Cliff,

In the first place it’s yet another sign that Buchanan has no grasp of this material, even though his disgusting magazine has run articles accusing me of being a fascist supporter. It’s hard for me to take him seriously on this subject. I wouldn’t give him the time of day.

But I certainly take you seriously, so — in response to your question — here are two thoughts. First, western european fascism, although it incorporated a good deal of religious ritual into its ceremonies, was basically secular. Mussolini was not religious, and he eventually negotiated a modus vivendi with the Vatican that provided for religious education in the public schools among other things the Church wanted. It would have made no sense to call him a “christian fascist.” Hitler wasn’t at all religious, he was a pagan racist. The concept of clerical fascism came from Romania, where religion and poltical doctrines fused into a particularly noxious movement known as “the Legion of the Archangel Michael” (a name that stays with me for obvious reasons). There, I think it would be legitimate to speak of “Christian fascism.” And the scholarly literature reflects that.

Second, fascism was exported to the Middle East by both Hitler and Mussolini. The language of contemporary jihadist antisemitism comes in large part from the Third Reich, although there was a ‘traditional’ islamic antisemitism for many centuries, as Bernard Lewis, Robert Spencer, Andy Bostom, Bat Ye’or and others have documented to a fare-the-well. In this case, the fascist doctrines have been fully integrated into Koranic language, and it makes perfect sense to call it Islamic fascism. That’s why I called Khomeini a clerical fascist, even before he came to power.