Post by xylokarabes on Mar 13, 2009 19:19:40 GMT
This term seems to be the centrepiece of the critique staged in our last meeting on Hamas. Unfortunately things were a little muddled as it was highly unclear whether we were meant to be talking about our stance on Hamas, or whether we should discuss what Hamas are so I didn't really know whether it behooved me to respond.
At any rate, here's my line on that phrase: it's highly silly.
Fascism is not merely a matter of hating Jews and gunning down trade unionists. There are plenty of people who've done both throughout history and not been fascists: as Hobsbawm points out, at one stage American railroad companies effectively had their own armies of thugs to smash unions with. That wasn't fascism.
The following characteristics define fascism and are lacking from Hamas:
Hamas lack a leader figure even of the Nasrallah-Hezbollah, Fatah-Arafat, Al-Sadr-Al-Sadr variety. And even those groups/leaders are quite a long way off Saddam style emulation of fascist views of leadership. Hamas don't exhibit a personality cult which hones in upon a single individual, instead idolising everyone who dies fighting Israel. It seems like the quickest way to get adored is to get killed, in stark contrast to both the National Socialists and the Fascist Party.
As Ed pointed out in the meeting, Hamas are eager to establish a Caliphate. This is certainly not the sort of desire you would find among ultra-nationalists: it's like the BNP declaring themselves firm federalists. Hamas do have a strong nationalist streak, indeed its that that feeds my vague continuing hope that a two state solution might just work out if the Israeli Right allowed it to happen (which it never will). But they also have a formidable amount of nationalism in them, and it seems likely that they're only emphasising the nationhood stuff as a consequence of the massive quantity of oppression being applied to them.
It's questionable as to whether Palestine really has a bourgeoisie left at all. An immediate answer to this question that springs to my head is: "Yes, in Israel", but perhaps that's a bit glib. The Gaza Strip though certainly has precious little that resembles an economy. If there's no production going on who owns the means is rather a moot point. Anyway: as I've said before, the Palestinian left is almost as impressively splintered than are own. It definitely isn't a driving force (a coalition of three of the biggest leftie parties failed to scrape 5%) and it definitely isn't something that terrifies many Palestinians.
Hamas isn't as traditionalist as many other Islamists. They ran a music school which taught girls, for example (recently bombed by Israel). They backed a PLP candidate for mayor who happened to have a vagina. Hamas has set up education centres for women (along with the orphanages, soup kitchens, blood banks, mosques, sports leagues & youth clubs which Israeli scholar Reuven Paz has estimated fills 90% of Hamas activity). Hamas are not a group which I'd describe as absurdly progressive, but <i>they are hardly the Taliban.</i>
Indeed, they are a good deal better in this regard than their largest backers: Saudi Arabia!
Only the National Socialists relied upon anti-semitism. It would seem that, like the original Fascists, Hamas do not rely upon Jew Hatred. Esther Webman's contribution to the Project for the Study of Anti-Semitism (Tel Aviv University) included the following extract:
Hamas explain their position on the Holocaust and the Jew-Zionist division here: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/12/hamascondemnstheholocaust
Anti-Semitism is obviously something that many Hamas members adhere to and engage in. But is it something required for their organisation to exist? Not at all. There would still be a violent national liberation movement that killed civilians, of a similar nature to the one which militant Zionists engaged in to birth Israel (see here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing ).
By contrast, Nazism could never have existed in the form it did without a driving disdain for Jews. This was a definitive feature of the National Socialist movement and since they are now largely lumped with "Fascism" this is a distinctive connotation in the accusation. Mussolini was not an active architect of the Holocaust, but it should also be remembered that he was perhaps the greatest collaborator with it: sending Jews, gays, the homeless, the left and other undesirables to their certain death.
I am no Hamas supporter, but calling them "Clerical Fascists" is meaningless. Their ideology is not a fascist one, but an Islamist one. As Islamists go there are those near to deserving the term, but imagining Islamism as a singular, cohesive bloc is the height of intellectual idiocy.
At any rate, here's my line on that phrase: it's highly silly.
Fascism is not merely a matter of hating Jews and gunning down trade unionists. There are plenty of people who've done both throughout history and not been fascists: as Hobsbawm points out, at one stage American railroad companies effectively had their own armies of thugs to smash unions with. That wasn't fascism.
The following characteristics define fascism and are lacking from Hamas:
- A conception of the party leader as a driving force who all power should be centralised to.
- Ultra-nationalism.
- Mobilisation of the bourgeoisie against both the cultural and economic left.
- Rigid traditionalism in matters cultural.
Hamas lack a leader figure even of the Nasrallah-Hezbollah, Fatah-Arafat, Al-Sadr-Al-Sadr variety. And even those groups/leaders are quite a long way off Saddam style emulation of fascist views of leadership. Hamas don't exhibit a personality cult which hones in upon a single individual, instead idolising everyone who dies fighting Israel. It seems like the quickest way to get adored is to get killed, in stark contrast to both the National Socialists and the Fascist Party.
As Ed pointed out in the meeting, Hamas are eager to establish a Caliphate. This is certainly not the sort of desire you would find among ultra-nationalists: it's like the BNP declaring themselves firm federalists. Hamas do have a strong nationalist streak, indeed its that that feeds my vague continuing hope that a two state solution might just work out if the Israeli Right allowed it to happen (which it never will). But they also have a formidable amount of nationalism in them, and it seems likely that they're only emphasising the nationhood stuff as a consequence of the massive quantity of oppression being applied to them.
It's questionable as to whether Palestine really has a bourgeoisie left at all. An immediate answer to this question that springs to my head is: "Yes, in Israel", but perhaps that's a bit glib. The Gaza Strip though certainly has precious little that resembles an economy. If there's no production going on who owns the means is rather a moot point. Anyway: as I've said before, the Palestinian left is almost as impressively splintered than are own. It definitely isn't a driving force (a coalition of three of the biggest leftie parties failed to scrape 5%) and it definitely isn't something that terrifies many Palestinians.
Hamas isn't as traditionalist as many other Islamists. They ran a music school which taught girls, for example (recently bombed by Israel). They backed a PLP candidate for mayor who happened to have a vagina. Hamas has set up education centres for women (along with the orphanages, soup kitchens, blood banks, mosques, sports leagues & youth clubs which Israeli scholar Reuven Paz has estimated fills 90% of Hamas activity). Hamas are not a group which I'd describe as absurdly progressive, but <i>they are hardly the Taliban.</i>
Indeed, they are a good deal better in this regard than their largest backers: Saudi Arabia!
Only the National Socialists relied upon anti-semitism. It would seem that, like the original Fascists, Hamas do not rely upon Jew Hatred. Esther Webman's contribution to the Project for the Study of Anti-Semitism (Tel Aviv University) included the following extract:
"....the anti-Semitic rhetoric in Hamas leaflets is frequent and intense. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism is not the main tenet of Hamas ideology. Generally no differentiation was made in the leaflets between Jew and Zionist, in as much as Judaism was perceived as embracing Zionism, although in other Hamas publications and in interviews with its leaders attempts at this differentiation have been made."
Hamas explain their position on the Holocaust and the Jew-Zionist division here: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/12/hamascondemnstheholocaust
Anti-Semitism is obviously something that many Hamas members adhere to and engage in. But is it something required for their organisation to exist? Not at all. There would still be a violent national liberation movement that killed civilians, of a similar nature to the one which militant Zionists engaged in to birth Israel (see here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing ).
By contrast, Nazism could never have existed in the form it did without a driving disdain for Jews. This was a definitive feature of the National Socialist movement and since they are now largely lumped with "Fascism" this is a distinctive connotation in the accusation. Mussolini was not an active architect of the Holocaust, but it should also be remembered that he was perhaps the greatest collaborator with it: sending Jews, gays, the homeless, the left and other undesirables to their certain death.
I am no Hamas supporter, but calling them "Clerical Fascists" is meaningless. Their ideology is not a fascist one, but an Islamist one. As Islamists go there are those near to deserving the term, but imagining Islamism as a singular, cohesive bloc is the height of intellectual idiocy.