Ian Pindar has a review in Saturday’s Guardian of Toby Green’s new book, Inquisition: The Reign of Fear. If I am reading him right, the review seems to be a perfect illustration of both the dangers of historical analogy and the intellectual confusion surrounding the struggle against Islamist terrorism. Pindar focuses on what he sees as the book’s argument that the Inquisition was ‘about power not religion‘ and the need to ‘create a fictitious enemy within to channel the forces of popular unrest away from the throne‘. Then, somewhat speculatively, he writes, 

Just as Arthur Miller used the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 to comment on McCarthyite
America, so in this book Green appears to be using the Inquisition to comment obliquely on the “war on terror”. He makes no explicit comparison, leaving the parallels to speak for themselves. 

I cannot say whether this was the author’s intention or not as I have not read the book, but Pindar seems to have no doubts and uses the rest of his review to draw out what he sees these to be. He quotes Green as writing, 

“Propaganda was winning … Thus soon even reasonable Christians believed in the archetype of the seditious crypto-Muslim and came to believe that these fanatics had to be stopped before they could succeed in their plan of destroying the nation and its way of life.” 

Is Green drawing a parallel between 16th Century Spain and today? If so there is a big distinction. Far from being a ‘fictitious enemy‘, Islamist terrorism is only too real and addicted to the slaughter of innocent people around the globe - this would be a false analogy if ever I have seen one. 

Pindar goes on to write, 

Green argues persuasively that the Inquisition’s vast bureaucratic reach into the private lives of its citizens makes it a forerunner of the modern totalitarian state, while its obsession with limpieza de sangre or “purity of blood” is an awful forewarning of fascism. 

As someone who sees totalitarianism as an historical constant rather than a feature of modernity, I have to agree. However, what is Pindar trying to say? Is he suggesting that the ‘war on terror’ is turning Western governments into precursors of fascist states? If so, I think he has got his analogies in a terrible tangle. 

What the ‘war on terror’ is actually fighting is the attempt to create a new Inquisition. Islamist terrorism embodies Inquisition values. Just look at theocratic rule today; from the arrest of young men for having the wrong haircut to condemning journalists to death for being ‘enemies of God’. Despite some of the egregious aspects - Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, ‘extraordinary rendition’, the threat to some civil liberties, etc. - all of which I unreservedly condemn, the ‘war on terror’ was conceived to defend liberal capitalist society against the establishment of a new totalitarianism rather than being a threat to impose one.  

I am cautious about dragging out the old cliché, ‘the lessons of history’, but if there is one to be learnt here, it is that fascism needs opposing. I am not sure that Ian Pindar has learnt it properly.