Posted by Eugene Volokh:
More on Islamofascism,
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_10_21-2007_10_27.shtml#1193091542
from [1]Christopher Hitchens, in Slate. An excerpt:
The most obvious points of comparison would be these: 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.
I think he treats the other similarity -- both are repressive of
political, religious, and social dissent -- as too obvious to need
mentioning. He also goes on to acknowledge differences, related to
corporatism and racial superiority (though suggests that Islamofascism
does in some measure involve some claims of racial or ethnic
superiority).
References
1. http://www.slate.com/id/2176389/
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