"Republofascists"

[zaj]

Seems to me to be an equally meaningful term to describe some Republicans/Conservatives as the "Islamofascists" counterpart...

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009518.php


(August 23, 2006 -- 03:28 PM EST // link)
The past week or so has seen some renewed attention to the longstanding hawk-pundit gambit of referring to people as "Islamofascists" since the President, in what I can only understand as a sign of increasing desperation, decided to more-or-less sign on to this agenda by adopting the slightly-less-absurd formulation "Islamic fascists." The other day, Spencer Ackerman made the fundamental pragmatic argument against this -- Muslims everywhere really, really, really don't appreciate this terminology.

That aside, however, it's worth calling attention to the function of this rhetoric. "Fascist," in this context, just roughly means "bad." Add in the "Islamic" and what you come to is the conclusion that we're in a war and that the enemy in this war is Muslims who subscribe to bad ideologies. This has the consequence of taking a set of institutionally and ideologically distinct actors -- Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Iraq, Iran, Syria, al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, Iraqi insurgents, etc. -- and treating them as a single phenomenon. To do so would be a serious mistake. And to call it a mistake is not to deny the obvious fact that these are groups that are to some degree interrelated. There's some ideological overlap. Some of these groups are allied with each other at the moment. Some have been allied in the past. Some might ally in the future.

Nevertheless, they are different things. And the essence of sound strategy has long been to look at potentially hostile actors and try to divide them. To decide what your top priority is and focus on it. The "Islamofascism" rhetoric is part of a continuing campaign to do the reverse.

-- Matthew Yglesias

[ixion]

1. it would be Republicofascists, though, I think

:-)

[oc2002]

2. The word does seem to ring true. They support Bush more like a dictator

than a president.

[ananda]

3. Bush/Caligula

More and more I think of Bush as a modern equivalent
of Caligula... in the sense that he has openly appropriated
executive powers over all other branches of government...
as Caligula did with the power of the Roman "princeps."

I didn't realize that the executive branch was charged with
so much power until Bush started actually using it.

Congress sometimes whines about it but doesn't actually
do anything about it. The courts sometimes rule against
Bush, but Bush and the justice dept. simply ignore them.

This is thus the picture of a ruler with absolute power, with
elections as a sham and a cover.

Sue

[oc2002]

4. thats an insult to Caligula! Nero, maybe.

lol.

[yurbud]

5. Didn't Caligula have sex with his horse? Worst Bush did was Gannon.

[pansypoo53219]

12. not just caligula

but napoleon too. and since hitler farted a lot too, i am sure all 4 farted.

[yurbud]

6. this is a great idea and probably the only way to force right to look at

what fascism really is.

I discuss this in my classes and ask what they know about nazis and fascism beyond their hatred of Jews. And, as far as I know, Franco and Mussolini didn't share Hitler's Jewish obsession. None of them know anything about it, or that it is a capitalist dictatorship, which the last couple of decades of propaganda have made impossible for people to put together.

[oc2002]

8. Its more of a corporate dictatorship, where big big corp dictate through

control of executive, legislative and judicial branches of this government.

Bush is nothing more than a figure head, Cheney tells him what to do and say.

[yurbud]

9. talk about the corporate stuff, and even hard righties will listen

they get that. Remember that Pat Buchanan and some of the old school conservatives were against NAFTA.

They can see their self-interests on some of this stuff, but the problem is that's not a frequent or loud part of the public discussion because the people that own the microphone have already decided we don't have a say on those issues.

[jsamuel]

7. that has a very strong ring to it

[yurbud]

10. or GOPpyfascist or Wascist.

[leftofthedial]

11. FAR more meaningful term

a. it's not an oxymoron

b. it's true

[zaj]

13. Yep...

Pretty straight-forward actually.

[leftofthedial]

15. in fact, it may actually be redundant

[librechik]

14. They are just plain fascists

though I think they are trying to ride the coattails of the word "Christofascist" which has much more logic to its coinage: after all, Christians are happy to run corporations and profit from them, while Islamists, I think, believe such worldly activities are sinful.

[TahitiNut]

16. "Fascists" is accurate enough - "Reich-Wingers" as a neologism.

:shrug: