Bush says we're fighting "Islamic fascists"

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
Once again, that is not the question. The question is if the worldwide Islamic terror movement is Fascist.
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I particularly dislike the use of the word to describe anything other than Mussolini’s Fascisti.

To me ‘Islamic Fascist’ is as ludicrous as ‘Islamic Nazi’

Different movements/ideologies may have many things in common, but to arbitrarily pick one name and apply it blanket fashion is a bit like calling a dog a wolf, or a wolf a dog.

My take is that Bush could not pronounce Islamist (or Islamicist)

Incidentally Spain had a movement called the Blue Shirts with a charasmatic leader:

Franco was not interested in that sort of thing, I would describe him as a ‘conservative authoritarian’ and both Hitler and Mussolini as ‘radical authoritarian’ - with Mussolini as quite a bit less radical.

82

[QUOTE=FRDE]
My take is that Bush could not pronounce Islamist (or Islamicist)
[/QUOTE]
Most people don’t know Islamists from Muslims. Just yesterday I read a letter to a newspaper, where someone was bitching about the media tarring all 1 billion Muslims by saying Islamists were bad. So if you insist of “Islamist”, you’re going to have a lot of people thinking you mean Muslims in general.

83

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
Once again, that is not the question. The question is if the worldwide Islamic terror movement is Fascist.
[/QUOTE]

Once again the definition does not fit them.

84

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Once again the definition does not fit them.
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(shrug) That depends entirely on which definition you chose to use, and how broadly or narrowly you want to define the term.

“Fascist” has been used as a term of abuse for so long (mostly but not always by the left) that the term probably doesn’t have much usefulness for other purposes. If we’re talking about history, I think the term should be restricted to Mussolini’s movement. If we’re talking about anything else, it’s just a cuss word–but that’s mainly the left’s fault for abusing the word for so long. I think “semantic inflation” is the term that applies here.

85

[QUOTE=Shodan]
The fact that they wears turbans instead of brown shirts, use fatwas instead of the Fuehrerprinzip and a selected few of the verses from the Koran instead of Mein Kampf is, I suppose, a real distinction, but not a particularly useful one.
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Glad to know that’s what’s serious and important to the right is not accurately characterizing the threat and thinking about what that means for how we fight it, but rather choosing the best super-awesome buzzword to really stick it to those bad guys from behind your keyboard/radio-show/Oval Office!

No wonder the policies based on such deep sophisticated view of things have been so successful.

86

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
Once again, that is not the question. The question is if the worldwide Islamic terror movement is Fascist.
[/QUOTE]

More accurately, the question is “But do you think the terms are accurate?”

In some sense of the phrase, al-Qaeda is a ‘social club’. I suspect it is entirely possible to pick a handful of definitions for ‘social club’ and/or (social + club) and construct a case that indeed, al-Qaeda is a social club. Is it ‘accurate’ to call al-Qaeda a social club? In this context, calling al-Qaeda a social club is not ‘accurate’ in the regular sense of the word ‘accurate’. While there is still a valid case that could be made for how al-Qaeda is a social club, it’s not accurate to call al-Qaeda a social club because accuracy is relative. It takes more than that to be accurate because there’re terms that’re signifcantly more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful than ‘social club.’

The question is whether or not any more accurate term or terms that may exist are more accurate enough to render ‘fascist’ wide of the mark even though it may be ‘technically correct’.
If there’s not much difference between ‘fascist’ and any more accurate term or terms that may exist, then perhaps ‘fascist’ is ‘accurate.’
However, if there’re other terms besides ‘fascist’ that are significantly more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful, then fascist would not be accurate enough to be accurate.

87

How about this?

Clerical Fascism

88

[QUOTE=PatriotX]
More accurately, the question is “But do you think the terms are accurate?”

In some sense of the phrase, al-Qaeda is a ‘social club’. I suspect it is entirely possible to pick a handful of definitions for ‘social club’ and/or (social + club) and construct a case that indeed, al-Qaeda is a social club. Is it ‘accurate’ to call al-Qaeda a social club? In this context, calling al-Qaeda a social club is not ‘accurate’ in the regular sense of the word ‘accurate’. While there is still a valid case that could be made for how al-Qaeda is a social club, it’s not accurate to call al-Qaeda a social club because accuracy is relative. It takes more than that to be accurate because there’re terms that’re signifcantly more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful than ‘social club.’

The question is whether or not any more accurate term or terms that may exist are more accurate enough to render ‘fascist’ wide of the mark even though it may be ‘technically correct’.
If there’s not much difference between ‘fascist’ and any more accurate term or terms that may exist, then perhaps ‘fascist’ is ‘accurate.’
However, if there’re other terms besides ‘fascist’ that are significantly more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful, then fascist would not be accurate enough to be accurate.
[/QUOTE]

But all this assumes that there actually is a clear, widely accepted definition of the term “fascist.”

89

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
But all this assumes that there actually is a clear, widely accepted definition of the term “fascist.”
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No, not at all. There’s no need for a single authoritative definition. All that there has to be are terms that are indentifiably more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful.

Did you require “a clear, widely accepted definition” of the term ‘social club’ to realize that there are terms more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful than ‘social club’ to describe al-Qaeda?

90

If no single definition ,why use the term? Because It elicits an emotional fear response. It scares .It was picked carefully .Cheney ,Bush and Rumsfield have all used it lately.It is not a harmless misuse. It has been picked deliberately and is used for effect, not to get to the truth.

91

[QUOTE=PatriotX]
No, not at all. There’s no need for a single authoritative definition. All that there has to be are terms that are indentifiably more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful.

Did you require “a clear, widely accepted definition” of the term ‘social club’ to realize that there are terms more relevant, more descriptive, more meaningful, more useful than ‘social club’ to describe al-Qaeda?
[/QUOTE]

When I was in college at Georgetown U. in the early ‘80s, I sometimes spent weekends with a Jewish family (friends of ours) in the Maryland suburbs. The matriarch (who, as a girl, had gotten out of Germany the day before the Kristallnacht) sometimes wore a t-shirt with the legend: "Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society."

Seemed a lot funnier then.

92

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
But all this assumes that there actually is a clear, widely accepted definition of the term “fascist.”
[/QUOTE]

A very good source on that (even if it does not yield a single clear definition) is Fascism: A History, by Roger Eatwell.

93

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
…
Islamic militants resemble the old-fashioned fascists so much, right down the murderous anti-Semitism and totalitarianism, that I can’t get terribly upset when someone describes them as Islamic fascists.
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I’m not sure it is fair to describe Islamic militants as Antisemitic. There is a lot of animosity to Israel there, I’ve heard, but that’s not quite the same thing. While there is bound to be some spillover into Antisemitism the difference is real.

In any case, the real point is that Antisemitism was not a particularly definitive feature of fascism. It was more of a Northern European/Anglophone thing. Germany (obviously), Scandanvia, the UK and the US variants of fascism had that. But it did not appear on the songsheet for Franco, Mussolini and the South Americans.

94

BG, Sev, Patriot, I know that historians, political scientists and other scholars tend the use the term much more scrupulously than laymen; but let’s face it, after decades of abuse and misuse, all meaning has pretty much been sucked out of the term when it comes to political discourse at the popular level. Sure, Bush is indulging himself in overblown rhetoric when he uses the term “Islamic fascist,” but so what? That’s what politicians do, and I see little point in getting upset over it.

(And the only copy of that Eatwell book has been withdrawn from my public library, dang it.)

95

[QUOTE=Sevastopol]
I’m not sure it is fair to describe Islamic militants as Antisemitic. There is a lot of animosity to Israel there, I’ve heard, but that’s not quite the same thing. While there is bound to be some spillover into Antisemitism the difference is real.
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Well, Sev, I really just don’t know what to say to this. Violent anti-Jewish sentiment is common throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and this is so well-established that I don’t even see a need to defend the claim.

96

This is a desperate, transparent attempt by the Republo-fascists to scare the sheep before the November elections. If it doesn’t achieve that effect, look for Bush to ratchet up the hysteria with more ridiculous comparisons, like, oh, Islamo-Witches.

97

[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
This is a desperate, transparent attempt by the Republo-fascists to scare the sheep before the November elections. If it doesn’t achieve that effect, look for Bush to ratchet up the hysteria with more ridiculous comparisons, like, oh, Islamo-Witches.
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Oh, man, switch to decaf.

98

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
Oh, man, switch to decaf.
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OK, but I will pass on your Kool-Aid, if you don’t mind.

99

[QUOTE=LonesomePolecat]
BG, Sev, Patriot, I know that historians, political scientists and other scholars tend the use the term much more scrupulously than laymen; but let’s face it, after decades of abuse and misuse, all meaning has pretty much been sucked out of the term when it comes to political discourse at the popular level. Sure, Bush is indulging himself in overblown rhetoric when he uses the term “Islamic fascist,” but so what? That’s what politicians do, and I see little point in getting upset over it.
[/QUOTE]

Whether one feels like getting upset over it or not, it is the subject of this debate. More specifically, the question is whether or not it is an accurate term. Obviously, not everyone who participates in this debate is “upset over it.”

However, as can be readily determined from items on the USMC small wars reading list the GWoT bears many similarities to an insurgency. One of the primary, central and essential focuses in an insurgency is the political aspect.

Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare (html)[RIGHT]by Robert Tomes
Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, Spring 2004, pp. 16-28
http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/04spring/tomes.pdf [/RIGHT] “One cannot understand the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare without understanding the socio-political-economic intricacies of the “cause” which insurgents use to mobilize support. Without a cause, the insurgency cannot persuade the population to join or assist it.”

Failure to understand the enemy we’re facing is classically seen as a predictor for failure. The more removed from reality the electorate’s understanding of the situation is, the more likely they will be to make inappropriate choices. And, as Confucius and Mr. Limbaugh have so aptly pointed out, ‘words mean things.’

Also, as a rule of thumb, politicians routinely do many things that should upset the electorate. Just because there’re politicians who routinely lie, cheat and steal doesn’t mean that we should condone their mendacity of theft.

100

This is one of the reasons I prefer terms like “militant Islamic extremists” to less-graspable ones like “Islamists” or wrongly-graspable ones like “Islamofascists”. (After all, isn’t the curent closest thing to an actual blend of Islamism and fascism an authoritarian regime like that of Saudi Arabia, which is technically one of our allies and hence not a target in the War on Terror? It seems weird to apply a term like “Islamofascist” to a loosely-organized criminal conspiracy like al-Qaeda which doesn’t even have an official regime of any kind, but not to a genuine Islamic dictatorship like the Sauds.)