Recent public references to "Islamic fascists," a term used by George W. Bush and repeated often in the print media, suggest that the President and many writers have an inaccurate or at least incomplete understanding of fascism. This is not to suggest that there are no Islamic fascists, rather to point out that the people on whom Bush wishes to hang the term do not fit the description. Perhaps that does not trouble Bush nor some of the op-ed authors who understand that the use of the word "fascist" is effective propaganda. Even if people are not sure what a fascist is, most know that it is not a positive term, and for many in this administration and those who support them this is sufficient justification to use it. Calling one's opponents unpleasant names is known in philosophy as an ad hominem argument, and it is recognized as a logical fallacy. Sound logic requires us to understand that bad people and bad ideas are not synonymous, and in the same way, good people do not always have sound ideas. But, bad logic often makes for good propaganda.
Politicians, as George Orwell pointed out to us, are particularly adept at draining meaning from language and refilling words with emotional rather than cognitive content. Careful writers of all political persuasions, perhaps especially conservatives, protest the debasement of language by our leaders and public figures. The process has become so ubiquitous that many, if not most, people do not notice that the words they hear or read mean something other than what the dictionary informs us. Therefore, President Bush can call members of Islamic terrorist organizations fascists, and neither he nor most of his listeners recognize any irony in his name-calling. Fortunately, President Bush's misuse of language in referring to Islamic fascists has not escaped attention by some in the popular press. See Georgie Ann Geyer's August 16, 2006 column, "With Twist of Words Bush Gets It Wrong Again." It is a service to the reading public for journalists such as Ms. Geyer to call attention to the debasement of political terms by leaders who should, but who may not, know better.
Perhaps more than most political terms, the word fascist lends itself to imprecise use. This is because -- unlike most modern ideologies such as communism, socialism, or laissez faire capitalism which have a recognizable set of intellectual constructs that define their core beliefs and to some extent direct or predict their economic or political behaviors – fascism at its core substitutes emotional beliefs for intellectual principles. Whereas communism or capitalism have universally applicable principles, such as public ownership of the means of production or a reliance upon the power of private property within a free market economy as the means to a well ordered polity, fascism takes a form that varies according nature and history of the national culture in which it arises. In the 20th Century, nations with widely differing cultures and political structures have been subject to fascist governments. Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Croatia and a few other nations have each had a version of fascist government, but the commonalities that make them fascist are not immediately apparent in a survey of their cultural, economic, or institutional structures under fascist regimes. Reading books by German fascists (Hitler, Rosenberg) or by Italian fascists (Mussolini, Gentile), or reading the speeches of Franco, Salazar, or Peron will not immediately provide one with an understanding of fascism as an ideology, or even suggest that there are enough common elements among these national movements to categorize them together on any basis at all.
A number of scholars have addressed the problems of defining fascism as a political theory and have achieved some success, albeit at a rather abstract level. For instance, Umberto Eco, the prolific Italian jack-of-all-trades intellectual, identified 14 points that mark fascism in a 1995 article entitled, "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" (New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995). Additionally, in 2002, political scientist Laurence Britt outlined the essentials of fascism in "14 Points of Fascism," for the Project for the Old American Century (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm). Despite the coincidence of finding 14 points of commonality that define fascism, the two articles do not completely catalog the same traits. Nevertheless, taken together they bring a great deal of coherence to the study of fascism as a political movement, if not a coherent ideology.
Eco, writing before the advent of the Bush Administration, may be considered without reference to the Republican administration of George W. Bush, but it still provides a very interesting yardstick against which to measure Islamic militancy as well as recent American activities and policies. Eco's fourteen points may be briefly paraphrased in summary as follows:
1) A cult of tradition marks fascist governments. National history is selectively presented to emphasize traits that support the myth of a nation's superiority or special status in history.
2) Fascist governments reject modernism and rationality, although they embrace the instrumentality of technology. Fascist regimes are marked by irrationality, anti-intellectualism, and emotion.
3) Fascist governments value action for action's sake. Another manifestation of irrationality and emotion over reason, fascist behavior often favors unilateral action (often violent) over diplomacy or consensus.
4) Dissent or disagreement is usually interpreted by fascist governments as treason. The government exploits fear of difference
5) A fear of diversity or difference within the nation is created and exploited by fascist regimes.
6) Fascist governments usually draw on social frustration of groups or classes of citizens that feel themselves to be politically humiliated or threatened by internal social groups above or below their class, or by external forces.
7) Hyper- nationalism marks the fascist state. Often this is reinforced by government propaganda which makes the populace feel beleaguered or the intended victims of international plots.
8) Fascist governments often appear humiliated by the wealth, force, power or prestige of their enemies.
9) Fascists present a world view that individual and national life is a permanent struggle, and that war is the only acceptable means of asserting, establishing, and preserving the superiority of the fascist state.
10) Fascism relies on a form of elitism, which is a hallmark of reactionary societies, that hold the weak in contempt.
11) Fascist regimes celebrate the Hero. Everyone is trained to be a hero, and to lead a heroic life, the culmination of which is a heroic death. Heroic death becomes something of a cult, tied to militarism, nationalism, struggle, and an irrational will to power.
12) The will-to-power which is a hallmark of fascism leads to an exaggerated masculinity or machismo which is marked by a disdain for women, intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits. Homosexuality, chastity, abortion, promiscuity, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and so on are suppressed as crimes against the state or as crimes against nature.
Ph.D. University of Oklahoma 1971. Retired, emeritus status since 2004. Senior administrative positions in academic affairs at State University of New York, University of Evansville, Oklahoma State University, Eastern Illinois University. Held faculty rank and taught political science at SUNY Plattsburgh, University of Evansville, Oklahoma State University, and Eastern Illinois Universitiy. Academic specialization, political theory, public law, American political institutioins.
Fascism may have been coined by Mussolini but it was practiced in front of all countries to see by the US back in the late 19th and early 20th century when US trusts ran the government and eugenics was the craze among elites. Corporatism and fascism where used interchangably in the 1920s and 30s.
The American empire follows the practices of the British empire closely, with the exception that no people are needed to exploit the mercantile system the US has developed that includes all places that the US has a military presence and/or puppet government.
The US is a set of multinational banks, corporations and world wide military/intel presence to raid nations of their natural resources and treasury through amoral loan sharking (WTO, IMF and USAid), covert and overt regime change. This is all ok with the American people as long as long as they stay happy, satisfied and ignorant.
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Jim Reinhart (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 60 comments)
on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 10:41:03 AM
Actually, one of my colleagues who is retired from Texas A&M read the article prior to posting and observed that by Eco's list, several US administrations have shown affinities with fascism, including those of some liberal democrats. That is open to interpretation, I suppose, and depends upoon how one reads American history. Personally, I find that capitalist corporatism, a hallmark of the country's economic history since about the time of the War Between the States, always carries with it a tendency toward the style of government that could slip easily into fascism, or at least Pseudo-fascism as defined in the article.
My purpose in writing was not to paint Bush or any prior administrations with a fascist brush, but merely to point out that there are scholars have drawn benchmarks to aid in the definition of fascism, and that Bush had inappropriately applied the term to the militant Islamisists whom he wishes to vilify. It appears to me, as I point out in the article, that the Republican Bush administration comes much closer to meeting the criteria established for fascism than do the Islamic fundamentalists at whom he is throwing the label. I hoped that I might help to point out the irony in the situation.
I appreciate your comment, and thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.
Charles Evans
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Charles M. Evans (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 2:12:33 PM
The Irony of it all comes with some pain included.
Thanks for viewing my comment. Your article is a great comment on the irony of a fascist calling theocrats something they are not. Orwell's word usage is very prevalent in this administration. Euphemisms seem to be outdated to describe reality now. It makes me laugh while feeling the pain of it all. Thank you for having the courage to write about the topic and opednews for posting it.
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Jim Reinhart (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 60 comments)
on Friday, August 25, 2006 at 2:24:54 PM
Wonderful article! You should also check out the article written by Vice President Henry Wallace during World War II. It seems that the Bush (Busholini?) regime has borrowed the Fascist technique of fear mongering and war scares to intimidate democratic opposition. As the "master," Benito Mussolini is reputed to have said: "When the war drums beat, all laws grow silent."
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Tom Sciamanna (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 24 comments)
on Saturday, August 26, 2006 at 9:01:57 AM
Thanks for pointing out Wallace's remarks. I find him to be one of the most interesting characters of the New Deal period. I appreciate your kind words about the article.
Charles Evans
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Charles M. Evans (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 at 4:38:01 PM
Thank you for your article about the definition of Fascism. I was particularly interested in item 9 in your list of attributes,
9) Corporate power is protected: The industrial and business leadership of a fascist nation are often the ones who put government leaders into powers, creating a mutually beneficial government/business relationship with the power elite.
A definition of Fascism that I have heard (from Thom Hartmann) to be attributed to none other than B. Mussolini. I understand that there is some reason to doubt the accuracy of the attribution, but Mussolini is said to have defined Fascism as more aptly named corporatism. It is the political system in which political power is in the hands of corporations.
I'd be interested in what you might have to say about this.
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PrMaine (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 165 comments)
on Saturday, August 26, 2006 at 1:08:47 PM
Thanks for your interest in the fascism article. Mussolini wrote in the Encyclopedia Italiano that fascism might better be called corporatism. Reference is made to this in the article, and the quote from the Encyclopedia is printed in its entirity. Certainly gives Americans cause for reflection considereing the recent political/economic history of the nation. I appreciated your note.
Charles Evans
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Charles M. Evans (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Saturday, August 26, 2006 at 6:44:24 PM
