In the mindset of right-wing America, western civilization is threatened by an Islamofascist Jihad. The battle has already been lost in Eurabia, due to the appeasment of multicultural, Godless Europeans to the Muslim extremists. Only America – to precise, American military force – stands in the way of the desired Caliphate, which will impose Shariia law on all Americans. President Bush often invokes the term Islamofascism to justify the continuing debacle in Iraq, and analogies to Nazi Germany abound in his rhetoric, and in that of his apologists in the press. As I wrote earlier, it’s always Munich 1938 in right-wing America, and the nation is in danger of appeasing terrorist forces unless it immediately starts bombing North Korea, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria Iran. One hears the theme over and over again on American hate talk radio. Last week talk radio host Michael Savage said the following to his nationwide audience of 8 million listeners:
"You know, when I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi. That’s what I see — how do you like that? — a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children. Don’t give me this crap that they’re doing it out of a sacred ritual or rite. It’s not required by the Quran that a woman walk around in a seventh-century drape. She’s doing it to spit in your face. She’s saying, "You white moron, you, I’m going to kill you if I can." That’s how I see it! What do you want me to do, mince words with you? I’m not going to mince words. We’re too far gone in this country."
So the Muslim=Nazi idea is already deeply entrenched in the red state American popular imagination. Voices of reason – like that of the Dutch writer Ian Buruma – sometimes seem like lonely cries in the wilderness:
"But the term “Islamofascism” was not coined for nothing. It invites us to see a big part of the Islamic world as a natural extension of Nazism. Saddam Hussein, who was hardly an Islamist, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is, are often described as natural successors to Adolf Hitler. And European weakness, not to mention the “treason” of its liberal scribes, paving the way to an Islamist conquest of Europe (“Eurabia”) is seen as a ghastly echo of the appeasement of the Nazi threat.
Revolutionary Islamism is undoubtedly dangerous and bloody. Yet analogies with the Third Reich, although highly effective as a way to denounce people with whose views one disagrees, are usually false. No Islamist armies are about to march into Europe – indeed, most victims of Revolutionary Islamism live in the Middle East, not in Europe – and Ahmadinejad, his nasty rhetoric notwithstanding, does not have a fraction of Hitler’s power.
The refusal of many Muslims to integrate into Western societies, as well as high levels of unemployment and ready access to revolutionary propaganda, can easily explode in acts of violence. But the prospect of an “Islamized” Europe is also remote. We are not living a replay of 1938. "
