WORDS IN WARTIME
November 11, 2004

by Joe Sobran

     The war on terror, like all wars, has claimed 
language as one of its casualties. As a name for the 
ill-defined enemy, it has given us the ugly and silly 
coinage "Islamofascism." What, pray tell, is that?

     This label is used not only by Rush Limbaugh and 
neoconservatives, but also by some pundits who usually 
choose their words with care, such as Christopher 
Hitchens. Yet nobody seems to have defined it. It's more 
a bit of invective than a useful term of identification.

     The Left has been using "fascism" as a cussword 
since the days of Hitler and Mussolini. It was already 
very old and weary by the time it was annexed to "Islam." 
But what's fascistic about al-Qaeda, unless "fascist" 
just means "a form of politics I don't like," which 
doesn't take us very far toward understanding what it is?

     After all, nobody calls himself an Islamofascist. 
The original Fascists, led by Mussolini, called 
themselves Fascists, just as Communists called themselves 
Communists. THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY gives as its 
primary definition of "fascism" "a philosophy or system 
of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship 
of the extreme right, typically through the merging of 
state and business leadership, together with an ideology 
of belligerent nationalism."

     Not very helpful. It's more an expression of 
disapproval than a dispassionate and objective 
definition. And it hardly applies to al-Qaeda, which 
doesn't seem to combine "state and business leadership." 
What grounds are there for thinking al-Qaeda aspires to 
"dictatorship"? Its chief announced goal -- which we have 
little reason to doubt -- is to drive the U.S. Government 
out of the Middle East. You may reject both that goal and 
the methods used to achieve it, but that doesn't make it 
fascistic, unless you're using "fascism" as an 
all-purpose synonym for "nasty."

     And what is the "extreme right"? The Left generally 
stands for socialism, dictatorial or democratic; but the 
term "right-wing" has no such single or consistent 
meaning. It's applied, usually abusively, to various 
political systems that can't be reconciled to each other. 
Conservatives, neoconservatives, capital-F Fascists, 
monarchists, constitutionalists, libertarians, and even 
anarchists are all called right-wing, their only common 
denominator being their hostility to socialism. Some 
socialists label even liberals right-wing.

     "Islamofascism" seems designed to produce semantic 
frustration. It should be possible to understand 
al-Qaeda's purpose without approving its terrorist 
tactics. After all, any cause, however noble, may be 
advanced, and also compromised, by inhuman methods. This 
basic distinction seems oddly hard to grasp. The United 
States has a grim record of bombing enemy cities and 
killing their civilian inhabitants, yet few Americans 
seriously ask whether these grisly means were justified 
by their alleged ends.

     Even today, few Americans are raising such questions 
about the war in progress in Iraq. How many civilians 
have died in a war that is supposed to be bringing that 
country democracy and other blessings? We aren't getting 
reliable figures; our government isn't publishing them. 
Estimates run as high as 100,000; defenders of the war 
call this a wild exaggeration, but would it disturb them 
much if it were accurate? At what point -- if any -- 
would they agree that the human price of defeating 
"Islamofascism" is just too high? Can't we at least have 
an official body count of the innocent noncombatants? 
Just an estimate? If not, why not?

     And this, I think, is the point of this bogus label. 
Just as all political scandals are now awkwardly suffixed 
"-gate," as in "Watergate," so all foreign enemies can be 
equated with the World War II-era enemy by being 
plastered with the suffix "-fascism." This implies that 
they are absolute evil, to be destroyed at any cost. 
Whatever it takes.

     In the same spirit, all resistance fighters are now 
called "terrorists" and all American troops "heroes." No 
heroism can be ascribed to the enemy forces, even if, in 
their own minds, they are giving their lives to fight a 
foreign invader -- not to establish anything that can be 
called fascism.

     In other words, "Islamofascism" is nothing but an 
empty propaganda term. And wartime propaganda is usually, 
if not always, crafted to produce hysteria, the 
destruction of any sense of proportion. Such words, 
undefined and unmeasured, are used by people more 
interested in making us lose our heads than in keeping 
their own.

     The rest of the world hasn't picked up this word. 
Undistracted by our propaganda, it sees clearly what the 
U.S. Government is doing in the Middle East.

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