I primarily want to direct your attention to a scathing review of Norman Podhoretz’s World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. The review is by Michael Scheuer who has some claim to being knowledgable about the matters Podhoretz discusses: “Why Does Norman Podhoretz Hate America?“

But something Scheuer quoted from Podhoretz got me wondering: “[the Islamists are] the latest mutation of the totalitarian threat to our civilization [and are,] like the Nazis and the Communists before them… dedicated to the destruction of the freedoms we cherish and for which Americans stand.” (14-15)

In combating the “Islamo-Fascist” meme I’ve never heard anyone bring up the issue of property. A central aspect of socialism and fascism is an attack on private property, each in their own way. It is this attack on property that makes socialist and fascist regimes so deadly to the populations they rule over… a “totalitarian” threat in a way that say Hapsburg monarchists were not. It is also why in the long run, as we saw with the anti-climactic end of the Cold War, these regimes are such non-threats… They destroy the industrial basis of their military might by so severely hampering the market.

Here’s the point. I gather various contradictory statements on economics have been made in the bin Laden tapes but I don’t think anyone, even Podhoretz, thinks that the Al-Qaeda Economic Programme is a particular part of their appeal or their threat. But, if that’s the case, then they really aren’t a threat comparable to communists or fascists and this “Islamo-fascist” label is absurd.

The Best of Stephen W. Carson