Islamo-fascism shares a number of key traits with the European fascism popularized by Mussolini and Hitler during the 1930s. Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except insofar as it is capable of constructing or supplying weapons of war). Both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and are thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia. Both are inclined to leader worship and unquestioning obedience. Both have a strong commitment to the subordination of women and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence. And both burn books and art treasures.
Moreover, Al-Qaeda’s demands that countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia be dissolved into one great revived caliphate is a goal that has points of resemblance with Hitler's quest to create a "Greater Germany," or with Mussolini's fantasy of a revived Roman empire.
While not exactly similar, both Islamo-fascism and European fascism are totalitarian systems of thought that stress suicidal tactics and sacrificial ends; both would rather see the destruction of their own societies than any compromise with infidels or any dilution of their doctrinal orthodoxy.
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