Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Islamic Fascism 101 - On all they’ve done to earn the name.
National Review ^ | 25 Sept 2006 | VDH

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: crushislam; islam; islamicfascism; islamofascism; jihad; muslims; vdh; victordavishanson; waronterror; wot
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100101-105 next last
To: katyusha

The USSR also tried to base their economy on autarky. Are you going to tell us that the USSR had no natural resources? Autarky and planned economies go together. It is inconsistent with a free economy.


81 posted on 09/25/2006 4:07:35 PM PDT by attiladhun2 (Islam is a despotism so vile that it would warm the heart of Orwell's Big Brother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: katyusha
You are obviously too young to remember the period between roughly 1945-1960 when the US was, essentially, economically self-sufficient. Everything you bought whether it was a TV set, radio, automobile, toy, clothing, footwear, home appliance, flatware etc etc etc was MADE IN THE USA. Only exception would have been the diamond in the engagement ring you offered to your girlfriend after the sock hop was over!

I am not too young and you are forgetting one little fact about that era. Both the indusrial bases of both Europe and Japan had been destroyed during WWII and this country was untouched by the war and benefited greatly from new industries, such as aerospace and electronics, created by the necessity of war. In other words, this country was practically the only one in the free world with an intact industrial plant during much of the post-war period you mentioned. Using this country's unique position then as proof of the viability of autarky ignores the fact that we could not possibly continue to possess that unique economic position once Europe and Japan rebuilt their industrial bases.
82 posted on 09/25/2006 4:23:38 PM PDT by attiladhun2 (Islam is a despotism so vile that it would warm the heart of Orwell's Big Brother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: attiladhun2
What about Indonesia?  Are they not as the biggest collection of mohammedheads on the planet deserve the right to be called 'Island-Nazis,' LOL!

It's not about geography as in sands, islands, it's more astronomical as in moonbatology.

and avoids the offensive "Islamo" part

"A thing is, what it is."   - Aristotle

83 posted on 09/25/2006 6:38:14 PM PDT by quantim (Victory is not relative, it is absolute.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies]

To: daviddennis
"The Looming Tower" bump.

Interesting from a religious POV, and for a look into the depths of insanity.

84 posted on 09/25/2006 10:05:28 PM PDT by onedoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: attiladhun2

--Using this country's unique position then as proof of the viability of autarky ignores the fact that we could not possibly continue to possess that unique economic position once Europe and Japan rebuilt their industrial bases.--

Why not? The point is that the USA was able to supply just about everything consumers and industry needed, with the exception of some precious gems, oddball minerals for aerospace, and some ancillary food items. If that's not autarky, its pretty darn close.


85 posted on 09/26/2006 8:24:18 AM PDT by katyusha (Those who fail history are doomed to go to summer school)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: attiladhun2

--The USSR also tried to base their economy on autarky. Are you going to tell us that the USSR had no natural resources? Autarky and planned economies go together. It is inconsistent with a free economy.--


From 1945-1980 the Soviet economy actually grew at a healthy pace. In 1970 the Soviet GNP was 50 percent of the US; in 1980 it was 60 percent (i.e. no. 2 economy, Japan was a close 3d). But there is no reason for autarky to be at loggerheads with a free economy. There is no reason why an economy can't be free and robust WITHIN ITS OWN BORDERS, especially with a prosperous consumer base and an educated, productive workforce.


86 posted on 09/26/2006 8:27:43 AM PDT by katyusha (Those who fail history are doomed to go to summer school)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 81 | View Replies]

To: supremedoctrine
We need some terms and reference points WE can understand to help us get a grip on the enemy, because he is otherwise so difficult to understand, and so intractable, and intransigent.

Agreed, but neither WWII nor Hanson's other favorite war, the Pelopenesian conflict, will provide signifcantly informative references. If we keep cramming Bin Laden and his cohorts into the WWII box, we're fighting the last war. Sounds like a self-defeating project to me.

87 posted on 09/26/2006 12:03:56 PM PDT by Dumb_Ox (http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: Dumb_Ox

I know what you mean about a self-defeating project. This is unprecedented in what we fondly call "modern history" but does have more in common, say, with exported "guerrilla war" of the kind that eventually killed the late unlamented Che Guevara, courtesy of Castro and the Cuban Revolution. This enemy does not represent an organized, sovereign nation-state, wears no recognizable uniforms, does everything surreptitiously,loves to kill innocent non-combatants, and does not offer therefore the possibilities of any formal surrender. So we are left back at square one---you will remember that when the WOT was officially launched, the Administration already had its ducks in a row and told us (unfortunately for the first and last time) just how long this could take, and on how many different fronts it would have to be fought, and how there might be small and large successes, but somehow, never a decisive defeat. I have to admit that I simply can't wrap my mind around this, and I think our war policies whether the Bush administration wants to admit it or not, do have a structure, but are a lot more improvised, flexible and spontaneous than they let on. We are in the dark historically. I also have to admit that we could be nudged into a very difficult period where the only way out would be to accept the fact that only massive carnage on an unprecedented level would have an effect. I simply can't see the USA allowing itself to be bullied and intimidated indefinetely. One step I would urge is that ALL Western nations would ACT NOW , assess their situations realistically, (as Australia has done) and begin wholesale deportations of their troublesome Islamic populations, INCLUDING AND PRIMARILY the sleek Advance Men like CAIR and all those "Islamic Councils" frontgroups that are all over Europe and the rest of the world.


88 posted on 09/26/2006 12:27:01 PM PDT by supremedoctrine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies]

To: Dumb_Ox

Oh and BTW, are you on that kevinjjones.blogspot thing in your tagline, or do you run it.?I went to it but couldn;t identify what was what.


89 posted on 09/26/2006 12:29:15 PM PDT by supremedoctrine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies]

To: RKV
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.

Well, a list isn't an argument. What did Zen Buddhism have to do with Japanese militarism? Is there such a thing as "Shinto Buddhism"? Or are Shinto and Buddhism separate religions? How is Gamal Abdel Nasser comparable to "Nordic folk romance" or Wagnerian opera?

VD is a classics professor, not an expert on military strategy or the Middle East. And his record in writing on those subjects isn't the best. I suspect he's even more out of his depth on Japanese history and culture. It's sad that people get taken in by him.

90 posted on 09/26/2006 12:46:19 PM PDT by x
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tolik; Convert from ECUSA; SJackson; yonif; Simcha7; American in Israel; Slings and Arrows; ...
Victor Davis Hanson defining "Islamic Fascism." This man is a national treasure.







AMERICA AT WAR
At Salem the Soldier's Homepage ~
Honored member of FReeper Leapfrog's "Enemy of Islam" list.
Islam, a Religion of Peace®? Some links...  by backhoe
Translated Pre-War IRAQ Documents  by jveritas
Mohammed, The Mad Poet Quoted....  by PsyOp
"PLAES DO NOT TOCH THE WAR"  by AnnaZ
One FReeper On The Line  by SNOWFLAKE
The Clash of Ideologies - A Review

"It's time we recognized the nature of the conflict. It's total war and we are all involved. Nobody on our side is exempted because of age, gender, or handicap. The Islamofacists have stolen childhood from the world." [FReeper Retief]

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Paleologus

American Flag

91 posted on 09/26/2006 8:20:37 PM PDT by Salem (FREE REPUBLIC - Fighting to win within the Arena of the War of Ideas! So get in the fight!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: RKV

Don't miss the latest song -- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1709006/posts


92 posted on 09/26/2006 8:52:45 PM PDT by doug from upland (Stopping Hillary should be a FreeRepublic Manhattan Project)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Salem

93 posted on 09/27/2006 5:37:32 AM PDT by Convert from ECUSA (Regarding islam: Osculate meas Sanctas Romanas nates (with thanks to Alouette for translation)P)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies]

To: x
Having trouble connecting the dots are you? :) Without having read a thing on this thread other than your post, let me reiterate: I don't like grand unified theories. They generate more noise than light.
94 posted on 09/27/2006 8:37:14 PM PDT by Torie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 90 | View Replies]

To: sageb1

"It's like wishing one could be six again."

What a silly thing to say. Would you care to explain this off the cuff remark?


95 posted on 09/28/2006 7:45:52 AM PDT by katyusha (Those who fail history are doomed to go to summer school)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: katyusha

If you include military hardware and substandard construction projects and consumer goods in GNP, then I guess you could say the USSR was second to the US. In actuality, in an autarkic economy like the USSR's, the people lived at a 3d world level of existence with frequent shortages of things we take for granted. Thanx but no thanx.


96 posted on 09/28/2006 9:25:00 AM PDT by attiladhun2 (Islam is a despotism so vile that it would warm the heart of Orwell's Big Brother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 86 | View Replies]

To: quantim

Islam came out of the deserts of the Hejaz and its ritual language continues to be the Classical Arabic the was spoken in that region. Islamic social institutions (such as purdah) are taken from 7th cen. Arabia and are still practiced by Muslims everywhere. Hence, "Sand-Nazi" is accurate no matter where the Jihadists might be from.


97 posted on 09/28/2006 9:46:39 AM PDT by attiladhun2 (Islam is a despotism so vile that it would warm the heart of Orwell's Big Brother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies]

To: attiladhun2

I certainly wouldn't want to live at a living standard anywhere near that of the old USSR either. One must remember though, that living standards in Russia (including the old tsarist empire)were horribly low compared to Western Europe and the USA, and they're STILL horribly low now. I believe that Russia had and still has a "culture" of poverty which has kept living standards low, regardless of what political or economic system it had. No entrepenurial class worthy of the name; it missed the industrial revolution entirely(the Stalin years were a mad dash to catch up) and collectivizing agriculture strangled the one aspect of Russian economic life that actually worked before the revolution. None of these factors had much to do with a policy of economic autarky--the USSR did have trading relations with both the Red and Free Worlds, but mostly as a supplier (leaving out military hardware for the moment) of oil and gas, rather like some Middle Eastern "ragistan."


98 posted on 09/28/2006 10:03:42 AM PDT by katyusha (Those who fail history are doomed to go to summer school)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 96 | View Replies]

To: katyusha
Life is improving in Russia. As they gain the skills to participate in a free (relatively) economy it will improve even more. The whole place has all kinds of potential but is capital-poor. Once these factors are overcome, the place could become an economic powerhouse that could lift it and all Europe out of its economic doldrums.
99 posted on 09/28/2006 10:47:22 AM PDT by attiladhun2 (Islam is a despotism so vile that it would warm the heart of Orwell's Big Brother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 98 | View Replies]

To: Torie
Historians like to classify each other as "lumpers," who see the similarities between things and form big theories, and "splitters," who can't overlook the differences between things. They concentrate on the particulars and avoid big picture theories.

The thing about VD is he's got the idea in advance and he's ransacking history for the particulars to fill in his big picture. He's not considering the differences between the German, Italian, Japanese, and Arab cases. Even when we were fighting Japan, American public opinion avoided simply regarding Japan as another example of European fascism. Aside from Marxists, we were "splitters" who saw the differences, and use the term "militarism," rather than fascism.

His way of thinking is too subjective for me. Now we're involved in conflict with Chavez and other Latin American demagogues. So soon VD will dig up examples of governments and parties that under other circumstances might have favored or been neutral towards, and push them as examples of "Latinofascism." I certainly don't say that such movements and tendencies were good, just that the pattern gets imposed on things because of the needs of present policy. It doesn't always grow out of careful study of things in themselves and their own characteristics.

100 posted on 09/28/2006 1:46:16 PM PDT by x
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 94 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100101-105 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson