In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
– Dr. Thomas Szasz
Dr. Szasz is a controversial figure most will be unfamiliar with. A psychiatrist any Scientologist would love. But this observation can be applied to many fields. In a political context, it describes the attempt — quite openly, of the concerted effort to turn antifascism, a noble and liberal endeavor of the survival of life and liberty into… an evil? Cicero would pose the question himself, “Cui bono?”
Who would wish to do such an absurd and ridiculous thing and benefit from it? Fascists would.
But what about all the other words we use to describe these phenomena? And why so many names for what might just be called points on a line in the development of the ideal Fascist Superman, otherwise known as a malignant narcissist and sociopath. This does include anyone currently in the GOP and others, especially libertarians. Even NRO acknowledges this theory, desperately hoping to distinguish themselves from Nazis.
It’s partly Orwell’s fault. Orwell was the original ANTIFA, a republican who fought alongside the Lincoln Brigade in Spain, and a “democratic socialist,” or what we now call a social democrat.
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.
And Godwin.
The one group that seems most concerned about the definition is the same group claiming anti-fascists are the real fascists. That’s what fascists do. Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance is quite clear: You cannot fight intolerance with tolerance. Sorry, Jesus. And fascism and liberalism cannot coexist peacefully or otherwise. Ever. You can only fight fascism with antifascism if education fails these segments of society and sadly, it has. And education isn’t what it used to be 100 years ago.
Bob Altemeyer prefers “authoritarian” and I respect his work, the result of 20 years of research. The link takes you to a pdf of the work, or you could buy it on Amazon. And as of now, a Daily Kos contributor David Neiwert, who I have read at Orcinus, years ago and glad he posts here now. From David’s work, relying often on the work of Paxton and Griffin.
Taking into account the common fallacy of static analysis: Young Adolf was not a full-blown fascist. Nor was he born that way. The Boys From Brazil was a great movie and even there, cloning Hitler from his DNA required a similar upbringing to Hitler’s own childhood to reproduce an exact copy of Hitler. An entomologist can identify a specific insect from the larval stage, but it isn’t yet the full-grown mature insect. No one is born a fascist but can become one very easily. It’s a process. Altemeyer says Left Authoritarians are rare, but not non-existent. I take issue with the left/right spectrum altogether and my preference is not to indulge it or propagate it. There are more accurate labels to my mind but that’s another diary.
MAGA, which satisfies the fascist requirement of rebirth, or palingenesis was a warning. The minute Trump said, “I alone can fix it!” I knew where this was headed and said so, knowing what he is. Any Manhattanite does. He’s a scumbag, and that’s the technical jargon. Like the Clintons were never accepted by the Beltway Brahmans. Karma has bitten them on the ass now and they pine for the Clintons. The Trumps were persona non grata in Manhattan’s high society and treated like the help (much worse than the Clintons in D.C at first. Sally Quinn wrote about it at the time. David Broder said of Bill Clinton: “He came in here and trashed the place and it’s not his place.” Quite amusing the way DC has been dominated by a dolt. Where’s a Dean Broder now?
"It's much more personal here," says pollster Geoff Garin. "This is an affront to their world. It affects the dignity of the place where they live and work. . . . Clinton's behavior is unacceptable. If they did this at the local Elks Club hall in some other community it would be a big cause for concern."
"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."
"This is a company town," says retired senator Howard Baker, once Ronald Reagan's chief of staff. "We're up close and personal. The White House is the center around which our city revolves."
Bill Galston, former deputy domestic policy adviser to Clinton and now a professor at the University of Maryland, says of the scandal that "most people in Washington believe that most people in Washington are honorable and are trying to do the right thing. The basic thought is that to concede that this is normal and that everybody does it is to undermine a lifetime commitment to honorable public service."
Pundits are now realizing most of fly-over America actually bought that Trump bullshit. I thought country folks prided themselves on being able to outsmart a “city slicker.” Some can. Most get sheared like sheep.
Trump is more than a mere con man. What’s in a name? If the name is Trump…
Etymology. The study of words and their meanings over time. Entomology - insects, and fascists have been compared to insects before. They are definitely pests.
And finally, the wisdom of Chief Justice Potter’s threshold test for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Whatever you choose to call it, it’s here and trying to latch on permanently. I prefer “fascism” for many good reasons, not the least of which is that it fits now and Trump will only grow into it. And it is a very large group of some disparate or ostensibly disparate factions. I lump them all in together quite comfortably because they all share one common quality: Anti-liberal. The point of that old cliche about fascism coming to America is that when it does reappear, you will not recognize it. It won’t sing and dance like Mel Brooks in a rousing rendition of Spring Time For Hitler. Again, this is intentional. More noise than signal...audiophiles will understand SNR. The Signal to Noise Ratio. And deception. And really, they have always been here since the 1930s and proudly declare themselves fascist. This is a link to The New York Public Library’s Radical Reference. Librarians and other academics do the research but lack of funding caused them to shut RadRef down. We don’t want an intelligent and informed citizenry here, do we?
Support for Hitler (or Fascism) in the United States.
Fascism is like rust. It never sleeps. Many academics and scholars have taken issue with attaching the label of fascism to Trump.
Don’t Call Donald Trump a Fascist
What it means to brand today’s right-wing leaders with the F-word—and why you probably shouldn’t.
This fellow says high unemployment (check) and a recession (check) is required for fascism to flourish. He wrote this before COVID. These guys must publish so they can get higher up the ladder of matriculation and get that professor’s chair and tenure someday. As a result, most of it is crap. Static analysis, a fallacy, and crap. And I would rather not argue over what to call it and just deal with it. You don’t debate fascism or debate fascists, you just end it. Snuff it out until the next time it resurfaces, and in whatever disguise it takes.
As Cormac McCarthy might say, “If this ain’t fascism, it’ll do until it gets here.“
Asked if he sees himself as a German or as a Jew, Albert Einstein replied, "It is quite possible to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease... measles of mankind."
* Updated with grammar and punctuation corrections suggested by the Kos literati and some additional background and history relating to the way the Clintons were received in DC during the 1990s.