Riyadh- It would seem that today’s hardline ISIS can draw parallels to a once Nazi Germany showcasing mythology-inspired extremism.
For Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler’s Germany the master race was the Aryan, whilst ISIS preaches self-declared righteousness and a God-given right to rule.
Political Science Professor Mohamed Shimi at the Helwan University, Egypt explains that similar to Nazis, ISIS members believe that their lifestyle or religious-interpretation is somewhat superior to any other, hence cannot be refereed by social, cultural or political systems other than its self.
The Aryan race was a racial profiling used in the period of the late 19th century to the mid-20th century to describe multiple peoples. It has been used to describe all Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical Aryan people in Persia and India and the Nordic or Germanic peoples.
Hitler identified Jews as descending from non-European races, particularly from what he classified as the Near Asian race, commonly known as the Armenoid race, and said that such origins rendered Jews fundamentally different from and incompatible with Germans and most Europeans.
Like Nazism, ISIS also drew in popular recruitment by religious profiling and slogans promoting for privileges bestowed upon believers and members of the cult.
Strategic and ideological resemblances are also spotted between the two—U.S. retired Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata says that ISIS exploits the information sector to proliferate its propaganda for international recruitment and training youth, something Nazism had done before.
The terror organization has learnt from history’s ‘bad guys’ and now are copycatting ghastly tactics.
More so, Dan Jarvis, the Labour MP and former British Army officer, labeled ISIS as the “fascists of our time.”
Russia’s Vladimir Putin also embarks on forming a wide-scale coalition to combat and terminate the terror group, in a move mimicking ‘The Allies of World War II’ an alliance of countries that came together to take down Nazi Germany.
President Putin resurfaced the Nazi definition of the situation, especially when arguing the international need to combat terrorism’s proliferation and bloodshed, the making of a total war pitting the world against terror organizations.
ISIS’ NAZI-INSPIRED FEATURES
Other than the shared obvious textbook defined extremist ideology, ISIS -like Nazism- appeals to the public through broadcasting values and convincing recruits through impressive media.
Many top ISIS officials have appeared in footage wearing a military costume and performing a Hitler’s Nazi salute.
The Nazi salute or Hitler salute is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. The salute is performed by extending the right arm in the air with a straightened hand. Usually, the person offering the salute would say “Heil Hitler!”..”Heil, mein Führer!” (Hail, my leader). It was adopted in the 1930s by the Nazi Party to signal obedience to the party’s leader, Adolf Hitler, and to glorify the nation.
Egypt’s national army has also reported cases of ISIS recruits planting old-fashioned land mines—what later trended as Hitler helping ISIS from beyond the grave. The terror group is dug up old Nazi land mines and bombs across Egypt as a way to beef up their weapons arsenal, according to the report.
ISIS had been scouring the deserts of northwest Egypt where more than 17 million World War II-era land mines are buried in what is likely the largest un-detonated land mine field in the world
LEADERSHIP, ETHNIC CLEANSING
If Nazi Germany was famous for one thing, it would be deifying the Reich leader, Adolf Hitler, as the nation’s sole salvation and chance at glory—ISIS’ caliphate had its similar worship flare except with a different face, the self-declared Islamic state’s caliphate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who receives indisputable obedience.
Another common social feature is the concept of supremacy– the Aryan race was the sole undeniable valid race for Nazism, whilst other ethnic backgrounds such as Jews and Eastern Europe’s Gypsies were demonized. For ISIS, any other background other that what it deems a good Muslim is also portrayed as an abomination, such as Christians, Shi’ites, Moderate Sunnis, and Jews.
Brutal trial would face any outsider, along with certain death and torture. Nazism and terrorist ISIS both infringe on any other value system—at some instances eradicated entire human values such as empathy, you most certainly won’t find mercy in neither their dictionaries.
Killing and callousness is cemented into the mindsets of followers, with a simple argument of the end justifies the means at any given cost, even if it calls for suicide attacks.