In what ways do the ideologies of fascism and Islamism incorporate and
advocate the uses of protest and violence in their message?
Abstract:
This essay sets out to compare and contrast two political ideologies - fascism and Islamism whilst taking a particular interest in their tendencies towards violence and protest. A background
to both ideologies is given, with a look taken also at the actions and beliefs of some of the
key ideologues represented by both. While the origins, development, and core themes of each
ideology are discussed, there are also contemporary instances of violence and protest mentioned
which serve to suggest that both fascism and Islamism are alive and adapting in the twenty-first
century, following their notorious fledgling years in the previous one. The essay also serves to
discount the myth that there is such an ideology as Islamic-fascism, and concludes that whatever
the similarities in their outlooks, the differences each hold are too ingrained for them to coexist
peacefully.
Fascism; Islamism; Political Violence; Terrorism; Ideology.
***
Introduction
In this essay, I will discuss the importance of violence with regard to two of the most hostile
ideologies we have experienced in recent history: fascism and Islamism. Both ideologies employ
violence through means deemed entirely necessary to the survival of their being. I will begin
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by simply exploring the lengths that these two ideologies are willing to go and the reasoning
behind such actions, through two specific time-periods in their history: I will discuss the use of
violence by the fascists in 1930s and 40s Europe; and the genesis of the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt and the growth of its ideology, through to the recent protests in Tahrir Square. Following
on from this I will address the issue of 'Islamic-fascism' - a term coined by George Bush Jr. that
suggests a relationship between the two ideologies. Finally, I will take a look at a contemporary
vision of fascism and how it, through means of protest, deals with the spread of Islam.
Fascism and violence
The overriding belief in fascism, is the notion of an organically unified national community,
subscribing to the mantra of 'strength through unity'. In fascism, the focus is on the collective,
and what the individual can do for the social group. The fascist ideal is:
…that of a 'new man', a hero, motivated by duty, honor and self-sacrifice, prepared to
dedicate his life to the glory of his nation or race, and to give unquestioning obedience to
a supreme leader (Heywood, 2007: 203).
In contrast to liberalism, where we see the promotion of rationalism, progress, freedom and
equality, fascism instead puts to the forefront ideas of struggle, heroism, vitalism, and violence
(Sternhell, Sznaider & Asheri, 1994: 32). Defined, almost, by its anti-character, fascism is
defiantly anti- all other ideologies, with the exception of nationalism which it builds upon.
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The purpose of this segment is to examine how fascism both advocates the use of violence and
how it employs it.
While many ideologies see violence as a byproduct of their actions, such as revolutions
in liberalism and socialism, fascism is different in that it views it as a necessary force,
to be nurtured and employed. Heywood writes that despite fascism's tendency to veer
towards "nihilism, war and even death…[it] saw itself as a creative force, a means of
constructing a new civilization through 'creative destruction'" (Heywood, 2007: 209). Similarly,
Mike Hawkins notes that it viewed violence "as a fact of life that is a necessary means to achieve
human progress" (Hawkins, 1997: 285).
One of the core beliefs of fascist ideology is that of struggle. Fascists subscribe wholly to
the theory of Darwinism and natural selection, in that they believe that the strong will adapt
to survive while the weak will perish. Fascists regard struggle as "the natural and inevitable
condition of both social and international life" (Heywood, 2007: 209). They believe that
competition, and through it, conflict, will ensure the fittest and strongest of society will survive.
War was viewed by the two most prominent fascist leaders - Benitto Mussolini and Adolf Hitler
- as a testing ground for this struggle, with Hitler describing war as an "unalterable law of the
whole of life" (Heywood, 2007: 209) while Mussolini stated that "war is to men what maternity
is to women" (Heywood, 2007: 210) illustrating clearly the fascist belief that violence is not
only necessary, but natural and good. What seems to mark fascists out over other ideologies who
promote social Darwinism (of which there are many) is the fascist obsession with not only the
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prosperity of the strong, but with the termination of the weak, and it is here that eugenics played
a large part in fascist ideology, promoted most infamously by the Nazis in World War II.
The elitism evident in other ideologies is also on display in fascism, yet again demonstrating
the violence that is inherent in its beliefs by structuring the social class around an omniscient
totalitarian leader, supported by a warrior elite defined by their "heroism, vision and capacity
for self-sacrifice" and ruling over the subordinate masses. This notion of an Ubermensch was
created in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, mused upon by George Bernard Shaw in Man
and Superman and personified by Il Duce and Der Fuhrer in Italy and Germany, respectively.
In fascism, there is a tendency to see many parallels with nationalism. But, where nationalism
drew the line with patriotism and national identity, fascism incorporated extreme versions of
these with expansionist nationalism and the establishment of an "intense and militant sense of
identity" (Heywood, 2007: 215) called integral nationalism, which was "authoritarian, antiSemitic, exclusivist, and intolerant" (Payne, 1995: 47). The theory utilized by leaders like
Mussolini and Hitler was to create in the minds of the masses a vision of a past where they lived
gloriously, and to spur them on with hopes and aspirations for a similar future shaped through
fascism and palingenesis. This populist ultranationalism was the heartbeat of the Third Reich,
and in reality it amounted to no more than violent "assertion of power over other nations through
expansionism, war and conquest" (Heywood, 2007: 215).
As mentioned above, totalitarianism came part and parcel with fascism. The extreme
collectivism embraced in Italy and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, coupled with the goal
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of creating 'fascist man' ensured that there was no distinction between 'public' and 'private'
existence. Liberalism, and its separation of state and civil society, is not given any credence in
fascism, which holds the supreme leader with unlimited reverence and authority. Similarly, ideas
like that of pluralism or civil liberty are in firm opposition to the fascist belief in a single value
system (Heywood, 2007: 217). While totalitarianism, by that definition, is not inherently violent,
it is the enforced obedience of such aspects, such as monism, that is. The Nazis in particular,
were brutal in their measures to suppress political opposition, and the reverence that the state was
held in in Italy and Germany led to the belief that further expansion (through war and conquest)
was necessary for the betterment of the state.
While these have been the methods employed by fascism in both domestic and foreign policy,
there is a violent and hate-fuelled core at the heart of Nazism. The nationalism and imperialism
that was sweeping through Europe in the 30s and 40s was most harshly felt by the Jewish
peoples. Fascist ideology labelled the Jews as a race rather than as a "religious, economic or
cultural group" (Heywood, 2007: 223). In An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,
Arthur de Gobineau found that the human race was divided into three subsections: white, black
and yellow, of which black was the lowest form of race with white being supreme, and amongst
the white race, the Aryans were the elite (de Gobineau, 1915: 146). He wrote that "the purer a
race keeps its blood, the less will its social foundations be liable to attack" (de Gobineau, 1915:
90). It is quite obvious that Hitler was influenced by these writings, and both simplified the
ideas in his own writings, and expanded upon them to describe the Aryans as the "Prometheus
of mankind" and to incorporate the Jews whom he referred to as "the destroyers of culture". Fest
writes, in his biography Hitler, that Hitler had "simplified Gobineau's elaborate doctrine until it
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became demagogically usable and offered a set of plausible explanations for all the discontents,
anxieties, and crisis of the contemporary scene" (Fest, 2002: 210-211). This Manichaean world
view of Hitler's manifested itself as a racial struggle between the Germans and the Jews which
Hitler set about winning with his Final Solution, employing expansionism, war, genocide and
racial extermination to murder more than 6 million Jews.
Islamism and violence
Islamism is a form of religious fundamentalism that has gained notoriety in recent decades.
Religious fundamentalism consists of "a strict adherence to ancient or fundamental doctrines
or holy books, with no concessions to modern developments in thought or customs…but no
necessary link to violence or terrorism.”1 While Islam, like all religions, has both fundamentalist
and amiable variants, it is the three varieties of Islamism - political Islam; violent Islam; and
Jihadis - that I will focus on, and attempt to illustrate how they promote both violence and protest
in their ideology.
While it was Islamic and Sharia law that were the building blocks of violent and political
Islamism, it was the writings and teachings of individual Islamists who set forth the Islamist
ideology. Ideologues such as Sayyid Qutb, Abul Ala Maududi, and Hassan al Banna directly
influenced the actions of Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abdullah Azzam, and Osama bin Laden.
1
Conway, Maura (2011). Islamism. Class Notes.
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Maududi incorporated into Islamic society the train of thought that Islam was more than just a
religion, that it was a complete social system, similar to the fascist method. It was adherence and
acceptance to other non-Islamic systems that was overseeing the downfall of Islamic society, in
Maududi's eyes. Maududi explains this in Jihad in Islam:
In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology…and "Jihad" refers to that revolutionary
struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this
objective…Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face
of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the
country or the Nation which rules it…the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal
revolution (Maududi,1939 [2006]: 5-22).
In 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood was established by Hassan al Banna with the aim of creating
government rule based on the laws and values of Islam. This was political Islamism in that alBanna served the community first and employed a bottom-up approach, providing services to the
schools and mosques. He promoted the idea, amongst Muslims, that jihad was not just a defense
of Islam but a tool to be used in spreading Islam. This notion was built upon by Sayyid Qutb.
Qutb employed, unlike al Banna, a top-down method of implementing Islamism into society.This
involved the removal of non-Islamic rulers and governments, and apostates. While a part of the
Muslim Brotherhood, the movement officially opposed the achievement of its goals through
violence,2 yet in employing Qutb's tactics members attempted the assassination of Gamal Abdel
Nasser, second president of Egypt, in 1954, and were successful in assassinating Anwar Sadat in
1981.
2
Conway, Maura (2011). Islamism. Class Notes.
7
In continuing on from al Banna's thought process of jihad and its uses, Qutb argued that
offensive jihad was necessary, due to the influence of jahiliyyah (ignorance of Divine guidance)
in Islamic society. In Qutb's eyes, jahiliyya and Islam are not mutually agreeable and therefore
jahiliyyah must be destroyed through offensive jihad:
…defense is not the ultimate objective of the Islamic movement of jihad but it is a mean
of establishing the Divine authority within it so that it becomes the headquarters for the
movement of Islam, which is then to be carried throughout the earth to the whole of
mankind (Qutb, 1964 [2006]: ch 4).
So far, I have described how the Islamist ideology utilizes violence both defensively and
offensively in order to spread its message, but similar to fascism, Islamism employs a variant of
political oppression. Qutb employed the concept of 'takfir' which made it a religious obligation
to kill apostates. This was the defense of Islamists in all assassination attempts and fatwas.
It was similar to totalitarianism in that it branded as takfir any form of secular opposition,
justifying attacks on them. Dale Eikmeier explains that the takfir concept, "along with 'offensive
jihad' became a blank check [sic] for any Islamic extremist to justify attacks against anyone"
(Eikmeier, 2007: 89).
Al Banna and Qutb were the two ideologues who shaped Islamism the most, and introduced
the theories of violence into their teachings. The trickle down effect of this to their intellectual
protégé
Ayman al-Zawahiri cannot be understated. He led the Egyptian Islamic Jihad which was founded
after the assassination of Sadat, and oversaw multiple assassination attempts on Hosni Mubarak
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(Egypt's fourth president) and the 1997 Luxor attack which claimed the lives of 60 tourists. In
1998 he joined forces with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. This destructive merger has been
involved in the first World Trade Centre attack in 1993, issuing fatwas, embassy bombings in
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, the speed-boat bomb attack on the USS Cole and most prominently
the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks on New York and London, killing thousands in the name of Islam.
Following last year's Arab Spring, and more precisely, the protests in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak was
ousted from government after a 30 year reign. The Muslim Brotherhood had, through violence
and protest, succeeded in ousting an apostate from the presidency. The overriding sentiment at
the time was that these demonstrations were not violent Islamist but, rather the confirmation of a
new generation of Arabs who wished to live free of corruption, and who succeeded in replacing
Mubarak where Islamists had failed. In writing of Osama bin Laden's assassination, Robert Fisk
of The Independent wrote:
His [Osama bin Laden] promises of overthrowing the pro-American or non-Islamic Arab
dictators were fulfilled by the people of Egypt and Tunisia - and perhaps soon by Libyans
and Syrians - not by al-Qa'ida and its violence (Fisk, 2011).
But with the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) winning the largest number
of seats in Egypt's complex electoral system, and the hardline Salafist Nour party coming
second, it remains to be seen the impact that the ideology given breath to by Hassan al-Bann and
Sayyid Qutb, and promoted by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden will have on the future
of Egypt, and further down the line, Libya and Syria.3
3 BBC News. (2012). Egypt's Islamist parties win elections to parliament.Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16665748.
Last accessed 22nd January, 2012.
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Islamo-fascism
Having discussed the ways that both fascism and Islamism have used violence, and at times,
protest, in their powerful messages I am now going to briefly look at how closely intertwined the
two ideologies have become in recent decades, despite some of their obvious differences, which
will be addressed later.
Mark Erikson writes, in his four-part analysis of Islamic-fascism, Islamism, fascism and
terrorism, that:
Both Islamism and fascism have a long, over 80-year history based on shared ideas,
practices and perceived common enemies. They abhor "Western decadence" (political
liberalism, capitalism), fight holy wars - if needs be suicidal ones - by indiscriminate
means, and are bent on the destruction of the Jews and of America and its allies (Erikson,
2002).
While I wouldn't agree with the insinuation that the fascists fought holy wars - indeed fascists
believed in "religious toleration" (Moseley, 1936: 10), they, however perceived the Jews to be a
lower race rather than a religion - Erikson draws some interesting commonalities:
Substitute religious for racial purity, the idealized ummah of the rule for the four
righteous caliphs of the mid-7th century for the mythical Aryan 'Volksgemeinschaft', and
most ideological and organizational precepts of Nazism laid out by chief theoretician
Alfred Rosenberg in his work The Myth of the 20th Century and by Adolf Hitler in Mein
Kampf, and later put into practice, are in all essential respects identical to the precepts of
the Muslim Brotherhood after its initial phase as a group promoting spiritual and moral
reform (Erikson, 2002).
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Erikson furthers this claim saying that this comparison of the two ranges from the rejection of
Western economic liberalism to the "endorsement of the use of terror and assassinations to seize
and hold state power" and further into the common held feelings of anti-Semitism (Erikson,
2002).
Islamophobia
While Erikson goes to some lengths to point out the similarities between the two ideologies
and their attitudes towards violence it is almost rendered futile when you consider some of the
leading fascist movements in the twenty-first century are anti-Islam, or rather anti-Islamification.
In Britain, the British National Party made waves not long ago, winning their greatest amount of
seats to date in 2010. They shamelessly campaign on the fear of the public through their "clear
and explicit shift towards more openly anti-Muslim and anti-Islam messages" following 9/11
and, closer to home, 7/7 (Allen, 2011: 283). However, it is the emergence and growth of the
English Defence League that has gained most notoriety in the United Kingdom.
The EDL claim to be neither racist nor Islamophobic, but rather protest against the spreading
of Islamic extremism. They find their origins in the already well-organised world of football
hooliganism, and at a moments notice can begin a protest with thousands of marchers:
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Following the organization's protests in Dudley, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council
claimed that the activities of the EDL had cost local taxpayers more than £1 million. It is
highly likely that similar costs would be incurred wherever the EDL protests, especially
given the fact that their demonstrations generally provoke counter-demonstrations by
groups such as United against Fascism (Allen, 2011: 289).
Claims have been made that they are not in fact a fascist group as they boast amongst their ranks
minorities, and protest against an extreme form of violent Islamism, but despite this, while they
may be an organization with fascist-lite traits and tendencies, they clearly name their enemy violent Islamists - , see them as the cause of their woes, and set out to stop them, proving that
despite the fascist tendencies in Islamism, and their similar glorification of violence, the two
ideologies are not compatible.
Conclusion
Having examined the genesis of both ideologies, I believe that violence, its use and abuse,
constitutes major chapters in the history of both fascism and Islamism. Following on from the
Versailles Treaty and the restrictions imposed on Germany there was a landscape ready to be
cultivated and fascism found a very able breeding ground, and eased itself into government with
relative effortlessness. Similarly, al-Banna and Qutb found a demographic of puritan Muslims
who were disenchanted with the perceived jahiliyyah surrounding them. Contrasting that with
today, it would seem, up until the events of 9/11, fascist organizations in Western society were
struggling to have their voices heard, yet with the war on terror they have mobilized through
protest rather than violence in both the fascist quarters and, seemingly, the Islamist quarters.
In 2010, the BNP had their largest representation of local councillors, following on from
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parliamentary success in 2008 and 2009, and just recently the Muslim Brotherhood have seen
their Freedom and Justice Party win top billing in Egypt, replacing a secular despot. Violence
may well be a part of who they - fascists and Islamists - are, but in order to survive in the twentyfirst century they have adapted and adopted the use of peaceful process to spread their vision.
But, while this use of peaceful protest is supplementary to their character, their tendency towards
violence is inherent. Every ideology has its extremists, and there have been plenty of deaths
associated with liberalism, socialism, conservatism etc, through revolutions and such, but it is
worth being reminded what Jean-Paul Sartre said, with Islamism being equally interchangeable
in the context:
Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.
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