Ilya Afanasyev, Opendemocracy, April 28, 2016.

Fascism is not only a form of
prejudice, it is also a political logic. A logic that reduces complex problems
to ‘us and them’ issues.

What is fascism? Perhaps one way
to answer this question is to say that fascism is a political logic that
assumes that there is an easy solution to complex political, economic and
societal problems, and that this solution is grounded in being ‘honest’ and
ruthless about who ‘us’ and ‘them’ are.

Political practice is then
understood as a necessity and even a moral obligation to pursue this reductive
identity-based vision to its logical conclusions. In this view, the complexity
of society and all structural socio-economic conditions are rendered ultimately
unimportant, while identity is equated with ideology and political action. 
Hence, for example, in classic Nazism, an integrated, baptised and ‘Germanised’
Jew, who had nothing to do with any ‘Jewish community’, was seen as ultimately
representing the same coherent entity, conceived as a conscious and malevolent
political agent, as a traditional religious Jew, who spoke Yiddish and practised
Judaism. 
No matter what their appearances were, they were all the same at some
level and must have been treated as an alien element in the body of the nation.

Today, a very similar logic is
propagated by those who are obsessed with the connection between Islam and
terrorism. 
Charlie Hebdo’s recent editorial ‘How did we end up here?’ is a
perfect example of it. 
The article’s main argument is that every Muslim, who
publically reveals her or his religion, engages in an act of terror and is,
therefore, complicit in violent terrorism.

A peaceful intellectual, a polite
baker who does not serve ham sandwiches or a woman daring to wear the veil in
public – they all are members of the same entity that is not only different
from ‘us’, but is also attacking ‘us’, either with their alien cultural
practices or their bombs, a distinction between the two turned into a
difference of scale, not of quality.

A conclusion, which is offered
implicitly, is that to end terrorism we must admit that ‘Muslims’ are a
problem, alongside those ‘politically correct’ lefties who do not want to
acknowledge that. The only thing that is still missing here is an explicit form
of biological racism: we are not yet told that everyone of ‘Muslim descent’ is
guilty by definition. 
For now, we are ‘only’ sold comprehensive cultural
discrimination.

At least, this is the case at the
level of discourse. 
When one looks at it in practice, the situation is already
more blurred, as police forces across western countries are systematically
harassing those citizens and immigrants who look ‘Muslim’. For many liberals
and leftists, the far-right undercurrent of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial is
obvious in its attempt to build a case for a comprehensive discrimination
against, in fact, a heterogeneous group of people mainly engaging in harmless
activities. 
But we should notice that there is more to it. Fascism is not only
a form of prejudice, it is also a political logic. A logic that reduces complex
problems to ‘us and them’ issues. 

Multiple factors, homegrown and otherwise 

Terrorism is a complex problem.
Any attempt to deal with it cannot be separated from understanding its multiple
roots, causes and structural conditions. As even security services admit,
Islamist terrorism in the west is linked to western countries’ foreign policies
across the globe. This is logical in the most basic common-sense way: if you
claim to wage a war, how can you be so surprised that there will be people who
would want to bring it back to you?
But there is also a more complex
socio-economic and geo-political dimension, related to both the west’s historical
support of various Islamists movements, as well as its ongoing support of the
most oppressive dictatorships across the world. Next, although systematic
poverty and exclusion of (post)immigrant communities in Europe is not the only
explanation of terrorism (neither is it its justification, for that matter),
terrorism is indeed inseparable from the structural conditions imposed on those
communities by European states and societies.
Finally, one should not dismiss
the role of Islamism as a form of religiously-sanctioned political ideology and
practice that attracts alienated individuals seeking empowerment. 
In that sense,
all well-meaning proclamations that ‘terrorism has nothing to do with Islam’
are not only a form of wishful thinking, but also an explicitly harmful
contribution to the reification of ‘Muslims’ as a coherent and uniform group.

The key point here is that none
of the reductive singular explanations will do. Islamism and its rise in the
Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Europe is a complex story. 

The
attractiveness of violent Islamism to a certain segment of immigrant and post-immigrant
communities in the west (a very small segment, one should add) cannot be
understood outside the long history and immediate politics of the west’s
actions in Muslim-majority regions, those regions’ own political,
socio-economic and ideological dynamics, as well as the systemic poverty and
exclusion affecting minorities in the west itself. These are just three
interconnected factors causing and shaping Islamist terrorism today. 
There are
many more, as well as many more forms of terrorism, both in the west and in the
world as a whole. 

Banal binaries 

All this should be fairly banal,
but instead, we are constantly being sold a different identity-focused
narrative. 
It is assembled in a few simple steps. There is a terrifying problem
of terrorism, terrorism perpetrated by ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the only
solution is to admit that there are ‘us’ and ‘them’ and stop pretending that
‘they’ are not a threat, with all their veils, refusal to serve ‘us’ ham
sandwiches, smart talk of Muslim ethics and bombs.

Only when we admit that can we
somehow get rid of the actual physical threat of terrorism. 
For now, nobody is
yet telling us how exactly to solve this problem in practice (although Trump
with his suggestions of banning Muslims from entering the US is coming close).
That is the difference between
fascism as political practice and fascism as logic and rhetoric. But the latter
is of course enabling the possibility of the former. This is why it should be
resisted fiercely. To everyone who insists on a direct link between Islam, ‘the
Muslims’ and terrorism, we should reply that there are no ‘Muslims’ as a
coherent group, that religion itself, independently of whether we like it or
not, is not a cause of political violence and that the problem of terrorism will
never be solved by an insistence on any reductive identity-based approach to
it. 

Serious solutions 

Of course, a genuine solution to
the problem of terrorism is difficult to imagine short of a radical
transformation of the world. Such a transformation would address the three
problems singled out above and involve at least three massive structural
changes.

First, ending the neo-colonialist
practices of the west, Russia and China. Second, opening up a political space
for going beyond the wrong choice between phony-capitalist murderous dictatorships
and thuggish Islamism in the Middle East (and other post-colonial regions).
Third, resurrecting the social state in Europe, one able to efficiently address
the appalling conditions and exclusion of its post-immigrant communities. 

While these changes remain
utopian, the problem of terrorism is going to stay with us and will influence
where we are going to end up. 
Its actual influence has nothing to do with
challenges to ‘our way of life’ or any other pseudo-threats, omnipresent in the
rhetoric of mainstream politicians.

The real danger is in what must
be called the myth of terrorism: a view that terrorism is the ultimate form of
evil, simultaneously an act of war and the most despicable vile crime, somehow both
cunning and meaningless. 
This emotional and a-political understanding of
terrorism is widespread and makes the job of those who want to reduce politics
to scapegoating imagined communities easier.
The potential harm here is not
only in increasing prejudices against people who are already discriminated
against, but also in the replacement of necessary struggles over the forms of
political-economic organisation and the distribution of wealth with reductive
and simplistic politics of ‘us and them’. This is why we must prevent the supporters
of fascist logic from using it to enable a new age of fascist politics to
prevail in the west.