By the way, Hitchens has been conspicuously silent on Lebanon, at least on Slate.
mbs
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2006 10:14 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Eric Lee vs. Sean Matgamna of the AWL debating Israel
On Jul 29, 2006, at 11:45 PM, Chip Berlet wrote:
> I understand that many people use the term Islamo-fascism as a
> catch-all epithet, but there are serious scholars, including some
> on the left, who think that some Islamic militant movements should
> be seriously considered to be clerical fascist or theocratic
> fascist movements. I understand your anger and frustration, but I
> dislike having some of my claims, that are published in scholarly
> publications, dismissed as merely "bullshit." And Eric Lee is
> hardly a crackpot. And is Juan Cole a crackpot for suggesting that
> Hezbollah has engaged in war crimes? Get a grip.
I feel fully gripped, and in no need of getting one.
Attacking civilians is a war crime - I have no problem with Cole or anyone else saying that. But that's got almost nothing to do with "Islamo-fascism," an epithet that Hitchens loves to throw around - and now apparently, so does Eric Lee. It's a term that once magnifies the strength of the "enemy," obscures any real analysis of who "they" are or what motivates them, and casts opponents of the general war as Neville Chamberlains.
I'm not familiar with your work on this - could you point me to some? I don't think you produce bullshit, far from it, but the term itself is bullshit.
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
-- ---------------------------------------- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter for private users.<br />It has removed 18925 spam emails to date.<br />Paying users do not have this message in their emails.<br />Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len<br /> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 3208 bytes Desc: not available URL: <../attachments/20060730/95a2e6ad/attachment.bin>