While I have strong objections to the political ideology that former Sen. Rick Santorum propagated in his lecture on Monday, my primary problem with his presentation was with his use of the term Islamic fascism. This term, which has become increasingly popular among ultra-conservatives, suggests direct parallels between the anti-Semitic fascism of Nazi Germany and the religious ideology of radical Islam. It strikes me that if our goal is to understand the logic of this latter movement which indeed we must we are ill-served by such ignorant comparisons.
Radical Islam is nothing like fascism, and the comparison obscures far more than it illuminates. Fascism is, at base, a racial-nationalist ideology. Nazis, for example, feared the blood-contamination of the pure Aryan race, and sought to preserve the nation by purging the other from within its bounds. By contrast, radical Islam is typically anti-nationalist, and because it does not conceptualize purity in the idiom of blood, its expansionist campaign is fundamentally different. Ironically, this sort of mischaracterization distracts our attention from social phenomena that actually do approximate fascism, like the institutional racism and anti-immigration sentiment in Europe and the United States.
Let me be clear: I do not intend to defend the violent excesses of radical Islam. On the contrary, I am concerned to see its cessation. But the term Islamic fascism is a red herring in this endeavor, distracting us from a more thoughtful understanding of the movement's underpinnings.
Jason Hickel
GSAS
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