Heaven-Hating Hitchens Hails Islamofascism

If anyone asks me why I take Christopher Hitchens' intellectualized-up [Iddybudspeak for dog-doodoo wrapped up in college-lined paper] defense of the ridiculous anti-intellectual term Islamofascism with a grain of salt, it's because I know - given the fact that Hitchens eschews religion [have you read his book?] - that it's a hell of a lot more simple for this intellectual to throw the totally unrelated terms Islam and fascism together when he already harbors a wicked disdain for both.

Assholeofascism is a term that strikes closer to the truth. Leave the good religion of Islam out of it and we'll look a hell of a lot less like the Crusaders we've apeared to have been these past six years, where God's-voice--to-Fearless-Leader's-ear has caused unnecessary war and suffering of the innocent ... enough to warrant 70,000,000 tickets to eternal damnation. You'd think, if Hitchens was really all that clever and truly believed religion is a poison, that he might see that he's allowing himself to be stuck in the middle of a strange and dangerous religious tug of war. He's defending a term [Islamofascism] that blasts one established religion while huddling in the corner with the extremist Judeo-Christians of the neoconservative cult.


Related:

Crooks and Liars - It’s “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week”

C’mon, kiddies, let’s put out the decorations and bake a cake!....Remind me again how many times these neo-cons have been right? Oh that’s right, zero. I’m sure parents will be thrilled to know their tuition dollars are going towards instilling ignorance, hate and fear in their children.

Will Bunch has the whole sordid affair.

Will Bunch - Attytood: It's the most wonderful time of the year: Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week

This is why Rick Santorum was placed on God's formerly green earth, because were it not for my former senator (R-Leesburg, Va., McMansion) I might have totally missed Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. [..]

[..] As an actual college professor, Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, has noted, the Islamo-Fascism label makes no sense:

Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state. Fascism exalts youth and a master race above the old and the "inferior" races. Muslim fundamentalists would never speak this way.

Take a Good Look on Y'own Backyard:
From a prior post on my Iddybud blog on the topic of fascism

- Bora Zivkovic, a progressive blogger who I have had the opportunity to meet many times, has an important story and lesson for all of us. He and his family have been through a shameful time in human history - the Holocaust - a time when many of them didn't make it through to the other side with their lives. If you cannot trust the perspective of a person who has lost 42 members of his family to state-sanctioned murder, than I suggest that you may not be capable of trusting anyone. At the beginning of the crisis in the Balkans in 1991, Bora points to the fact that the Israeli press had recognized what the Westerners did not - the fascistic nature of Franjo Tudjman's new government in Croatia, and the reason is because the Jews have decided to never again become an invisible people whose persecution could escape the consciousness of humankind. Warning signs of fascism can come in the forms of underlying ideology "which can be coated in whatever symbols people are already used to - and proud of - including the American flag."
Bora says,

"Neither Nazism nor Stalinism sprung up suddenly out of nowhere. Both built up gradually, over the years, slowly acclimating the populations to the ever-increasing levels of totalitarianism, and utilizing the fears and emotional insecurity of the few to rein in the many....

....If you look at The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism you will recognize that all 14 are at some stage of implementation by the current US government....

NOTE:

Think about this "warning sign" of fascism:

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Now read Peter Bergen's new TNR piece that showcases the fruitlessness of such a reach around the rule of law for power's sake:

Daniel Coleman, a former FBI special agent who dealt with Mohamed and is regarded as one of the nation’s leading authorities on Al Qaeda, recalls that "it took two years to get him to the point where we could safely say that he was reliable and not leading us on." But, eventually, he did -- and physical coercion was not involved. "There is no need to use anything else other than the full legal scope and power of the justice system," Coleman says of his approach to interrogations. "To go outside of that is completely unnecessary."

Indeed, Coleman thinks the Bush administration’s treatment of captured terrorists -- holding so many outside the traditional justice system at Guantánamo while authorizing interrogation techniques that some observers would consider torture -- has been largely a bust. He told me that most of the information he saw coming out of Guantánamo until his retirement in 2004 "was of no particular value."

- Peter Bergen, War of Error

Larisa Alexandrovna has a related post featured at Raw Story titled Theater of the Absurd

Getting back to Hitchens and his ridiculous defense of the dumb term Islamofascism:

The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism

Rule 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

David Horowitz playing stupid human tricks to get the masses to buy his term...expected. Hitchens swallowing it lock, stock, and barrel...an allegedly-smart person falling into the trappings of fascism.

Enough said?