So who is fascist?
George Bush is quoted on the BBC web site today as referring to
“Islamic fascists… will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom”.He’s supposed to be brighter than people give him credit for, but I do wonder if he knows the definition of fascist?
There’s a short summary of political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt’s article on fascism (2003 in Free Inquiry) here, which is worth taking a look at. Looking at the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they had 14 elements in common. To summarise the summary, the 14 characteristics that he identified were:
- Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
- Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
- Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
- Supremacy of the Military
- Rampant Sexism
- Controlled Mass Media
- Obsession with National Security
- Religion and Government are Intertwined
- Corporate Power is Protected
- Labor Power is Suppressed
- Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
- Obsession with Crime and Punishment
- Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
- Fraudulent Elections
Do those seem to you to match more closely with al-Qaeda or the USA?
Update (2006-08-12):
I see that Daniel Benjamin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies also thinks using the term “islamic fascists” is nonsense:
There is no sense in which jihadists embrace fascist ideology as it was developed by Mussolini or anyone else who was associated with the term. This is an epithet, a way of arousing strong emotion and tarnishing one’s opponent, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the content of their beliefs…Sounds similar to Bush’s redefinition of the word terrorist, which he uses to mean anyone whose political views divirge from Bush’s.