of self righteousness and crippling guilt which makes it so much easier for islamism to transform potential victims into perpetrators recruit abroad and create suicide bombers for example. It’s also in my opinion at the core of the problems the occidental left has in criticizing it. In a lot of ways islamism is potentially more dangerous than fascism not only because it draws more easily on the potential disgust some have for our consumerist, edonistic societies but also because it doesn’t need the focus on the State that was at the core of fascist ideologies, it’s perfectly adapted to guerilla warfare and terrorist actions. When the Allied took down nazi Germany that was it, more or less, for the ideology; by its own standards its defeat proved that it wasn’t deserving of survival, the situation with islamism is a lot more nebulous.
But as I said before, in what is already a far too long post, whether it’s right or wrong doesn’t really matter, the word islamofascism has become a cliché and a warmonger’s tool and we would all be far better if we resisted the temptation to use it.
David S, no, I didn’t take it as a criticism. I was just explaining – answering your questions (there are three question marks in your post, so I took the post to be questions as well as observation). And the difference of opinion referred to 2003 – I don’t even know if there’s a difference of opinion now. But JS was still a little bit involved with B&W in 2003, so the best thing seemed to be to avoid the subject (Iraq).
Btw, G, I just read Klein’s account of post-invasion Iraq and while it tells a damning story about what happened, it says nothing to me about the motives for the war in the first place because it does not document motives but simply asserts them.
More broadly I find the lack of coherent motive — even wacko right-wing motive — to be the most chilling part of this whole fiasco.
I hadn’t realised that D’Annunzio and the Italian futurists were hostile to modernity. You learn something new every day.
One of the problems of dissecting this issue is a failure to realise that ‘Fascism’ is not a Platonic Form, but merely a handy label for a ragbag of ideas that emerged in reaction to the classic social, cultural and political patterns of cosmopolitan modernity in the early C20. Outside of the Hitler Cult, they were strongly influenced by religion [both organised, espcially RC, forms, and wierdo, cultic neo-paganism [the latter also inside the Hitler Cult, as every geek knows all about Himmler and the Grail Quest….]]
FWIW, I think there are elements clearly capable of being labelled overtly fascistic, for example in the paramilitary organisation of Hezbollah and some other such groups; it is also a fact of history that the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded individuals pre-1945 saw European fascism as the best bet for reviving the Ummah.
OTOH, loony Yank warmongers should just shut up. But that goes for anything they say, not just screechings about Islamofascism.
Huzzah, Dave. Couldn’t agree more, especially about your last point.
:-)
They should just shut up not least (also not most) because they taint any women’s rights or human rights or any other struggle they pay lip service to. There are fools all over the place who think that talking about women’s rights in Islam is an extreme right-wing thing to do.
“Both are obsessed with purity, which is important, because that obsession is probably foundational to some of the other obsessions”
The Irish Roman Catholic Church’s obsession with purity is in some respects still with us to stay. Nonetheless, in stating this fact we are still suffering the consequences of it from the past. For example, I was (approximately one week ago) in tête-à-tête with someone who had just come from the Irish Film Institute, Temple Bar, Dublin {ICI) having seen a free film that was (wait for it) banned in Holy Catholic Ireland for precisely fifty years. It was ‘purely’ and simply for
‘moralistic’ reasons that unsurprisingly did not gel with that of the Catholic Churches teachings. It was as well banned for the same raison d’être as that of why (through the Irish court system) thousands of blameless children illegally entered into the industrial school organism (such as Goldenbridge). To get to the ‘moral’ or rather, in this case the ‘immoral’ part of the story; – the film was about an Irish woman who had six wee babies – all out of wedlock. You see illegitimacy was/is a dirty word, and all those babies by six different men borne by the Irish woman should from birth have been damned and have gone to hell. Morally speaking they should not have existed. This world was/is only for families. And by the Catholic Churches standards, only families who are made up of proper men and proper women belong to this world. Btw, illegitimate people were never allowed by the church to become nuns/sisters/priests. I’ll sing a hymn to Mary, The Mother of my God, The Virgin of all virgins, Of David’s royal blood. O teach me, Holy Mary,
A loving song to frame, When wicked men blaspheme thee, To love and bless thy name. O Lily of the Valley,
O Mystic Rose, what tree, Or flower, e’en the fairest, Is half so fair as thee? O let me, tho’ so lowly Recite my Mother’s fame. When wicked men blaspheme thee, I’ll love and bless thy name.
All the more fascinating given that Jesus was himself ‘illegitimate.’