Fascism

I always hesitate to use the word Fascist referring to right wing politics and politicians, it’s one of those words that’s been used as a pejorative for so long that it has ceased to mean anything other than “something I don’t like.” But I have been thinking about it a lot lately because of the town hall chaos, you hear people yelling these things, “COMMUNIST, FASCIST, SOCIALIST!!” You have to wonder if these people have ever taken a political science or history class. Do they even know that Hitler and Stalin weren’t fond of each other precisely because one was a communist and the other was a fascist? Words do mean things, and those words mean different things. So how can the American left be all of these things simultaneously? Anyway, I just read this piece over at AlterNet which then directed me to this paper by Robert Paxton which caused me to reexamine my relative ambivalence on the word “fascism.” I know I know, AlterNet is just another far left website and Robert Paxon is just another liberal elitist intellectual Rhodes Scholar with an MA from Oxford and a PhD from Harvard; not as credible as a wing nut in a powdered big on YouTube calling himself Thomas Paine but we liberals have to make due with what we have. Check them out if you can.