A progressive foreign policy will require more focus on Islamic radicalism.

The following is adapted from a talk delivered at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., on March 19, 2010.

One of the greatest ironies of the past decade's debates over political Islam has been that, on the whole, the most passionate and emphatic rejections of radical Islamism in this country came from President Bush and his supporters—that is, conservatives. This is peculiar because the various forms of radical Islamism represent the third major form of totalitarian ideology and politics in modern world history. While it seeks to benefit from the pathos of Third Worldist rhetoric, its ideological themes have more in common with fascism and Nazism than with Marxism-Leninism. One would think that here in Washington, its most natural and passionate opponents would be less the heirs of Ronald Reagan than of Franklin Roosevelt. Now, over a year into the Obama administration, I hope we are at a moment when this irony will be modified, and the center-left will raise a clear and strong voice in the war of ideas with radical Islamism.

Twenty-four years ago, I published a book about some aspects of German ideologies that contributed to Nazi thought. It was titled Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. The term “reactionary modernism” referred to Nazism’s simultaneous rejection of liberal political and cultural modernity combined with enthusiasm for modern technology. It described the way that the Nazis embraced the machine but remained true to what they regarded as the German soul. They, along with the Italian Fascists and the Japanese dictatorship, all demonstrated that the embrace of modern technology did not necessarily mean the embrace of ideas about democracy, individual rights, and equality of all persons. At that time, Ayatollah Khomeini, one of the most significant political and cultural reactionaries of the twentieth century, was using tape cassettes to call for the abandonment of Iranian modernity in favor of a society built on premodern religious notions. The term "reactionary modernism" was equally applicable on September 11, when Al Qaeda-trained engineering students flew jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, Khomeini's successors reject the modern world even as they race toward the possession of nuclear weapons. Yet American liberals have been slow to place the reactionary nature of these extremists at the center of their analysis about the proper response.

Though political Islamism is not identical to Nazism and Fascism, the lineages and continuities are significant. One of the most obvious continuities is hatred of the Jews and the anti-Zionism it inspires. Islamists of various ideological camps all share in the conspiracy theorizing that was at the heart of Nazi ideology. In their German-language propaganda aimed at a domestic audience, the Nazi propagandists claimed that “international Jewry” started World War II in order to exterminate the German people. They publicly assured the German audience that they would exterminate the Jews before the Jews had a chance to exterminate them. At the same time, in their Arabic-language propaganda for North Africa and the Middle East, Nazi propagandists claimed that the Jews had driven the United States into World War II in order to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, dominate the entire Middle East and destroy the religion of Islam. The echoes of these arguments come across loud and clear in the Hamas covenant of 1988, bin Laden’s declaration of war against the “Zionist-Crusader alliance,” Ahmadinejad’s calls to wipe out the state of Israel, and TV programs in Arab countries that reproduce new versions of anti-Semitic blood libels.

A second set of continuities lies in the rejection of cultural modernity, especially the extension of rights to women and homosexuals. Fascism and Nazism in Europe were, in part, a reaction against efforts to bring about both. Like the paramilitary organizations of the Fascist and Nazi street fighters, the Islamic terrorist organizations are also militant “brotherhoods” that celebrate an absurd but familiar cult of hyper-masculinity. Where fascism and Nazism sought to restore the position of women to the subordinate status they held before World War I, the Islamists view the proper position of women as something out of pre-modern times. Here again, the fundamentally reactionary nature of political Islamism is evident. It is fitting that some of the bravest and most eloquent Muslim critics of the Islamists are women.