PC: actual Islamic Fascism

rather than be empty rhetoric by certain have a Islamic Fascist or something close to it exist with a POD of 1800

Make Albania an Italian client state in WWII?

Give Ataturk a slightly more egocentric personality?

post WWI Enver Pasha comes out on top. stays in power for 50 years; embraces nationalistic-islamic fascism.

i'd love to write a story set in that world in the post-Enverist turkey

It happened.

Wasn't Kemalism a ultra Laicite authoritarianism turkish Nationalist ideology

Unfortunately, I don't think we can consider Kemalist Turkey as fascist, although it was pretty close and fulfilled some key requirements that many other states which often get unjustly called fascist don't. It certainly wasn't Islamic fascism, though, as it became secular. Either way, post-WWI Turkey, or another Ottoman successor state was the most likely candidate for such an event. Another idea of mine is something involving Egypt, a perfect place for an outbreak of palingenetic nationalism, with anti-British sentiment being a key unifying force and the establishment of a Greater Egypt, drawing from both the Ancient Egyptian empire and the Muslim Caliphates of the Middle Ages (as well as the Egyptian empire that Muhammad Ali briefly managed to establish which included Syria as well). This could be accomplished with a marginal defeat for the side the Ottoman Empire is on, that leaves both sides ruined, the British Empire unable to prevent the breakaway of Egypt and the OE unable to prevent its ascension.

Alternate History said:

Unfortunately, I don't think we can consider Kemalist Turkey as fascist, although it was pretty close and fulfilled some key requirements that many other states which often get unjustly called fascist don't. It certainly wasn't Islamic fascism, though, as it became secular. Either way, post-WWI Turkey, or another Ottoman successor state was the most likely candidate for such an event. Another idea of mine is something involving Egypt, a perfect place for an outbreak of palingenetic nationalism, with anti-British sentiment being a key unifying force and the establishment of a Greater Egypt, drawing from both the Ancient Egyptian empire and the Muslim Caliphates of the Middle Ages (as well as the Egyptian empire that Muhammad Ali briefly managed to establish which included Syria as well). This could be accomplished with a marginal defeat for the side the Ottoman Empire is on, that leaves both sides ruined, the British Empire unable to prevent the breakaway of Egypt and the OE unable to prevent its ascension.

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Hypothetically if the Ottomans somehow industrialized and if there was a mililant Labour movement then some military officer and his sympathetizers launches a coup reduces the Sultan to a puppet and quash dissent

What would be a platform for a Islamic fascist government?

erich von changstein said:

rather than be empty rhetoric by certain have a Islamic Fascist or something close to it exist with a POD of 1800

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Alternate History said:

Unfortunately, I don't think we can consider Kemalist Turkey as fascist, although it was pretty close and fulfilled some key requirements that many other states which often get unjustly called fascist don't. It certainly wasn't Islamic fascism, though, as it became secular. Either way, post-WWI Turkey, or another Ottoman successor state was the most likely candidate for such an event. Another idea of mine is something involving Egypt, a perfect place for an outbreak of palingenetic nationalism, with anti-British sentiment being a key unifying force and the establishment of a Greater Egypt, drawing from both the Ancient Egyptian empire and the Muslim Caliphates of the Middle Ages (as well as the Egyptian empire that Muhammad Ali briefly managed to establish which included Syria as well). This could be accomplished with a marginal defeat for the side the Ottoman Empire is on, that leaves both sides ruined, the British Empire unable to prevent the breakaway of Egypt and the OE unable to prevent its ascension.

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Sadly, there IS one OTL religious Islamic organization that's not quite fascistic, but does come a tad close to it.....It's called the Muslim Brotherhood, and one of the first things they in the first years of their existence was to aid the Nazis during WWII.....If you want a close Western equivalent or two to this organization, think of William Pelley's Silver Shirts or Oswald Mosley's organization in the pre-WWII U.K., and perhaps mixed with the charm & charisma of Charles Coughlin and the support enjoyed by the Ku Klux Klan in the South of the 1920s.

I don't have anything as to how they'd make the transition into full-blown fascism, though, not now.

(However, though, we can indeed be grateful that indeed, this talk of Islamic fascism remains, by and large, empty rhetoric......)

so the Brotherhood is more Francoist than Mussolini and could this movement adopt some form of Populism to stay in power?

Kemal Ataturk could never be called a fascist, and he was never an Islamist. He was against Islamism of all hues and one hundred per cent secular. He was the greatest leader with a modern vision to rise in the Middle East in the first half of the last century.
If an example of Islamic Fascism is to be pointed out it could be Afghanistan under Taliban. An Islamic Fascist state in the formative period could be Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood. The actions of the newly elected President point in such a direction.

Wouldn't the Iranian Ayatollahs quite closely reach the definition of "fascism"?

EternalCynic said:

Wouldn't the Iranian Ayatollahs quite closely reach the definition of "fascism"?

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I'd personally argue so. In the 1980s in particular they pushed for an autarkic economy run on corporatist lines, combine that with the 'state within a state' that the Revolutionary Guard have become to an extent and there's obvious parallels.

The power structure makes it a bit skewed though. Khomeini might have been the "Fuhrer" (actually I've always preferred to see him as the Islamist Lenin) but these days its a lot more complicated and the Guardian Council is arguably subservient to the President and secular government. However considering the secular government are these days in effect the Revolutionary Guard in business suits, there's a line to be drawn to "SS-creep" in Germany.

The problem with fascism is it really was a franchise not a Leninist brand. It was always successful elsewhere where domestic variants that were really right-wing populist movements simply taking a policy here and there. Just see how well the carbon copies movements managed, in Britain, America even in France it wasn't until the late 1930s that really a French version was forming with the PSF. Hell I'd argue the Falange was far too slavish to Rome and really needed Franco to get anywhere.

In terms of the broad umbrella that is required to make Fascism anything more than Mussolini on a balcony and Milanese trade unionists drinking castor oil, I'd say Iran fits as much as, say Spain, ever did.


EDIT: On Turkey - Ataturk was his own thing really, a centrist strongman happy to work with anyone to ensure his country didn't collapse like most of the Great War participants did. His close connections with Moscow do remove the key anti-communist plank from his roster if nothing else. He definitely wasn't Islamist.

However I'd love to see an Enver Pasha TL, he'd be a good candidate though his pan-Turkish visions might mean his regime doesn't last all too long.

I actually wrote an AH scenario where a victorious Nazi Germany under Fuhrer Reinhard Heydrich becomes anti-colonial for political reasons (pressuring its French and Italian puppets to dump its colonies). So in that TL there may some possibilities in this area...

Also see the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

So what would an Islamic fascism would look like.

erich von changstein said:

So what would an Islamic fascism would look like.

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A lot like the Christian variety, really. Despite the heated rhetoric of the last decade or so, you cannot marry modern Salafist Islamism and Fascism very well. Islamic fascism would have to be fascism based on a modern ethnic nation state, but linked to a traditional, established form of Islam as its religious ally. I think that with some nudging into a nastier direction, Kemalism could have gotten there, so take that as your foil and darken to taste. Or imagine a Bosnian Ustasa.

Note that this would be Islamic fascism, not Islamist fascism. I don't think the latter is really doable, for all the Saudis seem to be trying.

carlton_bach said:

Note that this would be Islamic fascism, not Islamist fascism. I don't think the latter is really doable, for all the Saudis seem to be trying.

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The problem is that it's so hard to define fascism, at least to me. But it seems like an authoritarian Ottoman Empire trying to hold together Turks and Arabs could use a militant Islam as a glue...

Faeelin said:

The problem is that it's so hard to define fascism, at least to me. But it seems like an authoritarian Ottoman Empire trying to hold together Turks and Arabs could use a militant Islam as a glue...

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Eco has given it a good stab, and I think it's the best we are going to get. Fascist movements (and they are very similar in many ways, so the classification makes sense) are hard to pin down on their actual structures and goals. What unites them is much more a package of emotional appeals and convictions, and a broadly shared symbolism (trust Eco to engage with that). That also makes them very much creatures of their time and place, and I am doubtful that something like postmodern fascism is even possible.

CaliBoy1990 said:

Sadly, there IS one OTL religious Islamic organization that's not quite fascistic, but does come a tad close to it.....It's called the Muslim Brotherhood, and one of the first things they in the first years of their existence was to aid the Nazis during WWII.....

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Aiding the Nazis doesn't make someone a facist - my God, the current Israeli government is descended from a faction that sent fan mail to Adolf Hitler during WW2! Although that might not be the best example...

Nor is "facist" a synonym for "I don't like these people" or "nasty"!

Saddam's regime comes to mind, as do the thugs in Tehran.

I suppose Paxton's definition of fascism may be necessary:

Robert Paxton said:

• A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
• The primacy of the group, towards which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;
• A belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
• Dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
• The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, by exclusionary violence if necessary;
• The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny;
• The superiority of the Leader's instinct over abstract and universal reason;
• The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;
• The right of a chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

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And here's a sort of abridged version of Eco's:

Umberto Eco said:

• The Cult of Tradition and attempts at historical syncretism
• Traditionalism and the rejection of modernism;
• Irrationalism dependent on the cult of "Action for Action's Sake"
• Disagreement is seen as treason;
• Fear of difference, racism;
• Appealing to a frustrated middle class;
• Obsession with a plot, feelings of victimization;
• Humiliation by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies;
• Life is lived for struggle because life is permanent warfare;
• Elitist contempt for the weak;
• Everybody is educated to become a hero/martyr;
• Machismo and the will to power to sexual matters;
• Selective, or "qualitative," populism;
• Newspeak.

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