"We will fight the evil ones for the cause of fascism!"

Две противоположные точки зрения на термин "исламофашизм", который, благодаря Бушу и Чейни, недавно перекочевал из риторических упражнений неоконсервативных политологов в официальный дискурс.

1. Language Log:

The word stereotypically connotes a combination of complete control of all institutions by a highly militarized authoritarian state headed by a charismatic leader. It is used for political systems that are radical, totalitarian, corporatist, and chauvinist. It is quintessentially opposed to liberalism — not liberalism in the (now much more common) sense that Geoff Nunberg's latest book talks about, where it is a kind of Republican term of abuse, but the older and more technical sense: individual rights, free-market economics, and a minimum of control by authorities of how people should live, worship, trade, interact, or express themselves.

"Fascism" is not a bad term to pick for the kind of nightmare that would probably result if a global Islamic caliphate were to be established by the sort of Waziristan cave denizens who issue taped messages encouraging disaffected young Pakistanis in Britain to go out and blow themselves and a few hundred passengers to pieces on a train or a plane to glorify Allah. (Yes, I despise this corrupt cult of mass slaughter and theocratic bigotry. Did you think I would be all latte-sipping gooey-relativist about it?) The opposition to individual rights, free markets, choice in lifestyle, tolerance in religion, and expression of dissent of the jihadists is plangent.

So it may indeed be true that right now the Bush administration has a desire to forge a rhetorical connection to the struggle of the Allies against Mussolini and Hitler; but independently of any such desire, the term "Islamic fascism" seems to me perfectly reasonable one to use when characterizing the movement in question.

2. LA Times:

Actually, the term "Islamo-fascism," if taken literally, doesn't make sense. The "fascist" part might fit Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with its militaristic nationalism, its secret police and its silly peaked officers' hats. But there was nothing "Islamo" about the regime; Iraq's Baathists tried to make the state the real object of the people's devotion.

That's why it's odd to describe repressive theocracies like the Taliban as fascist — just as it would be for Savonarola's Florence, John Calvin's Geneva or the Spain of the Inquisition, all of which reduced the state to an instrument for enforcing God's will. The Islamic world doesn't seem to offer very fertile soil for fascist cults of the state. In a 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey, majorities in most Muslim nations said their loyalty to Islam came before their loyalty as citizens.

But in the mouths of the neocons, "fascist" is just an evocative label for people who are fanatical, intolerant and generally creepy. In fact, that was pretty much what the word stood for among the 1960s radicals, who used it as a one-size-fits-all epithet for the Nixon administration, American capitalism, the police, reserved concert seating and all other varieties of social control that disinclined them to work on Maggie's farm no more.

But like "terror," and "evil" before it, "Islamic fascism" has the effect of reducing a complex story to a simple fable. It effaces the differences among ex-Baathists, Al Qaeda and Shiite mullahs; Chechens and Kashmiris; Hezbollah, Hamas and British-born Asians allegedly making bombs in a London suburb. Yes, there are millions of people in the Muslim world who wish the U.S. ill, and some of them are pretty creepy about it. But that doesn't mean they're all of a single mind and purpose, or that a blow against any one of them is a blow against the others. As Tolstoy might have put it, every creep is creepy in his own way.

Я полностью согласен со второй точкой зрения. Никакой полезной функции, кроме пропагандистской, это словосочетание не выполняет.