32 PARTISAN REVIEW
ROBERT S. WISTRICH
The New Islamic Fascism
I
n his prison journals Albert Speer recalled an astonishing scene
towards the end of World War II when Adolf Hitler, in a kind of
delirium, "pictured for himself and for us the destruction of New
York in a hurricane of fire." The Nazi leader described skyscrapers
being turned into "gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon one
another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark sky." In
September
2001
this frenzied Wagnerian imagery became fact.
There is something apocalyptic about the sheer scale and seismic
shock effect of the Twin Towers massacre in New York. The Islamic ter–
rorist perpetrators of this act, like the Nazis and fascists sixty years ago,
speak a language of unquenchable hatred for the Jewish people, for
America and the West, indeed for civilization itself. They too enjoy-at
least in the Muslim world-the acclamation of significant sectors of the
population. Like the Nazis, they too have chosen a cult of death over
life-turning motifs of martyrdom, sacrifice, and death into something
urgent, elemental, pseudo-religious, and mythical. Their bible may be
the Koran and not
Mein Kampf
but the mental structures and world–
view behind their actions have many similarities with totalitarian fas–
cism. In this war they are worthy successors of the wartime Palestinian
leader and Hitler's ally Haj Amin al-Husseini, who in
1944
urged the
Arabs over Radio Berlin: "Kill Jews wherever you find them for the love
of God, history, and religion." Such murderous calls have become com–
monplace across the Muslim world today. The suicide bombers of the
Hamas and Islamic Jihad who bloodied Israel on December 2nd are a
testament to their destructiveness.
There are other parallels, too. The same intolerance of dissent, the
same will to control every aspect of everyday life, and the desire to
export terrorism throughout the world are common ground to the rad–
ical nihilists of yesterday and today. In organizations like al Qaeda, the
Taliban, the Hamas, the Hezbollah, and other like-minded terror
groups, one finds a totalitarian mind-set, hatred of the West, fanatical
extremism, repression of women, loathing of Jews, a firm belief in con–
spiracy theories, and dreams of globa l hegemony. Like pre-war Euro–
pean fascists, these Muslim radicals claim to speak for frustrated,
