Bush: We are at war with 'Islamic Fascism' (Is it: Islamofascism or Islamic Fascism?)

I've been waiting for a reason to post this on SciForums. An op-ed by David Ignatius from a few weeks ago. Heavily excerpted, I'm kinder than my fellow members who make you read the whole thing as if you people aren't more perceptive than the average newspaper reader.

Notice in his closing line, Ignatius echoes my oft-stated opinion (and not an original one) that Islam, whose development has been clocking at a very steady 600 years behind Christianity, is just about due for its Enlightenment, Renaissance and Reformation.

ARE WE FIGHTING 'ISLAMIC FASCISTS'?
--David Ignatius

Does the phrase “Islamic fascists” make sense? A look at the history of fascism produces some startling parallels to the revolutionary movements that have swept Iran and other Muslim countries. But the phrase is misleading in its broad reference to Islam and its evocation of another century and another war.

Ernst Nolte defined fascism as “a resistance to transcendence,” meaning a rebellion against the liberating but destabilizing transformations of modern society. In the European countries it began as a middle class assault on the liberal elites who were creating that era’s version of globalization. Jews were a special target but they were symbols of a larger internationalist movement.

Nolte described the focus of fascist protest in language that might apply to today’s globalized world: “The leading class performs its task of establishing the technical and economic unity of the world, and emancipating all men for participation in this undertaking, in ever new political and intellectual compromises with the hitherto ruling powers: It is the society of synthesis.”

The fascist revolt was driven by rage against the perceived corruption of the European elites, who were thought to have grown rich during the 1920s at the expense of the hard working middle class. The final motivation was Germany’s shame and indignation over its defeat in WWI. Fascism gave ordinary people an explanation of what had gone wrong in their lives and someone to blame.

I see some of these same factors in radical Islam. The baseline for the movement was the revolution in 1979 in Iran, the region’s most modern and “transcendent” state. Its shah was rushing to embrace the global economy and its elite was liberal, secular, international--and wretchedly corrupt. Ordinary Muslims felt that their hard work was buying mansions on the Cote d’Azur. That radical populism lives on in Ahmadinejad, dressed in his ostentatiously humble golf jacket.

Today’s Muslim radicals, like the Nazis, promise dignity for a people who feel shamed by defeat in war. That’s the appeal of Nasrallah: The Arabs feel they have suffered forty years of military humiliation from Israel. He is a hero even though he brought about the ruination of Lebanon.

Bush’s phrase “Islamic fascists” captures the rage that fuels America’s new enemies. What is particularly pernicious about them is that they have made Jews the symbol for larger forces that confound angry Muslims. This is perverse: The corrupt elites who obstruct Iranians, Egyptians, Syrians and Saudis today are their own rulers with their legions of fixers and bagmen, not the Israelis.

Yet I balk at the term. The notion that we are fighting “Islamic fascists” blurs the conflict, widening the enemy to include many if not all Muslims. It’s as if we were to call Hitler and Mussolini “Christian fascists,” implying that it is their religion, not their resistance to transcendence, that is the root cause of the problem.

The counterrevolution that began in Iran must be contained so that it doesn’t destabilize the region any more than it already has. But it will not be broken by America--or Israel. It can only be broken from within, by the Muslim people throughout the Mideast who are at last ready to transcend.