Propaganda Offensive
Rainer Rupp | 07.09.2006 13:46 | Anti-militarism | World
America will be more secure the sooner Rumsfeld resigns.. In an historical sense, the term "Islam fascism" is absurd, a contradiction in itself.. The fascism reproach is not true for any of the Moslem groups resisting Anglo-American control of the Middle East.
PROPAGANDA OFFENSIVE
US government starts a propaganda offensive: Bush and Rumsfeld warn of “Islam-fascists” and denounce critics of the Iraq war as “Hitler-appeasers”
By Rainer Rupp
[This article published under the title “Neuer Typ Fascismus?” in Junge Welt, 9/1/2006 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,
http://www.jungewelt.de/2006/09-01/035.php?print=1/]
With thunderous speeches, US president George W. Bush and his secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld promote their war in Iraq these days. Given ever-stronger resistance against the occupation forces in the Tigris-Euphrates land and louder demands from the public and opposition in the US, Bush clearly rejected a withdrawal of his army. A rushed withdrawal would transform Iraq into a terrorist state, the president said on Wednesday at an election event in Nashville, Tennessee. “Much is at stake,” Bush said, a victory in Iraq would be “an important ideological triumph in the battle of the 21st century.”
In the most caustic speech of a long career, Rumsfeld spoke days before to veterans of the “American Legion” in Salt Lake City of a battle against a “new type of fascism.” The US defense secretary compared critics of the war policy of the Bush administration supposedly directed against “terrorism” with “allied appeasement politicians” toward the Nazis before the Second World War.
THREATENING ELECTION DEFEAT
Since the republicans could lose the majority in both houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives, in the midterm congressional elections in November, the Bush administration with a new propaganda offensive is trying to present its worldwide “crusade against terror” as an epic battle of the US against a new fascism and so win the favor of voters. After alleged terror attacks on ten transatlantic airplanes supposedly prevented in July 2006 in London, Bush reminded his compatriots “that we are a nation in a war with Islam-fascists.” Despite massive criticism above all from the Moslem side, the US president repeatedly used the term whispered to him by his neo-conservative advisors since 2005 to give a catchy name to the anonymous enemy in his “worldwide war against terror.”
Bush and his secretary have now triggered a vehement debate with their reference to “Islam fascism.” “Rumsfeld is right in all things and everyone with another opinion is wrong and a danger for freedom,” he said after the Salt Lake City speech in a first reaction in the online edition of the Washington Post. According to Rumsfeld, all critics of the Iraq war are “appeasers” in allusion to the misguided appeasement policy of the British Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany. They are appeasers toward “Islam fascists.” At the same time he compared himself and his government colleagues implicitly with those statesmen of the 1930s who foresaw the war and urged from the first a harsh fight against Hitler when he wasn’t so strong. The “war against terror” can be “compared with the war against the fascist countries in the Second World War,” Rumsfeld said, because America’s battle against “Islamic terror” is a battle against a “new” type of fascism. The Pentagon chief urgently warned all honest Americans not to make the same mistake as the appeasement politicians made toward the Nazis.
TOO MUCH NEGATIVE NEWS
Rumsfeld saw the real enemy as critics in the West, especially in his own country where “cynicism and moral and intellectual confusion” are widespread. They could “weaken the staying power of free societies.” These people “have not learned the lessons of history.” “Instead of facing the new dangers threatening the country,” they are “mainly occupied with dividing the land.” Whoever criticizes the “war against terrorism” waged by the US government “contributes to the demoralization of the population,” Rumsfeld ranted and raved. The media that allegedly do not report fairly are particularly responsible.
The journalists intentionally exaggerate negative news about the situation in Iraq and devote all their attention to the misdeeds of a few soldiers without writing anything about the first soldiers awarded the highest military medals in Iraq. Rumsfeld directed his special rage against the human rights organization Amnesty International that described the US camp at Guantanamo as a “contemporary Gulag.” This charge is “inexcusable,” the Pentagon warlord bellowed.
In a first reaction, the Democratic Party accused Rumsfeld of a “political smear campaign.” He is only trying “to divert from his own mistakes as defense secretary.” “Joe McCarthy would have been proud of his style,” democratic representative Pete Stark said alluding to the anti-communist witch-hunter of the 1950s. “America will be more secure the sooner Rumsfeld resigns,” Stark said according to the Washington Post.
PROPAGANDA FORMULA “ISLAM FASCISM”
One of the most dangerous propaganda terms from the hotbed of gossip and intrigue of the neo-conservative advisors of the Bush administration is “Islam fascism or “Islam fascists.” This is the new catch term that now circulates in America’s Christian fundamentalist and rightwing conservative circles. US president George W. Bush used it last week when he spoke of the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Both are democratically recognized parties with members in a democratically elected government.
In an historical sense, the term “Islam fascism” is absurd, a contradiction in itself. However no other term could serve as a better justification of Bush’s wars to create a “new Middle East” conforming to the US. As an explosive term “Islam fascism” mobilizes dangerous emotions, especially racist hatred against Arabs.
Using middle class definitions like those of American professor Robert Paxton, the fascism reproach is not true for any of the Moslem groups resisting Anglo-American control of the Middle East. The only approximately fascist group that arose there was the Marxist-Christian Phalange party in Lebanon that ironically was an ally of Israel’s radical rightwing government in the 1980s.
In a greatly praised book “The Anatomy of Fascism” (2004), Paxton lists five criteria characterizing fascism: 1) a feeling of an overwhelming crisis that cannot be solved with traditional means, 2) the conviction that one’s group or one’s nation was the victim and all measures are justified beyond all legal and moral limits, 3) the need for authority by a leader standing above all law who trusts the superiority of his instincts, 4) the right of the elected people to dominate other people without legal or moral restraint, and 5) fear of foreign control.
Fascism demands one war after another to conquer and dominate foreign countries. At the same time it needs many internal threats to keep a nation in fear and terror and develop “patriotic” hyper-activism so every critic is branded as a traitor. Last but not least, Paxton points out that all successful fascist regimes have sought support from corporations, especially from the military-industrial complex. If one follows this definition, the fascists can be found in Washington, not in the Middle East.
US government starts a propaganda offensive: Bush and Rumsfeld warn of “Islam-fascists” and denounce critics of the Iraq war as “Hitler-appeasers”
By Rainer Rupp
[This article published under the title “Neuer Typ Fascismus?” in Junge Welt, 9/1/2006 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,
http://www.jungewelt.de/2006/09-01/035.php?print=1/] With thunderous speeches, US president George W. Bush and his secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld promote their war in Iraq these days. Given ever-stronger resistance against the occupation forces in the Tigris-Euphrates land and louder demands from the public and opposition in the US, Bush clearly rejected a withdrawal of his army. A rushed withdrawal would transform Iraq into a terrorist state, the president said on Wednesday at an election event in Nashville, Tennessee. “Much is at stake,” Bush said, a victory in Iraq would be “an important ideological triumph in the battle of the 21st century.”
In the most caustic speech of a long career, Rumsfeld spoke days before to veterans of the “American Legion” in Salt Lake City of a battle against a “new type of fascism.” The US defense secretary compared critics of the war policy of the Bush administration supposedly directed against “terrorism” with “allied appeasement politicians” toward the Nazis before the Second World War.
THREATENING ELECTION DEFEAT
Since the republicans could lose the majority in both houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives, in the midterm congressional elections in November, the Bush administration with a new propaganda offensive is trying to present its worldwide “crusade against terror” as an epic battle of the US against a new fascism and so win the favor of voters. After alleged terror attacks on ten transatlantic airplanes supposedly prevented in July 2006 in London, Bush reminded his compatriots “that we are a nation in a war with Islam-fascists.” Despite massive criticism above all from the Moslem side, the US president repeatedly used the term whispered to him by his neo-conservative advisors since 2005 to give a catchy name to the anonymous enemy in his “worldwide war against terror.”
Bush and his secretary have now triggered a vehement debate with their reference to “Islam fascism.” “Rumsfeld is right in all things and everyone with another opinion is wrong and a danger for freedom,” he said after the Salt Lake City speech in a first reaction in the online edition of the Washington Post. According to Rumsfeld, all critics of the Iraq war are “appeasers” in allusion to the misguided appeasement policy of the British Neville Chamberlain toward Nazi Germany. They are appeasers toward “Islam fascists.” At the same time he compared himself and his government colleagues implicitly with those statesmen of the 1930s who foresaw the war and urged from the first a harsh fight against Hitler when he wasn’t so strong. The “war against terror” can be “compared with the war against the fascist countries in the Second World War,” Rumsfeld said, because America’s battle against “Islamic terror” is a battle against a “new” type of fascism. The Pentagon chief urgently warned all honest Americans not to make the same mistake as the appeasement politicians made toward the Nazis.
TOO MUCH NEGATIVE NEWS
Rumsfeld saw the real enemy as critics in the West, especially in his own country where “cynicism and moral and intellectual confusion” are widespread. They could “weaken the staying power of free societies.” These people “have not learned the lessons of history.” “Instead of facing the new dangers threatening the country,” they are “mainly occupied with dividing the land.” Whoever criticizes the “war against terrorism” waged by the US government “contributes to the demoralization of the population,” Rumsfeld ranted and raved. The media that allegedly do not report fairly are particularly responsible.
The journalists intentionally exaggerate negative news about the situation in Iraq and devote all their attention to the misdeeds of a few soldiers without writing anything about the first soldiers awarded the highest military medals in Iraq. Rumsfeld directed his special rage against the human rights organization Amnesty International that described the US camp at Guantanamo as a “contemporary Gulag.” This charge is “inexcusable,” the Pentagon warlord bellowed.
In a first reaction, the Democratic Party accused Rumsfeld of a “political smear campaign.” He is only trying “to divert from his own mistakes as defense secretary.” “Joe McCarthy would have been proud of his style,” democratic representative Pete Stark said alluding to the anti-communist witch-hunter of the 1950s. “America will be more secure the sooner Rumsfeld resigns,” Stark said according to the Washington Post.
PROPAGANDA FORMULA “ISLAM FASCISM”
One of the most dangerous propaganda terms from the hotbed of gossip and intrigue of the neo-conservative advisors of the Bush administration is “Islam fascism or “Islam fascists.” This is the new catch term that now circulates in America’s Christian fundamentalist and rightwing conservative circles. US president George W. Bush used it last week when he spoke of the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Both are democratically recognized parties with members in a democratically elected government.
In an historical sense, the term “Islam fascism” is absurd, a contradiction in itself. However no other term could serve as a better justification of Bush’s wars to create a “new Middle East” conforming to the US. As an explosive term “Islam fascism” mobilizes dangerous emotions, especially racist hatred against Arabs.
Using middle class definitions like those of American professor Robert Paxton, the fascism reproach is not true for any of the Moslem groups resisting Anglo-American control of the Middle East. The only approximately fascist group that arose there was the Marxist-Christian Phalange party in Lebanon that ironically was an ally of Israel’s radical rightwing government in the 1980s.
In a greatly praised book “The Anatomy of Fascism” (2004), Paxton lists five criteria characterizing fascism: 1) a feeling of an overwhelming crisis that cannot be solved with traditional means, 2) the conviction that one’s group or one’s nation was the victim and all measures are justified beyond all legal and moral limits, 3) the need for authority by a leader standing above all law who trusts the superiority of his instincts, 4) the right of the elected people to dominate other people without legal or moral restraint, and 5) fear of foreign control.
Fascism demands one war after another to conquer and dominate foreign countries. At the same time it needs many internal threats to keep a nation in fear and terror and develop “patriotic” hyper-activism so every critic is branded as a traitor. Last but not least, Paxton points out that all successful fascist regimes have sought support from corporations, especially from the military-industrial complex. If one follows this definition, the fascists can be found in Washington, not in the Middle East.
Rainer Rupp
e-mail:
mbatko@lycos.com
Homepage:
http://www.mbtranslations.com
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
Divide and rule
07.09.2006 20:42
This is one of the reasons why the crap behind 9-11 needs to be brought to the foreground: this is the entire pretext for the war on "terror" which is actually the war by terrorists, and once exposed for the scam and false flag op it was, the entire house of cards will crumble and their war effort will be evacuated in double time. Challenge the orthodoxy: why do these war mongers want you to believe the official story? Because then we don't have a (critical) leg to stand on ... and that is their greatest fear - just like the Wizard of Oz ... a small, pathetic little man who needs the smoke and mirrors to appear powerful. Don't be fooled (again)!!
dr jeckyl does not hyde
The Big Lie About 'Islamic Fascism'
08.09.2006 06:26
by Eric Margolis
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The latest big lie unveiled by Washington’s neoconservatives are the poisonous terms, "Islamo-Fascists" and "Islamic Fascists." They are the new, hot buzzwords among America’s far right and Christian fundamentalists.
President George W. Bush made a point last week of using "Islamofacists" when recently speaking of Hezbullah and Hamas – both, by the way, democratically elected parties. A Canadian government minister from the Conservative Party compared Lebanon’s Hezbullah to Nazi Germany.
The term "Islamofascist" is utterly without meaning, but packed with emotional explosives. It is a propaganda creation worthy Dr. Goebbels, and the latest expression of the big lie technique being used by neocons in Washington’s propaganda war against its enemies in the Muslim World.
This ugly term was probably first coined in Israel – as was the other hugely successful propaganda term, "terrorism" – to dehumanize and demonize opponents and deny them any rational political motivation, hence removing any need to deal with their grievances and demands.
As the brilliant humanist Sir Peter Ustinov so succinctly put it, "Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."
Both the terms "terrorism" and "fascist" have been so abused and overused that they have lost any original meaning. The best modern definition I’ve read of fascism comes in former Columbia University Professor Robert Paxton’s superb 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism.
Paxton defines fascism’s essence, which he aptly terms its "emotional lava" as: 1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign "contamination."
Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors. All successful fascists regimes, Paxton points out, allied themselves to traditional conservative parties, and to the military-industrial complex.
Highly conservative and militaristic regimes are not necessarily fascist, says Paxton. True fascism requires relentless aggression abroad and a semi-religious adoration of the regime at home.
None of the many Muslim groups opposing US-British control of the Mideast fit Paxton’s definitive analysis. The only truly fascist group ever to emerge in the Mideast was Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Phalange Party in the 1930’s which, ironically, became an ally of Israel’s rightwing in the 1980’s.
It is grotesque watching the Bush Administration and Tony Blair maintain the ludicrous pretense they are re-fighting World War II. The only similarity between that era and today is the cultivation of fear, war fever and racist-religious hate by US neoconservatives and America’s religious far right, which is now boiling with hatred for anything Muslim.
Under the guise of fighting a "third world war" against "Islamic fascism," America’s far right is infecting its own nation with the harbingers of WWII totalitarianism.
In the western world, hatred of Muslims has become a key ideological hallmark of rightwing parties. We see this overtly in the United States, France, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Poland, and, most lately, Canada, and more subtly expressed in Britain and Belgium. The huge uproar over blatantly anti-Muslim cartoons published in Denmark laid bare the seething Islamophobia spreading through western society.
There is nothing in any part of the Muslim World that resembles the corporate fascist states of western history. In fact, clan and tribal-based traditional Islamic society, with its fragmented power structures, local loyalties, and consensus decision-making, is about as far as possible from western industrial state fascism.
The Muslim World is replete with brutal dictatorships, feudal monarchies, and corrupt military-run states, but none of these regimes, however deplorable, fits the standard definition of fascism. Most, in fact, are America’s allies.
Nor do underground Islamic militant groups ("terrorists" in western terminology). They are either focused on liberating land from foreign occupation, overthrowing "un-Islamic" regimes, driving western influence from their region, or imposing theocracy based on early Islamic democracy.
Claims by fevered neoconservatives that Muslim radicals plan to somehow impose a worldwide Islamic caliphate are lurid fantasies worthy of Dr. Fu Manchu and yet another example of the big lie technique that worked so well over Iraq.
As Prof. Andrew Bosworth notes in an incisive essay on so-called Islamic fascism, "Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism."
However, there are plenty of modern fascists. But to find them, you have to go to North America and Europe. These neo-fascists advocate "preemptive attacks against all potential enemies," grabbing other nation’s resources, overthrowing uncooperative governments, military dominance of the world, hatred of Semites (Muslims in this case), adherence to biblical prophecies, hatred of all who fail to agree, intensified police controls, and curtailment of "liberal" political rights.
They revel in flag-waving, patriotic melodrama, demonstrations of military power, and use the mantle of patriotism to feather the nests of the military-industrial complex, colluding legislators and lobbyists. They urge war to the death, fought, of course, by other people’s children. They have turned important sectors of the media into propaganda organs and brought the Pentagon largely under their control.
Now, the neoconservatives are busy whipping up war against Syria and Iran to keep themselves in power and maintain the political dynamics of this 21st century revival of fascism.
The real modern fascists are not in the Muslim World, but Washington. The neocons screaming fascist the loudest, are the true fascists themselves. It’s a pity that communist and leftist propaganda so debased the term "neo-fascist" that it has become almost meaningless. Because that is what we should be calling the so-called neocons, for that is what they really are.
August 29, 2006
Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author of War at the Top of the World.
Eric Margolis