Fascists of the World Unite!

How the right learned to stop worrying and love the Muslims.

by Jason Abaluck

Clearly, Jerry Falwell "intended no disrespect" when he called Muhammed "a demon possessed-pedophile" and "a terrorist" and said that Islam teaches the destruction of all non-Muslims. It's equally evident that the Iran-based newspaper Kayhan had only admiration for Falwell when it urged American Muslims to kill him and Pat Robertson. Amid all this mutual esteem, one has to wonder--what's stopping everyone's favorite fundamentalist groups from reconciling their differences and forming a powerful global lobby for right-wing issues? Throw in a few xenophobic fascists to curry favor from both sides, and you've got a veritable Justice League.

Clearly, only the noblest of causes could bring this eclectic group of do-gooders together. But does a cause of such intrinsic morality and justice even exist? Fortunately, it does--stopping women's rights. The story of how the world's right-wing movements united in an attempt to prevent a global agreement granting women employment and reproductive rights is an inspiring one: after increasing each other's influence through mutual hate, they somehow found common ground amidst their bitter differences. As yet, this alliance between the religious right and some of the world's most colorful secular despots and right-wing maniacs has principally affected women's rights. If such an alliance persists, however, it could represent a drastic shift in values that will result not in a "Clash of Civilizations" but in a new incarnation of the age-old fight between the Left and the Right.

A Match Made in Heaven

The religious right must now decide what is more important to it--denouncing Islam or stopping women's rights initiatives. America's religious right has always been particularly adept at alienating Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and foreigners. While it has not forgotten the sins of homosexual Teletubbies, the religious right has recently focused more on denouncing Islam. Falwell does have a point about Muhammed. The historical spread of Islam involved a series of wars and forced conversions. Except for the Crusades, the Conquistadors, the Inquisition, the Thirty Years' War, and a few other minor skirmishes, Christianity has rarely won converts through violence; plus, when they did, it was in the name of the one, true God, so it was okay. Particularly effective, though, was the response in the Muslim world to Falwell's charges. In order to refute the claim that Islam is a violent religion, thousands of fundamentalist protestors held a riot in India in which 47 people were injured and five killed. It's hard to imagine a response that could have done more for Falwell's cause.

In an effort to supplement the generous assistance that fundamentalist Muslims have provided to Falwell, the Bush administration seems intent on rewarding one of its most loyal lobbies. Bush was apparently unable to find any legal way to give federal funds to Falwell, but CNN reports that as part of Bush's "faith-based initiative," half a million dollars in grants from the Department of Health and Human Service's "Compassion Capital Fund" are going to Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing International. And Robertson's hatred isn't confined to Muslims. According to Pat, not only is Muhammed "a killer," but Hindus are "devil worshippers." After multiple victories by religious right-sponsored candidates in the November elections, their political clout is likely to grow even larger. Their improved political standing does not seem to be due to their repeated denunciations of Muslims--instead, their consistent support of the Republican Party is paying dividends. Thus, if the religious right is willing to abandon its traditional antipathy towards the Muslim world as it did back in June, 2000, when the UN convened the Beijing+5 conference to promote "gender equality in the 21st century," it could find powerful allies in promoting their agenda. Already, the ideological similarities between the religious right and European neo-fascists have led to productive alliances.

No one American better embodies the link between America's religious right and Europe's fascists than Pat Buchanan. In the past, Buchanan has been unfairly criticized for suggesting that the allies may have been wrong to fight Hitler since his territorial ambitions lay in the east. In fact, comparisons between Buchanan and Hitler are often made out of context. Whereas Hitler declared that "secular schools can never be tolerated" at a rally before signing the infamous Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933, Buchanan announced that we must "drive... secular humanism right out of the public schools" at an innocent anti-gay rally in Des Moines, Iowa. Of course, bringing religion back to our schools is just one of Buchanan's many clever ideas. In line with his belief that "our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity," Buchanan has fought vigorously to keep immigrants and other heathens from entering American soil, including famously suggesting that a fence be erected along the entire United States/Mexico border. It's ideas like this that have drawn the admiration of some of Europe's finest right-wing zealots.

Setting Aside Their Differences

In his book, Radical Right-wing Populism in Western Europe, political scientist Hanz-Georg Betz attributes the recent emergence of neo-fascist parties to "the transition from industrial welfare capitalism to postindustrial individualized capitalism." According to Betz, as individuals have begun to focus increasingly on self-promotion, they have become alienated from their traditional social bonds. Without a fixed identity, "they have become easy targets for radical right-wing entrepreneurs who opportunistically exploit the widespread sense of grievance." Thus, there is a common ground between the religious right, which hates foreigners because they believe the conservative Christian cause to be the only correct one, and Europe's xenophobic fascists, who hate foreigners because doing so furthers their own political ends.

Because of this commonality, it makes sense that Europe's neo-fascists have worked so hard to blame Muslims, immigrants, and America for their countries' problems while simultaneously arranging alliances with the religious right and Muslim leaders. All three groups are xenophobic, and despite their distaste for one another, they have all embraced similar social policies. He's probably just being politically correct, but Buchanan has yet to call for the annexation of Mexico and the deportation of Mexicans to South America. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the founder of Russia's "Liberal Democratic party," has no such qualms. He called for the annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in order to make room for additional Russian seaports. Upon hearing of Buchanan's claim that Congress "is Israeli-occupied territory," he wrote to Buchanan to complain of the "troublesome tribe" that was causing similar problems in Russia and to endorse Buchanan's 1996 Presidential bid. Creepy man that he is, he even offered this sage advice on a recent visit to the United States: "You'd better watch those Muslims and those Chinese." While Zhirinovsky was unable to convince the Russian delegation to oppose women's rights at the Beijing conference, he has led the charge against women's rights in Russia. In 2001, he launched an initiative to outlaw abortion and contraceptives and to impose travel limits on women under 42 years of age.

Jörg Haider, the former leader of Austria's Freedom Party, has similarly managed to attain power by scapegoating Muslims while at the same time forging alliances with fundamentalist Muslim dictators and opposing women's rights. His party's platform in the recent election called for one third of Austria's mostly Muslim immigrants to be returned to their native countries over the next two years. Of course, to suggest that Haider's hatred is confined exclusively to Muslims would be unfair. After his conspicuous absence from the ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen death camp, he attended a reunion of the Waffen SS and announced that the fact it had been called a criminal organization at Nuremberg "doesn't interest me in the least." He delicately named his plan to end Austria's agricultural problems "the final solution." One might think that Libya's Moammar Gadhafi would object to Haider's treatment of Muslims, but, to Gadhafi, Haider's apparent hatred of Jews seems to more than make up for his deficiencies in other areas. When the European Union imposed sanctions on Austria to protest Haider's entrance into the government, Gadhafi provided the province of Carinthia, of which Haider is governor, with a $25 million relief package. Still, Haider could not live up to Gadhafi's lofty example when it comes to limiting women's rights. After the Beijing conference, Haider was successful in replacing the "Minister for Women's Affairs" with the "Extended Family Ministry" designed to encourage women to pursue "traditional roles," but he was unable to stop Austria from criminalizing sexual violence against women by their husbands.

Jean-Marie Le Pen recently became one of the most prominent of Europe's xenophobic right-wing leaders. In the recent French presidential election, Le Pen finished ahead of France's sitting Prime Minister before losing to President Jacques Chirac in a run-off. Compared to Zhirinovsky and Haider, Le Pen's credentials seem like a broken record, which is interesting, since the record company Le Pen founded called Hitler's administration "on the whole popular and democratic." Le Pen's platform consists mainly of blaming France's Muslim immigrants for the nation's ills. Like his counterparts in Russia and Austria, he has vigorously campaigned against abortion and women, but was unable to sway France's delegation to the Beijing conference.

In the Low Countries, Hungary, Italy, and Belgium, right-wing parties have sprung up with similar agendas. Thanks in part to renewed acts of terrorism and rioting in the Middle East, Europe's xenophobic neo-fascists have emerged as a powerful political force. In America, the perceived lack of a cohesive Democratic foreign policy has led to Republican victories that have strengthened the position of the religious right. In response, fundamentalist Muslims don't seem all that far-fetched when they claim that the West fails to respect their culture and way of life. By reacting against one another, Europe's right-wing leaders, the religious right, and fundamentalist Muslims have all benefited from increased clout. All three reject the fundamental tenet of Enlightenment liberalism: that political institutions should ensure equal autonomy for all individuals. Instead, they seek to impose a specific agenda upon the populace. Although their respective agendas seem contradictory, they are surprisingly consistent with one another. In assessing the current political situation, all three would prefer a world in which people of different cultural backgrounds are segregated and each can govern based on their conception of the good. As the Beijing conference shows, they also agree on a number of social issues.

An Unholy Alliance

At the Beijing+5 conference, members of the religious right banded together with fundamentalist Muslims to prevent language that could be construed as condoning abortion or suggesting that women should have the right to work outside the home from being inserted into the agreement. Together with what Amnesty International called an "unholy alliance" consisting of the Vatican, Iran, Algeria, Nicaragua, Syria, Libya, Morocco, and Pakistan, they managed to win a semantic victory--language criticizing "some countries [where abortion is legal that] still do not provide abortion and post-abortion services" was watered down. Further, while the position agreed upon at the Beijing conference five years earlier--that nations should "consider reviewing laws containing punitive measures against women who have undergone illegal abortions"--was reaffirmed, the Vatican and its allies managed to prevent the adoption of any plan designed to facilitate the implementation of such decrees. Europe's fascists were in general unable to influence their respective nation's delegations, but as we've seen, they did their best to oppose women's rights domestically. More interesting than the actual results are the ideological ramifications of this alliance.

Reactionaries now face a conflict--whether to continue reacting against the forces they traditionally oppose, or whether to band together to oppose liberalism. If they choose the latter, the prospect of a "clash of civilizations" will be replaced by the ancient conflict between traditionalism and modernity played out on a global scale. Though daunting, this may be in many ways preferable. The moral ambiguity involved in imposing one's civilization upon others because "it's right" would give way to the moral clarity of a fight for Enlightenment liberalism; in both cases, we must reconsider the traditional role of the state in safeguarding liberal values, but in the second we can appeal to a universal morality rather than localized interests.

The most fanatic fundamentalists on both sides will continue to press for an apocalyptic conflict between civilizations in which all sinners will be purged from the earth. If the more "moderate" right-wingers choose not to play into the rhetoric of their reactionary counterparts and choose instead to form an alliance to promote conservative issues, then a hopeless conflict will become managable. In a conflict between civilizations, moderates on both sides would rightly fear that elements of the other side would want nothing except the complete destruction of their way of life. If a political realignment occurred, pitting left against right, then conservatives who thrive off their hatred of each other would lose much of their influence. Certainly, there is a danger in concerted action by the right, but the outcome of the Beijing conference shows that even united they can only forestall progressive advances. As long as the xenophobes, racists, and anti-Semites are all on the same side, they cannot reinforce each other's hate. The final outcome of such a conflict remains uncertain, but at least the possibility of victory exists.

Questions? Comments? Please contact perspy@hcs.harvard.edu