Fascism: What Israel's and Afghanistan's Governments Have In Common
Recent efforts to control the populations of two ideologically opposed countries reveal their approaches to governing are not dissimilar.
(Israeli bombs fall upon Lebanon on September 23, 2024. Image courtesy of Al Jazeera.)
Last week, the government of Israel brought to fruition a plan that had been some time in the making. They had implanted explosive devices in pagers and walkie-talkies aiming for members and allies of the militia group Hezbollah. The devices exploded, killing and injuring people in Lebanon.
Following this, Israel began a campaign of bombing in Lebanon, continuing to target Hezbollah members and allies. Hezbollah, for its part, has been firing rockets at Israel for the past year. The two groups began fighting with one another after Israel launched an attack on Hezbollah targets last year on October 7th, 2023.
Within its own borders, Israel has hardly been treating its own Palestinian population any better. What began as a drawn-out campaign of apartheid has since turned into a genocide with Israel, supported in part by billions of dollars of American foreign aid, attacking civilian targets such as hospitals and schools.
Relations between Iran and Israel have been strained this year due in part by an Israeli missile attack on Iran, to the point where Iran is reportedly considering joining the escalating conflict.
Netanyahu’s government shows all the overt signs of fascism: demonizing out-groups while valorizing in-groups; governing from perpetual grievance; and, most importantly, indiscriminately killing others to place itself in a dominant position. Fascist governments which behave in this manner are ultimately self-destructive. By making enemies from without and from within, it cannot survive save by violence, fear, and intimidation.
The Taliban, the current ruling party of Afghanistan, has more in common with Netanyahu’s fascist Israel than might be immediately apparent. In 1998, the Taliban, during its five-year run as the country’s governmental authority, denied food aid to civilians which had been organized by the United Nations- a policy Israel would emulate by denying food aid to Palestinians. Later, in the decades when they operated as an insurgency group during an occupation and war in Afghanistan, civilians were caught in the crossfire in the nation’s internal strife.
Now, upon returning to power in 2021, they have proved to be a misogynistic and reactionary government, adhering to strict Islamic traditions. New morality laws have banned women from showing their faces and using their voices in public. There have also been restrictions on education and vocation in what the Associated Press called “systematic gender persecution.”
New laws from the Taliban also bar men from having a “non-Muslim” appearance, and require them to grow beards. Men have found officials coming to their residences for not attending mosques. Male taxi drivers have been stopped for taking a female passenger, or for playing music. Those found guilty of adultery could be flogged or stoned to death.
For the Taliban, the in-group is devout Muslim men who take their faith seriously. The out-groups are women, and men who are less devout than the government would wish. Those who cannot conform or integrate themselves into the in-group are punished, as is often the case with fascist governments.
While the government of Afghanistan is not nearly so militaristic and aggressive as Israel, both nevertheless have too many similarities in how they approach policy. Tradition, a yearning for a mythical past which never existed, is at the center of both.
Under a fascist framework, anything modern must be rejected as immoral. The leader’s authority should never be questioned or challenged. Invariably, the fascist society, left to its own devices, devolves into chaos during which violence is the only argument that wins any debate.
If they were neighbors, they would be at war with one another, just as Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia- both fascist governments of different types- were during World War II. Since there is some distance between them, their governments are able to ruin their societies and impoverish their people with impunity- sometimes with foreign aid as a reward for behaving so badly.
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