I don't think it is "pointless", it's about learning from the past. To me all conservatives and all fascists are on the same broad spectrum/continuum; their ideologies are _all_ basically anachronistic (false consciousness if you like) and are applied selectively. For example, the Japanese government prior to 1945 can't be called "fascist", for several obvious reasons. Nevertheless, it was expansionist, ultranationalist, racist (in spite of the rhetoric about European colonialism and so on), it played on religious bigotry and it was a military ally of fascists.
Fascists are quite different to "puritanical" religious "fundamentalists", in that their economic policies of fascists serve the needs of a national bourgeoisie, and/or sectors of international capital. However, broad right alliances are still possible, and/or the religion _may_ be flexible enough to overcome its differences with the dominant class of accumulators (as protestants did in the medieval and early modern eras).
I think also that a religious revival in Saudi Arabia would be a very disturbing sign, given the economic power there. Which may or not be "capitalist"... As Marx pointed out, at a certain point the quantitative becomes qualitative.With that sheer scale of accumulation in a capitalist global economy, the Saudi ruling class are "capitalists", whether they like it or not.
Regards,
Grant.
Hakki said:
Sorry, I was actually trying to comment on the pointlessness of this whole discussion while at the same time picking up on your interesting points. My bad.