MUSINGS
Dangerous smile
TABISH KHAIR
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Post-modern fascism may not appear to take itself too seriously but it means trouble.
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ON October 11, 2006, the correspondent of a Danish paper went out to interview Muslims in an immigrant-dominated section of Copenhagen. She wanted to get their reactions to film footings of a fancy-dress party at the annual "summer camp" of the youth wing of the Danish People's Party (DFU), a major Rightist-nationalist party that supports the ruling liberal-conservative coalition from the outside. In this fancy-dress party, young DFU members had dressed up as Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, garnishing their fancy with demeaning connotations. She wrote an article later headlined "Muslims silent about the DFU-affair".
A prelude
The journalist and much of Danish media have read this relative silence (especially in the wake of the recent cartoon controversy, in which Danish Muslims had voiced their objections democratically) along conservative lines — for example, her article implies that these were footings from a "private" party and as such not offensive to Muslims. But this silence needs to be listened to more carefully than that. This silence is the prelude to post-modern fascism; just as "marking" the Jews of Germany was a prelude to the worst of modern fascism.
The fancy-dress party itself, and the general trajectory of DFU, is a good example of how post-modern fascism works. Unlike modern fascism — of which certain versions (though not all) of Islamic fundamentalism form a variety — post-modern fascism does not appear to take itself too seriously in some areas. It is eminently playful about its prejudices, the core of the non-ideology that informs all fascism. Hence, the fancy-dress party in which young DFU members dress up as Mohammad in demeaning shapes. It is all a big joke.
Or take, for example, this TV ad from the last elections. A well-known Rightist politician, whose first name is Christian, is shown as getting down from his car at a gas station. He is accosted by an elderly woman who says, Are you Christian? Yes, he replies. The woman continues: What is this we are hearing? They are letting Turkey into the European Union. Don't worry, assures our Christian, as long as we have a say in the matter, this won't happen.
Does this make you smile? Should it make you smile? Would it make you smile if you lived in Denmark and were not from a Christian background?
Vital difference
Part of the humour in Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" stemmed from Chaplin's comic parody of the stern seriousness of Hitler and his non-ideology. But such a parody would be ineffective against post-modern fascism. It can only be used against the stale mimicry of modern fascism that one comes across in the Third World at times, not least in some anti-democratic Islamist movements or among the more conservative supporters of India's Hindutva brigade. Post-modern fascism — either because it is post-modern or because, unlike Hitler's Nazism or Islamic fundamentalism, it is located in politically dominant nations — is capable of laughing, though more at others than at itself. (DFU is not actually renowned in Denmark for its internal democracy!)
But the laughter does not reassure me. Perhaps when the smile finally slips, we will get a glimpse of the skull that lurks underneath. Perhaps that is why Danish Muslims have been silent — not just because they know that you cannot get angry at post-modern fascism, but because they can see the skull underneath.
Tabish Khair is the author of
The Bus Stopped.
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