Parallels of Nazis and al Qaeda?

by clintcannon

Is it possible that the history of Fascism and or Nazism parallel that of the Taliban and al Qaeda? In order to defeat the Soviets, Pakistan and the Saudis and the CIA, chipped in to fund the fight. Hence, weapons in Afghanistan and the "pipeline" of madrassas and training and to the battlefield. The "blowback" being al Qaeda and like groups. Any higher powers sponsoring communism's defeat in Europe and eventually Germany, lead to Nazism?

amp1212

Short answer:

No, that's a "parallel" that obscures far more than it explains.

Discussion:

al Qaeda has deep historical and religious roots and is backwards looking-- compare to, say, abu Muslim al Khorasani and Kharijites, the Wahhabis, rather than to the Nazis.

To understand al Qaeda, you need to study Islamic history, and particularly the history of the Arabs in Islam. To understand the Nazis, you need to study German history.

There are few useful parallels. In general "the Nazis" are a rhetorical and historically unconvincing parallel to draw. The Internet is filled with people comparing anything and everything to "the Nazis", by which they mostly mean "I think these are bad people who do bad things". Such an argument suggests that its proponent hasn't thought much about either the Nazis or whoever they might be being compared to today.

Serious historians like Ernst Nolte have compared fascist/national socialist movements like Action Française, Mussolini's Fascists and German National Socialists with historical rigor and with a point -- looking at the way these varied movements emerged within a few decades of each other, in specific national contexts but as a response to certain common challenges. But that kind of a comparative treatment is of little use in exploring groups like al Qaeda or ISIS; "Islamo-Fascism" is a catchy epithet, despite its ubiquity it doesn't specify anything much beyond violent people of some description. It's notable that it's often been used to describe Statists, like the Assads or Nasser . . . a description which can be used to describe both a Statist Shi'a regime and an anarchic Sunni insurgency is neither specific nor sensitive.

al-Qaeda isn't an enemy of communism a political ideology-- it's an enemy of Western secularism. They were just as much opposed to American soldiers in Saudi Arabia as they were to Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan; they cared little for the distinction between communist Russians and anti-communist Americans.

Sources:

“THE KHĀRIJITES.” Medieval Islamic Political Thought, by PATRICIA CRONE, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2005, pp. 54–64.

Lassner, Jacob. “Abū Muslim Al-Khurāsānī: The Emergence of a Secret Agent from Kurāsān, Irāq, or Was It Iṣfahān?” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 104, no. 1, 1984, pp. 165–175.

Valentine, Simon Ross. "Force and Fanaticism: Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond", London: Hurst, 2015

LADEN, OSAMA BIN, and ROLAND JACQUARD. “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places: Expel the Polytheists from the Arabian Peninsula (August 23, 1996) / In the Name of Osama Bin Laden: Global Terrorism and the Bin Laden Brotherhood.” On Violence: A Reader, edited by Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, Duke University Press, DURHAM; LONDON, 2007, pp. 539–546.

Nolte, Ernst. Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. 1963