NEWS: Happy Islamofascism Awareness Week!

Seculoauthoritarian!

Aesthetologofascist!

Thats Mr Hilter to you bub.

I'm really more of a Secularmonarchist. I dig all the fancy clothes and ceremony. Though I do claim my right to rule by divine right, so figure that out.

I notice nobody bothered jumping on your typos, why jump on theirs?
Also, how can the "spell it before you can accuse it" defense work when the "know the definitions of the words you are using" defense clearly doesn't?

Sue for damages!!! Oh wait, just noticed you aren't in the US.

But... my mommy always told me never to click on something a stranger tells me to...

By the way, you're a brat (Obviously I didn't listen to my mommy!)

I didn't know Rockefeller University existed until now. Huh.

I thought she had an internship at the London Stock Exchange or something.
It's a school huh ? Who'd have guessed. What was the name of her school again? LSE ? It's a correspondence school or something ? I don't seem to be able to find it listed here among the top 100 or so schools.

*snicker*

Ok, guys regardless of what you think of her views or what she said this is getting a bit much.

really, though, can you trust a wikipedia article?

Ok but lets be honest it does nothing to promote a fresh exchange of ideas. If someone is wrong or trolling let them be wrong through their own stupidity.

God knows I have posted some FAR out shit here while trolling because I simply gave up even caring about trying to have a normal conversation. It can be very off putting to have multiple people all attacking you.

Fascism probably requires violence, but violence does not entail fascism. Authoritarian governments have existed throughout history much earlier than the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, oppression and violence are not the defining features of fascism. Nationalism, however, is most definitely at the core of fascism. The sense of the "nation," however, cannot be simply replaced with a religious community in the way that fascists use it. For fascists, the national community has "natural" members (often defined ethnically) who share some sort of commonality that is unique to their group - often in the form of an understanding of the world (see Heidegger or Spengler, for instance).

Oxford University's Roger Griffin, one of the leading scholars of fascism, offers the following definition: "Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism" (Griffin Fascism 4). Fascism then, he argues, is not most easily defined by the use of violence or other policies. For him, the most defining characteristic of fascism is the "mythic core" comprised of "the vision of the (perceived) crisis of the nation as betokening the birth-pangs of a new order. It crystallizes in the image of the national community, once purged and rejuvenated, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of a morally bankrupt state system and the decadent culture associated with it" (Griffin 3). The purged "new" society once "awoken" can give birth to a "New Man" (Griffin 3).

Griffin takes this vision of society to be at odds with non-fascistic understandings of society because it "connotes an organism within its own life-cycle, collective psyche, and communal destiny, embracing the principle the whole people (not just its ruling elites), and in practice all those who ethnically or culturally are 'natural' members of it, and are not contaminated by forces hostile to nationhood" (3).

In common English then, fascism is a type of political ideology which is rooted in ultra-nationalism, critiques its national community as being morally bankrupt, advocates national rebirth, and the creation of a fascist "new man." I find Griffin's definition appealing because it allows us to understand the difference between non-fascist and fascist authoritarian governments. This definition also enables us to identify which ideologies/parties are fascist even when they are not advocating violence and oppression. Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party in Russia is a good example of a political party that does not advocate violence or oppression, but is most definitely fascist.

I pretty much feel like this wins the thread.

I want to coin a word! Can I do that?

I also should probably list the characteristics of fascism (again according to Griffin), since I only posted the definition...

So does that make my word valid?

So, I would argue that "Islamofascism" isn't a very accurate term for describing the fundamentalist movements we are trying to analyze. While both fascist and fundamentalists often share some features, such as violence, rejection of liberalism, and antisemitism, the terms differ more than they agree with each other. The most basic element of fascist ideology, the myth necessitating a national rebirth for the purpose of creating a new and healthy man, is simply not present in "Islamofascist" ideology.

If we call the fundamentalists "authoritarian," then we don't have to explain away a great number of incongruities between our definitions. If we call the fundamentalists "fascist," we face this problem, yet I don't see what explanatory power we are supposed to get out of it (unless we just want to use guilt-by-association).

Depends on what you are trying to pick out as fascist. America definitely has its share of fascist movements.

In order for the "fascist" tag to fit, however, they have to fit the description that Griffin gives. Note: I say that because he seems to give a pretty fucking good definition (it holds true to the documents that fascists wrote/write and doesn't blur issues). Additionally, if the description fits whatever group, then we could expect them to roughly have the sorts of characteristics in my second post.

... but if people keep insisting on using "Islamofascist," you have my personal permission to coin any ridiculous term you want in response. I would suggest, though, that we start calling these people "Bad-definition-and-analysis-o-fascists."

Does this document suit the definition?

That was more or less what I was going for.

RedBstrd FTW, is all I can say.

I agree. I'd love to have this debate with Colinism and RedBstrd (and anyone else interested in chatting about it, free from extreme aggression). So, anyone can feel free to PM me to debate it/challenge some ideas if they're interested.

And to a few people in this thread - there's something really wrong with you, and I don't want to make it what is already clearly a bad situation for you worse by launching insults at you. I've got sympathy for you and I wish you luck in life.

Wow, there's allot of this thread, much of which seems to be senseless bickering, so do forgive me if this point has already been made. I skim read the thread, but might have missed something.

Islamofacism is a stupid term: yep, it certainly is. Other people (particularly my good friend RedBstrd) have put far more eloquently than I could, the reasons why this is true.

But lets cut to the chase shall we? Of course it's a stupid term. It doesn't need to be clever, accurate or appropriate because it is designed to enflame people who don't know any better.
This is one of a long list of enflamatory buzzwords and spin which American politicians (particularly those of the far right) use to terrify the less politically savvy of their citizens into complacency and to distract them from faliures and inaction on domestic issues.
These terms have ranged from having some kernel of truth to them (war against drugs, red threat) to very little or no accuracy (reds under the bed, McArthy etc and this current Islamofacist nonsense).

It's far easier to convince a population, terrified of the communists hiding in their cupboards or terrorists planting bombs under their houses, to agree to giving up their civil liberties. It places another issue, a hazy foreign and far away issue, higher up the agenda the real and tangible injustices going on at home. If you screw up abroad only the parents of the people you sent to their deaths care. If you screw up at home everyone sees it, and you'll lose your next election.
It's rather like a game of smoke and mirrors.
It is also a magnificent cover for financial and military ambitions abroad. A country of people you've terrified will willingly support foriegn wars if you convince them it is combating the fears which you yourself have planted in their minds.

Now, I'm not saying there's no terrorist threat at all. What I'm saying is, Islamofacism is a concept designed not to genuinely help the "war on terror", but to pacify, distract and stupify the general populous.

I can envisage the policy committee now:

In general, of course, I agree with your assessment of the function of terms like "Islamofascism" and "Red Menace."

But I think you're giving the inventors of such catchphrases too much credit. I rather strongly suspect that they're not so much trying to manipulate the masses deliberately as much as they're just stupid themselves.

Oh despite the spoiler I'm not really suggesting there are policy comittees to think these things up. I think that these sorts of ideas crop up more naturally, but their effect certainly isn't lost on the people who use them.
US politicians have always strove to find a convenient enemy, but I don't think they sit around rubbing their hands together in brainstorming sessions to come up with a new one.

It's more like a natural strategic instinct.

I think allot of the way we're manipulated and controlled by the powers that be operate in exactly that manner. I don't believe in an evil capitalist illuminatum. There doesn't need to be.

Personally, I assume "Islamofascism" was coined (or at least popularized) by neo-conservatives to try and shame leftists into supporting an pre-emptive, interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East.

If you can frame the debate on global Islamic terrorism as "Nazis 2.0!", then you can paint anyone who wants anything less than total war as a modern Neville Chamberlain looking for "peace in our time".

It also smacks of "You won't understand how oppressive fundamentalist Islam can be unless we tart it up a bit and compare it to Hitler".

We're in agreement on that, then. Though I'd describe the "natural strategic instinct" as the result of selective sociopolitical pressures, but, yeah, we're still talking about the same thing, just chicken-and-egging it.

True. But I think that if this thread proves nothing else, it's that the people who coin and popularize such idiotic catchphrases sincerely believe in their applicability.

And that's all the point I was making, there.