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Hitler's LegacyModern Islamo-fascism and its Nazi Origins

Dr Carlo KoppFirst published in Defence Today, Vol.6 No.1

April/May 2007Text, Line Art © 2007, 2008 Carlo Kopp

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Magazine cover subtitle: Der Grossmufti von Jerusalem bei den bosnischen Freiwilligen der Waffen-SS (The GrandMufti of Jerusalem with Bosnian volunteers of the Waffen-SS)

One of the little known realities of twentieth century history is the role played by Hitler'sNazi regime in kindling the contemporary conflagration known as the Global War OnTerror.

With the incessant and very effective propaganda war being waged by the Islamo-fascistmovement in the media and the Internet, many of the deeper underlying issues in thisconflict are being obscured, intentionally so.

When US analyst Stephen Schwartz coined the term Islamo-fascism to describe Al Qaeda,its multitude of franchises, and the Tehran regime, he elicited considerable argument. Todate academic analysts and scholars remain divided on the use of this term. This isunfortunate insofar as these regimes/movements and the underpinning methodology ofpublic control are clearly fascist in every respect, once the veneer of fundamentalist Islamic

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propaganda is stripped away. Schwartz cites his own definition as 'Islamofascism refers touse of the faith of Islam as a cover for totalitarian ideology'.

Every revolutionary warfare movement needs cannon fodder, and the primary cannon fodderare disaffected people. The root of the Jihadist movement underpinning Al Qaeda is theprogressive economic and political decline of the Islamic world, relative to the industrialisedworld.

While the Jihadist view is that this is a consequence of Western oppression, the reality isfar simpler. Nearly all of these nations were recipients of generous economic and military aidduring the Cold War, as they sold their allegiance to the West or the Soviets since thebeginning of the Cold War. W ith the fall of the Soviet Union, that source of external subsidyvanished overnight, and they had to compete in an increasingly globalised and active worldeconomy. W ith little or no industrial base, and excluding the handful of nations withsignificant petrochemical wealth, most of these nations were not viable economically. Thiswas further exacerbated by arcane legal systems, often almost medieval, poor levels ofpublic education, poor governance and dysfunctional public institutions, and often absolutistor authoritarian governments. Nation states in this condition cannot compete in a modernglobal economy, and the result was increasing poverty, unemployment, and a sense ofhelplessness.

These are conditions no differentfrom those which spawned theBolshevik revolution, and the riseof Hitler's National SocialistGerman Worker's Party (NSDAP).The only missing ingredient was ashared ideology which provides asupporting belief system to unifyrecruits. Fundamentalist Islamwith its anti-Western, anti-Jewishand anti-wealth belief system wasthat ideology, and the result iswhat we see today.

Another way of looking at thisproblem is that only Turkey andIran had made a genuine

transition from the medieval form of governance where church and state were linked, andthe genuine separation of Church and State, as occurred in the West during the reformationperiod centuries ago, only remains in Turkey, since Iran's secular regime collapsed. As aresult of this, political meddling by clerics remains at the root of the problems we see todayin the Islamic world.

By far the most active in this respect have been Wahhabi fundamentalists, a deeplyconservative and extreme sect in Sunni Islam, which for a variety of historical accidentsbecame the official state religion of Saudi Arabia. Wahhabist clerics receive generous statesubsidies, for both domestic activities and missionary activities on a global scale.Wahhabism is the ideology underpinning Al Qaeda, and the defunct Taliban state which wascrushed in Operation Enduring Freedom.

The Islamic nations of the worldhad considerable exposure duringthe Cold War to Sovietrevolutionary warfare doctrine,which was standard curriculummaterial for any students sent toSoviet and other Warsaw Pactnation universities to gain freeundergraduate and postgraduateeducation. Suffice to say, classicslike Lenin's Gosudarstvo iRevolutsia (The State and theRevolution) were compulsoryreading. To this pool ofsociopathic knowledge infusedacross Islamic nations must alsobe added the extensive training ininsurgency techniques provided byUS and UK special forces andintelligence instructors during the 1980s Afghan war of liberation against the Soviets.Therefore the technique of destabilising governments and political institutions by sustainedinsurgency is well understood across the Islamic world, and considerable study materialespecially of Soviet origin remains available.

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Having cannon fodder in the form of a materially disadvantaged and disaffected populace, aex-Soviet cookbook for practising insurgency, and an ideological framework of Wahhabismare essential ingredients for mayhem, but not enough to construct a genuinely effectiveglobalised insurgency. The glue which is needed to hold these together is a developedideological doctrine and propaganda framework.

The Soviet model was never goingto be a candidate in thisenvironment, since too much ofSoviet propaganda technique wascentred on exploiting classdivisions in industrialisedsocieties, and too much wascentred in ideas like 'Pan-Slavism'and 'internationalism'. The 'ideal'communist had to ferventlybelieve in the brotherhood of allmen, and accept that only classenemies were evil, and thatpeople of any nationality could beliberated and brought into thefold given enough indoctrination.A revolutionary Islamic movementneeded an ideological doctrine

and propaganda framework which was chauvinistic in cultural values, and racist in focussinghatred on non-Islamic nations or groups, especially Jews.

The ideal model for this environment is of course the destructive creation of Dr JosephGoebbels, Reich Propaganda Minister, and chief ideologue of Hitler's NSDAP, the Nazipropaganda machine and its associated doctrine and technique.

Contemporary Western popular culture, exemplified by much of what Hollywood hasproduced on the topic, tends to portray the Nazis either as buffoons, or caricatures of evil.This is an unfortunate simplification of the truly destructive nature of the Nazi regime, andits clever use of a wide range of techniques designed to deeply seduce its followers. It isworth observing that the popularity of Nazi ideology in fringe groups in Western nations,despite the demonstrable moral and social bankruptcy of Nazism, has if anything grown overrecent decades.

The Nazi model was multi-pronged, essentially populist, andwas carefully constructed toprovide paths via which thesocially disadvantaged orambitious individual couldadvance. A central theme of theNazi cultural construct was thatthose who would take theinitiative individually, inpromoting Nazi agendas orperforming a community service(of a variety approved by theregime) would be rapidlypromoted. Good ideas and thewillingness to invest effort inthem were rapidly rewarded. In asocially strongly stratified andclass structured pre-NaziGermany, the Nazis presented opportunities for upward social mobility unseen until then.Individuals who jumped on the Nazi bandwagon, if industrious in their pursuits, could risesocially at a speed unseen until then in Germany. Cinematographer Leni Riefenstahl andaviatrix Hanna Reitsch were classical examples.

One byproduct of this arrangement was an enormous burst of technological, industrial andsocial welfare innovation in Germany, during the 1930s. Talent which aligned with the Naziswas rewarded generously, the quid pro quo being complete subservience to the ideologicalbelief system of the regime. The Nazis for instance actively recruited PhD graduates in awide range of disciplines to staff their bureaucracies and security apparatus. It is a littleknown fact that much of the leadership staff of the SS security apparatus held doctoratesfrom leading German universities.

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Another key element of the Nazimodel was a focus on socialwelfare, hitherto unseen indeveloped nations, and amechanism designed tocompletely seduce the 'blue collar'sections of German society. Thisextended from the use of youthorganisations to performcommunity service, to theintroduction of innovative healthinsurance. Which citizen could notadmire a movement which wouldorganise idle teenagers to help fixa pensioner's dilapidatedresidence, or clean up the litteredtown square?

The Nazis perfected the model ofcomplete ideological seduction of the populace, in a manner the Soviets never mastered,despite no less intensive effort. This is why German troops fought with such blind fanaticismduring the latter phase of the Second World War – most truly believed, en masse, in theregime and its view of the world.

A key tenet of Nazi propaganda was to attribute all misfortunes experienced by Germany toinfluence or conspiracy of others. Therefore German humiliation, misery and poverty in thepost Great War Weimar republic, and depression era, were attributed to the Westernpowers, a global Jewish conspiracy, and the subversive influence of the Nazi's primaryideological competitor, the Soviet led communists. In the Nazi view of the world, Germanswere deemed to be perfect, and all misfortune the fault of others, who had to be fought andultimately exterminated. The Holocaust, and other mass murder effected against opponentsof the regime across Europe were the manifestation of this deeply indoctrinated belief.

Readers who have followed therise of Islamo-fascist political andrevolutionary movements acrossthe Islamic world over recentyears will note the strikingsimilarities in social ideology,political doctrine, propaganda andthe exploitation of socialinequality, in comparison with theNazi model.

Is is similarity a coincidence, or isthere a deeper connectioninvolved?

There is ample evidence to showthat during the latter decade ofthe Nazi regime, and followingthe collapse of Nazi Germany in1945, elements of Nazi ideologyfound their way into the MiddleEast. There is a good case to be made that initially, anti-Semitism was at the root of thismigration of ideas, but later, other aspects of Nazi model became assimilated.

The connections between the radical 'political Islam' movement and Hitler's regime nowspan eight decades, and most recently involve an ongoing dialogue between neo-Naziorganisations and 'political Islam' centred organisations.

The roots of current 'political Islam' and its Islamo-fascist ideology lie in the 1920s, whenAtaturk secularised Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman regime, and dumped the idea of anIslamic caliphate which spanned the globe. Egyptian Hassan al-Banna, by occupation aschoolteacher, founded Al Ikhwan Al Muslimun (The Muslim Brotherhood) in 1928, a radicalrevolutionary movement centred in fundamentalist Islam as an ideological model.

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The Brotherhood followed thepattern of European revolutionarymovements, recruiting followersdisaffected by colonial rule in theArab world, and building up acovert organisation which by someaccounts had hundreds ofthousands of followers in Egypt by1945, and branch offices acrossthe Middle East. The aims of theBrotherhood were simple –recreate the 'Golden Age' of Islamby restoring the Caliphate, anddrive the infidel 'kafer' colonialistsout of the Islamic world. Thesocial groupings around mosques,and traditional Islamic welfareorganisations were used as acover and conduit for financing

the movement. By some accounts, much of the early activity of the Brotherhood wasmodelled on the early NSDAP.

By 1948 the Brotherhood had gained such potential, that it prepared a coup against theEgyptian monarchy, but was disbanded by the Egyptian government. It responded byassassinating the Prime Minister, the regime in turn killing its leader Hassan al-Banna. Theascendancy of Nasser's national socialist regime then saw a sustained campaign by thegovernment to destroy the Brotherhood, one which has continued to this very day. One ofthe casualties of the this campaign was al-Banna's successor, Sayyid Qutb, hanged in 1966.

Qutb is often regarded as thefather of modern Islamo-fascism,as he fused fundamentalistIslamic ideology with the Nazipropaganda model, his stated aimbeing to produce a movementwhich rivalled Nazism in the Westand Communism in the East. Tocreat this ideological model, Qutbessentially 'remapped' the Nazimodel into a Middle Easternequivalent, replacing 'Germanracial purity' with 'Islamicreligious purity', and adopting thetenets of Nazi anti-Semitism andrejection of Western capitalismand liberal democracy. Keyelements of Nazi propaganda,such as the ideas of a worldZionist conspiracy, centred in the US, were rolled into this toxic mix, together with the ideaof propagating Islam by the sword.

A then young follower of Qutb was Ayman al-Zawahiri, more recently co-founder and deputyleader of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida, who was recruited into the Brotherhood during the1960s. In many respects, the modern Al Qaeda is a direct offspring of al-Banna's movement.Al-Zawahiri, like bin Laden, is a dropout from a social elite, he qualified as a medicalpractioner, his grandfather was the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar University, his uncle thefirst leader of the Arab League.

Another Islamo-fascist who was inspired by Qutb was a young Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,later to lead the Iranian revolution which toppled the Shah, Reza Pahlavi.

The connection with the NSDAP regime in Germany however runs deeper, as the Nazis didtheir best to support through finance and advice the embryonic Islamofascist movements inBritish ruled Eqypt and Iraq through the late 1930s and early 1940s. The aim was todestabilise British rule in these strategically critical colonies. A key player was the GrandMufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, implicated in a 1941 coup attempt in Baghdad,and another graduate of the al-Azhar University. Al-Husseini was extensively involved inanti-British and anti-Jewish Palestinian unrest during the 1920s and 1930s, and one sourceclaims he met covertly with representatives of the Nazi SS intelligence arm during the late1930s, including Adolf Eichmann, later a key player in the extermination of European Jews.

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Once al Husseini wore out hiswelcome with the British, he fledto Germany for the remainder ofWorld War II, remaining active asa propagandist and recruiter ofBalkan Muslims into the WaffenSS Handschar and Kama Divisions,used extensively in the latter partof the war, as German manpoweravailable for combat divisionsdeclined. After the war al Husseinireturned to Egypt, and after beingimplicated in numerous acts ofpolitical violence was exiled.Yasser Arafat, deceased leader ofthe Palestinians, was a nephew ofal Husseini.

W ith the withdrawal of the Britishand French from their Middle Eastern colonies after the Second World War, and theformation of Israel, the Middle East became a hotbed of Arab nationalism, in which thefascist Baath movement became the dominant player. The Baathists represent yet anotherthread of Nazi influence, as they asimilated Nazi propaganda materials. As secular 'nationalsocialists' they in many respects represented a closer ideological model to that of the Nazis.Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime, broken by Coalition forces in 2003, was a directdescendent of this political movement. Hussein's admiration for Hitler was well documented.

The connections between Nazism and Arabfascism were further reinforced as some Naziwar criminals sought refuge after the war.The best documented instance is that of SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Alois Brunner, formercommandant of the Drancy concentrationcamp in Paris, who eventually settled in Syriaduring the 1950s. There are claims that intotal several hundred former SS and Gestapoofficers eventually found new homes in theArab world, these including Gestapo officerJoachim Däumling, SS Ober-GruppenfuhrerOskar Dirlewanger, SS Gruppenfuhrer LeopoldGleim, and SS Ober-Gruppenfuhrer HeinrichSelimann.

Given the volume of publications whichcurrently exist, connecting modern Islamo-fascism to the NSDAP regime of the 1930s,and the well documented activities of alHusseini in Nazi occupied Europe, theevidence that modern Islamo-fascism has itsprimary ideological and doctrinal roots intwentieth century Nazism is overwhelming.

Apologists for Islamo-fascism and 'politicalIslam' will no doubt dismiss this material as'Zionist propaganda', but whether we areprepared to accept or reject such historicalclaims, the nearly identical ideological anddoctrinal models used by the Nazis andmodern Islamofascists cannot be explainedaway so easily. Nor is the adoption of Nazi symbology such as the straight arm salute usedby Hezbollah, or the wide distribution by Islamo-fascists of anti-semitic tracts such as the“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a favourite of Goebbels' propagandists. There aresimply too many threads connecting the two ideologies to be dismissed easily.

World War Two may well be sixty years behind us, but it is clear that the poison whichalmost destroyed the world's democracies then is still alive and well today.

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Waffen SS Handshar Division troops firing an artillery piece.

Imagery Sources: Third Reich Propaganda MinistryLine Artwork: © 2000, 2007, 2008 Carlo Kopp

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