Fuck. It. Again.
by Will, 9 February 2008
You will have to read this as well
Christopher Hitchens, let’s begin with you.
Is the term “Islamo-Fascism” legitimate in terms of defining the enemy we face in the terror war?
Hitchens: The attempt by David Horowitz and his allies to launch “Islamofascism Awareness Week” on American campuses has been met with a variety of responses. One of these is a challenge to the validity of the term itself. It’s quite the done thing, in liberal academic circles, to sneer at any comparison between fascist and jihadist ideology.
People like Tony Judt write to me to say in effect that it’s ahistorical and simplistic to do so. And in some media circles another kind of reluctance applies: Alan Colmes thinks that one shouldn’t use the word “Islamic” even to designate jihad, because to do is to risk incriminating an entire religion. He and others don’t want to tag Islam even in its most extreme form with a word as hideous as fascism. Finally, I have seen and heard it argued that the term is unfair or prejudiced, because it isn’t applied to any other religion. This was most recently argued by Patrick J. Buchanan, who asked us how we would have felt if Franklin Roosevelt had described Mussolini, say, as “Christo-fascist”.
Buchanan in his own autobiography describes being raised in a home where the true heroes were Father Coughlin the Jew-baiting priest, General Franco the foe of the Reds and freemasons, and Joseph McCarthy the drink-sodden bigmouth and bigot. That’s why the term “Catholic fascist” or “clerical fascist” used to be so current on the left.
This was to recognize the undeniable fact that, from Spain to Croatia to Slovakia, there was a very direct link between fascism and the Roman Catholic Church. More recently, Yehoshua Leibowitz, editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, coined the term “Judaeo-Nazi” to describe the messianic settlers who moved onto the occupied West Bank after 1967. So there need be no self-pity among Muslims about being “singled out” on this point.
The actual term “Islamofascism” was first used in 1990 in the London Independent by the Anglo-Irish writer Malise Ruthven, who was writing about the way in which traditional Arab dictatorships used religious appeals in order to stay in power. The expression has some respectable antecedents. In his book, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, published by Princeton in 1965, the German scholar Manfred Halpern (himself a refugee from the Third Reich) employed the term “Islamic totalitarian” to characterize the mingled worship of a heroic past with the mobilization of “passion and violence”. Perhaps you suspect Halpern of undue sympathy with Judaism or Zionism? Very well, then, consider Professor Maxime Rodinson, one of the most intransigent critics of the state of Israel. In an exchange with Michel Foucault in the late 1970s, on the subject of the nascent Shi’a theocracy in Iran, Rodinson writing in Le Monde alluded to “a certain type of archaic fascism” taking the form of “an authoritarian and totalitarian state whose political police would brutally enforce the moral and social order.” I didn’t know about all of these for-runners when I employed the term “fascism with an Islamic face” to describe the assault on civil society on 11 September 2001, and to ridicule those who presented the attack as some kind of liberation theology in action. “Fascism with an Islamic face” is meant to summon a dual echo of both Alexander Dubcek and Susan Sontag (if I do say so myself), and in any case it can’t be used for everyday polemical purposes, so the question remains: does bin-Ladinism or Salafism or whatever we agree to call it have anything in common with fascism?
I think yes. 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 Franco’s accomplice General Mola so pithily phrased it in a debate with Miguel de Unamuno). 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, and burn books and destroy museums and treasures.
Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately, especially in its most recent statement on the last anniversary of 11 September, the manner in which Al Quaeda has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and “Green” movements.
There isn’t a perfect congruence. Historically, fascism laid great emphasis on glorifying the nation state and the corporate structure. There isn’t much of a corporate structure in the Muslim world, where the conditions often approximate more nearly to feudalism than capitalism, but bin-Laden’s own business conglomerate is, among other things, a rogue multi-national corporation with some links to finance-capital. As to the nation state, Al Quaida’s demand is that countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia be dissolved into one great revived Caliphate but doesn’t this have points of resemblance with the mad scheme of a “Greater Germany” or with Mussolini’s fantasy of a revived Roman empire?
Technically, no form of Islam preaches racial superiority or proposes a master-race. But in practice, Islamic fanatics operate a fascistic concept of the “pure” and the “exclusive” over the unclean and the kufar or profane. In the propaganda against Hinduism and India, for example, there can be seen something very like bigotry. In the attitude to Jews, it is clear that an inferior or unclean race is being talked about (which is why many Muslim extremists like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem gravitated to Hitler’s side). In the attempted destruction of the Hazara people of Afghanistan, who are ethnically Persian as well as religiously Shi’ite, there was also a strong suggestion of “cleansing”. And of course bin-Laden has threatened force against UN peacekeepers who might dare interrupt the race-murder campaign against African Muslims that is being carried out by his pious Sudanese friends.
Essentially, though, the point of convergence occurs at the word “totalitarian”. Study any serious proclamation about shari’a and you will be struck by the way in which Islam proposes itself as a “total” solution, covering every area of life and effectively abolishing the distinction between the public and the private. All “faith” does this, in my opinion, just as all “faiths” do it, but one cannot fail to be struck by the confidence with which Islamism legislates for absolutism in every department of existence.
This makes it permissible, it seems to me, to mention the two phenomena in the same breath and to suggest that they constitute comparable threats to civilization and civilized values. There is one final point of comparison: one that is in some ways encouraging. Both of these totalitarian systems of thought evidently suffer from a death-wish. It is surely not an accident that both of them stress suicidal tactics and sacrificial ends, just as both of them would obviously rather see the destruction of their own societies than any compromise with infidels or any dilution of the joys of absolute doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus, while we have a duty to oppose and destroy these and any similar totalitarian movements, we can also be fairly sure that they will play an unconscious part in arranging for their own destruction, as well. Meanwhile, however our critics may wail about the way in which we generalize or deal in “stereotypes”, there is hardly one of them who has protested when the American flag is paraded bedecked with a swastika (a swastika!) or a cartoon of the President is carried across campus wearing a Hitler moustache. Who exactly is it who is looking for fascism in all the wrong places?
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 4:13
Under Fascism proper - Italian Fascism - the rights of, for example, women were objectively and undeniably greater than those under any Islamist polity. The Taliban are the most extreme example but the same is true for all but the upper classes in Pakistan (and then only in private), in “Saudi” Arabia and in the Shiite brand in Iran. The same can be said for the rights of labour, political opposition of any kind from conservative to socialist, the rights of sexual minorities, iconoclastic artists, etc. etc., i.e. by almost any definable measure. Furthermore, I believe this same claim stands up against all but a handful of polities designated as “fascist” up to and including (in some instances) Nazi Germany itself. “Saudi” Arabia is judenfrei after Hitler’s own aspiration and a nuclear armed, apocalyptic Tehran could kill as many Jews in an afternoon as Germany and its allies and fellow travelers managed in the course of years.
To designate varieties of “extremist” Islam as Islamo-fascism is therefore to smear Fascism. No easy rhetorical trick but accomplished quite handily as a matter of fact.
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 5:18
It’s Yeshayahu Leibowitz, not Yehoshua Leibowitz; Isaiah, not Joshua. He was notorious for his lack of judiciousness and for having a venomous tongue.
The fact that he called the settlers Judaeo-Nazis does not in itself make it true. While there is a fringe element that is ideologically anti-Arab (like Hitchens himself), all the Jewish residents of the West Bank, including the “messianic” ones, are far removed from anything that might justify such an appellation.
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 7:44
Ben:
Hitchens was not calling the settlers Judeo-Nazis at all. He was observing that the appellation has been applied to Jews as well as Catholics, to point out that it’s specious to complain that Islam is being “singled out” when the term Islamofascist is used.
And I’m more than surprised by your assertion that Hitchens is “ideologically anti-Arab.” Odd term anyway. Sounds like some post-modernist deconstruction I’ve obviously never come across.
Flea: To call Islamofacism a smear on fascism - now that’s a “rhetorical trick” if I’ve ever seen one.
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 8:19
Will’s preceding post links to a brilliant Jeff Herf essay, which is more closely and helpfully grounded in real history.
Also as in:
“To be sure, different languages, state structures, geographical locations, and cultures distinguish contemporary totalitarianism from that of the 20th century. Nevertheless, today’s radical Islamists have much in common with their fascist and Nazi predecessors. The ideological attack on liberal democracy and cultural modernity, on full equality for women, on the priority of the freedom of the individual in the face of the pressures of collectivism, the vision of a totalitarian society and especially and most of all the murderous hatred of the Jews, all of this returns now enveloped in a religious discourse. As their fascist and Nazi predecessors once did, now the radical Islamist propagate paranoid conspiracy theories combined with fanatical anti-Semitism and the radical anti-Americanism that is bound up with it. With these ideological foundations, the Islamists, just as the Nazis of the 1940s, have legitimated the murder of defenseless civilians.”
And so on.
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 14:15
If you can fault my logic, Terry, feel free to do so. The point is the Taliban and the like are objectively worse than the darkest example we have in our political lexicon.
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 14:53
Read also Paul Berman on the subject of direct links between fascist ideology and Islamist ideology.
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 15:55
To quibble: Not just Fascist ideology, Nazi ideology.
Saturday 9 February 2008 at 17:04
Flea:
But then it would come down to a kind of a silly quarrel, about which ideology is “worse”, say, Talibanism or Nazism, an it would miss the point, which is not about words, but about the historical and ideological affinities and origins of Islamism.
The “logic” of your statement was that it’s a rhetorical trick to equate fascism with certain barbarisms that manifest in Islamic terms (I think it’s rather more than that, but nevermind). Your rhetorical trick was to say that to do so is to “smear” fascism.
I didn’t say it was faulty logic. I noticed it was a rhetorical trick is all.
G’wan, admit it. No shame in it.
Sunday 10 February 2008 at 0:09
[hp sauce right wing loon — deleted]
[Horowitz is rightly despised — he’s a cretin and scum — personally speaking I’d have him shot]
Sunday 10 February 2008 at 1:51
Try these on for size Terry:
Islamo-feminism.
Islamo-democracy.
Islamo-archaeology.
Etc.
Sunday 10 February 2008 at 14:25
Whenever a guy picks up a baseball bat to attack a couple leftists, the leftists will argue with each other about what the attack should be called, his choice of weapon, etc., until they’re beating too badly to continue arguing.
Kee hyphen rist!
Monday 11 February 2008 at 0:43
Is the term “Islamo-Fascism” legitimate in terms of defining the enemy we face in the terror war?
Who cares if it is legitimate in some sort of a historical context, that context is not helpful. “Islamofacism” belittles the jihadist movement as an offshoot of mere facism. Facism today is long defeated, it is men who play at dress up and the basis of every schtick laden Hollywood villian with a euro accent. To call someone facist is a grown-up equivalent of saying they have “cooties”.
There is one final point of comparison: one that is in some ways encouraging. Both of these totalitarian systems of thought evidently suffer from a death-wish. It is surely not an accident that both of them stress suicidal tactics and sacrificial ends, just as both of them would obviously rather see the destruction of their own societies than any compromise with infidels or any dilution of the joys of absolute doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus, while we have a duty to oppose and destroy these and any similar totalitarian movements, we can also be fairly sure that they will play an unconscious part in arranging for their own destruction, as well.
This is arrogance verging on hubris, merely equating our jihadists to the defeated facists will not predetermine their defeat. Suicidal tactics can be effective, sacraficial ends can be practiced - these do not constitute a “death-wish”. We need “to oppose and destroy these and any similar totalitarian movements”, because they are anti-pathic to our society and because we should not expect them to implode on their own.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 1:14
Dearest Mr Unaha-Clospie:
You are completely loopy (most everything you write is). It isn’t the malicious crap of an out and out madman mind you. It is just bonkers. However, you are rather endearing at getting everything wrong in a pompous sort of way. So I err on the side of your good self having your say. But then again, I would wouldn’t I?
You are most welcome. I think I like you despite everything.
X
Monday 11 February 2008 at 2:05
John is funny. Good one.
“Try these on for size,” says Flea. But why? If you’re saying we should just call fascism what it is and drop the Islamo bit, okay, that would be sensible, probably most of the time. At least it would avoid the silly arguments John alludes to.
But it would also violate Flea’s own “don’t smear fascism” rule, and as Unaha makes clear in his first couple of sentences, it’s also just insufficient and unnecessary.
If the point Unaha goes on to make is that a full-throated and both-barrels response to jihadism is necessary no matter whether some history-faculty eggheads have discerned some strains of German or Italian in the jihadist pedigree, then I’m with Unaha.
But to entirely dismiss the nature and relevance of fascism in all this is to make Unaha’s mistake, which is the assertion that fascism has been defeated.
No it bloody well hasn’t been.
That’s like saying William Wilberforce or Abe Lincoln defeated slavery. There are more slaves in the world today than there ever were (and I’m not just tossing the term around for rhetorical convenience, either).
Fascism is as commonplace as ever, too, most noticeably in the so-called “Muslim world.” Neither Hollywood stereotypes nor the slovenly misuse of the word among people who carry on about cootie-infestedness will change that fact.
There is no hubris or arrogance, at all, in Hitchens’ observation that the common death-wish aspects of German and Islamist facism presents certain encouraging implications for contemporary struggle.
We will have to see if he’s right about present-day jihadists, I suppose, although there is already evidence that strongly suggests that he is right, especially from recent developments in Iraq. But he is not calling for a retreat or a cessation or a lessing of our hostilities. If you think that’s what Hitchens meant, you might re-read what he said. Read anything of Hitchens, for that matter, and you’ll soon disabuse yourself of any notion that he subscribes to the view that words alone will pre-determine jihadist defeat.
But I’m happy to see Unaha is at least in favour of fascist-killing, while preferring to call it something else. That’s an order of magnitude greater than the bleating of bat-bashed leftists John pokes fun at.
Understanding the origins and affinities of what has come to be called Islamo-fascism is productive and useful and long-overdue work for academics and historians and the rest of us.
Jeff Herf explains why.
Read him.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 3:27
By the way.
I went to the shops this afternoon to buy a fucking toothbrush.
Could I get what I wanted? Could I fuck as like!
What I wanted was a fucking toothbrush — what i had on offer was a load of fucking crap that was marketed as a fucking toothbrush. Shit that was overpriced and over-marketed. Extra pieces of crap stuck on the fucker left right and centre (the bastards).
Now listen and listen good. I have gotten to the end of my tether now. If I am unable to buy a fucking toothbrush like what I want the morra I am going on a fucking rampage.
Fuckers will be injured. And that.
Give me a fucking toothbrush like what I want you bastards!
Monday 11 February 2008 at 4:31
Like Hitchens, do not like Horowitz. To see Hitchens go defend this term of Horowitz’ is annoying.
Of course there are similarities between jihadism and facism or Islamic theocratic regimes and mid 20th facist dictatorships. And Islamofacism sure does announce to the world that this is a bad thing making the label of Islamofacism a useful attention grabbing tool, but nothing more.
What does it mean? That Islam is inherently facist (as Horowitz probably would have us believe)?
Which is plain wrong, equating Islam directly to facism is stupid. There are many self judged Muslims who do not support jihadism or even sharia.
Or taken the other way, the jihadists are followers of Islam who are corrupted by facist ideals?
Perhaps yes, but there are some aspects of the Muslim world which I believe contribute to jihadism that are inconsistant with facism - feudalist, tribal or oligarchic regimes are not classically facist, but Saudi and Pakistan have contributed a lot.
My blowhard, pompous, big-headed gripe is that whilst facism is indeed a culture with a deathwish (fight everyone) mentality these regimes are not facist. These regimes do not wish to fight anyone yet support jihadists (islamofacists) who do, because it allows them to externalise their dissent and manage their own internal affairs better. I pompously view the jihadi as a (perhaps facist influenced) by-product at most, a death-cult generated by non-facist regimes. Attacking both barrels the death-cultist/Islamofacist/jihadist movements is not going to solve much without the reform of those regimes. It is hubris to say that the jihadi will inevitably be defeated as they have “death-wish aspects”. The stressing of “suicidal tactics and sacrificial ends” to a jihadi whose actual purpose is to go die somewhereelse fighting against someoneelse makes “perfect” tactical and strategic sense to a dictatorial regime looking to maintain power.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 4:41
A jihadi is a well armed dupe.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 4:50
A jihadi is a well armed dupe.
Scratch that, more a poorly armed facist who is fighting a meaningless misdirected rebellion against everything.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 11:54
A comic character - until he detonates next to you.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 15:19
Flea - It’s a matter of degree, yes. But it is only a matter of degree. This is an elevator pitch, not a doctoral thesis.
Will - Try Boots. They do two-packs of simple white plastic toothbrushes that don’t glow, vibrate, have cartoon characters on, play a tune through your jaw or look like an eel’s psychedelic running shoe.
Monday 11 February 2008 at 22:27
What pisses me off about Flea’s comments (ok — one aspect - there’s other stuff also that does the same), about Islamism and fascism is the pseudo-intellectual onanism about whether this or that conforms to this or that definition of fascism, or is better or worse than the pathology uncontroversially understood to be fascism, is worse than useless.
The point is only to know the enemy when we see it, and understanding fascism serves the purpose of knowing the enemy’s weaknesses and strengths, knowing his movements, knowing where he lives, which room he sleeps in, and how to kill him as quickly and efficiently as possible (although saying all that I wouldn’t, personally speaking, be too averse to a bit of torture before putting to death the scum).
Unless I’ve missed something.
Still love Flea mind you — a very canny lad — knows his stuff and writes very well.
Tuesday 12 February 2008 at 2:14
Unless I’ve missed something.
Need to know where they come from and how do they sustain themselves.
Tuesday 12 February 2008 at 2:20
Allow me to clarify my intent, as badly misunderstood as it evidently has been.
I regard Islamism as worse than Fascism and arguably worse than Nazism (or its Arab variant, Ba’athism). Feel free to disagree, both are horrendous, obviously.
My “smear” remark is to underline this contention by suggesting the worst evil we have in our political lexicon - viz, fascism - pales next to Islamism. Again, you may disagree.
I am also open to the suggestion Islamism is a form of fascism (note the lower-case “f”), provided we use the term following Deleuze and Guattari and, specifically following Kenneth Dean and Brian Massumi’s Deleuzian riff “First and Last Emperors“, a book I recommend to everybody.
I am also sympathetic to those who might argue this is a Hulk vs Superman argument. Superman cannot be beaten but the Hulk’s strength grows geometrically as his rage increases, etc. Wankerism, in other words.
But then my specific point is that life under the Fascists proper (this being Italy we are talking about) was better - I am going to double-down here - incomparably* better than under the Taliban. Especially if you were, for example, a woman and not, for example, leftist intellectual guys arguing about politics. But then my point would still hold. It would also hold in Bradford or Birmingham or the banlieues of Paris or anywhere else women are being sexually mutilated, disfigured by acid, murdered for dishonouring their fathers, etc. etc. etc.
My point, gentleman, is that our worst metaphor does not cut it. To append -fascism to Islamism is to understate the problem, radically so.
* Hyperbole and bold fonts go together.
Tuesday 12 February 2008 at 3:30
Oddly enough - pretty sure I’ve had this whole debate against the validity of “Islamo-insert bad prefix here-ism” terminology at Pyjamas Media or IBA a couple of years ago. There the argument was for islamocommunism or islamosocialism (or indeed islamofacism which is considered in that sphere to be a variant socialist ideology) with the same stretching for similarities by the affirmatives. Their scholar of merit was Horowitz and I was a leftist fucking kook over there - now I am a rightist kook, shit happens.
Instead of rehashing I’ll state my position:
All those “-isms” are wrong and I am not even sure it has that much to do with Islam. I reckon the core issue is that a group of local feudal/tribal lordlings have had a whole heap of wealth handed to them and this is their way of coping with the “problems” this causes them.
The Arab are states are effectively tribal, with one tribe holding feudal reins of power. The subject tribes are jealous and the royals buy off, threaten & play off the elders in a normal feudal way to keep their position. The royals big problem is the large number of healthy, unmarried, young men (& some young women) who have nothing to lose - they are practically immune to threats and disdainful of small handouts. The royals cannot go to war against each other (the traditional use of young men), because attacking neighbouring tribes would stop the oil being pumped. They cannot attack anyone else, because they are incredibly backward tribal societies who are 1000x worse at everything than any modern society (see how badly they do against Israel every time). They cannot reform, because that would mean handing over the keys to the Boeing 747 with gold toilet seats to some politician. They can however build a religious cult out of local practices that tells the locals they are superior beings run low by foreign infidels and that they need to go out to physically reclaim their honour - thus export their ambitious violent risk takers.
All the evidence that Horowitz/Hitchens put forward is that these ambitious violent risk takers are “facists”. Could be right, could be wrong - they’re both smart guys (even though one is a complete tool) so on balance let’s assume they’re correct. So fucking what? Kill every last one of them and they’ll still be an endless supply.
This is feudalism which (for all its faults) is the most historically stable form of government we have ever concieved, there have been thousands of years of almost totally feudal rule - there is no fucking death wish. These are princes, kings, emirs screwing with us on their royal perogative. This is nothing so advanced as facism.
Wednesday 13 February 2008 at 0:02
Flea,
My point, gentleman, is that our worst metaphor does not cut it. To append -fascism to Islamism is to understate the problem, radically so.
Fascism is not our worst metaphor.
5.4 million people or so have been killed in the current Congolese civil war - 1998 onwards. Slaves are taken, the defenceless are slaughtered, cannibalism occurs, women are raped, boys are sodomised, limbs are amputated, famines are created, water sources are poisoned, bodies are left where they fall. This is a regional conflict that doesn’t make the news much - because it arises in, takes place in and stays in a society entirely divorced from our own.
This is inter-tribal conflict with tribes trying to impose feudal dominance - a better basis for the analysis of Islamism than fascism, because Islamic countries are tribal and feudalistic. Islamist terrorism is at its core a societal problem within some of the Islamic states, it is not a case of an external “islamofascist” entity causing trouble.
Wednesday 13 February 2008 at 1:36
Will,
The point is only to know the enemy when we see it, and understanding fascism serves the purpose of knowing the enemy’s weaknesses and strengths, knowing his movements, knowing where he lives, which room he sleeps in, and how to kill him as quickly and efficiently as possible (although saying all that I wouldn’t, personally speaking, be too averse to a bit of torture before putting to death the scum).
Unless I’ve missed something.
Only the fucking obvious. The enemy is (as always) a rich, fat prick who lives in a palace or twenty with servants to wipe his nose & arse and drives a hundred fancy cars whilst ruling over his subject poor. The mere trifling fact that the seriously misguided self-professed rebels against this royal prick are shooting at you and me is largely irrelevent.
If they are not of the royal tribe those subject poor have got three choices - kiss the ground the royal hoof walks on, emmigrate or rebel. Which would you choose? This “islamofascist” rebellion is the only game in their town and it is not even real.
Hitchens points out that Al Qaeda has demanded “that countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia be dissolved into one great revived Caliphate” which to everyone listening says “we are rebels“. They aren’t. There have been 5000 attacks against Iraq and 5 against Saudi (4 of which were foiled), there is fuck all rebellion there. Islamofascism is a legitimate need for rebellion channelled towards external targets - us.
Sure we need to hunt down and kill these rebel “scum”, because they hurt us. But it will never end as long as there is a class of fat rich prick princelings ruling the ME. What we need to do is to forcefully encourage reform (neocon agenda), invade (imperialist agenda) or support a fucking real rebellion (an agenda once attributed to a russian with an allergic reaction to ice picks - not that anybody follows that sort of shit anymore).
Wednesday 13 February 2008 at 1:45
i get you Unaha.
Really I do.
The source of ideology and that.
I really get you.
Honest.
Wednesday 13 February 2008 at 4:38
Yeah, I know. Just about finished, this one more rant to go then done.
After we beat the “islamofascists” of Al Qaeda (by doing all that stuff you said, torturing a few) they’ll be another organisation to take their place. It will probably be similarly weak with a careless regard for its foot soldiers lives too, we could also call the new entity fascist. So on and so forth a perpetual war on “terror” becomes a perpetual war on islamofascism. Our kill ratio will most likely improve with this better definition of the enemy.
Actually engaging in perpetual war is a pretty good choice for us. It is no big problem, because we will always be stronger than they will - like Hitchens says fascism is a culture with a death wish and anyway they are reliant on funding by ill-educated, weak-arse feudalistic societies. We really can’t lose. Also the oil producers of the ME remain pretty stable and totally reliant on oil export to fund themselves, by virtue of them exporting the most dangerous, rebellious sections of their lower classes to us as immigrants or terrorists. Those oil exporters will be forever (until their oil runs out, when they’ll just be poor and we’ll care as much as we do about the Congo) wealthy compliant customers of our technological economies and never get into a position to compete.
There are some risks in choosing to engage in perpetual conflict, by focusing on the terrorist/islamofascist armies and ignoring why & from where they came. From the mundane - they might stumble into possession of a nuke or two. To the profound - there may be a 10 y.o. girl in Tabuk who with half a chance could invent an everlasting toothbrush, but is currently betrothed to marry her second cousin who is on the fast track (he has the 2nd biggest beard) in the Muttawa.
Thursday 14 February 2008 at 21:33
P.S. in the interests of full disclosure the reason given as being banned from Jihadwatch - I am an Islamo(christian)fascist according to Hugh Fitzgerald. So obviously you should disregard the above as part of our disinfomation strategy in whilst we take over the world.