Double-you tee eff
Good old wikipedia... (comments in parentheses are mine)
(For the curious, this post is my 'wtf bush' post, because he's taken to calling all terrorists fascists. In fact, apparently the free world is at war with these fascists. So, how exactly are terrorists that are trying to blow up planes... fascists?)
The term fascism has come to mean any system of government resembling Mussolini's, that in various combinations:
exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual. (OK I'll give him this one, they exalt their nation above all, but it's more of a religious nation - Islam - as opposed to the traditional definition of nation, that normally associated with the nation state.)
stresses loyalty to a single leader. (In fact, terrorists are deliberately set up using a cell system which distributes authority, to make it more difficult to disrupt because there is no single figurehead. Osama was an exception to the rule, and one can see why it is not a good idea to have a figurehead - it gives the US something to try and blow up.)
uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition. (Violence perpetrated by terrorist is actually aimed to disrupt the target's way of life and to sow chaos, or to induce political change in their target like the IRA. The terrorists are normally fighting a 'war' against an opponent with vastly superior resources, and as such I personally don't view terrorism as attempting to supress political opposition, but rather as a means of advancing their political agenda. The use of mass media to publicize the terrorism could perhaps be viewed as propaganda - so a tie can go to Bush.)
engages in severe economic and social regimentation. (Terrorists telling you how to spend your money? Strictly regulating their country's economy? Passing abortion laws? Please. Maybe extorting private citizens for funding. But then petty criminals could be considered fascists.)
engages in corporatism. (Some terrorist networks are actually quite proficient at making money. However, the best ways of making money are also illicit, and as such are not really viewed as corporatism. Or else the Mafia - or at least certain drug cartels - would probably be one of the top 100 corporations of the world.)
implements totalitarianism. (Actually this would be quite inconvenient for terrorists to have to spend resources controlling a population. They would have no support if they did not offer the public some form of better life, and going Stalinistic on people seems to piss them off. There's a reason the taliban ran the country, while the terrorists concentrated on attacking the West.)
As a populist social movement prior to gaining government power, fascism displays different characteristics. (Terrorists are not a populist social movement. If the majority of Muslims supported the terrorists and wanted the US out of their country, it would be called an uprising or a revolt. Terrorists are a very vocal, very visible minority.)
In an article in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana, written by Giovanni Gentile and attributed to Benito Mussolini, fascism is described as a system in which "The State not only is authority which governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life, but it is also power which makes its will prevail abroad... For the Fascist, everything is within the State and... neither individuals nor groups are outside the State... For Fascism, the State is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative..." (Unless you replace the State with 'their religion', the terrorists that Bush speaks of aren't really fascists. Perhaps a more apt description would be theocratics)
(Basically, I believe Bush is making a very ill-disguised play to relate his war on terror to the campaign against Hitler. Hitler is very unique in that he was near-universally despised, and world war 2 can very much be seen as a war of good vs. evil. Or rather, it can be seen as such because history is written by the victors, but that's another discussion. But terrorists are not fascists in any way, shape or form. They're actually almost polar opposites, with fascists at the extreme right and terrorists more akin to anarchists at the extreme left. The most they have in common is that they are both very extreme political ideologies - but fascists advocate government above all, and the terrorists are more destructive by nature - merely anti-american, anti-democracy, but not pro-government or really pro-anything at all.)
*gets off soap box*
~Fin~
(For the curious, this post is my 'wtf bush' post, because he's taken to calling all terrorists fascists. In fact, apparently the free world is at war with these fascists. So, how exactly are terrorists that are trying to blow up planes... fascists?)
The term fascism has come to mean any system of government resembling Mussolini's, that in various combinations:
exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual. (OK I'll give him this one, they exalt their nation above all, but it's more of a religious nation - Islam - as opposed to the traditional definition of nation, that normally associated with the nation state.)
stresses loyalty to a single leader. (In fact, terrorists are deliberately set up using a cell system which distributes authority, to make it more difficult to disrupt because there is no single figurehead. Osama was an exception to the rule, and one can see why it is not a good idea to have a figurehead - it gives the US something to try and blow up.)
uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition. (Violence perpetrated by terrorist is actually aimed to disrupt the target's way of life and to sow chaos, or to induce political change in their target like the IRA. The terrorists are normally fighting a 'war' against an opponent with vastly superior resources, and as such I personally don't view terrorism as attempting to supress political opposition, but rather as a means of advancing their political agenda. The use of mass media to publicize the terrorism could perhaps be viewed as propaganda - so a tie can go to Bush.)
engages in severe economic and social regimentation. (Terrorists telling you how to spend your money? Strictly regulating their country's economy? Passing abortion laws? Please. Maybe extorting private citizens for funding. But then petty criminals could be considered fascists.)
engages in corporatism. (Some terrorist networks are actually quite proficient at making money. However, the best ways of making money are also illicit, and as such are not really viewed as corporatism. Or else the Mafia - or at least certain drug cartels - would probably be one of the top 100 corporations of the world.)
implements totalitarianism. (Actually this would be quite inconvenient for terrorists to have to spend resources controlling a population. They would have no support if they did not offer the public some form of better life, and going Stalinistic on people seems to piss them off. There's a reason the taliban ran the country, while the terrorists concentrated on attacking the West.)
As a populist social movement prior to gaining government power, fascism displays different characteristics. (Terrorists are not a populist social movement. If the majority of Muslims supported the terrorists and wanted the US out of their country, it would be called an uprising or a revolt. Terrorists are a very vocal, very visible minority.)
In an article in the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana, written by Giovanni Gentile and attributed to Benito Mussolini, fascism is described as a system in which "The State not only is authority which governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life, but it is also power which makes its will prevail abroad... For the Fascist, everything is within the State and... neither individuals nor groups are outside the State... For Fascism, the State is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative..." (Unless you replace the State with 'their religion', the terrorists that Bush speaks of aren't really fascists. Perhaps a more apt description would be theocratics)
(Basically, I believe Bush is making a very ill-disguised play to relate his war on terror to the campaign against Hitler. Hitler is very unique in that he was near-universally despised, and world war 2 can very much be seen as a war of good vs. evil. Or rather, it can be seen as such because history is written by the victors, but that's another discussion. But terrorists are not fascists in any way, shape or form. They're actually almost polar opposites, with fascists at the extreme right and terrorists more akin to anarchists at the extreme left. The most they have in common is that they are both very extreme political ideologies - but fascists advocate government above all, and the terrorists are more destructive by nature - merely anti-american, anti-democracy, but not pro-government or really pro-anything at all.)
*gets off soap box*
~Fin~