[lbo-talk] LGF cites Hitch

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Oct 23 08:56:57 PDT 2007


Yoshie's odious comparison got me paging through LGF. Yeah, sure, we'd all feel right at home there!

I came across their approving citation of this passage from Hitchens:

<http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=27644_Hitchens- _Defending_the_Term_Islamofascism&only>


> Does Bin Ladenism or Salafism or whatever we agree to call it have
> anything in common with fascism?
>
> I think yes. The most obvious points of comparison would be these:
> Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that
> exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind.
> (“Death to the intellect! Long live death!” as Gen. Francisco
> Franco’s sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.)
> Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit
> of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and
> lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined
> “humiliations” and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically
> infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly,
> also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are
> inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power
> of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual
> repression—especially to the repression of any sexual “deviance”—
> and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and
> contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as
> symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy
> museums and treasures.

It's almost a cliche to point out that what Hitch describes here sounds a lot like our own Christian fundies, starting with the ignoramus in the Oval Office. The glaring exception would be the anti- Jewish paranoia, but our fundie Zionists don't particularly like Jews unless they're safely contained in distant Israel, where they will be damned come the Second Coming.

Doug



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