Saw a post on Hit’n'Run that not only pointed out the idioicy of the buzz term “islamofascist”, but proposed a reasonable substitute (for those that insist on having one, that is):

If the Bush administration is looking for word to scare voters into supporting Republicans, or even simply a better, more descriptive term for groups who wage irregular war on the United States, let’s turn to another bloody, violent group, the Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, in fact, is in many ways a better template for al Qaida than fascist nation-states.

The Klan was part resistance movement, part terrorist organization, part opposition government, and it excelled at propaganda. It was aggressively Protestant, regional in outlook, built on extended informal, often family, networks, and as Jesse Walker noted last year, at one time included a fair amount of good government, social service-type concerns.

This begins to sound more like Hezbollah or Hamas, except for the Protestant part. And there’s more. The Klan enforced Taliban or Wabbahist-like codes against immoral behavior. As Jesse put it, “These Klansmen were more likely to flog you for bootlegging or breaking your marriage vows than for being black or Jewish.”

Yet when us war skeptics point out to neos in the heat of arguement that the difference between islamic extremists & christian extremists is merely the latter being too lazy to act on their words (for example, Jerry Falwell said 9/11 was “god’s wrath” for tolerating gays & abortion) they throw a hissy fit. Go figure…

This inspired me to describe what it is we’re actually faced with, sort’ve to put the final nail in the coffin of “islamofascist”. Tiring of the server squirrels at Reason, & suspecting this’ll run long (as such, this is going under “fevered barking”), I’ve decided to share it with you all here…

Honestly, the entire “islamofascism” thing could be dismissed by pointing out one thing: al-qaeda and its fellow travellers are anti-nationalism. To get why, you’d have to know what those types started out fighting against, which was pan-arabism & socialism*. For awhile in that part of the world there was a philosophy of embracing modernization, driven by nationalism, secularism (well…as much as the region would stand) and central planning of the economy — Iraq under Saddam would be an example of this, though he didn’t originate the idea. That strategy seemed to fall apart wherever it was utilized, turning into little more than petty tribal squabbling & rampant corruption — again, see Saddam — and it fell out of favor.

Over time, some chalked up the failure as being not from the type of things we would point out as being detrimental in ALL cases (state-run economics, corruption, lack of human rights), but because of it not being “islamic” enough. They threw it in reverse, wanting to scrub even the slightest western influence from their society. Here’s where we come in: many of the regimes that the islamic revivalists opposed were supported by the US. How do you call yourself getting rid of western influence when the “head” of the west has a hand in everything? It was inevitable that they’d see attacking us as merely part of the overall strategy.

That explains the roots of it. What about the spread? To the average disillusioned person in that region, islamic revivalism had a populist streak in that it was in opposition to the elite they lived under at the time. This would’ve been a spot where some influence of “the infidels” would work wonders, if only classical liberalism weren’t rejected out of hand already. Instead, islamist movements are gaining political legitimacy — Hamas runs the palestinian government, Hezbollah has seats in the Lebanese parliament, members of the Muslim Brotherhood won elections in Egypt despite their party being banned officially.

So, by the actual definition of fascism — militaristic expansion, nationalism, state-worship — no, we are not fighting a new breed of fascist. Nor are we against a group of people who “hate freedom”. The reason that we are in the mess we’re in is because through our arrogance & for the benefit of a few against everyone else, we established ourselves in the crossfire of a slow-grinding internal islamic civil war. Since people like comparison stories, here’s one:

Imagine that the US split into North & South again, only the reason was because a neo-Stalinist national leadership formed from the North ran the country into the ground. The South as a result moved towards becoming a full-fledged theocracy, while the North is in limbo.

Now imagine that, say, France has had military bases & overt political influence in the North for the past 50 years…

Would the people of the South be pissed off & start blowing up anything even remotely french? Would people in the North gradually come to sympathize with them? Would a response by the french government of “we must overthrow the North States & give them democracy!” be completely missing the point? Would reasonable people back in France think “gee, maybe we shouldn’t fuck around in the US”?

You know the answers…

(* - before anyone whines: yes, I know they also oppose the Saudi royals, and no they do not fit the arab state-socialist mold I described.  Going off of what I’ve read about the roots of al-qaeda specifically, that part seemed like Osama’s own personal fit with the Sauds was clumsily grafted onto the rest & it grew into something of its own.  The ideology is on autopilot now, the key issue on our part is to stop throwing gasoline on the fire.)