Calling a (Terrorist) Fascist a Fascist

The Dry Bones Blog has a cartoon that addresses the use of the term "fascist" to describe Islamic terrorists:

On the surface, it seems odd that anybody would even care to waste breath defending terrorists against charges of fascism.  Obviously, if a someone is willing to murder large numbers of innocent, noncombatant men, women and children to advance their power, they are a fascist or worse.

But I think I know what strange motivation underlies the resistance to the use of the term "fascist" to describe terrorists. 

It isn't just a desire for neutrality -- although neutrality between decency and evil is itself contemptible.  The problem is that the left has mentally reserved the word "fascist" to describe conservatives.  By definition, those on the right are authoritarian, rules-following, rigid, controlling fascists.

Thus, for the term "fascist" to be suddenly taken away and applied to terrorists who really do mean to kill us all -- terrorists whom President Bush, hated by the left, is current leading the fight to stop -- is unsettling. 

If the world "fascist" is used to describe terrorists, then what's left to describe George Bush?  How can he be fighting real fascists if he is a fascist?  It's a conundrum. 

That's why it feels much better for some to refer to Islamic terrorists as "militants" and "insurgents" and sometimes even as "activists" and "dissidents."  It feels better to pretend and hope that they're not really terrorists, nor fascists.

No, they are gentle "dissidents" (Osama Bin Laden) and peaceful "activists" (America-threatening Adam Gadahn).  And these gentle dissidents and activists are peacefully protesting all over the world -- at places like Beslan (where they peacefully slaughtered schoolchildren and their teachers) and New York and Washington, D.C. (where they gently killed about 3,000 Americans on September 11) and in the London underground, where they softly spoke truth to power with gentle explosives.

And yet, when we look at what Islamic terrorists have actually brought to the world, somehow the word "fascists" still comes to mind.

Fascists.  Islamic fascists.  Islamofacscists.

Yes, the word fits.

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Comments

[Francis W. Porretto]

We might want just a touch more specificity here: theocratic fascists. For there have been other varieties, which varied according to motivation. Military analysts emphasize the discovery of motivation as the key to strategic victory.

[Don Radlauer]

The use of the term "fascist" to refer to all terrorists is indeed problematic - although some terrorists do indeed merit the label. Fascism is not just the "willing[ness] to murder large numbers of innocent, noncombatant men, women and children to advance [one's] power" - it's a particular political philosophy involving exaggerated nationalism, authoritarian government, and (in its original form) a generally right-wing approach to economic and social issues. Archetypal fascists include Mussolini and Hitler, both of whom fit the definition nicely even though they were not terrorists by most definitions of the term.

"Fascism" is sometimes extended to include the Soviet Union under Stalin and Korea under the Kims - since even though these totalitarian regimes are/were nominally left-wing, they include(d) the kind of personality cult built around the individual leader that is typical of fascism.

Militant Islam (to use Daniel Pipes' preferred term) is often referred to as "Islamofascism" - not so much because it's violent, but because it advocates a totalitarian, expansionist, state-enforced version of Islam. The fact that Islamists frequently advocate a Caliphate (which, if it's for real, means effective one-man rule) adds to the parallels between their ideology and "traditional" fascism.

In short, Islamist terrorists are fascists (more or less) because of their goals, not because of the violence they use in pursuit of their goals. Many other terrorist movements are non-fascist, at least in theory.

Ed. An excellent and reasonable argument with respect to historical uses of the term "fascism." I submit that, in practice, terrorism and fascism largely intersect once the terrorists acquire any degree of power over a nation or region. The Taliban, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and Iran come to mind as examples. When out of power, such terrorists bomb, kidnap and kill. When such terrorists are in power, their icy grip extends further and they have less need of bombings. There are more "arrests" followed by torture, on-the-spot executions, and long-term imprisonments. To me, it's all the same in terms of its effect on human liberty, but I readily agree that terrorists have not heretofore been defined as fascists.