A name coined by
Benito Mussolini, fascism is not a set of consciously articulated ideas but, a mood
that is anti-intellectual, a way of seeing, which itself is founded on certain
philosophical assumptions. Mussolini had been a Marxist, but Fascism's
theoretical origins lie not so much in Marxism or any other prior political
theory as in the philosophy of voluntarism. Simply stated, voluntarism is the
belief that the will is both prior to and superior to the intellect. Both
voluntarism and romanticism are reactions to Kant's critique, which limited the
legitimate range of reason. Of the different varieties of post-Kantians, one
strain of thinkers - of which Bergson was the most notorious - concluded that
if reason could not allow one access to true reality, then the will or the
feelings, or other newly discovered faculties could be the road to reality and
truth. Isaiah Berlin saw fascism as romanticism taken to its limit.
There was a sense,
shared by many of these post-Kantian philosophers, that culture and society, as
they presently exist, are the products of the tyranny of intellect, or reason,
to the exclusion of the vital elements of existence - those that are concerned
with the body, from dancing to boxing to warfare - and that this has led to
cultural decadence. Nietzsche, for example, wrote of the "undermen," men of the past, such as the Vikings, who
were able to act directly without their actions being mediated and enervated by
an excess of reflection. The rejection of intellect in favor of will was a
revolutionary idea. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified
with critical attitudes. The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged
in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed
traditional values.
One therefore might
think of fascism as voluntarism and romanticism, with a utopian plan of action.
It seeks to revive and reestablish the supposed past greatness of a certain
nation, society, culture, or religion, that supposedly existed before the slide
into decadence. Expressed differently one could also say that fascism is the
conviction that a process of national rebirth (palingenesis) has become
essential to bring to an end a protracted period of social and cultural
decadence, as a revolutionary form of ultranationalism.
Of course, there is
always a tendency - by intellectuals of the certain pessimistic sort, form
Hesiod to T.S. Eliot - to view the present age as decadent, as a product of
moral decay and intellectual and cultural degeneration. That in and of itself
is not fascistic, but merely part of the mythos of the of the present age in relation
to a supposed golden age. For fascism, the cause of decadence, furthermore, is
attributed to a certain group of people and thus fascism is also a conspirational vision.
Islamism shares with
other fascist movements the desire to resurrect an ancient empire. Mussolini,
for example, wanted to restore Italy to the glory of the ancient Roman empire.
Furthermore the sense of decadence, in regard to present-day Islam, is
attributed to various historical events. For example, in one of the videotapes
that bin Laden had sent to news stations, he alluded to the abolition of the
caliphate as devastating to Islam.
Thus revivalism is
often allied with delusions of persecution - which is a key aspect of the conspirational vision. A similar example where history was
to be made up and distorted - the First World War was not caused by an
aggressive Germany, but surely lost by a 'stab in the
back' by Jews at home.
Nationalism, as
Mussolini indicated by his words and his actions, is a key component of
fascism. It differs from communism in that respect, for communism's primary
interest is not nations, but classes - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Thus communism tends to have not a national, but an international focus. It might
seem, though, that Islamists, are not primarily concerned with nationality.
For example the call
to wage war against America was made because America has spearheaded the
crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to
the land of the two holy mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and
its politics.
Apparently, bin Laden
views all of Islam as a single nation. This is, of course, absurd, for within
the Islam world there are many different nations, each with its own social and
political goals, and opinions on how to be a true Muslim. The notion that there
is an Islamic nation is part of Islamism's "ideology," that is
endemic to fascism. The aggressive nationalism of fascism does not, though,
appear to be, for example, the self-confident nationalism of Napoleonic France
or America under Theodore Roosevelt. Fascism, on the contrary, always blends
nationalism with the perception of victimhood, which derive from conspirational ideas of persecution, hence an
undertone of vengeance.
Not surprisingly,
militancy is endemic to fascism, but again, while fascism is invariably
militant, not all military dictatorships are fascist, neither are popular
acclaim and expansionism sufficient to make a regime fascistic. Soviet communism
rested on popular acclaim plus it was expansionistic. Al Qaeda and other
extreme forms of Islamism, is not, of course, a dictatorship, but it could be
argued that it is fascistic in its way of seeing. Their power has rested on
popular acclaim, certainly by those within their organization, and by many
people outside their organization as well. Indeed.
The militancy of
Islamist organisations and bin Laden is both
popular in the Muslim world, it contains fascism's voluntaristic and romantic
roots, its rejection of intellect and thinking in favor of the life of
instinct, feeling, and action unmediated by consideration of thought and
conscience. From this militancy emerges the mystique of the warrior. If one
reads transcripts of the speeches of Osama bin Laden, one hears about the
virtues of being a holy warrior, of sacrifice and martyrdom. Bourgeois life is
rejected in favor of that creed. Civilian life disappears as everyone becomes
the equivalent of a soldier. This is not viewed as a temporary state of affairs,
but one founded on the belief that war is good in itself. Islamists find
scriptural support for warfare in the Qur'an, which commands that true
believers go on a Jihad, or holy war.
The cult of the
supreme leader is also endemic to fascism. Mussolini was considered
predestined, alone and sad, yet a colossus and titan. Like Stalin, he was
considered to virtually never slept but, however greater than Napoleon, Predappio, his birthplace, became a place of pilgrimage.
But it is not
primarily what Westerners do (their alleged imperialism, colonialism, and
foreign policies), or what they did, that enrages Islamist. Becouse
the Soviet Union, was far more egregious in its repression of Islam in the
Soviet Union, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the suppression of the revolt in
Chechnya, for example - and yet the Soviets, as well as other hegemonic nations
like China , were never hated with anything approaching the fury of many
Muslim's anathema towards lets say, The United
States.
Thus the real source
of Muslim rage, rather seems to ly with basic
cultural values perceived as, antithetical to the defining values of Islamism,
but why?
One of the clues we
have already expanded upon, is that there is in fact a tradition of criticism
of America by other groups of preoples, dating from the early part of the nineteenth century
this includes not just French and Germans, but also Russians, Japanese
and the English. Curiously enough, these criticisms are the simllar
as those levied against America by Muslim intellectuals. America, the ultimate
example of civilization without culture: rich and comfortable, materially
advanced but soulless and artificial; assembled or at best constructed, not
grown; mechanical, not organic; technologically complex but lacking the
spirituality and vitality of the rooted, human, national cultures of the
Germans and other "authentic" peoples.
But despite the
alleged influence that these criticisms have had on the Islamic world, and the
fact that these very same criticisms are being levied against America today -
they did not cause it, and certainly they do not explain the widespread anti-westemism that made so many in the Middle East and
elsewhere in the Islamic world receptive to such ideas.
What rather seems the
case is, that fundamentalist religious leaders see capitalism, democracy,
and therefore also Western civilization in general, as an appealing alternative
to their way of life- by a clergy threatened by losing power amongst their
flock vice versa a rival, i.e. Western civilization. An angry Islamism
contemplating its corrupt, decadent and alienating" enemies is based upon
a whole set of perceptions and misperceptions -maybe even also motivated by an
eschatology as we will see later. Nevertheless "Occidentalism" as
some have tried to call is, is not the case, otherwise, the criticism that
European countries have levied against America have essentially been criticisms
of their own ‚Western’ mentality.
The notion that makes
it alienating and dehumanizing, rather is that it is a fall from a state of
purity, wholeness, and goodness that supposedly had once existed in the world.
A notion of paradise lost, a nostalgia for a state of affairs that in fact
never existed. Thus, also Christians and Europeans can see themselves as
upholders of traditional values, as defenders of a rapidly eroding virtue. This
way the critics of modernity can be members of modem societies
themselves, like we pointed out yesterday in the case of Britain where polling data
showed, a third of the Muslims willingly living there, said they would rather
live under Sharia, or Islamic law, than British law. Sharia, as good, perfect,
noble, wise and holy, with ‚modernism,’ as bad, weak, shallow, foolish,
decadent, degenerate or downright evil. But again, they are essentially
the values of totalitarianism, or again, like we already
investigated before on this website, the values of
fascism.
So Islamists believe
that their society was originally whole before Westernization shattered,
fragmented, and splintered that wholeness. Ofcourse
we had the same criticism also comming from
Fascist Japanese intellectuals when they held a conference in Kyoto, in
1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor, in which they blamed science, technology,
capitalism, individual freedom, democracy for having splintered the wholeness
of their own culture, and how to restore the "holistic" and
"organic" quality of Japanese culture. Apparently, these same
sentiments are now shared by Islamists, but then as we recently have pointed
out, by some Chinese nationalists too.
This romantic longing
- to recover a supposedly lost wholeness, and thus inhabit a unified world, in
contradistinction to a world that is either compartmentalized or downright
fragmented - can find expressions in many ways ofcourse,
but Fascism is recognised as one. Fascism
further seeks to obliterate divisions that they perceive to be
artificial, or due to the cultural fragmentation in this case caused by the
encroachment of ‚Western’ meaning really ‚modern’ ideas.
Mussolini wrote in
1932, "If the nineteenth was the century of the individual it may be
expected that this one may be the century of 'collectivism' and therefore the
century of the State". Of course, Islamists have no interest in
worshipping the state unless, like bin Laden, they view the Islamic world as
one big state, to be ruled by the Caliphate. For theocratic totalitarians, the
church/state separation is viewed as artificial. Qutb
had made that separation the gravamen of his critique of the West. Qutb described this experience - of having to lead a double
life, as a religious person and a secular person - as "the hideous
schizophrenia of modem life." The fact that the source of the
problem according to Qutb is "specific and
identifiable" in the form of „Christianity“ makes it an example of what
one could call call ‚the localization of evil’, which
is the basis of conspiracy theories. For blaming the problem on in this case
Christianity, is a way of drawing attention away from the internal conflicts
and contradictions that exist within all human beings, including those who are
Islamist. In contrast, for example Buber's theory of the twofold manner of
knowing the world, namely I-Thou and I-It. The latter mode of knowing would be
responsible for the existence of the secular realm. In a non-conpiratist explanation, for it sees the dialectical
inevitability of the division of existence into the realms of the sacred and
the secular, as due to the development of human consciousness. Also some Sufi
mysticism as an effort to overcome one's fallen condition through a change in
consciousness (of the fall of spirit into objectification) can be said to be
equally non-conspiratist. But the claim that one's
culture or society possesses wholeness and organicity - or had possessed these
attributes, before it became corrupted - coupled with a disdain for the
supposed couse (fragmentation), is a futile effort to
put Humpty Dumpty (i.e. a symbolic image of an
original, unbroken, cosmic, totalitarianist unity)
back together again, while blaming another group of people - Americans, Jews,
etc. - for Humpty Dumpty's fall. We could also say,
that the preoccupation with one's culture, society, or world being
natural, organic, and whole, is the outer expression of the longing to annul
the divisions and dualities, and the consequent feeling of isolation and
alienation, that is a function of emerging selfawareness.
The totalitarian solution to the burden of individuality is to jettison one's
own will and conscience, in an effort to live in accordance with the will of
the leader, the nation, and the movement. The totalitarian longing for group
identity as an inauthentic flight from the responsibilities of being a person.
Related is the
accusation that ‚Westerners’ (Americans and Jews in particular) are rootless
and, consequently, abstract, mechanical, excessively rational, artificial, and
superficial. Or as the Nazis early on claimed; that membership in a Volk was
'organic' and by definition exclusive, while citizenship in the French
republic, the United States, or Britain was, like their cities, theoretically
open to all.
The example of
Islamist feeling that the existence of American troops stationed in Saudi
Arabia was defiling the land can also be perceived as the paranoid vision of
purity seeking. And then, there are the effort to return to a supposedly purer
state of being by means of terror and violence. A purifying violence would
purge the people of egotism and hedonism, and draw them back into a primitive
collective of self-sacrifice.
To Islamists, whose
consciousness is predominantly mythic, the city, particularly the Western city,
has many negative symbolic connotations. Most generally, it symbolizes
individual autonomy, experienced in all domains: intellectually, politically,
socially, spiritually, artistically, culturally, and economically. The freedom
that women know in Western cities is particularly.
Plus Western city
also symbolize debauched pleasure seeking, materialism, decadence, and
idolatry. And although it might be true that Westerners, like all people, are
tempted by idols. All the same, resentment is evident here, for were religious
fundamentalists truly religious, the Twin Towers would either have had no
significance or been considered a pitiable attempt by the benighted to rival
God, in which case it would inspire pity, not hatred.
Islamists
conclude that the Westerner is addicted to comfort and security, is excessively
practical, and is soft and decadent. A young Taliban fighter, once said, ‚The
Americans would never win, for 'they love Pepsi Cola, but we love death.'
Japanese and the Germans can be said to have a similar view of Americans
prior to attacking them.
Related to the notion
that the West lacks heroism, is the notion that it is bourgeois and lacks
spirituality. It is true that capitalism and democracy are neither spiritual
nor heroic creeds. Consequently, in America, at least, it is up to the individual
to search for deliverance, courage, or heroism. The state cannot be depended
upon to provide direction in that regard, nor should it, although Mussolini
argued that it should. Furthermore, the citizens of liberal Western democracies
have invariably been able to rise to the occasion, becoming heroic when
necessary, and have at times seen to become fierce adversaries, defending
democratic values against autocratic regimes.
Thus founded on a
misperception of the ‚West,’ there is a virulence to that misperception that
suggests it is not founded on a simple misunderstanding. And once more can be
seen founded on distorted perception that is a product of a
conspiracy-thinking.
Westerners are thus
also accused of being excessively rational, leading them to mechanize and
commercialize all aspects of human existence. In placing their faith in science
and reason, they supposedly lack feelings, intuitions, and wisdom. Or the
Western city as compared to that of a prostitute who makes basic human
relations into a commodity, and is thus soulless. But if the Islamists truly
believed that spiritual values were more important than material objects and
worldly power - and did not secretly hanker after them – again, their attitude
towards Westerners would certainly not be virulent hatred. If anything, it
would be pity. The hatred towards Westerners for their lack of spirituality
hence would appear to be a function of resentment, or envy-manifestations of an
insecurity, a lack of faith in the worth of one's own values and in the ability
of one's group to resist alien ideas and values. In 1989 Irwin Straub proposed
that societies or nations who commit genocide suffer from a lack of
self-esteem. If so, societies that are breeding grounds for terrorists may
suffer from the same insecurities.
This loss of cultural
dominance is experienced as all the more galling to the Islamists, because they
see themselves as having been defeated by an enemy whom they regard as
fragmented, impure, rootless, idolatrous, bourgeois, and materialistic. The
assumption, on the part of the Islamists, that makes for their bitterness, is
that hegemony is an indication of moral superiority. After all, Mohamed was a
hugely victorious general and leader, in contradistinction, for example, to the
Jews at the time. And so, not surprisingly, Mohamed becomes the paradigm for
the right life. Consequently, if they do not see themselves as having been
betrayed by fate, history, or conspirators, they are in danger of falling into
doubt about their alleged moral superiority. It is possible, though, to
challenge the equation of might with right, as did Socrates in Plato's
Republic. To challenge that equation would be to challenge the very worldview
that Mohamed bequeathed to them, but that is a risky business.
The dehumanizing
caricatures of the West that are the product of the dualities that we mentioned
above, set the stage for the growth of apocalyptic fantasies. In this scenario,
one sees the final battle. It is between the forces of good (the
traditionalists) and the forcers of evil (the
modernists). Like other apocalypticists, whether
secular or theocratic, Islamists believe that their attack on the enemy could
precipitate the apocalypse.
Of course, Islam was
strongly apocalyptic right from the beginning, as were Judaism (in the book of
Daniel, for example) and Christianity, long before the advent of modernity. The
Qur'an is filled with predictions about the end of the world. The prophet
Mohammed envisioned the end as being very close, within a few years after
receiving his revelation.
Not surprising, in
Arab lands as well as in Iran, The Protocols of Elders of Zion ranks number six
on the best seller list, along with the Qur' an and
Mein Kampf. Furthermore, one is surprised to
learn that Muslims would be drawn to a notion that belongs to Christian
theology, namely the Antichrist, demonstrating that they can be eclectic in
their theological references. Sometimes the Anti-chrlst
is identified as a U.S. president, other times it is western civilization in
general. This literature freely uses predictions about End of World or Israel's
demise to recruit followers and prove they need to be working for God, instead
of their own purposes.
And Islamists will
often quote the Hadith, saying ascribed to the Prophet Mohamed, "The Hour
[of Judgment] will not arrive until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims
will kill them until the Jew will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rock and
the tree will say: O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me-come
and kill him."
Richard Landes, a scholar of millennialism, confirms that bin Laden
sees himself, and many Muslims also see him, as "...a central player in a
cosmic battle that pits warriors of truth against the agents of Satan and evil
in this world" (Landes; Relics, Apocalypse, and
the Deceits of History, 2005, p. 1).
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