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We Are All ‘Fascists’ Now
We are all fascists now. No, you say? Prove it. Show me in the definition of fascism where that’s not us. Or me. Or you.
We observe that the word “fascism” has become shorthand for “thing I do not like”, and “fascist” for a similarly disliked person or idea. True, but there’s more to the story. Fascism is a notoriously difficult word to define, and your defensive definition will be challenged by the same people who accused you to begin with. There is no defense in definitions.
But why should you have to defend at all? The onus is upon the accuser to prove an accusation. Yet this is not true in the arena where this accusation is hurled. We do not elect the better man — we elect the one who is better at getting elected. This is supposed to be a proxy for a definition of the word “better”, what with the invisible hand making better decisions in the aggregate than the wizards of smart. Defining objective good is a fool’s errand, and the comparative or superlative of that word would make you either more foolish or the most foolish. Quality (in the sense of goodness) is suitability for a given purpose — giving the purpose makes the whole exercise subjective. This does not mean that it is meaningless, but that using the word in isolation can convey only vague things, the same way that “fascist” does.
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
— Saul Alinsky
Implied here is the real goal — pain. The reason he advises his co-minions to go after people is that they “hurt faster”. Thus the purpose behind all of this is to maximize pain in the short term. Expanding scope we see that everything the Democrats are up to is connected by this thread — to cause pain throughout society, for it is not Republicans that they wish to change, but society, and as Hitler observed, you cannot motivate a satisfied people.
What they want from Republicans is silence or entertainment. We can die quietly or die in their Colosseum. Most should die quietly, but enough should die loudly that the masses are placated. Inflation? Trannies grooming children in the library and teaching school? Stolen elections? Die. Die, fascist, die.
Triumphal Marx/Lenin/Gramsci/Alinsky-ism is not about to slow down and reflect upon the validity of accusations, or the burden of proof. Its purpose is pain and if it cannot kill you yet, it must have your complicity. After all, it has the complicity of huge swathes of the population — why do you think they joined? Most of these people do not even know the master they serve, but will defend to their dying breath its right to deprive you of your rights. You are not a citizen, and you do not have rights to be weighed in balance with the rights of others. You are an obstacle, mere trash to be spotted, spiked, and binned. A fascist.
Perhaps we should each go about with our trousers about our ankles, hopping and holding on, struggling to preserve a little dignity and a little more life. Orwell said that he could not shoot a fascist in such a condition, as a man hopping about trying to hold his pants up is not a fascist but a man. For me, one of the pivotal scenes in the movie Doctor Zhivago was when a Bolshevik simply shot a Russian officer standing atop a barrel, exhorting the deserters to re-group. The thing was at a decision point, and once the man was shot, the rest was accomplished. As goes a scene, so goes the movie. Unfortunately, we are not up against Orwell who held his fire. We are provoked and confronted by the grim Bolshevik. We are not arguing a point — we are fighting for our lives and the life of the Republic.
With the ritual desecration of Trump (and by extension, the very real desecration of the Republic) now well underway, the officer has been shot. Laws? Standards of proof? Argument? Just so much standing on a barrel.
The war is upon us, and the epithet “fascist” is used by the left to freeze us in fear (who wants to be called a fascist?) and indecision (what can I do about this accusation?), to personalize resistance to the death of the Republic as a character flaw (racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe — deplorable!), to polarize our stance (you are either with the woke crowd, or you are beneath response, beneath contempt, beneath human). This is done even as the big-state machinery increasingly displays (unashamedly) the traits commonly or formally associated with fascism. Ask why we are “fascists”, and that just proves our fascism. Only a fascist would ask such a question, and dishonestly.
So get used to it. There is no arguing when you are accused of fascism. You must understand what the accusation really means: “I care neither for your words, nor your life. I will kill you and enslave your children, who will revile your memory first for your weakness, then for your fascism, and then when it is too late and they finally understand, once more for your weakness.” Currently, the death and enslavement are mostly metaphorical, but not always — increasingly not so.
When the power structure calls you a fascist, that’s not an argument. That’s a threat. So far, it works well. What do you do when you see something that you like, and then notice that the author of the remark is pilloried as a fascist? Do you jump up in defense? No, of course you do not. Neither do I. What good would it do? Why would you stand athwart the tracks yelling anything? There’s a train coming.
The best you can do is reject, revile, refuse those who accuse you. You will not change any minds save perhaps through your example, which at any rate will not be observed in the midst of an argument, least of all by the person who has accused you. In my own experience, make a stone of your heart, and a fortress of your mind. Ignore the derogatory claims that you are in a bubble, or have created a comfortable region of epistemological closure. That’s just the fury of ineffective losers who cannot conquer your mind. You need not (and can not anyway) justify your ideas, your thought processes, your conclusions, or your decisions to a post-logic hostile mob — not even to one of them. In this time of “division”, we have become people from very different, and hostile tribes. It is inertia and ignorance to try to remain somehow neutral. Make your choice, cast your vote, put on your armor, and be prepared to exercise your chosen metaphor.
You fascist.
Published in General
Consider this all that needs said about your #26. The definition *does not matter*.
Yep. Otherwise, I am in full agreement with the post. The word fascism has lost its punch, much like being called a racists, or a Communist.
You should post about that!
I know his intent because long ago, I read the history of the philosophy and of the word. It was during the time of great intellectual foment in Europe around communism and its relatives. Late 19th or early 20th century. An Italian, if I recall.
The guy was promoting a philosophy which he described in some detail, and he gave this name to it. It wasn’t complicated. This is what people trying to introduce a new philosophy always do.
I forgot the name and the date because I have an extremely poor memory for such details. I remember relevant ideas because that is how my mind works.
I have re-learned the details, and re-forgotten them, over and over. I don’t care about them much any more. If someone cares about the truth he will look them up himself. If he doesn’t, it’s likely that he is not interested in the truth.
Thanks for your comment
Today’s Leftists use “fascism” to describe people that oppose communism. This is a German thing. Most people use “fascism” to mean “authoritarian”. As a political/economic system it describes a form of governance that merges government with oligarchs/corporatations to rule the people. I don’t see any use of “fascism” to describe “unity”.
Fair notice: I have made minor uh improvements to this post along the way to this comment. None of them change the meaning, although some have (I hope) added clarity. I do try to always ‘fess up when I change things, so consider this a ‘fession. Nothing major has changed. If you see inconsistencies between the OP and comments previous to this one, the fault is mine, not the commenter’s.
Perhaps we should all say that “*reeeeel* fashism has never been tried!”
A fundamental of fascism was national unity, all the people laboring together, working together toward advancing the national within a socialistic worker-oriented framework.
I have coined a term, and I hope that you will take this in the spirit offered, a bit of playful rebuttal.
And since I who invented the word know everything about the word, I now know everything it means. Disagreement with me is not possible on this, I’m afraid.
That if we can get together and agree upon our definitions, then we may have productive dialectical arguments which arrive at an agreed conclusion?
My comment was meant to be a slam on the word tribal. And it was meant to be read in the voice of (I believe) Wanda or Laquesha? as portrayed by a Wayans brother on In Living Color; a very ugly, rather dim, woman who interrupted a conversation, asking her blind date Tommy Davidson, “Do you like alligators?”
“Uh, no.”
“Me neither. They skin so rough.”
Now back to your regularly sched–
That’s because I’m/we’re right!
Is such reification *always* a thinking disorder?
Somewhere I have a book of writings by Churchill. He said that fascism is the fusion of jingoism and socialism. IIRC, he said that “international socialism” wasn’t making a real impression or gaining followers because it was missing the tribal aspect. Converting it to “national socialism” was an effective strategy.
Don’t hold us all in suspense. Tell us!
Added much later: FWIW, I completely misinterpreted this comment. So, nevermind.
I think fascism is a real totalitarian economic / political system developed by Mussolini. It worked very well, for awhile, in certain societies beset with certain problems. Mussolini was briefly very well thought of in the West for some time. “He made the trains run on time”, which was a big improvement for Italy. He had no particular beef with Jews or Gypsies, etc, and capitalism was permitted, though with much state interference.
Then Hitler came along sullied the name of fascism with wars and racism and genocide and transformed the word into a general purpose epithet, stripping away the original meaning, and resulting in no meaning whatsoever.
I think China is a fascist state along the original lines of the Mussolini system. Not a perfect overlay, but essentially the same.
I’d say there’s a more proximate fallacy than material connection between words and reality (which would of course be witchcraft). That fallacy is the perception of utility in arguing for meaninglessness while hectoring others about meaning.
I am a double-starched prescriptivist not because I feel that words are imbued with actual meaning for the quarks and electrons thereby captured, but because humans drift, words drift, meanings drift, ideas drift, and frankly, none of those were all that stable from the git-go. I *choose* to use old dictionaries because I trust them more than I trust newer ones, yet some words are new. Arguing over the meaning (and usage) of words has its place, but saying that Fascism is notoriously difficult to define is borne out — proven true — by a century of experience by tens of millions of people in dealing with hundreds of millions of other people.
When the left accuses you of Fascism, definitions are of no use, and arguments over definitions are counterproductive.
Meta-arguments about meanings of meanings, and definitions of definitions are of less use than that.
Yet this was part of the intended meaning. The people, properly ruled, were united with the rest of it. So they say.
Hell, I think that the US is increasingly fascist, what with it ticking at both of my working criteria: arm’s-length administration of society through unaccountable corporate machinery, and aggressively courting children in order to supplant children’s loyalty toward parents.
Forcing compliance is not “unity” in my book, but that is probably just me.
I didn’t say that it worked. Just that that was the claim.
Unfortunately, the margins here are too small.
And a fundamental principle of God’s will for His Creation and people is diametrically opposed to this “collectivism”.
There needs to be a distinction between top down collectivizing and bottom up collectivizing.
It absolutely is a Christian virtue for all to work together towards common purpose. We are better together than apart. It is not good for man to be alone. We are all one body made of many parts.
There is nothing wrong with acting on an awareness that we are a part of something bigger.
The problem is when it is a governing force (outside God) that is doing it. I don’t think it’s because government ALWAYS collectivizes in bad ways, but because when it does it in bad ways, it is so terrible it doesn’t justify the good ways. At least that is the impression had at this moment in history.
But for people to organize themselves into collective groups of their own volition? We need to be careful about not demonizing that.
Yes, certainly it is a balancing act. And the parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church prior to 1885 state exactly that. It is the “top-down” collectivizing that you describe that the Church warns against. Anything that the individual can do, or the smallest version of a collective group as possible, is the person (or collection of persons) that should have the freedom and empowerment to do it, not some larger top-down collectivism. This is the principle of Subsidiarity.
Yes, like charity, collective work has to be voluntary.
I’ve found the video below to be a helpful summary of fascism and its philosophical father, Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944). He’s also Mussolini’s ghostwriter. In other words, many statements credited to Mussolini are his paraphrasing of Gentile. I see fascism as socialism on a nationalized or tribalistic level. What’s not touched on in the video is that unlike socialism, fascism attempts to maintain the illusion of private ownership despite actual government control (defacto ownership) of, as Marx would put it, the means of production. I agree that China is a good example of a communist regime that also employ fascist methods to not only control Chinese “companies” but also foreign companies that operate within its borders.
Closer to home, the Obama administration taking over General Motors during the bailout, the revelation last year that the White House and CDC communicates and advises social media companies on what and whom they should censor and deplatform, and the FBI telling Facebook, etc. that they should view the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation (implied: you better squash this story) are all examples of growing fascism in the federal government (not surprisingly when democrats are in control). These are all the illusion of private control and ownership with increasing actual government control (accompanied by implied threats) over their operations.
In contrast, these two articles on AntiFa provide a thoughtful discussion of how the radical left defines and uses the word fascism.
When Joe Biden calls you a fascist, only one reply is possible:
For definitions, let’s go to the experts. I think Mussolini should count as a serious expert on Italian Fascism, and Goebbels as a primary expert on the German version.
For Mussolini on Italian Fascism, see his paper The Doctrine of Fascism, dating from 1932. Key quote:
The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.
For Goebbels on German National Socialism, see his propaganda piece Those Damned Nazis, which first appeared in 1929. Four basic principles:
–Nationalism
–Socialism
–A Workers’ State
–Anti-Semitism