Ignoracracy

It’s awfully (though darkly) amusing to hear, in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election, all the cries from the streets denouncing his supporters as ‘Fascists’. The word, of course, has nearly been drained of all meaning, and like ‘racist’, is now little more than a cudgel for the faithful to use against anyone from whom they catch a whiff of heresy.

 
So why is this amusing? Because of the slogan chosen by their own champion, Mrs. Clinton, who chose to run her own campaign under the rallying cry “Stronger Together” — which, as anyone with a rudimentary familiarity with political history* will know, is precisely the essence of the Fascist idea, and of the ancient symbol, the fasces, that gave the movement its name and emblem.

Next time someone gets in your face to tell you that Trump supporters are Fascists, please remind them of this. And to learn more about what the word really means, please get yourself a copy of Paul Gottfried’s Fascism: The Career of a Concept.

 
* i.e., almost nobody.

5 Comments

  1. Eric says

    They’re using “fascism” in Orwell’s sense – i.e., “something not desirable”.

    The whole quote is good, too:

    “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”…In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”

    Posted November 11, 2016 at 12:58 pm | Permalink
  2. Whitewall says

    I’ll bet that poor boy in the photo has gone deeply in debt to get to where he is.

    Posted November 12, 2016 at 10:42 am | Permalink
  3. Reminds me of this pic:

    [img]https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bfm6J1DcjUQ/SV4xQOPu0oI/AAAAAAAAEJM/jMjVoNhKvI8/S187/juicedeath.jpg[/img]

    Posted November 12, 2016 at 3:02 pm | Permalink
  4. random coolzip says

    Well, he may be in debt now, but eventually that dual major in Gender Studies and Puppetry is going to pay off big!

    Posted November 12, 2016 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
  5. Bill Jones says

    And let’s not forget the daily worship of the ignorati of the country’s largest fasces at the shrine of the country’s still pre-eminent fascist.

    https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/16/lincoln-memorial-undergo-major-renovation-thanks-18-5-million-david-rubenstein/

    Posted November 12, 2016 at 9:19 pm | Permalink

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