Atlas / Comparisons / Apartheid Nationalism vs Islamic State
Apartheid Nationalism and Islamic State
Measured distance across six axes
The same broad family. They agree within three points on EC, CU, AU, SC, ID. They diverge by eight points or more on CH.
Axis by axis
| Axis | National Party | ISIS / Daesh | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | 00 | +01 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +10 | +10 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +07 | +10 | 3 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +07 | +09 | 2 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +10 | +10 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +02 | +10 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
National Party · CH +02
Coded slightly positive: an elected government imposing a radical reordering by statute.
- Documented act or statuteThe system was legislated over two decades after a normal electoral victory in 1948.
ISIS / Daesh · CH +10
At the ceiling: mass violence as constitutive rather than instrumental.
- Documented act or statutePublic executions and their filming were a central instrument of governance and recruitment.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Apartheid Nationalism
1948–1994 · South Africa
Permanent legal separation of racial groups with political rights reserved to one of them.
Islamic State
2013– · Iraq, Syria
Restoration of a universal caliphate through mass violence, with obligatory allegiance and death for dissent.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
Open in the atlas