Fear and Loathing in I/P threads...

I/P posts and threads are probably the most trenchant examples of the interwebs of the deaf shouting at each other. Rare indeed does one find a blog post on this conflict that doesn't descend into the worst type of Blogo-bigotry (tm socialrepublican). So when over on Dave Osler's site this very early morning, I came across Dave's fine intro to the I/P debate.

http://www.davidosler.com/2008/08/israelpalestine_some_parameter.html

Now I disagree fervently with him on two versus one state, it is trying to put the genie back into the bottle 60 years on. Similarly with respect to Hamas, I believe their ideological dynamics cannot be accommodated in peace with Israel, Jew hate is pretty much all they do...Yet within that spirit of seeking discussion on I/P sans bile with (hopefully) added enlightenment, I lay before my three readers (or possibly two, given Sarah is away on holiday :), the competing nationalism and steady state aggression model of the I/P conflict

In the last few years I've come to the conclusion that the problem is tripartite

#1 Palestinian nationalism has been a wholly reactive phenomenon. From the Grand Mufti onwards, defining the Arabs of Palestine from the Jews has been the objective. The Jews of the National home and then Israel have been depicted not as neighbours (fellow travellers of the Book?) but as an intrinsic threat to Arab identity. In the inter-war period, the Jewish community had a highly developed sense of group identity and represented a modern society at a time where Arab society had yet to undergo a 'nationalisation of the masses' in Mosse terminology. Jews ceased to be one particular community within a multi-ethnic system of estates but rather a competing (and winning) nation state in waiting. The inter-war period saw a rise in social scission as both sides sought to maximise their advantage and in the case of those around the Mufti, bring about a final ethnic solution. The fragile ethnic peace was torn apart by these competing identities and as such partition became increasingly necessary.

Neither Fatah's faux-socialism nor Hamas' Islamism has added to that. Hamas are still doctrinally committed to the forced expulsion of Jews, be they of immigrant descent or of ancient 'Levantine stock'. Fatah built its legitimacy not as a shadow government but as a resistance movement, it never attempted to govern as an elite but rather as a vanguard of action. Anti-Semitism of the darkest and most brutal type was maintained within public discourse as useful ideological glue.

This discourse thus fertilised the ground for Hamas' more violent and cathartic program of endless war and endless reiteration of identity. It should be remembered that for Hamas, Palestinian nationalism is merely a tool and a stepping stone towards a future Caliphate based on Qutb's blend of Islamic modernism. They did not even try to govern, as governance beyond partisan gain and the reinforcement of their military capacities would be counter-productive to their strategy of tension.

Hamas have yet to see beyond this Utopian caliphate, nor the dead ends of MB doctrine. Theirs is a universal and unlimited creed, so in a very real sense, without the room for compromise on essentials. I hope, and alas that is all I can bring to this conflict, that Fatah can begin to act like a party of competent governance and move on from the stasis of suffering that they, the Arab governments and Israel have left many Palestinians in.

#2 Those Arab governments, who for 60 some years have made so much propaganda gain and popular legitimacy from their support of violence need to transfer their monies and efforts towards ending the continued suffering of the Nabka. Rather then support Hamas with guns whilst keeping their own Palestinian populations in camps as second class citizens, both disenfranchised and excluded (to a degree absent in Israel), they should seek to make their 'brother Arabs' a prosperous Diaspora, ready and confident for the founding of a true Palestinian national home.

The use of the I/P conflict as a heroic grand narrative for domestic suppression in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia has been a energising myth, one that has been taken up by the radicals of the MB, HuT and Islamic Jihad. It has poisoned both discourse and policy wherever it has been raised. Its hypocrisy, as demonstrated by the Hama massacres and Black September, must be realised before progress of any kind can be made.

#3 As for Israel itself, it bears the scars of a society baptised in wars with its neighbours. Its society is aware of both its historic uniqueness as the sole Jewish state and the seemly systemic enmity of the Arab world towards it. It is of course, a remarkable successful nation, rich, democratic and comparatively for the region extremely liberal. Yet it has had to deal with an existential threat for much of its life, endemic violence and what might be called the seduction of the periphery. The expansion of settlements has been lead not centrally but from those on the border.

Given the legalistic blur which surrounds the extents of Israel's borders and the status of the West Bank and Gaza, there is a powerful incentive to claim Arab land as Israeli. Given the overlapping jurisdiction of spoils of war, partition plans of yesteryear and the diplomatic no-mans land that resulted from the treaty-less peace, Settlers and Soldiers could claim land and gain government protection. The Jewish right of return made the land betwixt ‘the Sea and the Jordan’ seem over-crowded and certain voices (never unanswered and un-argued) sought a complete conquest via expulsion. The anti-Nabka, the fleeing of North African and Middle Eastern Jewry from their ancient communities after 1948 under intense pressure gave a righteousness to a cause that would lead a democracy towards a half solution: neither ethnically cleansing historic Palestine nor keeping to the partition or the green lines. The solution is clear. The former is a dead end, of deepening a bloody conflict with one ‘last’ act of conquest. The latter requires a worthy and competent Palestinian government, facing down the dogmas of the past, Arab non-interference and putting the plight of the Palestinians first and an Israel brave enough to take the risk.

Weather or not this convergence can occur is unlikely. But peace needs these self-destructive trends to cease.

We're all HPers now...

Harry's Place, that bizarre mix of crazies, eccentrics and wordy fellows has been attacked by some no-mark idiot from the UCU. I love that mix of crazy/weirdo/genuinely interesting and informative that HP provides a forum for and I am in (badly phrased) solidarity with them.

Read Modernity's site for details http://jennadelich.wordpress.com/

Against One, against All

Eurabia, Georges Sorel and Social Scission

If I was to compile a list of thinkers from the Fin de Siecle period whos' ideas where still very much in vogue today, I would have to save space near the top for Mr Sorel. Although the political ideology he was most associated with, that of revolutionary Syndicalism is probably deader than the career of John Leslie say, many of his ideas have remained both in use as heuristic tools of interpretation and as strategies of political extremism. His admiration for the Bolshevik coup d'etat of 1917 and the subsequent terror and his position as one of the primary thinkers in early fascism mark him out as the totalitarian's thinker of choice, regardless of their place within the political spectrum.

Today, we can clearly see the work of his 'energizing myths' and of social scission (the increasing violent separation of a multi-polar society into a bi-polar one) in the rhetoric of the totalising Islamists such as HuT, the various MB fronts and Jamaat-e-Islami. The myth is based on the Ummah versus everything else, controlled as is the fashion for these constructs by a shadowy cabal of Jews/Zionists/ZioNazies depending on their preferred level of euphemism. Cultivated by the sectarianism of the Koran and thereby sacralised, the myth marks out the contours of an apocalyptic battle, where via will and violence, by the destruction of any areas of grey or overlap, Jerusalem is retaken, the Jews of Israel are flung into the sea and the Ummah is reunited and refortified with a homogeneity of faith and ritual. Sorel's mission for the proletariat of early 20th century France (and indeed his challenged to the bourgeoisie) has been successfully franchised out.

Yet never to be out done, the home of idiotic modern group identities, Europe has begun to produce examples of a counter myth, sacralised in part by religion but mainly by ethnocratic ideology and good ol' nationalism. The myth is Eurabia, a vast, baffling and deeply threatening conspiracy of a cabal (see....) of 'bureaucrats', 'leftists', 'liberals' and 'Big Business' to turn Europe over to Islam as part of some unclear but no doubt nefarious plot. Eurabia is a booming mythological narrative, taken up by both the 'core constituency' of Ultra-Nationalists such as the BNP and the VB and moving gingerly into ethno-cratic Liberals such as the NF and the FPO and the wider radical right community such as the Northern League. Just as contact with Islamist thought (and a great deal of lazing thinking) has poisoned the left with toxic antisemitism, this grand narrative of 'Islamisization' has taken a hold over much of the right.

The myth is clear only in its division of good and bad, it's manichean axis, if you will. If you buy into the conspiracy that Gordon Brown, Paddy Ashdown and Romano Prodi are actively seeking to institutionalise Islam as the dominant faith or that they are merely seeking cheap labour (the National Bolshevik tendency), then you logically must seek to combat that. Thus increasingly virulent calls for 'de-islamisization', defending Serbian ethnic cleansing and Russian expansionism and a full blown rhetorical attack on the 'rotten' liberalism' that has brought us to this point of crisis are in order. The jump from violent and inciting language and actual violence comes when the idea becomes not only widespread but so does its urgency. This democratisation of panic feeds of Islamist tactics of their stragedy of tension, making any common ground treachery and indeed sacralige. The contours of the mythology are self-creating and self-reinforcing

On the other half of the divide will eventually be lumped all those who failed to respond to the clarion call. Now inseparable from the the most vicious of Islamist demagogues and terror fetishists, old skool Conservatives, leftists of all shades (even those actively fighting for an anti totalitarian left) and of course, the true bete-noire, limp wristed decadent and effete liberals become a evil conglomerate. This Kraken is thus defined, formed from a contradictory Chimera and made real by the permutantions of the myth, its intent universally evil and malignant.

If i might suggest Oyvind Strommen blog here http://eurofascism.info/ (I have yet to read the book as I am very very poor)

As for those would be Sorel fans, may I recommend Jack J. Roth's 'The Cult of Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians' (London, University of California, 1980), old but still very good.

Hurrah for Jumpers for Goal posts

I think I'm in love

http://newcastleunited.rivals.net/News/pgArticle.aspx?artid=13498_4008869&id=55

Poetry Fruit Corner #2

The long hard tale of Jonathan Brecht by socialrepublican

equipped with
a certain memory condition
so each day was all new
so his loving father
slapped him
round the head
his beautiful beau
brought lovers over for tea
with coitus on the table
and thieves waited for him
outside his door
for his pocket change

drowned reluctantly
in a septic tank
whilst it
was raining

Neither Tblisi nor Moscow?

Dave Osler has a fine post on the Georgia/Russia pissing competition here - http://www.davidosler.com/2008/08/south_ossetia_the_left_doesnt.html#comments

For a informative but deeply skewed opinion, check Greater Surbitan here - http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/

Looking at the conflict, now in the thoes of ceasefires rather than T72 shells, it appears to me Georgia intended to reverse the ethnic cleansing of South Ossetia and recent Russian bullying whilst Russia was deemed distracted and weakened and being confident of US support. It was a miscalculation of considerable proportions. It might be an attempt at 'la glorie' to combat growing cynicism at the 'Rose revolution' but it has left Georgia weakened. Stories of Georgian atrocities uttered by the Butchers of Gronzy are difficult to give credence to but clearly, Georgian actions caused a wave of refugees across the border.

Marko's corralation between Operation Storm and the situation now is prescient, possibly for different reasons to which he raised it. Both are military attempts to rectify ethnic cleansing by a stronger power via invasion and seemly enforced expulsion of the now dominant ethnic community. I can only speak of one particular example. A very good friend of mine who is a quarter Serb told of her extended family's expulsion (evacuation) from the Krajina, fearful and hurried. These people were not radical nationalists and had not been involved in the ethnic cleansing during the founding of the RSK yet they were still made to flee their homes. This is no apologia for the greater Serbian project, merely a reminder that such 'corrections', even at the behest of saving Bihac from a fate like Srebrenica's, have victims, innocent victims. Being trapped under the cogs of Geo-politics is an horrific fate, one we should not forget nor rationalise away.

Update - The evacuation of the Krajina was carried out by the RSK (Ta, Mike Baresic)

The bitter heritage of the Ustaša

Marko comments on the relationship between the Ustaša and wider Croatian society here -
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/ in the aftermath of the funeral of Dinko Sakic, one of the commandants of Jasenovac. This event, the laying down of a foul murderous individual has been taken up by some of the Croatian far right as an opportunity to push their re-evaluation of the NDH as a legitimate part of Croatian national inspirations. Marko rightly points to the nihilistic and self-destructive creedo of Pavelic, Bubak and Kvaternik leading to a Croat Golgotha but I believe fails to recognise how such ultra-nationalism can still maintain a legitimate place within a wider, less radical nationalist discourse.

A few points.

Marko gives a sophisticated recap of a long standing interpretation of the roots and origins of Croatian fascism. Within this, Pavelic's followers and his ideology are foreign imports, nurtured in Italy and Horthy's Hungary and then given the opportunity to run an independent Croatia after Hitler had failed to find an alternative. The treaty of Rome is demonstrative proof of the Ustaša 'treachery' and their disconnection from 'kosher' Croatian Nationalism, leaving many thousands of Croats under a ruthlessly Italianising regime in Dalmatia. The Ustaša tragedy of tension against the Yugoslav regime in the thirties was aimed at 'disgracing and undermining Croatia' rather than 'liberation'. This historiographical trend, which includes Fikreta Jelić-Butić and Bogdan Krizman and more recently Mark Biondich, Aleksa Djilas and Hoare himself draws a line between the fascism of the Ustaša and that of the wider Croatian Nationalist milieu. I believe it is an overly sharp distinction and mistake the nature of nationalism in general.

The Ustaša were a tiny party before the takeover in 1941. Estimates by Srdjan Trifkovic and Ivo Goldstein put their numbers in the very low thousands. The Ustaša were the very antithesis of the NSDAP or the PNF in opposition. Yet this issue of size before the seizure of power does not support the 'foreign import' thesis as fully as first glance might suggest. Pavelic believed that mass agitation was foolhardy given the nature of the Yugoslav regime. After the death of the leader of the HSS, Radic at the hands of a Serbian nationalist on the floor of the Yugoslav assembly, Pavelic's more radical and confrontational ideology stood little chance of mass mobilisation or of creating a open volkpartei. Instead he sought to create a fighting organisation in the mode of the Macedonian IMRO or a Leninist Vanguard. That is to sat a small disciplined unit that would be able to strike violently at the Royal dictatorship. The Ustaša could not form as a 'classic' fascist mass movement because they faced a determined traditional authoritarian regime, willing to use force and violence to defeat its internal enemies.

Yet it's violent actions and terrorist activities were praised by a wider audience. Stipe Devcic, a Ustaša militant who faced with capture, killed himself with a hand grenade was lionised not only by the small Ustaša press but in the catholic and some of the HSS papers too. The Ustasa were not beyond the pale, they were within the nationalist coalition against Serbian hegemon, misguided and overly romantic, but still 'good' Croatian boys. As Radic's successor, Macek sought to gain increasing autonomy within Yugoslavia, the Ustasa gave an alternative vision of total Independence, one that saw their numbers increase as chaos seem to encamp in central Europe. By the point of takeover, the Ustasa had as many as 10000 members in Croatia and a significant hold over much of the nationalist community

The division between Macek and Pavelic's visions and conceptions of Croatia were deep rooted. Macek was a pan-Slavic believer, he believe in the joint heritage of Croat and Serb but wanted to defend and define Croatian 'uniqueness' within a federal Yugoslavia. Pavelic and various other ideologues on the other hand believed that Serbs were ethnically different from Croats, the formers being Slavs and 'oriental', the latter being of Dinaric/Gothic/Iranian (mythical constructs one and all). Croats were a princely class, invested with a civilising mission in the harsh valleys of the Drina. Thus on the one hand, Macek's nationalism was cultural, linguistic, inclusive and demo-centric, Pavelic, supported in part by Ante Starčević and Ivo Pilar was racial, belligerent and ethno-centric. This divide within national identities, concerning the defining contours of a people, of a volk remain. Indeed they are universal poles of national identities.

To give one case study, Max Bart's micro-study of the small Bosnian community of Medjugorje demonstartes how small scale levels of ethnic strife were transformed and the Ustasa ideology popularised as tension wiped away middle ground. The Slavas, intra-community meeting places were abandoned as the ethno-cratic forms of expulsion and annihilation of the Ustasa and to a certain extent, the Cetniki took over.

The power of the Ustasa was their powerful and bloody reinterpretation of a popular and authentically Croatian strand of nationalist discourse, of Serb otherness and accompanying corruption, of purging and remaking. That link should not be ignored.

Facsism is a natural part of the European experience of National identity. It is systemic to nationalism, although thankfully not in any way inevitable. It explains why when the forming of national identity as a primary collective experience was a european wider project (1860-1930), the seeds of fascism were sown.

More on Sozhenitsyn and the gutter of CIF

Anna Applebaum does a good job of summing up Solzhenitsyn's significance to Russia here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/06/solzhenitsyn.russia

For those with a strong stomach, check out the comments thread. CIF can get very low but this is pushing the boundaries

Poetry Fruit Corner

Cupcakes by Eve Riley

The neighbours are fighting
I’m making cupcakes
fingers in my ears
music playing
giddy happy
with icing
or diabetes
and realisation
for just a few nights ago
we were fighting
and I think the neighbours
were making cupcakes

Alexander and Me

My mother was and is a great lover of books. Her bed side table generally had about 20 or so volumes stacked up awaiting her consideration. On the various bookcases in the halls were many more, stacked neatly like paper bricks. In dark hues, adorned with gold lettering, they fascinated me as a child, coyly promising some magical enigmatic quality called knowledge or culture or some other totem. She had brought these either as a mature student before I was born or in the seemly constant parade of car boots sales and clearance auctions that made up the 1980s for me. They were as part of my Childhood as my sisters or my cat.

As I grew, in those neat and organised piles, I found Marx, Sartre, Dostoevsky, Rousseau, weird little trinkets like Field Marshall Slim's account of the Burma Campaign or David Maland's 'Europe in the Seventeenth Century' . Each brick became like a hand grenade, breaking from its cover, flinging its contents forcibly in the room and my wee head.

The most important finds were 'The First Circle' and volume one of 'The Gulag Archipelago' when I was 16 or so. Solzhenitsyn provided in these two books a personal and upfront challenge to me and indeed the world. He broke the tacit deceit of the Soviet regime and its apologists, he broke open a window in a history being erased by time and coerced ignorance and shouted the truth from the rooftops. As a young, precious little doctrinal Leninist, it snapped me in two. It held together the rage of the old testament with the clarity and wit of a scientist probing a unexplored phenomena. I had to go back to first principles under the intensity of his ringing probation and rethink. I will always be indebted for that

One of the most remarkable talents Solzhenitsyn had was to evoke a time and place that is now very distance and foreign, especially to a western audience. The density of his work, in terms of ideas, characterisation and historical detail is transporting. When reading the knots of 'August 1914', you are back into the debates of the third Duma and the rush to war. In 'The First Circle', you feel the breadth and conversely the interrelation of Stalin's Moscow. Cancer Ward is the only book that has brought me to tears as Oleg, now healthy but penniless comes out of the hospital. Whilst he couldn't write female characters to save his life (a common male condition), he still used the 19th century novelistic form like a broadsword and a rapier.

For his courage and intellectual vigour, he was a fascinatingly flawed character. He had willing swapped the hegemony of Bolshevik Communism for Nationalist Orthodox Christianity and the fallacies of the worst of the Slavo-philes. His historical reinterpretations of paradigm about the nature of the tsarist regime, the revolutions and the Bolshevik party were mixed by great insight and blinded by partisan bias of the most dogmatic type. His criticisms of the west as decadent seemed unworthy of his great mind and kind of hypocritical given the Stalinist conformity he had escaped. Further his failure to engage with the specific nature of the Holocaust and his defence of the slavo-phile narrative of the Jews in Russia spoke of an unreconstructed base level of anti-Semeitsm. Even more baffling was his late endorsement of that son of the NVKD, Vladimir Putin as the hope for Russia. Russia has never had the chance to suffer from a surplus of democracy, whilst the history of its strongmen is, to put it mildly, mixed

Yet for all his contradictions and flaws, he remains a hero of mine and a beloved, talented and passionate writer.

I will miss you Alexander

A F$#king Rocket!!!!!

Thats me sold!

The 'Islamo' affix and lazy thinking

Full disclosure - I am studying History, in particular the ideology of fascism and violence. It was the basis of my dissertation and, mysterious Grades deity willing, will be the core of my doctorate too. I am thus very very touchy about the use of the term fascist in serious debate and discourse.

To many very good and very bad commentators, Islamofascism is a useful and accurate term of reference. As far as i can tell, this is because it places the struggle against militant Islamic fundamentalists in a suitably dramatic light, being both existential for democracy and 'liberty' (or in the case of some, Judeo-Christian tradition) and adheres the affix Islamo to a well know brand of horror and malignant morality. It has been used by high priest decents of the left as well as the theo-right. It has even been uttered in the hallowed halls of the White House. Such universality is not surprising, it has a rather cathartic resonance. It places a complex and differing situation within a mythical and manichean world of the great struggle with fascism in the 30s and 40s. It is still lazy thinking, a-historical and possibly dangerous to defeating a very real threat.

Islamofascism correlates two ideologies or families of ideology together using somewhat outdated comparisons.

Mr Hitchens gives a fine defence of the term here - http://www.slate.com/id/2176389/

His list of comparison is as follows -

1. Both have a death cult centred within their perception and historical narrative
2. Both are anti-intellectual
3. Both are obsessed with mythical 'humiliations'
4. Both are anti-Semitic
5. Both are in hock to a leader cult and 'one great book'
6. Both are deeply misogynistic
7. Both are militantly philistinistic and abhor culture
8. Both 'steal' tricks from the mass movements of the left
9. Both dream of a greater 'volk' for their particular chosen people

1. Death cults are not particular to either movement of course. Japanese Bushido Militarism, the quasi- marxian spiritualism of the Shinning Path, Necheav's dreams of purifying violence, the Blanquism cult of the day at the barricades are all death cults and come from the extremities of political ideology. They are more linked to temporal matters on a socio-psychological level. For these movements, violence offers a temporal break, between a dying age, termed by one mystic of the post-war fascist movements, the Kali Yuga (the age of vice) to a new rejuvenated age of purifying violence and spiritual regeneration. This temporal break is not ideologically particular, rather it is primordial, even anthropological. Perceived decay of a social system is to be defeated or reversed or transcended by plunging the 'patient' into a crucible of violence, reforging it and reinvesting it with meaning.

Islamo-Bushido anyone...?

2. The anti-intellectualism of fascism is a half truth. How else could one classify Gentile, Evola, Rosenburg, Spengler, Heidigger, Junger or De Benoist as anything but intellectuals and dilettante ones at that. The fascist attack on the intellect was directed against sources of perceived decadence that corrupted the gemeinschaft being reborn. Thus Marxist and Liberal academics were attacked for the content of their thought, their materialism, their lack of spirituality. Their ideas were the font of the volk trouble, not idea 'creation' itself. Critical thinking was fine if it did not produce (as it systemically would) ideas that 'rocked the boat'.

As for the those 'Islamofascists', they too are involved in a war against perceived corruption. Indeed one of the particular horrors of their war against the people of Iraq is the decapitation of higher education (http://www.petitiononline.com/Iraqacad/petition.html). These academics are not good scholars like the sainted Qutb (possibly the less competent revolutionary of the 20th century). By their continuing to teach their students in the worst possible conditions, they are, to the 'Islamos', complicit in moving Iraqi society away from their telos of a theocracy in the midst of the purifying conflagration. Neither the 'Islamo' or fascist program can be accurately characterised as a war against intellect rather than a war against intellectual decadence. It is an instructive difference.

Islamo-Iconoclasts anyone...?

3. As for humiliations,they are again a common element to political extremism. To the fascists of the PNF, the mutilated peace demonstrated the lowly position of Giolottian Italy despite the sacrifices of the Italian Army on the Isonza. The stab in the back myth (actually propagated at the behest of the Prussian high command as a toxic first feed for the Weimar Republic) 'highlighted' how the decadence of Wilhelmine Germany had cowardly failed to stand on its 'honour'. The 'humiliation' of Israel victories and western intervention (from the independence of Greece to the Iraq war) were a ongoing proof that the traditional and nationalist elites of the ME had failed in their missions. Humiliation was thus a powerful reproof to current regimes, cutting away basic legitimacy. Avenging these was a milestone towards the completion of internal revolution. Yet we find these in the nationalist discourses of the Gironde in 1790-91 where Prussian and British humiliations of French arms were used as indictments of the Ancien Regime. The nationalist right in Russia failed to defend the throne in March 1917 as they were convinced that the Tsarist regime had 'humiliated' Russian honour via it's incompetence and border-line 'treason'.

Islamo-Black Hundreds anyone...?

4. The anti-Semitism of Islamism is fairly central to its identity. The Jews via their existence and the sectarianism within the Koran are the bete-noires of the mythical Ummah, their chosen other. While in Islam, this choice of 'otherness' is prescribed by the tenets of the Meccan Koran and the Hadith, in fascism, there is no set formula for those beyond the pale. The founding fathers of the PNF in 1919 Milan included Jews, who would feature in the mechanism of Fascist Italy till into the thirties. Then Mussolini became increasingly enamoured with a racial definition of Italian identity as he drew more dependant on the Reich. Fascism is in no way philo-semitic, as some have described the Ustasa foolishly. Rather fascism sought to destroy alternative and 'irredeemable' identity as seen from its own nationalistic lens. Anti-Semitism itself was not the strongest bond that held together the genus. In a similar vein, popular leftist movements of the early to mid 19th century were deeply embedded with christian anti-semitism. Fergus O'Connor being a particular virulent hater of the 'Jew'

Islamo-Chartism anyone..?

5. Here Hitchens is on very marshy ground. Islam declares only one intermediary betwixt God and Man, the Prophet (though the Shiite have their martyred Imans). A Leader cult is hardly a way to describe this. Indeed Islamo is not a top down phenomena, it is fractious diverse and multi-headed. Thus the Challenge.

As for Fascism, the leader cult was a primary element in its manifestation, even with remarkably uncharacteristic leaders like Pavelic. Indeed, this is one of the most divergent elements between Islamo and fascism (in the inner-war period certainly).

As for 'one great book', Mein Kampf was in no way a blueprint or central text for Nazism, its turgidness guarenteed that. Apart from short tracts, no other fascist leader produced a comparable work nor any movement adhered to one solitary text.

Islamo-Marxists anyone...? (actually that has been suggested)

6. Basically who ain't. Apart from a handful of liberals and some mightily hypocritical leftists, Misogyny remains mostly unmoved and unchallenged outside of the west and pockets elsewhere. Kinder, Kurke und Kirke is neither a fascism speciality nor an Islamic monopoly.

Islamo-Churchillians anyone...?

7. Again culture is contingent. Islamists don't destroy their own shrines and they don't burn their own books. Fascist modernism is a increasingly accepted term for the onrush of various styles seeking to become the national 'vernacular'. Certain types failed and were deemed decadent, others were applauded. Gropius carried on working and being commissioned in Germany long after 1933. Evola was Italy's leading Dadaist. Culture as a source of decadence was the enemy. Those giant Buddhas were an affront to the Taliban's monopoly of imagery, their destruction was meant to ensure that. Art and culture as a source of decadence and corruption is as old as art itself.

Islamo-Tipper-Gorists anyone..?

8. Mass movements, take a deep breath comrades, are not the monopoly of the left. Mass movements are simultaneously communities bound by ritual, vehicles for political action and a collective based on belief. These elements are in no way incompatible with rightist or Theocratic thought. Indeed one of the most vibrant early mass movements were connected to both. The Guerrilla movement in Spain 1808-14, the peasants of the Vendee and the Christian Social Party of Vienna. The left merely had a head start in organising a mass following, fascism was were right caught up. Islamists in contrast have been split between mass movements like the MB and vanguardist tactics of which the groups around AQ are a fine example. Mass movements are contingent to both left and right and neither is the result of some absolute higher rationality.

Islamo-Leninists anyone..?

9. Between the Volk and Ummah are a variety of differences. The Ummah is a mythical collection of believers brought together by the revelations of the Koran. The Volk is defined by a fair more nebulous series of conditions, cultural, identity, race. For Islamos, the ummah is a well defined construct, a united and morally purified flock of believers. The Volk is particular to each movement. By ascribing to the norms of the ideology, membership of the ummah is gained. Indeed conversion, either via missionary work or coercion is a mainstay of Islamo thought. This cannot be said for fascism. One example being the Ustasa's 'nationalising war' against the Serbs. As annihilation became counter-productive, ideological bypasses were created to allow Serbs to live as Croats as long as they refuted Serbian primacy of identity. Only in the defeat of their maximinist goals did they fall back to assimilation.

One might bring to mind considering the Ummah the example of the Jacobin conception of the Body Politic. It required an acceptance of the mythology of the Great Nation and abandoning 'couter-revolutionary' thought, practice and tradition.

Islamo-Jacobins anyone...?

Islamism, my preferred term, is its own beast. Using heuristic models of fascism that are 30 years behind currently scholarship and applying them slip-shod onto a very different ideological position is a worthless exercise. It might sound pleasing to the ear, but it is to confuse what the Kraken is about and how to confront it