We have an arsenal of ideas

Bin Laden's fascism requires a military response, but in the end, its defeat will come from a free flow of information
Patrick H. O'Neil

This editorial originally appeared in the 4 November 2001 News Tribune. Reproduced with the kind permission of the author.

In 1989, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama published a controversial article titled "The End of History?" In this piece (and his subsequent book) he asserted that with the end of the Cold War, modern history as we understood it - a struggle between competing ideologies, a battle over ideas to reshape the world - was essentially over. Classical liberalism (an ideology of free markets, individualism and a weak state, different from the way in which we commonly use the term) had fought against communism and fascism and beaten them both.

Like it or not, liberalism was now the only game in town. Critics of the left and right could rail against capitalism or the failures of democracy, but they presented no coherent alternative view for how the world should be organized.

If Fukuyama was right, it appears he was right for all too brief a time. What we confront now is an old struggle in a new package, a new war against fascism. Let me explain.

For most of us, fascism conjures up images of jackbooted Nazis and mechanized armies, industrial might fused with militarism and racism. But at its core, fascism is much more simple and diverse in its manifestations.

In my introductory courses on comparative politics, I teach students that politics is essentially the struggle between two ideas - freedom and equality. To what extent can these two values be reconciled?

For classical liberals (what Americans often call libertarians), individualism and markets are paramount, and personal freedom can produce greater prosperity than any government mechanism for redistribution.

For communists, individual freedom and private property must give way to government power, so that economic and social equality can be realized. While many people in the developed world accept the basic tenets of free markets and individualism, at the same time they acknowledge government has a role to play in leveling inequalities across society. The battle over the proper balance of freedom and equality is the fuel of modern politics.

Fascists, however, reject both the value of individual freedom and the quest for equality. For fascists, human beings are inherently unequal, between the pure and the unpure, and the pure must join in a collective whole to defeat and rule over the unpure. This is the essence of Osama bin Laden's message.

Let us not fool ourselves that if only the United States supported the creation of a Palestinian state, if only we withdrew our support for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, if only we ended the sanctions on Iraq, everything would be fine and bin Laden would suddenly disappear.

These appropriated grievances are not at the core of bin Laden's message. What bin Laden seeks is the creation of a single Islamic nation, the destruction of all forms of independent thought, the repression of other faiths and the emergence of a single, pure Islam that brooks no dissent or alternatives within or without.

As we learned in 1939, such fascism cannot be negotiated with.

It is not that bin Laden and his supporters want to be a legitimate part of the world system. Rather, they reject the current world system utterly. The United States, as the world's dominant power, is the biggest obstacle to that transformation. And so we must be the first to perish.

Interestingly, this fascism also explains why bin Laden and those who support him around the world refuse to accept his responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks, even as he calls for more airplanes to rain down on American cities. At its core fascism rests on a foundation of victim ideology, that the world has conspired to deprive a people of its wealth and power.

Thus, to admit to these attacks is to admit to power and the ability to control one's own destiny. In 1939, Germany asserted that it was Poland that attacked Germany, not the other way around. In the present day, neo-Nazis deny the very existence of the Holocaust while advocating a new one, so as to preserve their self-image of victimhood and the legitimacy of their violent goals.

What does this mean for American policy? The most important thing it means is that we should not allow fascism to define the debate for us.

Many critics in America and around the world have jumped to claim the United States is at fault for the horror that has been visited upon us; after all, since we oppress others and have all this wealth that we refuse to share, we got what we deserve.

Again, this is not dissimilar to public reactions as fascism rose in the 1930s.

Many people around the world saw fascism as a superior alternative to liberal democracy, which was seen as decadent and mired in economic depression. During World War II, many people were similarly untroubled by the extermination of the Jews - after all, didn't they have too much money, occupy too many positions of power, control the world? Didn't they get what they deserved?

How comfortable should we be with spouting a rationalization that is a component of genocide? If we allow this debate to be defined by bin Laden or by America's critics as simply a struggle over economic redistribution, we will fail to understand what we are fighting against.

If one goes back to World War II, one is struck by the way in which Americans viewed the war as one of ideology, a battle for democracy and personal liberty. This is again what we are fighting for. Can democracy and personal liberty be misused or subject to hypocrisy? Of course. The greatest strength of democracy is the ability of women and men to stand up and attack its flaws and inconsistencies and demand more of it.

This is exactly what bin Laden and his supporters do not want. They seek the opposite: a moral absolutism backed by oppression.

How do we fight the long war? Military might, complete with the deaths of innocents, is impossible to avoid. While many decry the deaths of innocents in Afghanistan and now call for an end to our attacks, they forget the uncounted numbers who have died under the Taliban's fascist regime, nor do they consider how many more may die if this fascist ideology is not met with force.

In the 1930s, many politicians sought to understand and negotiate with Hitler, failing to realize that his goal simply was their destruction. Had he been destroyed earlier, millions would have been saved.

It seems hard to believe bin Laden will not kill hundreds of thousands to realize this vision of a single Islamic state. Moreover, should bin Laden's power grow, the greatest casualties will not come in the West. Far more Muslims are likely to die at the hands of these fascists, killed for practicing the wrong sect of Islam, or for being insufficiently religious.

It is right to be uneasy about this struggle, and it is a risky course for us to take. But as we learned in the 1930s, in the case of fascism it is inaction, not violence, that breeds more violence.

But military might is not enough. There has been no Pearl Harbor, no attack by a conventional enemy against conventional military targets.

In an unconventional war we must also fight by unconventional means. If this is a war of ideas, it must be fought on the battlefield of people's minds, not just in the mountains of Afghanistan.

While it is now a cliche that Westerners don't understand Islam or the Middle East, it is also true Muslims in the region don't understand the West.

We should use the instruments of a globalized world to our advantage. If bin Laden calls for planes to rain down on us, then our fiercest relation can be in an indiscriminate bombardment of knowledge across the region, diverse and cacophonous ideas, including ones critical of the United States.

The United States has criticized the Qatari satellite television station Al-Jazeera for its coverage of bin Laden. Better that we avail ourselves of such media outlets and work harder to present our own views to the region and communicate and argue with those who are open to debate.

This should be less a policy of propaganda, of convincing people that bin Laden is evil and we are good, than the more subtle policy of showing people the world is full of different views and that intellectual diversity is worth having. That is what will kill fascism in the long run.

Ideas are the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of democracy. Bombs away.

Patrick H. O'Neil is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound.

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