http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1405605,00.html

You are so right: I take it all back and now hold a position diametrically opposed to the position I stated above, although I reserve the right to change my position 180 degrees again by teatime and then savagely attack anyone who held my first position as being a ‘fool’ and ‘coward’.

And I might do the same (except in reverse) tomorrow.

Can a column in the Observer be far behind?

I must say I’m disgusted! Disgusted! and shocked! shocked! I tell you. You’re holding Nick Cohen to some kind of standard of consistency. You might expect academics at a degenerate institution like Oxford to be consistent, but Mr Cohen is, let me remind you, a journalist! If he says you’re a jerk, you’re a jerk. He doesn’t have to give explanations or justifications or reasons. Good god man, what do you expect … If he tosses insults around just after noon, you’re not appreciating how much not doing research and not writing takes out of a tired and emotional journalist. You try only writing 800 words a week where most of those are cliches and the rest are factually incorrect and see what it does to your dignity. Poor Mr Cohen is suffering as he neither toils nor spins nor signs up for anything remotely useful in the great campaigns he urges on others. Can you not feel how awful it is to be so overpaid, so puffed up, so talentless and yet full of bile? Poor Nick Cohen. Just imagine a balloon filled with snot. Now imagine an elephant steps on it ….

Anybody can become a fully “equal” member in AQ. Anybody can become a Muslim. Or a Wahabbi. Presumably even conservative, but not radical Islamists think you go to hell if we don’t convert (as is the case with evangelical Christians). This is the same with Communism. Anyone can “sign up.” Lots of AQ’s membership has origins outside the traditionally defined Islamic world. This was not the case with Germany or Italy or Spain or Greece in the 20th century under varying “brands” of fascism. For Hitler, if you were Jewish or Black or even a Slav, you could never claim to be a part of the Reich.

Ben P

Well!

I need hardly point out (well it hasn’t occurred to him so obviously I do) that Captain Cohen has never, in 4 years of polemic, indicated that in any way he plans to help out in the Global War on Terror (RIP). No how, no way. He has not offered to join the army, air force or navy. He has not volunteered his services to the government. He has (to the best of my knowledge) not made any efforts to contact the relevant NGOs and help them out in any way whatsoever. Neither has he visited Iraq, learned Arab, visited, for that matter, any country in the region. On the contrary. The sum total of his help to the long suffering Iraqi people would seem to be, if you’ll pardon the expression, sweet FA.

So coward is not the word i would have chosen to criticise those who disagree with him. Nor is ‘brave’ the first word I would have used to describe him.

One last point. Cohen is too…shall I say disingenous to be polite?….but it must be pointed out again and again and again, that the views of those he describes as ‘fools’ and ‘cowards’ ARE EXACTLY CONGRUENT WITH HIS OWN VIEWS ONLY THREE YEARS AGO. Now I don’t know how much the average reader’s political views have changed in the last three years, but I suspect the answer is ‘not a lot’. After all, Cohen is not 18, and he hasn’t changed that much in 3 years: and neither (for all his protestations) has the external world.

But here he is in July 2002: ‘But what will the Americans and their British sidekicks be fighting to replace the tyrant with?
It’s impossible to say with certainty, but most reports from Washington suggest that Bush wants another tyrant and Blair will concur.’

The headline is “The last thing the US wants is democracy in Iraq”. It ends: ‘If anything, the Brits are more fanatical supporters of infinite injustice in the Gulf than the Yanks.’

Or HREF=”http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,665075,00.html
“>here he is again: ‘The Prime Minister gives every appearance of being willing to risk the lives of British troops in a war he believed should not be fought. His Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary didn’t believe it was justified either. His generals have warned against it as noisily as serving officers can. His diplomats and spies have found no excuse for it. But if and when America tells Britain to send its soldiers into Iraq, Tony Blair will comply with alacrity. What is there left to say about such a man? ’

Quite. And what is there to say about a man who says this, and then, only three years later, announces that anyone who holds these views is a coward and a fool?

By Captain Cohen’s own logic, he was either a fool and a coward then, or a fool and a coward now?

So which is it?

Power worship is essential to fascism. To be defeated is in itself a refutation. Pomp, ceremonial and outward display are important. For cults, this is not so. A martyr gets to Paradise, win or lose. Fascist movements have a hierarchy with a leader whose word is law. For Muslim cultists, there is no God but God and Osama isn’t even his prophet. One could extend the list of differences; for example, it is characteristic of fascism to reject both socialist and capitalist modes of production – an issue which does not even arise for cults, since they don’t have a hope of controlling a developed economy. But there is really no need to go on with this; as I write, British police are rounding up suspects for the London bombings. To me it looks like an arrest operation, not a skirmish in a war on a menacing fascist power.

Enough already. CT threads close for comments shortly after they drop off the front page and anyway I suspect we have this one all to ourselves by now. In closing let me say that I found this article about some radical Arab Muslims very interesting. I wondered why the author saw no need to drag “Islamofascism” into it.;)

Islam is, it should be said, much less readily compatible with national divisions than is Christianity – as Adrian Hastings pointed out in ‘The Construction of Nationhood’. So fascism is going to take a somewhat different form in the Islamic world.

Having said all that maybe the analogy doesn’t work, since Islam differs from Christianity. So it is conceivable that the term Islamo-fascist will prove useful. The acid test is whether progressive Muslims adopt it in order to rally opposition to reactionaries and especially terrorists. They are best placed to judge the likely effect of the word. So far, they don’t seem to have much use for it.

I don’t think the border between the religious and the national is as clear-cut as you suggest; Nazism clearly borrowed from traditional Christian anti-Semitism.

As for Al-Qaeda, its ideology may be theoretically universalist, but its goal of reestablishing an Islamic caliphate stretching from Indonesia to Spain seems to me to resemble the ‘great nation’ projects of the fascists. And its mobilisation of chauvinistic violence and glorification of killing outsiders (Jews and Christians) seem to me to resemble the fascist or Nazi attitude toward national or racial minorities. Add to that the fact that Al-Qaeda is a modern revolutionary organisation, as was the Nazi party, and I think ‘Islamofascism’ is a pretty apt term.

Fascism does not describe the Taliban. Indeed, I would argue fascism has nothing to do with religion. Whatever you may think, AQ regards its philosophy as utopian and millenial, which to me makes it much more like Marxist or various forms of religious thought. It makes claims that are universal, and is a set of beliefs potentially accessible to all humanity. Nazism or Italian or Spanish fascism wan’t. All the various fascisms of the 20th century were predicated on chauvinism surrounding the nation state. AQ’s view of Islam (and perhaps the ultimate result of any religion) makes a claim that transcends national borders.

Whether the Taliban (or AQ, or various revolutionary Marxisms) are totalitarian then I would agree with you. Most value systems that claim universal applicability are totalatarian if taken to their logical extreme.

I agree with Carroll – I suggest you both re-read his whole chapter and work out what he was trying to say…