Reclaiming The Issues: Islamic Or Republican Fascism?
by Thom HartmannIn the years since George W. Bush first used 9/11 as his own "Reichstag fire" to gut the Constitution and enhance the power and wealth of his corporate cronies, many across the political spectrum have accused him and his Republican support group of being fascists.
On the right,The John Birch Society's website editor recently opined of the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretap program: "This is to say that from the administration's perspective, the president is, in effect, our living constitution. This is, in a specific and unmistakable sense, fascist."
On the left, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. specifically indicts the Bush administration for fascistic behavior in his book "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and his Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy."
Genuine American fascists are on the run, and part of their survival strategy is to redefine the term "fascism" so it can't be applied to them any more. Most recently, George W. Bush said: "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."
In fact, the Islamic fundamentalists who apparently perpetrated 9/11 and other crimes in Spain and the United Kingdom are advocating a fundamentalist theocracy, not fascism.
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{ 3 comments }
Too often in the West, where I am from, we hear constant vindication of the Islamic system. Yeah, the Islamic system and countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Islamic Republic/Iran/Persia, Afghanistan or Egypt are not perfect. 9/11 was an awful event and such Arab fanatic organisations as al Qaeda are truly sickening. So, too, is stoning and veiling women, banning moderate consumption of alcohol, and justification of suicide bombers. We must take a look at the West as well, though. It too has its problems.
I’m sick to death of girls like Michelle Hughes. These people are the another extreme and the kind of people we kill 1000s of innocent Iraqis to protect. Night clubs, discos, street brawls, lap dancing, overconsumption of alcohol, Michelle Hughes, depression, suicide, loneliness … these are the things that the West has produced.
Once, the West was a religious fanatic zone but then countries like mine (Ireland) were nice places to live after the religious fanatics went away and before the Westoxification began. Surely, let’s make a need for religion (whether Christian, Islam or other). We do not need the Taliban but either do we need our streets so unsafe to walk even 100 yards on in the dark or even in the day now!! Dublin used to be a nice place but it is now dangerous.
The Koran rightly recognised the fact that immodestly dressed women (such as Michelle Hughes) cause unendless problems and that drunkenness is evil. In my opinion, it did NOT mean women in veils (just women not in the nude or near it) and it did NOT mean the complete banning of alcohol (but the banning of drunkenness and irresponsibility with it).
To sum it up: the West needs to take a look at its own imperfect society before it can accuse countries like Islamic Republic (Tehran) (formerly known as Persia and Iran) and its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad what to do. The outcome of the whole process is 100% certain: Ahmadinejad will be defiant but the US will eventually threaten military action and Ahmadinejad will do 180 degree turn to become little servant of the West or a humbled leader akin to Saddam was between 1991 and 2003. What gives the right to the West to be the ruler of this country? The fact that Islamic Republic or whatever it was you want to call it will become another US servant will happen. Ahmadinejad may want to rightly stand up for his rights but he may as well be pissing into the wind as the US will (just like the British did for defiant Irish in the 1921 treaty here) give him an offer he cannot refuse or else war. Ahmadinejad does not want the latter (he ain’t the religious nutter the West like to portray him as – he is a PhD graduate who uses religion as a symbol of power – while not believing a whole lot of it himself but seeing the usefulness of it) so he will have to have the former. Like the Irish radicals did in 1921. Or like Ayatollah Khomeini backed off into obscurity after releasing hostages in 1981 with a pledge from the US of not attacking the Islamic Republic but with a promise to keep anti-US rhetoric just as that.
The war on terror has drifted too much: 9/11 was done by al Qaeda, an enemy of also Iraq and Islamic Republic. Why so does the US invade Iraq, threaten Islamic Republic and even threaten the ardently non-Islamic communist atheist Republic of North Korea? If the war had been about getting those criminal scum who did 9/11, that would have been grand. Instead, the plan is: world domination by the West and turning all the world’s men into drug-dependant alcoholics, all the world’s women into Michelle Hughes and the only social spots either nigtclubs or lap dancing clubs. Hell, that would be boring .. every country would be the same.
Imagine 2010: go to:
USA
Empire of Persia (in 2006, known as Islamic Republic)
Iraq
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (ditched its religion in 2007 once oil money was distributed to the poor)
UK
Czech Republic
Ireland
France
All the same!! Popular passtimes? drinking to excess, street fighting. Popular names for girls? Michelle. God? Bush and Blair. Saints? Rumsfeld, Cheney, Reagan. and so on.
I forwarded this comment to many sites in the US.
They deserve to see this.
Here is a You Tube short titled “Stop Calling Islam Islamic Fascism” dated Aug. 12 (American) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCq88zAkWJQ&mode=related&search=
When I heard this remark I first thought it referred to entities such as Al-Qada. But then I realized he was referring to Islam itself. When 9/11 occured Bush and Co. put on a veneer of effort to say that the war to ensue on terrorism was NOT a war on Islam. The politically correct thing to do was to refrain from criticizing Islam (directly). Five years later, the gloves are completely off. Heck, they’ve been off for a while but now it’s a melee of criticism. In fact, it has turned into a full-blown religious war. There is NO getting around it, the “Judeo-Christian” West has declared war on Islam. One could say that it was first Islam to declare war, but OBL does NOT count as a voice of Islam. GWB and all the various fundamentalist Christian churches as well as some Jews (not all) have united forces in a war on another religion. The US has utterly ransacked Iraq with a civil war there in full swing between Sunnis and Shias. What year is this everyone? 2006 and here we are in an ACKNOWLEDGED religious war declared by the world’s most predominate nation. It is a chilling state of affairs.
Fascism: (some aspects)
* “1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination.” [4]
Who does this define? I am an American and can without any hesitation state that I feel my government under the neo-conservatives has become a fascist state. George Orwell should be the one winning the prize for predictions. When he wrote 1984 it was written as science-fiction. Unfortunately, the current state of affairs is that truth IS stranger than fiction.
Technology made by humans has made it possible and it is HUMANS who must turn it back. Humans who have the backbone to stand up to this before it is too late. Being a sheeple is simply no longer an option.