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