Lumping AQ with Adolf & Benito is what I am not doing. I and some others are arguing that there is a resurgence of forms of right-wing millenarian populist theocracy in the world, which can be a precursor to clerical fascism, which was the third form of fascism in interwar Europe. It allows for an analysis that see the similarities among US Christian Identity, (Matt & I argue Christian Reconstructionism, too), the BJP in India, Salafist (ultra-Wahhabist) Islamic Supremacist movements, Kahanaism and its offspring, and clericalized supremacist forms of Serb, Croat, and Kosovar nationalism. It also looks at the historic role of the Falange and the Muslim Brotherhood.
This was a project started several years ago at a meeting of the International Sociological Association's Alienation section, and it will result in a book in two years. There is by no means agreement on these issues, but the discussion is taken seriously by Marxists and non-Marxists in the ISA and ASA.
The issue of keeping distinct the left and right responses to corporate globalization, and refusing to collaborate with racial or religious nationalist responses to corporate globalization, is one that has been discussed at length here, and our core study group of political (as opposed to "just" scholarly) activists lives at "The Sucker Punch of Right/Left Coalitions: The Repressive Side of Right Wing Populism and Anti-Elite Conspiracism."
http://www.publiceye.org/Sucker_Punch/Clueless.html
There is also a European home page linked there.
This has to do with the disagreement over "organizing" the guys in the armed Militias and the Taliban as allies, a concept I think is suicidal (and immoral).
This does not mean we should not work in a broad TACTICAL alliance to stop the war and roll back the attack on civil liberties. I already work in such a coalition with folks like (ugh!) Paul Weyrich. Yech... Spit... That doesn't mean that we should all ignore his homophobia and antifeminst politics.
Chales J. raised some good points, but my (respectful) response must wait. I am off to speak at a symposium in Atlanta at the Contemporary Art Center.
-Chip Berlet
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Doug
Henwood
> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 11:07 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: RE: Islamism is a fascism? (was "Herman
responds")
>
>
> Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> >All true, but clerical fascism was neither Italian
fascism nor German
> >fascism. It appeared in Lithuania (Grey Wolves), Croatia
> (Ustashi), Hungary
> >(Arrow Cross--at the very end after toppling the Horthy
> regime) and in a
> >weird way in Romania (Iron Guard).
>
> What is clarified by calling AQ "fascist"? What is gained,
> analytically, by lumping it with Adolf & Benito?
>
> Doug