Lesson for Bush: Saddam is a Fascist, the Islamists are not

[many a good man]

Corriere Della Sera, Italy
Lesson for Bush: Saddam is a Fascist, the Islamists are not

By Sergio Romano

Translation Provided By Nur-al-Cubicle

August 12, 2006
Italy - Original Article (Italian)

The movement most resembling fascism among those groups which appeared in the Middle East during the 1900s was a movement founded in Syria in 1940. Its founder, Michel Aflaq RealVideo, was a Syrian Christian. He had studied at the Sorbonne in the 1930s, had participated in the battles between Left and Right in the streets of Paris and had absorbed an intoxicating mix of political literature, from Mazzini RealVideo to Lenin RealVideo. He was anti-colonial, pan-Arab, proud of the Arab past but resolutely secular and socialist. When he returned home, he founded the Ba'ath Party and one of his first actions was to join the al-Gaylani revolt against Great Britain in 1941. Aflaq died in 1989, probably in Baghdad, as the guest of a man who had much admired him and who drew on his teachings to organize the Iraqi state. That man was Saddam Hussein.

It was he who created the Party, Saddam Hussein told an interviewer in 1980. How could I possibly forget what Michel Aflaq did for me? If it were not for him, I would never have come to this position. Iraq was therefore the Middle East's most fascist regime in the last few decades. Saddam used the Ba'ath Party to militarize the society, to set up a cult of personality modeled from that of Il Duce and Der Führer, to put the bureaucracy in uniform and to emphasize public works. At the same time, he was a nationalist and, in his own way, a socialist. This was the height of fascism in the Arab world.

But it would be very difficult for me to identify fascism in religiously inspired movements from the Muslim Brotherhood to those that following the Iranian Revolution, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the First Gulf War in 1991. Between the Ba'ath and religious fanaticism, even against a common enemy, there is an unbridgeable divide. Unlike his predecessors, George Bush seems to have forgotten that the greatest enemy of Khomeini's Iran was Saddam Hussein, and that during the long war between the two countries, from 1980 to 1988, the United States supported the fascists against the Islamists.

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Excellent post!

Thanks for that.

[IntiRaymi]

2. It sounds like an insult.

'Islamofascist'
It is quite a mouthful, and it joins together two terms that pander to prejudices in the minds of people.
I am afraid that simply explaining why the term is nonapplicable (fascism has nothing to do with fundamentalist religion) will not work, and that what matters is the verbal impact that this term posesses.

[many a good man]

3. Americans need to understand fascism

I agree with you that this is not a term that is supposed to be accurate, but I've seen a lot of DUers lately nodding in agreement with its usage. Thinking people ought to be able to tell the difference. The bushcheney style of government is a lot closer to fascism than OBL or Sadr.

[IntiRaymi]

4. Is it cynical of me to assume that people do not think?

That sloganeering, as shallow as it is, is what ultimately works best?

[Igel]

5. I thought that one of the big pieces of argumentation

against 'Islamofascist' and its variants was that Islam has no form of corporatism, a crucial part of classical fascism. It crucially differs from state corporatism.

The Ba'ath Party was socialist in this regard; it took a Soviet, state corporatist, model of the economy more than a fascist or Nazi model.

Other than that, Stalin was a pretty good fascist. And so's Ahmedinejad.

Nationalist. Public works. Militarized society. Cult of personality. Emphasis on grievances and victimization by others.