Does Hamas Put the "Fascist" in Islamofascist?

In his article, "Palestine's Willing Executioners", Jonah Goldberg refers to Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's controversial book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners", whose theme is that the German people themselves and their German culture contained within it an "exterminationist" version of anti-Semitism that was just waiting to be ignited, independent of the fascism of the government that came to power. Not every fascist regime in history has been bent on the murder of Jews:

Goldhagen's thesis was overstated but fundamentally accurate. There was something unique to Germany that made its fascism genocidal. Around the globe there have been dozens of self-declared fascist movements (and a good deal more that go by different labels), and few of them have embraced Nazi-style genocide. Indeed, fascist Spain was a haven for Jews during the Holocaust.

Following World War II, one view to explain what had happened in Germany was the "victimhood view"--the German people were themselves 'occupied' by the Nazis and so were to be seen as victims of the Nazis as well.

But Goldberg is not impressed by such an interpretation:

But variations of the don't-blame-the-people thesis have been around for a long time far outside of Germany. Democracy can be wonderful, but some of its boosters across the ideological spectrum assume that all democratic outcomes are good outcomes, and that's nonsense. The Left historically has located political morality in the interests and desires of the masses, therefore pronouncing it heretical to blame "the people" for evil deeds. In order to be evil, it seems, causes must be "hijacked" by small cabals of bad guys.

Michael Ledeen has an article, "When People Freely Choose Tyranny: It's Still a Loser" that expands on this concept of political morality. This concept of the "morality of the people" that made it possible to excuse the masses has also been used to excuse revolutionary governments, regimes, and small cabals as well:

It's not easy for modern intellectuals to accept the true nature of the Islamofascists, because of the long-discredited but still popular theory that revolutions are a good thing, and are invariably a righteous eruption against social and economic misery inflicted by greedy oppressive governments. In that view, revolutions are signs of progress, another step along the road to modernity.

Such a left/liberal view that can excuse regimes as well as the masses--so prevalent in the world--ensures a sympathetic view of whatever course or measures the Palestinian Arabs take. It would help explain the ease with which terrorists morph into freedom-fighters. Arafat's success was in creating the mythos of the "Palestinian People"--the Palestinian masses that could be forgiven even when the leaders they followed were terrorists. Given this worldview, Israel remains the occupier-perhaps regardless of her borders.

And as accepted as the regimes are by the world, they are even more welcome by the masses who bring them into power. Making the masses happy is done according to a time-honored formula claiming to be corruption-free and making the trains run on time--something that was way beyond the ability of the ruling Fatah party. Rather, Goldberg thinks that

looked at through the eyes of many Palestinians, it probably looked a lot like the Weimar government did to many Germans: institutionally corrupt, ineffective, and tainted by humiliating concessions to foreign powers and occupiers. (People forget how much the League of Nations carved up Germany - and how much it rankled Germans).

While Fatah certainly was corrupt and ineffective, I'm not clear if Goldberg sees Fatah per se as having been "tainted by humiliating concessions to foreign powers and occupiers," or rather sees this as the overall emotion that has been reinforced in Palestinians. After all, Abbas seemed to have done quite a good job of avoiding the need to keep his part in any agreements that provided for Israeli concessions. But this does leave open the idea that the West learned a lesson from how the League of Nations treated Germany and misapplied it to the Palestinian Arabs.

Bottom line, Goldberg does not find the new Hamas regime hard to define, nor secret in its motives. The key is what they would do if they had the means. Thus Hamas is a:

terroristic, irredentist, militant organization dedicated to restoring national pride at the expense of exterminating millions of people, who just happen to be Jews. This was no secret, and it is a form of condescension bordering on infantilism to assert that the Palestinians didn't know what they were voting for. If the new government had the means, it would be Palestine's willing executioners.

So how do we deal with regimes such as Hamas. On a theoretical level, according to Ledeen, there have historically been 2 causes for the downfall of such regimes:

Revolutionary regimes have fallen both because their own people turned against them, and because they were defeated on the battlefield. In each case, the revolutionary ideology was discredited. We humiliated the fascist revolution in the Second World War, and fascism was drained of its mass appeal. We do not know how European fascism would have ended (or indeed if it would have ended) if the Axis had won the war

Having been brought to power by popular demand, Hamas need not fear the former. As for the latter point-defeat on the battlefield, Hamas has nothing to fear from that corner either. Amir Taheri has pointed out:

For a war to be won, it is not enough for one side to claim victory. It is also necessary for one side to admit defeat. Yet in the Arab-Israeli wars, the side that had won every time was not allowed to claim victory, while the side that had lost was prevented from admitting defeat. Why? Because each time the United Nations had intervened to put the victor and the vanquished on an equal basis and lock them into a problematic situation in the name of a mythical quest for an impossible peace.

If Israel not only is not allowed to be victorious in the wars it wins--whether on the battlefield or against terrorists--but must continually make concessions, instead of defeating the regime, it is only given a new lease on life.

Good news. On a more practical level, Ledeen believes that Islamofascism is already losing--the Iranian people loathe their own government, the Iraqis voted for the religious blocs but then renegotiated the division of power, several recent polls show al Qaeda's popularity sinking. He attributes this to 4 factors:

1. "the failure of the terrorists to drive us out of the Middle East"
2. "the recognition by most people that the terrorists, from al Qaeda to Hezbollah (that is, from Sunni to Shiite), are evil and must be defeated"
3. "the near-universal conviction that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the sort of place where one should want to live"
4. "the desire for freedom"

That's all well and good. But how much of this actually applies to Israel's situation? Let's see:

1. Israel is not allowed to defeat the terrorists who want to destroy her
2. Neither Arafat nor Fatah were recognized as evils that must be defeated and Hamas at best is considered a party that merely needs to be moderated
3. Since the Palestinians voted in such large numbers for a party that wants to impose Sharia, apparently Palestinian Arabs don't share the world's view of Iran.
4. Well, one out of four ain't bad.

There has been a lot of reaction to President Bush's State of the Union Address the other night. Rich Lowry reacts to it and Bush's statement of Middle East policy, noting a lot that he agrees with--and one thing with which he does not:

Bush said the only way to defeat the terrorists is through offering a better vision, namely a "hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change." True. This is an ideological struggle.

He said raising up a democracy requires more than elections. True. We are getting reminders of this fact all over the place at the moment.

He said, "Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens." True. No one should be surprised that religious parties do well in deeply religious societies.

So far so good. Where I got off the bus was when he said, "liberty is the right and hope of all humanity."

...People might not affirmatively yearn for oppression, but they can certainly value and desire all sorts of things more than freedom, at least freedom as we would define it. We have just seen that in the Palestinian elections. A lot depends on how you interpret them, but it certainly seemed that the Palestinians valued the destruction of their neighbor, national (or pre-national) honor, and religious chauvinism more than freedom.

In general people can desire order, power, fealty to religious faith, ethnic pride, and/or sexual purity more than freedom. Which it is very important to remember when you're trying to re-make foreign societies. [emphasis added]

And that makes the Palestinians 0-for-4 in Ledeen's factors for the fall of Islamofacism. Which is why 'Palestine' should not be mentioned in the same breath as countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hamas and Terrorism and Facism.