President Bush recently referred to some of America's enemies as Islamic Facists, to which Keith Burgess-Jackson objected that he was misusing the term 'fascist'.
The reason it’s inappropriate to describe Islamists as fascists is simple: They’re not statists. To Muslims, including that subset of Muslims I call Islamists (see below), a state is at best a temporary thing, performing certain administrative, organizational, or ideological tasks. It has no independent significance, as it does in, say, the Christian tradition. (“Render unto Caesar” and all that.) Islamists aren’t trying to create a state in which all the parts work as one; their ultimate goal is a stateless world in which everyone worships Allah.
He then clarifies his argument.
1. All fascists are statists (by which I mean people who assign intrinsic moral significance to the state).
2. No Muslims are statists.
Therefore,
3. No Muslims are fascists.
Therefore,
4. The concept of an Islamic (Muslim) fascist is incoherent.
The problem with this argument is that, by similar reasoning, most communists would not count as statists either, because most of them view the socialist state as a temporary stage before the establishment of a truly communist, classless, and stateless society. I think it is quite reasonable to view both islamists and communists as statists because both aim to create totalitarian states, and believe that the interests of individual citizens should be subordinated to the interests of the totalitarian state. Unlike fascists, both groups view the totalitarian state as a temporary phase serving a further purpose, but I don't think that is enough to make it a mistake to call them statists.
I noticed that a poll over at Instapundit had Guliani/Romney heavily favoured over McCain/Lieberman for president, which does not surprise me at all, given Instapundit's generally pro-war libertarian readership. Personally I'd be pretty happy if Guliani won. He's a defense hawk, social liberal, and fiscal conservative, with an unrivaled history of dealing effectively with crime. If he was pro-gun rights he'd be a damn near perfect candidate from my point of view. Unfortunately the socially liberal bit has most people predicting that he will lose to McCain in the primaries.
