‘Islamofascism’

I first heard the term ‘Islamofascism’ used by George Bush when talking about the biggest threats to western: liberty, equality, justice, freedom e.t.c. At the time I was a little surprised to hear the term ‘fascist’ used in this sense as the term originated in Italy under Mussolini who said, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”. As far as I’m aware Muslim terrorists aren’t overly interested in doing deals with corporations, and unless I’ve missed something, don’t have a state – at this point I could get into Halliburton, Exxonmobile, Enron – but I’m not heading in that direction. I must point out that I have no particular affiliation to Islam and that in fact I think the idea of people fighting over whose invisible friend is the best is preposterous, but who am I to judge?

In fact, I’m writing this as a means to redress the balance somewhat between reality and perceived reality. From observing the media and listening to our politicians it would be easy to think that Muslims are out to get us, that they are savages with a bloodlust who wish to impose shariah law and kill all of the white people. By any sane definition this is blatant racism, yet daily these images are disseminated through the BBC, SKY news, Fox News and their equivalents in the print media. However, when someone in a Muslim country burns the American flag in protest at the sanctions imposed in Iraq that killed half a million children, the U.S supported apartheid in Palestine, the million plus dead from the Iraq war or the army bases in their country, they are presented as Neanderthals all set on the destruction of our ‘freedom’. The hypocrisy would almost be laughable, if it wasn’t such effective propaganda. To be a Muslim now must be equivalent to being Jewish in 1940; The state is against you and you’re being blamed for everything that is wrong in the world while in reality you’re being used as a tool to control the populace and fulfil their hidden agenda.

Aside from the fact that a whole race/religion is being portrayed in such a negative manner, lets examine the very idea of ‘terrorism’. The official definition of terrorism is using violence to further political goals – now, certainly the attacks on 9/11 could be considered terrorist attacks, as could the bombs in London – they were explicitly political. They were a protest at western meddling in the middle east. But, if terrorism is using violence for political means then what is killing a million Iraqis in order to control their natural resources? Oh yeah, Saddam had Weapons of Mass destruction, er, actually, he’s just a bad guy who killed his own people with the weapons we gave him and we need to bring democracy to that country?... Oh yeah? If you’re reading this and still believe any of that then send me an email because I’ve got a talking unicorn you might be interested in buying. The media were complicit in the Iraq war as they failed in their journalistic role of actually doing research or asking pressing questions, embedded themselves with the soldiers as they engaged in ‘shock and awe’, (a euphemism for genocide), and even now keep us distracted with Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and the coming election rather than report the reality of hell on earth created in order for the powerful few to profit.

In any situation, for someone to take their own life then they have to be beyond desperate – for a Palestinian, excluded from your homeland, raised in a refugee camp with no hope, no choices then how do you fight back against a (American donated) nuclear armed Israel that has one of the biggest armies in the world? Unfortunately, some choose to use their bodies as weapons in order to show the sheer desperation they face in the hope that some day the world will see the injustice that has been perpetrated on that land for over sixty years. I am against suicide bombing, I’m against stealth bombing. There’s really no difference, both are morally decrepit and kill innocent people. Terrorism is wrong – whoever is doing it. The Palestine situation fuels anger throughout the middle east and makes a mockery of any western claims of believing in freedom, justice or liberty. The fact that George Bush holds hands with the Saudi kings, because the two nations are so close, is spitting in the face of the Saudi people. Saudi Arabia is the country with the worst human rights record on earth and most of the negative stereotypes about Muslims come from there – women can’t drive, public stoning e.t.c. Yet, like Iraq, Saudi Arabia is oil rich, but unlike Iraq, has a willing ruling class who are happy to invest in America.

Supporting repressive regimes, while claiming to be the world’s moral police is why so many people around the world hate the west. Alas, the domestic populations of many of these western countries never see this reality – reality to them is manufactured so that every Arab is Ali Baba or Osama Bin Laden. Being at war with Islam is very convenient for certain segments of our ruling classes in the same way that being at war with Russia was, and Emmanuel Goldstein was to the rulers in Orwell’s 1984. While 'our boys' are off defending liberty we have to give away our own domestic liberty in the form of I.D cards, having our phones tapped, and of course there’s less money to be spent of domestic social needs, like education and healthcare, as we’re off spending all the treasury money on weapons in order to 'defend freedom'. I’m going to go a step further than Mussolini here, he said that fascism was the merger of corporation and state, well, it is my stance that the only purpose of a state is to provide the best possible education and healthcare for its people, and that any nation that isn’t striving towards those goals is representing the few at the expense of the many and rightly deserves to be called fascist. It’s a scam of the highest order. And one last thing, if the President of the most powerful nation on earth had spent his whole career working in the milk industry and after 8 years in charge the price of milk had gone up by 1000%, would you be suspicious? Not if you were paying attention to the media you wouldn’t be.