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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
The use of epithets to silence people isn’t new. (Communist, Anti-semite, Racist, Homphobe…..)
It’s appalling, and deeply destructive for national conversations.
Is there an option to move away from this kind of non-discourse (in which case Conservatives would need to stop calling all those bougie Democrats like Pelosi ‘Communists’) or is it basically too late for that and it’s a matter of ignoring the epithets aimed at yourself while refining the ones you aim at your enemies?
Using epithets to silence people, however, depends on the target of abuse caring what your opinion is and taking it seriously. That’s increasingly diminished.
Another purpose for the use of these terms as abuse, and perhaps it’s even more important, is to rally the base as they solidify against “this hateful thing”.
That’s happened for years – by labelling critics of Zionism ‘Anti-Semites’, or critics of affirmative action ‘Racists’, or advocates for single payer health insurance ‘Communists’.
While this has become ineffective in terms of silencing people it remains pretty effective at rallying the base. It requires some willing suspension of disbelief, but so far people seem happy to do that. Will this continue? If it too becomes ineffective what will come next?
To a Democrat, a fascist is a person who rejects the idea of equity; that would be the idea that a failure to thrive in America rests solely in ones color, sexual proclivity and natural origin, hence all others must relinquish any claims on their success and sacrifice whatever the ruling class requires in order to atone for this presumption of advantage. They, it is assumed, or their progenitors, caused this inequity. Sins of the father are henceforth born by their heirs.
It is a very convenient, organizing idea. It defines the problem (heterosexual whites, especially males) and the answer (we must repress them), then all will be resolved. Except, in America, every generation stands on its own and the sins of the father die with the father; with one exception: the father who abandons his children. That man does in fact harm his children and leaves them to poverty and chaos. There is ample proof of this fact, however the leftist idea of inequity’s source in the success of certain white males is absurdly trumpeted and facts about bastardy’s toll, ignored.
I understand why the impoverished are angry. But they should be angry at their missing fathers, not the men shouldering mortgages and tuition payments in the suburbs. As for those children from the suburbs who find themselves underemployed and stuck with college debt, perhaps their lack of success has something to do with a failure to complete college or to study something that leads to employment? Ambition is not political, it is practical. We are all here to take care of ourselves and our families. A job is not a calling, it is an achievement, with practical advantages designed to make for a productive life.
Community organizing is not a profession (remember, Obama was first, a lawyer.) One’s first responsibility is to self and family. The rest is just noise and leads nowhere. A true fascist uses government to award favors, dictate support, destroy opponents and consolidate central power and control. Trump’s main accomplishments were to renegotiate foreign trade deals to benefit America, to embarrass our NATO allies into funding their share of NATO operations at the levels they promised in the treaty, to use tarriffs to punish unfair trade practices and to enforce other favorable outcomes for the US, to diminish unfettered illegal immigration at our borders and build the wall, to open the world to US trade to other countries with unfavorable import tarriffs and subsidies (Canada, for example, was opened to dairy imports, and China was opened to grain and rice imports), to rebuild and strengthen our military capabilities, to destroy, quietly, the ISIS caliphate, to open our country to the development of its own fossil fuel resources (rendering us a net exporter of energy) and to the streamlining and simplification of our tax code.
If you look at that list of accomplishments, is there anything there that is even slightly fascist? He did not punish his opponents. He never pursued Hillary (despite her worries) or any of his opponents. Yes, he ridiculed them, called them out and rankled them, but he never silenced them nor called for them to be punished or censored. This talk of fascism is nothing more than the bitter talk of the Democrat coalition of lefties whose finger in the dikes of made up existential threats leak nothing but hot air and vitriol. The constitution is not some irrelevant document made by white male slave owners; these men were not without sin, but they were educated, clever, intuitive, intelligent and worldly. Whatever sins they may have passed on to their heirs were purged with the blood of civil war. But they did leave us with this gift, the constitution, and it is both powerful and conservative. And it will be heard no matter what the leftists call us. It is an anthema to fascism, and by ignoring it, they embrace the thing they accuse us of fostering.
Neither is “politician”.
There’s a good reason that leftist anger is referred to as “weaponized Daddy issues.”
David Foster defined fascism above and we shouldn’t forget its origins. Italy and Germany nor where it ended. I’ve called current Democrat leaders (not Biden) fascists, but that’s not right either. They’re moving to consolidate power centrally but don’t have a fascist leader. They’re more like other giant states in history. They consolidate and gradually kill themselves because they consolidate beyond what’s feasible, or the top enjoys its position so much it just rots. We’re more like Carthage and China is Rome and after destroying us (more by our own stupid hand than theirs) they too will die. A giant modern economy can’t exist top down but what it looks like given existing technology isn’t obvious. Ultimately it will dissolve and some get to start over. If the nordics figure out their advantage maybe they’ll lead us back. We could do it ourselves but would have to separate from Washington, New York City and LA etc. Better to get our act together and take it back before these idiots destroy us not even for their own benefit, but for Chinas. Amazing really.
Fascism, the word, is one of those rope chew toys that two dogs can use to play tug-of-war. It is has been fought over so long that it has become torn-up and useless to its original purpose.
Biden is a demagogue – he always was one from the time he harassed Justice Thomas, to when he said Mitt Romney (the Ward Cleaver of American politics) would put black Americans “back in chains”), to calling photo ID laws the new Jim Crow.
Well, it shouldn’t be at least.
The above quote (p. 2, column 1, 2nd full paragraph of the above linked pdf version) is from the first part of the essay entitled “Fundamental Ideas” (pp. 1-3), and was written by Giovanni Gentile, not Mussolini.
Mussolini wrote the second part, entitled “Political And Social Doctrine” (pp. 3-9). Although attributed solely to Mussolini, Gentile was Mussolini’s ghostwriter and provided the intellectual foundation of fascism. Gentile also wrote (among many others):
What Is Fascism (1925)
Fascist Culture (1926)
Fascism and Culture (1928)
The Philosophy of Fascism (1928)
Origins and Doctrine of Fascism (1929)
This is the sort of factual information about the history of the word we’ve needed. Thx.