Hello All,
Probably one of the best columns I have read to date exposing the lie of
'Islamic Fascism'.
If the truth be told the real Fascists reside in Washington.
Here is a quote from the piece which pretty much describes our current
Government to a T:
"Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats
to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension.
Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors. All successful fascists
regimes, Paxton points out, allied themselves to traditional conservative
parties, and to the military-industrial complex."
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The Big Lie About 'Islamic Fascism'
by Eric Margolis
by Eric Margolis
DIGG THIS
The latest big lie unveiled by Washington's neoconservatives are
the poisonous terms, "Islamo-Fascists" and "Islamic Fascists." They are the
new, hot buzzwords among America's far right and Christian fundamentalists.
President George W. Bush made a point last week of using
"Islamofacists" when recently speaking of Hezbullah and Hamas - both, by the
way, democratically elected parties. A Canadian government minister from the
Conservative Party compared Lebanon's Hezbullah to Nazi Germany.
The term "Islamofascist" is utterly without meaning, but packed
with emotional explosives. It is a propaganda creation worthy Dr. Goebbels, and
the latest expression of the big lie technique being used by neocons in
Washington's propaganda war against its enemies in the Muslim World.
This ugly term was probably first coined in Israel - as was the
other hugely successful propaganda term, "terrorism" - to dehumanize and
demonize opponents and deny them any rational political motivation, hence
removing any need to deal with their grievances and demands.
As the brilliant humanist Sir Peter Ustinov so succinctly put it,
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."
Both the terms "terrorism" and "fascist" have been so abused and
overused that they have lost any original meaning. The best modern definition
I've read of fascism comes in former Colombia University Professor Robert
Paxton's superb 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism.
Paxton defines fascism's essence, which he aptly terms its
"emotional lava" as: 1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of
traditional solutions; 2. belief one's group is the victim, justifying any
action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader
above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the
chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of
foreign "contamination."
Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and
national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic
hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors. All
successful fascists regimes, Paxton points out, allied themselves to
traditional conservative parties, and to the military-industrial complex.
Highly conservative and militaristic regimes are not necessarily
fascist, says Paxton. True fascism requires relentless aggression abroad and a
semi-religious adoration of the regime at home.
None of the many Muslim groups opposing US-British control of the
Mideast fit Paxton's definitive analysis. The only truly fascist group ever to
emerge in the Mideast was Lebanon's Maronite Christian Phalange Party in the
1930's which, ironically, became an ally of Israel's rightwing in the 1980's.
It is grotesque watching the Bush Administration and Tony Blair
maintain the ludicrous pretense they are re-fighting World War II. The only
similarity between that era and today is the cultivation of fear, war fever and
racist-religious hate by US neoconservatives and America's religious far right,
which is now boiling with hatred for anything Muslim.
Under the guise of fighting a "third world war" against "Islamic
fascism," America's far right is infecting its own nation with the harbingers
of WWII totalitarianism.
In the western world, hatred of Muslims has become a key
ideological hallmark of rightwing parties. We see this overtly in the United
States, France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Poland, and, most lately, Canada, and
more subtly expressed in Britain and Belgium. The huge uproar over blatantly
anti-Muslim cartoons published in Denmark laid bare the seething Islamophobia
spreading through western society.
There is nothing in any part of the Muslim World that resembles the
corporate fascist states of western history. In fact, clan and tribal-based
traditional Islamic society, with its fragmented power structures, local
loyalties, and consensus decision-making, is about as far as possible from
western industrial state fascism.
The Muslim World is replete with brutal dictatorships, feudal
monarchies, and corrupt military-run states, but none of these regimes, however
deplorable, fits the standard definition of fascism. Most, in fact, are
America's allies.
Nor do underground Islamic militant groups ("terrorists" in western
terminology). They are either focused on liberating land from foreign
occupation, overthrowing "un-Islamic" regimes, driving western influence from
their region, or imposing theocracy based on early Islamic democracy.
Claims by fevered neoconservatives that Muslim radicals plan to
somehow impose a worldwide Islamic caliphate are lurid fantasies worthy of Dr.
Fu Manchu and yet another example of the big lie technique that worked so well
over Iraq.
As Prof. Andrew Bosworth notes in an incisive essay on so-called
Islamic fascism, "Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently
opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism."
However, there are plenty of modern fascists. But to find them, you
have to go to North America and Europe. These neo-fascists advocate "preemptive
attacks against all potential enemies," grabbing other nation's resources,
overthrowing uncooperative governments, military dominance of the world, hatred
of Semites (Muslims in this case), adherence to biblical prophecies, hatred of
all who fail to agree, intensified police controls, and curtailment of
"liberal" political rights.
They revel in flag-waving, patriotic melodrama, demonstrations of
military power, and use the mantle of patriotism to feather the nests of the
military-industrial complex, colluding legislators and lobbyists. They urge war
to the death, fought, of course, by other people's children. They have turned
important sectors of the media into propaganda organs and brought the Pentagon
largely under their control.
Now, the neoconservatives are busy whipping up war against Syria
and Iran to keep themselves in power and maintain the political dynamics of
this 21st century revival of fascism.
The real modern fascists are not in the Muslim World, but
Washington. The neocons screaming fascist the loudest, are the true fascists
themselves. It's a pity that communist and leftist propaganda so debased the
term "neo-fascist" that it has become almost meaningless. Because that is what
we should be calling the so-called neocons, for that is what they really are.
August 29, 2006
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun
National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World. See his
website.
Copyright © 2006 Eric Margolis
Eric Margolis Archives
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