Why do we choke on the word Fascist?
Why is there reluctance in calling Republicans what they are?
Last night I attended a talk “Fascism at our doorstep: What comes next?” Apparently, the academic community of historians, political and social scientists we assign to guide us on proper labeling, have been reticent on using Fascist to describe today’s Republican Party and their allied “Brown Shirt” minions, including Evangelical theocrats, Proud Boys, III Percenters and a host of insurrectionist Militias.
The preferred term we are to use is “authoritarian.”
The justification for denying use of the term Fascism amounts to the conditions that are required to make it so being fully realized. The argument goes that if the general population is not currently subject to a dictatorial leader, secret police kicking in doors, and no citizens being held in concentration camps, then we don’t have a Fascist State.
What this definitional contortion of logic does is to give Fascist time and space to advance their stated dogma and policies from ideology into reality. It requires that a Democratic Society must first tolerate the threats of hostility and violence against it until Fascists are in power. At which point the Fascists, use violence and hostile actions to silence anything perceived as threat to their now fully realized and absolutist power. Then we have a Fascist state
But why agree with the observation of someone who lacks the Phd required to challenge academia?
Fine, instead I defer my observation to Karl Popper, who is credited with creating the Philosophy of Science. He narrowly escaped the death camp of the Nazis that many in the waning days of the Weimar Republic felt obligated to tolerate.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
-Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
On Veteran’s Day I often think of my father (no paragon, just another dogface in WWII) who almost 80 years ago, on Dec. 25th 1944, went into combat during the coldest recorded winter in European history. He was one of millions who fought to defeat Fascism.
The Fascist were directly responsible for 65 million deaths worldwide.
Yet here today we now face a resurgence of Fascism in America.
If we too are too tolerant, too timid and frankly too fearful to call the existential threat to democracy what it is, then we may well suffer currently unimaginable realities.
Very astute of you to cite Popper on the dangers of tolerating the intolerable. DJT’s Veterans Day rhetoric put his neo-Fascist credentials beyond doubt, I agree. And the signs have been pointing that way for a while.
I agree with you. Call it what it is.