Guest post: It sticks in Whiny McWhinyPants’s craw
Guest post by Bruce Everett.
It’s a peculiar thing, watching people who slowly slide towards fascism without realizing it. Their fear of humiliation from mostly imaginary threats is a given, but what’s really striking is how a number of them – even the ones with university educations – have a propensity to call out really odd targets as being fascists, in a way totally divorced from the facts of 20th century history.
Left-wing unionists aren’t perfect, and some of them can be authoritarian and down right nasty. But even when they are authoritarian, they aren’t fascists – they can’t be.
Ditto with calling feminists “fascist”. Fascism has always, without exception, on one way or another, positioned women as second class citizens. Not every feminist can be perfect, and some aren’t very nice people, but all the same it’s ridiculous to associate their politics with fascism because fascism rejects feminism (either by stealth, implication or often explicitly).
So you get these people, who’re easily swayed by demagoguery and dire warnings of existential threat, and they get their backs up before a feminist, or a left-wing unionist, or any of the other textbook enemies of fascism, makes a criticism, explicit or otherwise.
Maybe it’s a bad album review. Maybe they’ve pointed to an politically inconvenient, well sourced and inductively strong fact about domestic violence or immigration statistics. Maybe they’ve opined that vigilante street patrols aren’t making anyone safer, and called people’s motives into question.
Whatever it is, it sticks in Whiny McWhinyPants’s craw, so Whiny whines “FASCIST!” before sitting down to cover Whiny’s chest in crumbs, all while mendacious pundits, YouTubers and crackpots tell Whiny that Whiny’s the victim, and that this other bunch of innocent people are responsible for Whiny’s embarrassment. That and maybe that someone needs to teach these people a brutal lesson in not embarrassing Virtuous People. [Insert dog whistle]
True, Mr McWhinyPants should look at himself before using the “f-word”.
But let’s at least be consistent if we want to bring up “the facts of 20th century history”, shall we?
Twentieth Century history is brimming with examples of “textbook enemies of fascism” going on to create societies that, while not technically “fascism”, were every bit as bad.
Great comment Bruce
Jib, the word you’re thinking of is totalitarian. It’s not the same as fascism. Popular usage tends to subsume things-I-don’t-like under Hated Label. “Liberal” for a while there was used as a swear word like that.
Bruce is talking about dictionary definition fascism, an off-scale respect for authority, which manifests as instant totalitarianism.
Communism, unionists, anarchists, feminists for that matter, don’t respect authority as such. Their ideals relate to workers or equal rights or controlling the means of production, etc. Obviously, any ideas people go overboard with can end in nasty dictatorships and become totalitarian.
quixote, history has pretty clearly and unambiguously demonstrated that the distinction you are making is a distinction without a shred of difference.
Whatever their take on “authority”, neither fascists nor communists, etc., respect the rule of law, due process, or any of the tangled web of institutions and practices that have messily evolved over centuries to allow the most successful, least inhumane societies on Earth to become what they have become. No, both are quite eager to confidently sweep all that aside because they have The Answer. And it makes no difference whether that Answer originated in a philosophy department or in a beer hall.
What shall we call all the TERF and SWERF slaying crazies of the intersectional bubble? For an example of the ‘progressive’ regressives.
Truly, ‘fascist’ is inappropriate historically and logically. But some term is needed for aggressive illiberal bullying. Totalitarian was used for a while.