Saladdin Bahozde – författare

Following decades of brutal campaigns against left forces, fascism in its nationalist and religious forms has been dominating Turkish, Iranian, and Arab politics for over half a century. At first, with key enemies vanquished, military generals assumed power and established some of the most terroristic totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century. It only followed that Islamist organizations then hijacked democratic movements of dissent. Now, in countries and territories where they have assumed state power, Islamist forces have surpassed all nationalist dictatorships for their utter disrespect of human lives.Today, Islamism subordinates peoples in the Middle East. Bearing the urgency of our times, Saladdin Bahozde problematizes all forms of fascist exclusionism in the region, while drawing attention to anti-fascist resistance and progressive alternatives there. As a critique of identitarianism and right-wing politics in the Middle East and North Africa, the work calls for a global movement, as endorsed by the peoples of the region, to go beyond nationalism and Islamism.

Following decades of brutal campaigns against left forces, fascism in its nationalist and religious forms has been dominating Turkish, Iranian, and Arab politics for over half a century. At first, with key enemies vanquished, military generals assumed power and established some of the most terroristic totalitarian regimes in the 20th Century. It only followed that Islamist organizations then hijacked democratic movements of dissent. Now, in countries and territories where they have assumed state power, Islamist forces have surpassed all nationalist dictatorships for their utter disrespect of human lives.Today, Islamism subordinates peoples in the Middle East. Bearing the urgency of our times, Saladdin Bahozde problematizes all forms of fascist exclusionism in the region, while drawing attention to anti-fascist resistance and progressive alternatives there. As a critique of identitarianism and right-wing politics in the Middle East and North Africa, the work calls for a global movement, as endorsed by the peoples of the region, to go beyond nationalism and Islamism.

Fascism or Whatever You Want to Call It constructs a crucial framework for diagnosing and exposing fascist ideologies and movements in whatever historical and geographical circumstances or disguises they may appear. At no point in history have so many people been subjected to the rule or threat of fascist movements. Nor have power and privilege ever been so concentrated in the hands of a few. We are living in the age of the decline of bourgeois liberalism and the rise of something much less democratic, something sectarian, extremist, militaristic, and exclusionary, which should be called fascism. Because fascism deploys endless camouflaging strategies, a critical theory for diagnosing and analyzing it is desperately needed. That is what this book offers. Arguing against conventional approaches that use the European model of the 1930s as a yardstick, Bahozde conceptualizes fascism as a form, rather than a system, of power and ideology.