Islamo-fascists? A plea for accuracy in apocalyptic nomenclature

George W. Bush just never gets tired of bugging me. I thought he'd settled on "Islamic extremists" or "Islamic fundamentalist extremists" (admittedly a mouthful) as the scourge of the Earth. Now, in the wake of the Heathrow Airport terrorist plot, he's out there with "Islamic fascists." I don't know what else to expect from a man whose only reported reading is of children's books, from which he could not tear himself away during America's own brush with disaster.

But this is intolerably bad taxonomy. I think he picked this term up from Tom Friedman, another superficial thinker who doesn't mind ruining perfectly good, specific terms for stigmatizing heinous regimes. Friedman used "Islamo-fascist," for some reason, maybe because he was thinking of Austro-Hungary, mezzo-soprano, gingko-biloba or something and concluded, incorrectly, that an "o" at the end of a hyphenated word converted the first word to adjectival form. In any event, Friedman is the originator of some of the clumsiest, clunkiest neologisms ever coined, and it's a pity when his infelicities get picked up in general usage.

Why didn't either one of these poor students of history, for example, consult Mussolini on the subject? Who would know more? In his 1932 paper (co-written with Giuseppe Gentile), Il Duce lays it out:

"The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after... "

I ask you: does that sound like any jihadist you know? Fascism is a social and political system, and arose as a counterweight to Marxist Communism. But back to Benito, because, like another Italian, Antonin Scalia, I believe in Originalism, of deriving our definitions and meaning from seminal texts whenever possible:

"The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone...."

Get it? It's a top-down system. Authoritarian, of course, and it doesn't see any point in leaving its citizenry any "useless and possibly harmful freedoms," such as, for example, the right to privacy, or protection from unwarranted searches and seizures, or...no, we won't go there today. The point is simple: Fascism is a state system, where corporate interests and the policies of the authoritarian government are fused so that Big Money dictates the legislation and ... gee, it's so hard to stay away from, isn't it?

Anyway the whole difficulty, I thought, behind this epic Clash of Civilizations was that the jihadists were non-state actors, a "new kind of enemy." We already defeated the old kind of enemy, the true Fascist regimes of Germany, Italy and Japan, during World War II. In what sense do "Islamo-fascists" despise suicide? What corporations control their daily lives and destinies? I thought we were trying to bring corporatism to Iraq as part of conducting the Central War on Terror; if Fascism is already in Baghdad, what's the point?

I prefer "Jihadista" as the nom de slur. Admittedly, it's a little too colorful and romantic, it brings to mind Pancho Villa and other folk heroes, but I don't want to be reminded all the time of Hitler and Mussolini. I've got enough reminders of them already.