At ZenPundit, a discussion on Islamists vs. “IslamoFascists” concerning the use of the big F-word to describe radical, militant, ‘expansionist’ Islam (or something like that) has proven interesting.

After commenting at ZenPundit, the OODA loop entered my mind in reaction to the apparent tendency of some commentators to narrowly define historical ideologies.  Mark Safranski quoted Dr. Tim Furnish, and this line stuck out, especially after I had read other comments in the thread:

A second point [against using ‘fascist’] is that the term reinforces the questionable tendency of us in the West, and especially in the U.S., to see every new global threat as a reprise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. Perhaps this is because World War II was the last war that all Americans agreed was truly legitimate….

[‘“Islamic Fascism”: Well, It’s Half Right’]

I can understand the point being made, but I would counter it with another to address some critics of contemporary use of that word:  It would seem that they very much want to believe fascism is long behind us, never to be reprised.

About a year ago, I had a debate with a reader about a comparison made between Asia Times commentator ‘Spengler’ and  Nazism.  [‘In Favor of Empire: Spengler’]  Godwin’s Law had been invoked —

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. [Wikipedia article]

— and that law seems to support Dr. Furnish’s claim.  In response, I mentioned that the Wikipedia article also suggests that invoking the law can be a ploy to purposely close down debate on any comparison.  I.e., no possibility of recognizing and debating a useful comparison can proceed when charges of facile argumentation always arise to close down such debate.

When we define fascism according to the fully developed and operational Nazi state, we miss the fact that fascism actually began before Hitler achieved total control over that state.  (I am using ‘total’ loosely.)  All coordinated activity must follow the ideology which we later invoke to describe it.  This is a simple matter of the OODA loop in operation. But what happens in contemporary commentary is often something else.  We look backward through time, see the fully developed Nazi apparatuses — political, economic, martial, social — and then, seeing no similarly fully developed system matching that system exactly, we say, “Ah, this new system is not a fascist system or the result of a fascist ideology!”

As I suggested in the thread that actually began that debate over the applicability of Godwin’s Law, some analysts appear to believe that no system without a small-mustachioed leader and swastikas for its unifying symbol can possibly be fascist.  That was an exaggeration, but it gets at the point.

However, because the ideology must precede the activity, attempting to predict future developments according to very general and fuzzy observations of early activity may lead us to make leaps in our assessment of the ideology.  This does not mean that the ideology is not fully developed — although it may not be — but may mean that our observational ability has not yet allowed us to see the full blooming of that ideology or to connect the dots in whatever activity we witness.  Nevertheless, refusing to see fascism may also be a result of a wish to believe it cannot recur.  Who wants to fight a war that The Greatest Generation already won?

Another commenter at ZenPundit appeared to place great significance on the method of warfare being utilized by these Islamists.  I am reminded of the debates over ‘generations of warfare’ which generally resolve to one side saying that all modern activities of warfare are essentially what they have always been and the other side saying that different and distinct generations of warfare can be isolated.  I generally fall into the second camp when discussing warfare, but with regard to the tactics of radical Islamists vs. the tactics of fascist Germany, I think that we should not place too much emphasis on the difference as a starting point to determining whether fascism is the essential ideology of radical Islamists.  If ideology precedes activity, then the same basic ideology may ultimately lead to different tactics in a different world:  The world which found Nazi Fascism was significantly different than the world which now finds Islamic Fascism.  You might as well say that love was different for the ancient Hebrews than for most modern-day Americans, since most Americans do not express that love in polygamy.

The ancient Greeks had different words for love — different loves — and even Americans distinguish between different types of love; but if we insist that absolutely no commonality exists between our concept of the word and their concept, then we have no basis for understanding their love poetry, their myths about lovers, and so forth, and should stop trying to understand those things.

Something of the same can be said of fascism.   From an OODA perspective, the changed world which now finds radical Islam feeds information into the Islamist’s loop which did not feed into the Nazi’s loop, and the resulting ideologies and, thus, the resulting actions may not be identical.  If we were to believe that absolutely no similar information fed into these loops separated by the decades since WWII, we could safely say that the two ideologies are entirely different; that’s too much of a stretch, however.  But major changes have occurred since WWII, and judging the differences between Nazist Fascism and what we now witness in radical Islam would likely prove dangerous if we did not take these changes into account. Similarly, refusing to make the analogy could also prove dangerous.  (As dangerous as not fully appreciating the ambitions of Hitler pre-WWII?)

In any case, we must remember that our view of Nazi Germany is biased by hindsight and that our view of our present predicament does not have analogous benefits of hindsight.  A thought experiment:  If Hitler and his closest advisers were transplanted to our present world — i.e., directly to today, not growing up from infancy in our modern world — and had today’s technology, today’s geopolitical-social map, and today’s hindsight of the past, how would they go about the business of conquest? (I suppose where they were placed might make a difference as well.)

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Background on the Revised OODA: Rethinking the OODA.