Mark Lawrence Schrad writes that Republicans have abandoned policy to promote the public good, including assistance following natural disasters.

William Lindsey :toad:

@JBShakerman Yes — and always, always, used as a weapon to serve the interests of the ruling elite and keep everybody else knocked into place.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella My reading of the term "fascism" as it now echoes through both popular and academic discourse is that the term has taken on a more elastic meaning. Some might say that development makes it meaningless. For me, it gives the term more power, since it detaches the term from its discrete historical roots in the same way that, say the term "clericalism" can be detached from the battles in 18th-century France that produced the French Revolution.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy interesting. We might disagree here. The author in my opinion doesn't give the concept more power rather they dismiss concept while literally using definitionally fascist characteristics to describe what they call not fascism.

Also, while the press and lay population may use a more flexible variety of the word, people like Stephen Miller are using the textbook definition (if such a thing exists, strictly speaking), though I'd argue it's an evolution best described as neo fascism.

JB

@wdlindsy Republicans want a US government modeled after the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, the 19th Century Mexican president whose wise leadership led to the 1910 Revolution and his permanent exile.

William Lindsey :toad:

@JBShakerman Well-noted. Yes, they want to take us back to models like this.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella I suspect there are always going to be fractious moments (of friction) when academic and popular discourse get overlaid. That also seems inevitable to me, the overlaying.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy from the standpoint of persuading the broader public there may be some merit to a more flexible definition of the term.

However, from the standpoint of using observations of the current neo fascist movement and making reasonable assertions of their true intentions given *they are sticking to the historic model* it's important.

For example, they know damn well before the Holocaust came mass deportations and property seizure and before that came talk the masses dismissed as hyperbole.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy the current neo fascist movement isn't just taking inspiration from Mussolini and Hitler, they're trying to be a continuation of Mussolini and especially Hitler.

Because of that, I think it's really important we understand what Mussolini and Hitler thought fascsim was (not that they agreed or even understood it themselves) because the people pushing it on us today are doing just that.

And they absolutely were trying to go to glorious past before the Enlightenment and move forward.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella I know I'm repeating things I've said before, but as someone who had (perhaps still has?) a foot in the academy, and also someone sharing commentary in the public square, I see matters like this through a kind of split screen. I understand and honor the academic concern to ground popular usage of terminology that points back to discrete historical moments in those formative moments. I also think it's inevitable that popular usage will take flight from that historical grounding.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella Yes, I agree. And I agree that that historical perspective enriches our understanding of the term as it's used in the popular square. What I'm less content with is the attempt of the academy to curb, control, even deny the term "fascism" as it's used in popular discourse, all of those academic gestures being fueled by claims that the term has taken leave of its original historical context and sense.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy I appreciate that. But even Orwell said in 1944 the term fascism has no meaning other than things we don't like. But he warned that was a mistake though he wasn't sure what to do about it. "All one can do for the moment is use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swear word."

I know you're not doing what Orwell warned us not to do. I'm suggesting the author of the piece you quoted is.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy I mean, the author is basically saying what's going on now is a return to pre enlightenment thinking, which is contrary to what fascism is. The problem is that's definitionally what fascism is.

I'm not trying to make an academic argument or gatekeeping so much as saying that if you're describing a game that involves a bouncing ball, baskets and the NBA rule book you can't just decide that game is called something other than basketball.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella My perspective is to ask repeatedly, Why is so much of American political commentary (and media commentary) so averse to using the term "fascism" and to comparing Trump to Hitler even when Trump parrots Hitler's exact words as he talks about racial purity or the bloodstream of the nation being infected by the impure?

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella I suspect you're reading the article more carefully with a certain trained historical eye than many of us will do so — more carefully than I did when it comes to making those connections. Which is to say, the word "fascism" worked for me when I read it….

Phiend

@wdlindsy

#RepublicanTerrorists

William Lindsey :toad:

@Phiend Yes.

Phiend

@wdlindsy I think it’s time we call them what they are to their faces. I’m not afraid.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy totally agree.

I do think the term is watered down the way Orwell described in 1944. There was a generation of scholarship that worked hard to remedy that but it's efforts and work are watered down today.

I think the media needs to do a better job, even in the headlines, of connecting the dots.

Trump is openly channeling Hitler. Repeatedly. The press needs to identify this AND why it's so dangerous *in headlines*.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy We don't want to minimize that the Holocaust targeted people who are Jewish, which is a common Holocaust denial adjacent tactic.

But the reality is, the mass killings in the fascist regimes killed hundreds of thousands of people who were not Jewish and it would have continued killing after all the people who were Jewish were gone.

The press needs to highlight this reality.

Timo

@wdlindsy @philip_cardella All this bossiness from the republicans being described reminds me of H. L. Mencken's snarky "Puritanism—the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy". Just switch out Puritanism for any of the autocratic descriptors. The conservative SCOTUS members have implied they don't care what the people want, they are the deciders. No happiness for the people! Which is contrary to the mission statement of the USA: 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'