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fpbI have to interpret these four posts as an attempt to prove yourself rational and reasonable. In which case, to open by qualifying me and my friends as "the fascist conservative propaganda machine" is a very poor start indeed. In five words, you manage to convey the following views: one, there is an agreed and co-ordinated structure of propaganda (that is what the determinate article "the" conveys); second, that we take our orders from it; third, that fascism and conservatism are one and the same thing; fourth, that I am a conservative; fifth, that I and all my friends have the kind of servile minds that will take orders from a "propaganda machine" and place our own blogs, our own names, and our own reputations, at its service.
To begin with, that none of these statements are true. If you had any understanding of dignity and honour, I would demand an apology. But more to the point, if you seriously believe that such a propaganda machine exists, why would you even want to waste your time replying to people you should expect to neither respect nor listen to your views - people who have sold their souls to the FCPM? Now there are two possible interpretations of this. Either you do not really believe what you are saying; or you do not really understand what you are saying. If you approach me with the intention of debating a point, you cannot possibly believe that I am a part of a propaganda machine, or else it would not even occur to you - assuming of course that you are gifted with the minimum amount of common sense - to waste your time on someone who has reasons other than personal honour to take the views he takes.
So we establish, right from the start, that you are using verbiage without any understanding of what it means, or else without meaning it. That is the same attitude as is shown in your treatment of the word Fascism. You say that it is any kind of politics involving violence. Bullshit. Fascism is a specific historical movement with specific features and a specific history, and it is not only wrong but immoral to extend the word to mean what it does not mean. And let me tell you, buddy: if you had spent your youths in the streets of Rome, dodging the squads when they were pumped up and looking for trouble; if you had known real Fascists, people who believed in Mussolini and the religion of action, in school and among your family friends; if you had grown up among people who remembered Fascism, who sometimes had nightmares about it; and if, on top of it, real live Fascist terrorists had been active in your country in the days of your youth, murdering people indiscriminately with bombs that exploded among civilians - look up the Bologna station bomb; if you had had all these experiences, then, let me tell you, you would find the arbitrary rewriting of the meaning of Fascist to include President Bush not only unacceptable but immoral, not only deceptive but revolting.
You are, in short, someone who does not treat words with any respect. Words mean whatever they have to mean for you to win an argument; and, if possible, to make the opponent feel bad about his/her position by using an insulting description for it ("the fascist conservative propaganda machine"). It may perhaps be news to you - since at the back of your attitude clearly lies an appallingly bad education for which you cannot be responsible - that this is not a way to prove anything. It may leave you astonished - since you clearly led a sheltered life - that people may find your behaviour offensive. And you will probably never accept - since feeling self-righteous is obviously of great importance to you - that your behaviour is plainly morally wrong. But let me explain something to you that may, perhaps, get through the screens of your mind: your behaviour is self-defeating. You will never get anywhere with people until you try to understand what they are saying, instead of forcing your opinions and your view of the meaning of words on them. You will only find more and more people who, like me and all my friends, will tell you that you have a problem.
And that being the case, and until you show an ability to show some morality in dealing with words, I can hardly bother to show you that you are wholly and entirely wrong in the most basic statements; that I am no conservative; that I am no supporter of President Bush; that I and my friends agree on very little except the shared Christian religion of many though not all of us; and that all these statements have the exact same content of truth - truth being defined as correspondence with facts - than it has to call the contemporary Republican Party a fascist body.
To begin with, that none of these statements are true. If you had any understanding of dignity and honour, I would demand an apology. But more to the point, if you seriously believe that such a propaganda machine exists, why would you even want to waste your time replying to people you should expect to neither respect nor listen to your views - people who have sold their souls to the FCPM? Now there are two possible interpretations of this. Either you do not really believe what you are saying; or you do not really understand what you are saying. If you approach me with the intention of debating a point, you cannot possibly believe that I am a part of a propaganda machine, or else it would not even occur to you - assuming of course that you are gifted with the minimum amount of common sense - to waste your time on someone who has reasons other than personal honour to take the views he takes.
So we establish, right from the start, that you are using verbiage without any understanding of what it means, or else without meaning it. That is the same attitude as is shown in your treatment of the word Fascism. You say that it is any kind of politics involving violence. Bullshit. Fascism is a specific historical movement with specific features and a specific history, and it is not only wrong but immoral to extend the word to mean what it does not mean. And let me tell you, buddy: if you had spent your youths in the streets of Rome, dodging the squads when they were pumped up and looking for trouble; if you had known real Fascists, people who believed in Mussolini and the religion of action, in school and among your family friends; if you had grown up among people who remembered Fascism, who sometimes had nightmares about it; and if, on top of it, real live Fascist terrorists had been active in your country in the days of your youth, murdering people indiscriminately with bombs that exploded among civilians - look up the Bologna station bomb; if you had had all these experiences, then, let me tell you, you would find the arbitrary rewriting of the meaning of Fascist to include President Bush not only unacceptable but immoral, not only deceptive but revolting.
You are, in short, someone who does not treat words with any respect. Words mean whatever they have to mean for you to win an argument; and, if possible, to make the opponent feel bad about his/her position by using an insulting description for it ("the fascist conservative propaganda machine"). It may perhaps be news to you - since at the back of your attitude clearly lies an appallingly bad education for which you cannot be responsible - that this is not a way to prove anything. It may leave you astonished - since you clearly led a sheltered life - that people may find your behaviour offensive. And you will probably never accept - since feeling self-righteous is obviously of great importance to you - that your behaviour is plainly morally wrong. But let me explain something to you that may, perhaps, get through the screens of your mind: your behaviour is self-defeating. You will never get anywhere with people until you try to understand what they are saying, instead of forcing your opinions and your view of the meaning of words on them. You will only find more and more people who, like me and all my friends, will tell you that you have a problem.
And that being the case, and until you show an ability to show some morality in dealing with words, I can hardly bother to show you that you are wholly and entirely wrong in the most basic statements; that I am no conservative; that I am no supporter of President Bush; that I and my friends agree on very little except the shared Christian religion of many though not all of us; and that all these statements have the exact same content of truth - truth being defined as correspondence with facts - than it has to call the contemporary Republican Party a fascist body.
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Decline and Fall of the Term "Fascist"
Date: 2007-05-04 03:33 pm (UTC)This is specifically a legacy of the old Soviet Communist propaganda machine (and there actually was one of those, coordinated from Moscow, and the many people who got their use of political terminology second- to n-hand from that machine. Because Soviet Communism was so obviously undemocratic, it was useful to cast the ideological struggle as two- rather than three-sided, so that one was invited to choose between "Communism" (the CP-USSR line) and Fascism (anything but that party line).
When liberal democracy was at its nadir (the 1930's and very early 1940's) this actually seemed reasonable: democracy seemed like a dying and outdated philosophy, and the future clearly belonged to one of the two big totalitarian ideologies. Of course, that's not what happened: democracy instead rallied around America (*waves tiny flag*) and triumphed. Today, the most developed and important parts of the world are with only one serious exception (Red China) liberal democracies (and China is under pressure to liberalize).
But the tendency to call anyone who disagreed with one a "fascist" survived the decline and fall of the Comintern, largely because of the Red Diaper Babies (the Boomers who were the children of Communist Party members in America and other Western lands). Forming the "New Left" of the 1960's, they spread this practice on American campuses: it became especially common from the 1980's on (when they occupied key posts in campus administration). Sometimes it was even applied justly (as to the many South American dictatorships that imitated Nazi or Fasicst governing patterns, such as Peron's or Galtieri's Argentina).
The result, today, when almost nobody remembers the Italian Fascists (outside of Italy) -- and even the true nature of the German Nazis is passing into history (*Galadriel voiceover as appropriate) -- the term "fascist" is being expanded into insignificance (a word which can mean anything really means nothing).
This is too bad, as it's a perfectly good political-science term to describe a particular kind of illiberal ideology.