corrente

"Fascist" is a not a word to use lightly. The old rule on discussion boards which said the minute the word was used meant the end of that particular topic, and the loss of the argument by the side to which the user subscribed, struck me as a good one. And I still maintain that for modern political discussion we need a different word, perhaps "Corporatist," to avoid the baggage "fascism" brings to any hope of rationality.

All of which I am presently reconsidering. David Neiwert has Part 2 of his latest series on the topic posted now, and I recommend you go take a look:

(via Orcinus)

"Fascism is a poisonous ideology that grows and adapts to its circumstances -- Eurofascism reflected European vices; American fascism is similarly home-brewed. Therein lies the challenge in identifying it and combating it. Fascism always wraps itself in the flag, always seeks absolute power, always brands opponents as traitors, always relies heavily on propaganda for dissemination of its ideas, always invokes subversive enemies (at home and abroad), always embraces militarism and permanent war, always favors politicizing of police functions (and expanding them and the surveillance state), always scorns intellectuals, artists, and bourgeois democratic values, always is hostile to leftist and labor movements, and is obsessed with idealized images of a mythic "better time" of the past (while at the same time destroying that past, and the nation as a whole).

This installment consists largely of definitions such as the one above, which comes not from David but one of his correspondents Dante M.

The word "fascism" is, in fact, a little bit like the word "God" in that it's short, everybody says it, but nobody can be even a little bit sure that the person listening is imagining the referent the word points to in the same way the speaker meant it. It's too big, too awful in the old sense of that word's meaning, to get your mind around.

But for word junkies it's worth looking at if only for one other definition:

Roger Griffin, who calls it "palingenetic ultranationalistic populism".

Wheee! Time to haul out the New Oxford International, I don't think my pocket Websters is gonna have "palingenetic." If it was "paladingenetic" I would understand it right away, although am pretty sure Richard Boone was not a facist.