I’m duly provoked by the spat underlying this post from John Ganz, whom I follow (but not enough to pay for his substack), and whom I think is always worth reading.
It goes to motive. If it’s not really fascism we don’t have to do anything about it. If it’s not really fascism we can continue to tolerate liberal media making their false equivalences between left and right. If it’s not really fascism we can continue to live in our elite privilege and not recognize that our indifference to the deterioration of the social safety net and most of rural America is part of the problem. If it’s not really fascism we don’t have to admit that racism still hangs over our polity like the clouds that precede the deadly storm. If it’s not really fascism we don’t have to admit that unchecked capitalism is a great danger and leftists who point to it cannot be dismissed as marginal crackpots.
If a protester who's been heckling at a Trump rally shouts "fascists!" at the security guards as they throw him out, I might want to say "that's a misuse of the term." But if Trump was talking about the need to save America by instituting martial law, jailing his opponents, and rounding up the "subhumans," and the heckler shouted "that's fascism!" I'm not going to quibble.
Correct!
It goes to motive. If it’s not really fascism we don’t have to do anything about it. If it’s not really fascism we can continue to tolerate liberal media making their false equivalences between left and right. If it’s not really fascism we can continue to live in our elite privilege and not recognize that our indifference to the deterioration of the social safety net and most of rural America is part of the problem. If it’s not really fascism we don’t have to admit that racism still hangs over our polity like the clouds that precede the deadly storm. If it’s not really fascism we don’t have to admit that unchecked capitalism is a great danger and leftists who point to it cannot be dismissed as marginal crackpots.
You could be right, but that goes further into their thinking and motivation than I'm prepared to go, absent more investigation.
If a protester who's been heckling at a Trump rally shouts "fascists!" at the security guards as they throw him out, I might want to say "that's a misuse of the term." But if Trump was talking about the need to save America by instituting martial law, jailing his opponents, and rounding up the "subhumans," and the heckler shouted "that's fascism!" I'm not going to quibble.