Fighting Fascism (01/10/14)

A range of commentators in the UK have, in the past, tried to provide intellectual cover to young men setting off to fight 'jihad' in the Middle East by comparing them to the International Brigades who fought to defend Spain from fascism during the Spanish civil war.

But instead of fighting fascism many of these young men are supporting a murderour new form is religious fascism which is embodied in an organisation like the un-Islamic State.

So I thought I would call upon Christopher Hitchens to help explain the links between historical fascism and the more recent phenomenon of Islamic fascism which he does below:

"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."

Well said, sir. I take my hat off to you.