Understanding Our Enemy

It seems recently that our focus in international matters, perhaps not our military or our politicians but our own as a society, has shifted away from Al Qaeda. This is certainly not without reason. The war in Iraq, while justified by Al Qaeda, had nothing really to do with that group at all, and distracted us from focusing on our true enemy. Despite certain random squashed attacks, many of them at a dangerously ambitious and large scale, there seems to be a feeling that we have defeated them merely by killing or imprisoning its members. Yet, giving Islamic fascism a physical limit is a mistake. It is an ideology that cannot be contained merely through military or police action, and one that is systemic in its creation and sustained success in recruiting such willing young men. The effectiveness of trying to make this sort of ambiguous intellectual argument does not, however, grab the interest of Americans who care more about crime and punishment than understanding the systematic causes and effects of an issue.

Therefore, the best way to grab the attention of the public on an issue like this is to make a frightening and headline grabbing analogy: the brand of Islamic-Fascism which fuels Al Qaeda and other terrorist cells like it has only one clear and direct link in history, and the similarities are frightening. That link is surprisingly to the sort of Nazi fascism that led to the utter destruction of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Despite representing potential harm and definite evil, it seems on the surface as if the two share few similarities. Ultimately, however their origin, fermentation and active ideological tenets are strikingly similar.

Fascism has certain universal qualities. On feature is an extremely rigid adherence to the power of the state, which combines with a very limited definition to leave little room for leeway. Fascist sees those belonging to a shared state as sharing the same blood and the same history. That is all, and there is a very small margin left for interpretation of who is with them and who is against them. Compounded with that rigidity is the utter distaste, and better yet, anger and even distrust, fascist feel for outsiders attempts to infiltrate the state. Hitler specifically took this characteristic, and used it effectively, disguising his war campaign under the guise of desperately needing to unify the state.

There also exists a staunchly anti-modernization belief, which helps in a way explain the feeling the ideology has for ethnicity. That belief fuels, perhaps more than anything, what it is exactly that feeds fascist hatred toward ideologies that promote modernization at all costs, namely Democracy and Marxist-Communism. Fascist believes in an agrarian economy and actively detests any concerted movement toward cosmopolitism or industrialization.

Those two characteristics described above, together with the personality qualities that their existence tend to indicate (such as distrust, fear and anger as well as a sort of confusion as to whom and where that anger should be placed) all create a perfect storm with regards to the existence of ethnicity.  Ethnicity represents a clear and physical manifestation of an outsider within the ever-important nation, whose infiltration and very existence is seen to soil the blood that serves as your last and strongest bond. The freedom of an ethnic group, as was the case with Jews in Nazi Europe to have some influence in industry and markets, once again is unacceptable. The essential point in this argument is the understanding that fascist mistakenly confuse ethnicity with race. To say that ALL people within groups sharing histories or cultures, real or imagined, are all exactly alike is utterly irrational. Yet, it is this utter irrationality that characterizes the fascist view of ethnic groups and it is what makes it such a potentially frightening system of beliefs.

In Germany, the national personality qualities including distrust, fear and insecurity driven delusion, sprung out of very real national wounds. The Treaty of Versailles ending World War I dismantled the economic and social constructions of Germany, an already particularly proud country compared with the rest of the world. Internal despair combined with the weakness of being torn apart by known enemies without the power to help yourself, created a fractured and wounded political and social German state. Angry at industry, the west and economic depression that influenced their lives after that first war, the people of Germany chose to follow a strong, patriarchal leader: Hitler. His promise to restore unity and power, regardless of his methods or his specific vision for the future, these broad strokes spoke to them.

Ultimately, there are four inherent qualities in the modern Islamic psyche. First, you can look at the necessary conditions for the birth of fascism I described above. For the sake of this argument, it is important, however, to understand Islamic fascism does not have one concrete homeland or a classic singular politicized body. It, instead, a collection, or network, of young men bound by religion and culture. In this regard, whereas Fascism in Germany lived for the specific nation, Islam sees religion as the nation. Still, whether religion or a nation with borders is the connection, it is all within the blood that they share. And as a group, the existence of our blood in matters economic and political, in their homeland, is harmful and intrusive.

Islamic fascism was born out of a Middle East that had once ruled the economic and intellectual world, albeit centuries ago. It is a place and a people that still deeply maintain that historical pride. Furthermore their possession of the world’s greatest resource, oil, has caused capitalist cultures to dominate their economy. Instead of oil money going towards infrastructure, it flows into the hands of those far away in the West. Frustration at the world’s development, and a sort of insecure anger at the capitalistic intrusion, have combined to create the sort of ‘ultimate’ fascist psyche that I described above.

A mutual hatred of modernization, and especially cosmopolitanism, driven by a sense of pride, drives Islamic anger towards the west, taking the form of fascism, and not surprisingly, consequently violence. They too possess a strict view of brotherhood, marked by blood, beliefs and shared experience

All of these shared and renewed characteristics of fascism leads to the large scale shared psychological traits that leads to not only increased anger toward ethnic groups, but an inability to differentiate, specify and understand such general hatred. For them, the Jews still remain an essential and easy outlet for those angers. Better yet, a vague notion of the “The West” as a whole, singular and scientifically exact entity has become just another, larger and easier target.

Understanding your enemy is half the battle. Too few people understand our greatest existential threat today, Islamic Fascism, just as too few people recognized the danger and potential for violence with Nazi’s during the early 1930s. Once we can understand their danger, and better yet, the true psychological and historical reasons behind their cause and their anger, we can better formulate a plan to combat it, and ultimately, ensure that movements like these cannot grow and develop again in the future.