September 3rd, 2006
By Leonard Fein
Islamofascism is plainly the new buzzword. President Bush uses it, as do Vice President
Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. And Google has – hold your breath – 1,650,000 entries for it.
Once upon a not so long ago time, we knew what fascism was. Benito Mussolini proudly coined the term, and in a 1932 essay that today reads like the rant of a madman, he boasted, “[I]f liberty is to be the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.” Soon enough
Hitler and, less clearly, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Horthy in Hungary, and elements in
Romania, Austria and Vichy France and a few other Europeans and arguably some South
Americans either proclaimed themselves fascists or were plausibly described by critical others as fascists.
Now, however, it appears that the word has been emptied of all content. As used by the administration in Washington, it appears to mean nothing more than “reprehensible.” There is as much similarity between fascism and radical Islamism as there is, say, between AIDS and bird flu. Both are dangerous, but they require very different responses. Comes the obvious question: Why, suddenly, has Washington decided that our war is with “Islamofascists?”
Most simply, there’s the president’s insistence that we are engaged in an ideological war, that we stand for freedom while the other side stand for . . . Stands for what? What it stand for needs a name – ideally, a name suggestive of evil. Early on, the name given it was “terrorism,” which worked until people realized that “terrorism” describes a method, not an ideology. So,
“fascism,” whose specific meaning has long since been forgotten.
More: If you say “fascism,” you evoke hazy memories of the period from 1922 (when
Mussolini came to power in Italy) to at least 1945, the end of World War II – or perhaps even to
1975, when Franco died. Specifically, you evoke memories of the failure of Europe and the
United States to confront Hitler early in his rule. You imply “appeasement.” And just in case the implication is lost on your audience, you spell it out: The AP reports that on August 29, speaking at an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, Donald Rumsfeld said that as fascism and Nazism took hold in Europe, those who warned of a coming crisis were ridiculed or ignored. “I recount this history,” he said, “because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?” Speaking the very same day in
Nebraska, Vice President Cheney observed that “This is not an enemy that can be ignored, or negotiated with, or appeased.”
Now, if what we confront in Islamist extremism is as dangerous as Nazi Germany was, if
Iran is essentially the new Nazi Germany, then those who counsel negotiation rather than confrontation are the Neville Chamberlains of our time. Accordingly, we must “stay the course” in Iraq and prepare to do battle with Iran. If those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, what of those who misapply history? And what of those who mislead the people? For if Iran is today’s Nazi Germany, as
Washington sloppily implies, there is no point in talking with Iran. Bombs away. But if Iran is
Iran, bombs may well be the wrong antidote. And it is not possible for serious people to trust the word of a government that seized on an Iraqi adventure to attack an enemy that was not there because it had weapons that were not there and that has been busy making up new rationales ever since things in Iraq started to fall apart. The newest rationale: Fascism.
Here’s a word I don’t think I have ever used before: Balderdash.
It is possible that George W. Bush is a genuine idealist, a man who believes it is
America’s destiny to bring liberal democracy to the whole world. Mr. Bush has separated himself from prior administrations by asserting that while they preferred stability, he prefers freedom. But the Bush endorsement of freedom over stability, sincere or not, is all foam, no beer. Mr. Bush dances with dictators when he finds reason to; think Egypt or Saudi Arabia. In the end, stability trumps freedom.
No surprise there: American foreign policy in the unruly post Cold War period is necessarily a hodgepodge, intervening here but not there, negotiating there but not here, guided neither by ideology nor by whim but by our appetite for oil and our desire for stability. That is why the Iraq fiasco is so ironic: What began in the name of stability – weapons of mass destruction do destabilize – has provoked utter chaos instead.
Yes, Iran threatens international stability. That, presumably, is why the Reagan administration in its day aided and abetted Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas in the Iraq-Iran war. The urgent question just now is how to deal with the Iranian threat. Preparing America (or urging Israel) to let loose the dogs of war because Iran is guilty of Islamofascism is not an answer. Most likely, the word’s become so voguish to convince us that come November, it will be Republicans against Islamofascist appeasers. Forget the “neo”; the con’s the thing.