Not for the first time either, IIRC. “Islamo-fascist” and variants have entered common parlance via talk radio and blogs. But do you think the terms are accurate? I could see “Islamic extremists/absolutists/terrorists,” but “fascist” implies to me an ideology of absolute obedience to a state, cultlike worship of a leader, secret police, a military-dominated economy, big rallies, persecution of an ethnic minority, bad art, etc.
What say my fellow Dopers?
Can’t call them “Islamo-Commies”, now can you?
We’re fighting a lot of people, ranging from religious fanatics to resistance fighters to the personally vengeful.
He harps on the Islamic part because he doesn’t want to embarrass his Christian fanatic base; remember; Christian fanatic = good; Islamic fanatic = bad.
The Islamic fanatics are theocrats, not fascists; he doesn’t want to call them that because the Republican party is stuffed with theocrats.
Political terms have been stripped of all meaning beyond their PR punch. Words like fascist, communist, socialist, terrorist, democracy, republic, and freedom no longer have any more practical value than new and improved, added value, or pearly white.
big rallies: check
persecution of ethnic and religious minorities: check.
Bad art: check
etc: double check
I’d say it fits well enough, not perfect, but it’ll do. elucidator’s Islamo-Commines would probably fit even better, but for some undeservedly reasons doesn’t carry the same ominous suggestions – which are definitely needed with the guys we’re dealing with here.
Anyway. Now I’ve been hearing dopers whine and bitch and moan for years about him using The War on Terrorism (TWAT) and then he comes out and calls it for what everybody has known all along, and then this is wrong too.
and my favourite: ”progressive” – which some of the most reactionary groups now use to describe themselves.
“Commies” implies Marxism, and Marxists and theocrats don’t always get along.
Iran under Khomeini was very close to a fascist state, though, in all the OP’s respects.
Daniel
An unassailable assertion. Think you’re on pretty firm ground there, Lefty.
What I find myself wondering, to no particular point…
I listen to wing-nut radio quite a bit, God alone knows why. But it seems to me thinking back that the “Islamo-facist” thingy was one I had heard quite a bit from the mouths of InsHannity, Limpbaugh, the CoulterBeast, and, of course, Michelle Malkin, “The Original Screaming Yellow Zonker”.
Is this the first time the phrase has been picked up and utilized by the Bushiviks?
Islamo-Fascist is a fine term. First of all, it describes them pretty well. Second it helps separate them from Muslims who want no part of terrorism and are good and decent people. An alternate term you often hear is “Islamist” or “Radical Islamist”, and for my money that term is too imprecise, as it includes fundamentalist muslims that do not believe in Jihad against the west and who oppose terror as a tactic.
For example, you could make the case that Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani is an Islamist. But I don’t believe he is an Islamo-Fascist as are the rulers of Iran, and he is an opponent of al-Qaida and other terror organizations.
Until a better term comes along that accurately describes the foes in this particular conflict, “Islamo-Fascist” will do, at least for popular discussion.
He gotten more certain of the verbiage since then:
Based on Bin Laden’s stated goal of a world-wide Islamic state including the conversion or killing of non-Islamic individuals, I think the term works just fine.
Der Trihs, while all of these definitions tend to be fuzzy and overlap somethat, wouldn’t you want to reserve the term “theocrat” for those situations that seem more focused on a particular way of life and less focused on killing all non-believers? By using the term “theocrat” with respect to AQ and Bin Laden, I think you do a disservice to those groups of people that want peacefull religious states.
Actually, he says we are at war with islamic fascists. I guess he is just giving advance notice that if we capture these guys they will be treated as prisoners of war with all the Geneva Convention rights due POWs. (or maybe not… what do you think?)
So how many “things” are we at war with right now… drugs, poverty, crime, terrorism, islamic fascists…
I forget–has Congress declared was on Obesity yet? THAT’s gonna be a tough one. There’s a LOT of “fifth column” types in our midst. Maybe 30 or 40% of USA citizens? And if you figure the percentage by weight… golly!
There isn’t enough organization for fascism, so far as I can tell, and too many different enemies to lump them togather. Iraq, for instance, is a sectarian free-for-all, so nothing like a fascist state currently exists. Al Qaeda is stateless and decentralized. Afghanistan is, again, substantially a loose confederation of different ethnicities, none having an upper hand whilst the US occupies that region. It’s quite possible both Iraq and Afghanistan could splinter someday, and whether or not some al Qaeda figure will grow up into a fascistic leader is entirely uncertain. Among the purported goals of al Qaeda is the creation of a pan-Arab Islamic state (with the elimination of Israel, of course), but right now they’re pretty focused on blowing up Westerners and fomenting unrest wherever they can, and that includes plenty of Asian regions. They’re just pack of thugs, really.
Not really. You can’t make people all live according to one, strict, set of religious rules without force and the threat of force. The belief that there is One True Way that should be followed combined with the willingness to use force and coercion pretty much guarantees eventual attacks against unbelievers. They might not say so or even believe so at the beginning, but that’s what would happen in any attempt to set up a theocracy.
Calling them fascists (did that start with Hitchens? Sullivan? one of those neo-con Op-Ed promoters around 2001)* is simply a way to tie the hatred toward one universally despised group from the 20th century to the people we want to hate in the 21st century. Any objective study of fascism eliminates the Islamists on several major points. (“Islamists”–in contradistinction to Muslims–works quite well, but it does not get the emotional umph that one can encourage by appealing to the hatred toward fascism.) In addition, by calling them “Islamic Fascists” he provides a way to avoid calling them “Islamic Fundamentalists” to the chagrin of the Christian Right.
It would help if we had a good solid definition of the term “fascism” to begin with.
Certainly, if defined as a creature of its time and place, “fascism” as a self-described polotical philosophy existed only prior to 1945 and in some isolated places thereafter, and has no connection to present day “Islamists” or “Islamofascists”.
However, it is somewhat difficult to pin down a definition, as “fascism” embraced a whole diversity of movements which often had little in common other than a hatred of the Western status quo and communism. Some definitions of their unifying characteristics seem to fit “Islamicists” pretty well:
Substitute “religious” for “nationalist”.
From: Fascism - Wikipedia
Except for the fact its COMPLETELY inaccurate:
More Wahhabbi extremism (as represented by Al Qieada) does not exalt the nation state or race. They consider nation states as obsticals in the way of a Islamic caliphate, they have no hang ups about race (they are quite a happy to employ Arabs, Africans, Asians from the far east, Asians from the Indian sub-continent, and of course Europeans). This doesn’t make them any “better” morally speaking than Facists, it just means they are NOT facists and describing them as such just muddies the waters.
Of course its handy to characterize them this way if you want to surreptitiously sweep totally unrelated foreign policy issues into the same bracket as Al Quieda (e.g. Saddam Hussien, the Baathist movement, the Iranian Theocracy, etc.). This is clearly the idea behind the Islamo-facist tag.
With no snark intended at all, what does that make us?
They used to be called Islamic Fundamentalists with some regularity. I wonder why that went by the wayside? 
If we don’t, then it “helps”, in that it allows lazy people like Bush to call anyone who he disagrees with a fascist.
But I think we do. See griffin’s post above for a nice, compact consensus version.
Well, if you voted for Bush in 2000 or 2004, that makes you an aider and abetter.
The rest of us are “stuck in the handbasket for Hell.”
