Web Letters: The Culture War Descends on Columbia

While some worry about Islamo-Fascism, usually for rather self-interested reasons, I worry more about what I call Christo-Fascism and Judaeo-Fascism. Christo-Fascism is the premillenialist obsession with the last days, a time in which Christ will return to acknowledge his own and send everyone else to Hell. Anything you can do to speed this up is all to the good. Judaeo-Fascism is the right term for Likud Zionism, a form of Integral Nationalism in which all transcendance is denied (see Ernst Nolte) and the individual is subordinated to the Movement or the State for the greater glory of both. It is the antechamber to Fascism, if not Fascism itself. Islam actually has demonstrated far less inclination to Fascism than Christianity or Judaism.

The attempt to portray our Islamic enemies as Fascists is typically of Fascistoid thinking.

The right-wingers have invented "Islamic Fascism" in order to give their movement something akin to the legitimacy of the allied war against Germany in WWII. It is a totally phoney use of terminology. If you want to worry about Fascism, worry about it here in the USA. Here Fascist propagandists (talk show hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham and Savage) are called conservatives or Republicans, but we know who they really are. They use the Goebbels technique of attacking all opponents as traitors and subversives--and of course as Communists, although this term has gone out of style after the cold war's end. They employ the old Nazi idea of "the stab in the back" for every setback to their imperialist policy. Yes, worry about Fascism. Do you recall that Sinclair Lewis predicted that here Fascists would fly the Stars and Stripes? They also carry crosses--when they are not busy burning them.

Having taught at a university fo thirty-eight years I know that leftists can try to impose their ideas and shut out other opinion. But so can rightists. Right now the biggest issue is to prevent a war against Iran, planned by evangelicals, Zionists, neocon, right-wing Republicans and Democrats beholden to the Israel Lobby. At such a time, talking about Islamic Fascists only plays into the hands of warmongers, imperialists and Fascists.

They need to be resisted.

Norman Ravitch

Savannah, GA

The author skirts the issue of political Islam as a totalitarian movement akin to fascism and communism--Islamism, whether terroristic or not, holds the goal of creating a Muslim Middle East without a Jewish state and, in the long view, a Muslim world. This is not manufactured by Zionists or American conservatives. It is spelled out on Islamist websites, in mosque sermons and in their published materials. Jews didn't invent the partnership of radical Islamism and old fashioned anti-Semitism and David Horowitz is not the first one to call Islamofascism by name.

So what's your beef? Do you object to free speech for conservatives and hold that the only speakers allowed to speak must be liberals? Sticking your head in the sand is good enough if you choose it, but college students have the right to hear both sides of the issue. David Horowitz and the other speakers during Islamofascism Week are bringing important ideas to the table, and it's about time so-called progressives act like progressives and allow them to be heard.

Jane Maestro

Lake Worth, FL