On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 15:09:50 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes:
>
> We're playing word games to some extent, but what does it mean to
> apply the same term to Germany under Hitler and al-Qaeda? One is
> big,
> hierarchical, and centralized and the other isn't. One fought
> conventional wars, the other doesn't. They have different social
> roots, different ideologies, and different enemies. I don't see the
>
> point of using the same word for both.
>
> Doug
>
This is the kind of thing that Carrol has been pointing out here forever. Many leftwing people like to apply the term "fascist" to all sorts of governments and political movements that they find repulsive but this strips the term of any useful scientific meaning, so that it becomes little more than a political swear word. The fact is that there are many different kinds of political regimes that can take on a repressive and authoritarian manner including good old fashioned bourgeois - liberal democracy.
Chip has been calling the Taliban "clerical fascists" but I don't think that I can buy that unless he can provide us with an analysis of the ideology and class roots of the Taliban that can link them to the types of regimes that everyone agrees were fascists - i.e. Mussolini's in Italy, the National Socialists in Germany. I have seen the term "clerical fascist" applied to the rightwing Catholic regime that governed Austria following the suppression of the Social Democrats in Vienna, and prior to the Anschluss with Nazi Germany, but I am not at all sure that the Taliban bear any ressemblence with that regime.
Jim F. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20011011/97af6a91/attachment.htm>