Blair, Islamism and fascism

October 20, 2007 at 10:01 pm (fascism, Iran, Islam, Jim D, religion, Tony Blair, war)

Tony Blair’s recent speech to a bunch of American Catholics, suggesting that  Islamist extremism is similar to “rising fascism in the 1920′s and 1930′s”, has been widely criticised – most effectively by my old mucker Dave.

Dave rightly points out that “fascism is the most widely misused term in the entire political  lexicon…in Dictatorland only the real Big Swinging Dicks get to be fascists“, going on to  point out that Iran (singled out by Blair as the main state sponsor of Islamism) is not, strictly ‘totalitarian’, let alone ‘fascist’: “The simple fact that independent working class organisations openly exist (in Iran)…is of itself almost enough to make the point“, he says. I should  immediately emphasise, that Dave makes it clear that he doesn’t offer “one iota of legitimacy to the (Iranian) dictatorship…the government of Iran deserves the odium of every democrat on the planet. But to call it ‘fascist’ strips the term of any descriptive value…”

I agree with Dave on most of this, and also with his  observation that Blair’s comments are almost certainly an “histrionic attempt to soften up public opinion for (a) future military strike on the Middle East’s premier pariah”.

However, I think Dave goes too far in rejecting Blair’s “fascism” analogy out of hand. For one thing, I notice that Blair talked about ”rising fascism in the 1920′s and 1930′s” (my emphasis). Now, granted that history has never been Blair’s strong point, I think we can, nevertheless take it that he meant the relatively early days of fascism in Europe, before it achieved state power in Italy and Germany. He was, as I understand it, talking about fascism as an ideology, not as a state power: therefore Dave’s “Big Swinging Dicks” argument is beside the point. It’s the same mistake that people like the SWP and Seamas Milne make when they attempt to reject the analogy between Islamism and fascism: they try to argue that simply because Islamism doesn’t control any powerful state apparatuses, it cannot be compared with fascism. On that basis, of course, Hitler wasn’t a fascist before 1933 and the BNP are not fascists today. 

Of course, there is another reason to reject the simplistic comparison that Blair attempted to make: classic European fascism was a phenomenon associated with the rise of poweful workers’ movements and the  squeezing of the petty bourgeoisie. Nothing like that is happening in the (mainly Middle Eastern) countries where Islamism is presently on the rise. True, but as Trotsky argued in 1934, to dismiss fascism as just “a product of the capitalist regime…means we have to renounce the whole struggle, for all contemporary social evils are ‘products of the capitalist system’…Fatalist prostration is substituted for the militant theory of Marx, to the sole advantage of the class enemy…The increase in the misery and the revolt of the proletariat are also products of capitalism” (quoted in this article).

And if holding ‘big’ state power was a pre-requisite for being considered a fascist, what was  (British) SWP-founder Tony Cliff  going on about in 1946, when he wrote: “The British are…doing all in their power to foster the ‘Moslem Brotherhood’, a clerical-fascist organisation in Egypt which is at present organising branches in Palestine”? 

Of course Blair’s speech was simplistic and historically flawed; and of course he should not be allowed to use his “rising fascism” analogy to justify a military attack upon Iran. But he wasn’t completely wrong about Islamic “fascism”, either.