A Pilgrim’s Digression

A Fox News Hounds article about the continuing debate over the President’s use of the term Islamo-fascist contains a link to an interesting bit of video. Through selective editing, and creative splicing of real news footage and voice overs, someone has created a version of the film V for Vendetta that suggests parallels between the movie’s fiction and our reality.

The film is titled 9/11 Vendetta. Like the Hollywood film on which it is based, the amateur film oversimplifies to a great extent; and in one respect, it is even misleading. Near the beginning, dialogue from the film in which Chancellor Sutler’s lackeys discuss V’s terrorist plot to bomb Parliament is overlaid with images of the World Trade Center. The only problem is, the dialogue used suggests that the plot to bomb Parliament is an inside job, rather than a plot by an outside terrorist. This would suggest to someone who hasn’t seen V for Vendetta that WTC was an inside job.

While this bit of propaganda clearly indicates the editor’s bias in regards to 9/11 conspiracy theory, the rest of the film does a better job of pointing out ways in which elements of the Chancellor’s fascist British state match up to America in the first decade of the 21st century.

I admit I have been guilty of using the term “fascist” or “fascism” to refer to terrorists and the ideology to which they reportedly ascribe. When President Bush used the term in a recent speech, it did not seem like a big deal to me, at first. To me, in the interest of accomodating some small measure of Conservative thinking on the subject, using the term “Islamo-fascist” seemed like a concession I could easily make.

I am not so sure now, and I would like to retract my own use of the term. In conservative terminology, I used the term out of a desire to “appease” an enemy (conservatives) who cannot be negotiated with and who accept no concessions.

Seriously, though, NPR provides a detailed, but overall supportive analysis of the use of the term “Islamo-fascist.” Other analyses, negative, on the whole, seem more persuasive. No one refers to Christians who bomb abortion clinics as “Christian terrorists” or “Christian fascists,” for example. So doesn’t the use of the term Islamo-fascist in some way unfairly single out Islam as singularly producing violent, religio-political terrorists?

Also, one could equate the loose use of the term fascist to the loose use of the term Nazi. Conservatives traditionally, and probably correctly, blame liberals for overusing the term Nazi to refer to every Conservative from the President to Pat Robertson. A term such as “fascism” or “Nazi” has a specific meaning, and that meaning is diluted when used promiscuously to refer to every hated ideology and government entity under the sun.

Fascism as defined by Wikipedia does not seem applicable to terrorist ideology. For one thing, it is not nationalism, but some other as-yet unnamed beast entirely, which terrorists hope to stir up in the world. Maybe we could call it “theocratism,” but it is religion-based, not based on racist notions of national identity.

However, use of the terms “fascist” and “fascism” to describe the enemy does serve a valuable purpose for the President and authorities in charge of our government. Like the repeated and erroneous use of WWII analogies, use of the term “fascist” serves to paint our enemies in the starkest and most frightening terms possible. Use of the term “fascist” heightens the sense that America is involved in as noble and as necessary a struggle as our Grandfathers, who fought fascism in their day.

Nevermind the inconvenient inconsistencies in the comparison of German/Italian/Japanese fascism to so-called Islamo-fascism. At a time when support for the Bush administration’s foreign policy is at low ebb, even among conservatives such as George Will, the important thing is to convince the nation that we are in mortal peril from a concerted enemy with no humanity and no goal other than our complete obliteration. An enemy like the European and Japanese fascists of the nineteen-thirties and forties.

On this one point, the film V for Vendetta and its amateur-produced offspring exactly line up with reality. President Bush’s overall response to the plot to bomb airplanes en route from England to America was telling, not just for his first-time use of the term “Islamo-fascist.” It was telling for its intentional attempt to take political advantage of fear of terrorism for political gain.

In keeping with the conservative attempt to muddy the issue of whether we are safer today than we were five years ago, before 9/11/01, the President said that “America is safer than it has been. But it’s not yet safe.” No, and we never will be safe enough to elect anyone but a Republican to office.

Like Chancellor Sutler, whose name is a play on the word “subtle,” George Bush believes that without his determined leadership, chaos and destruction awaits this country. As the Chancellor says, “What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country…I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want every man, woman, and child to understand how close we are to chaos. I want everyone to remember why they need us.”

George Bush, literally, could not have said it better.