Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Are You Leaning Far Enough to the Right to be Considered a Fascist?

loquitur · 03-26-2008, 01:54 PM

RB, I'm afraid that if you look at the historical academic literature you'll find a marked inability to provide a definition of fascism that is generally acceptable. You will find such definitions by people who have a political interest in defining the term in ways that suit them. That's why I linked the Orwell quote about fascism now being used as a general term to refer to political ideas the speaker doesn't like. I'm not quibbling right now with your definition because I'm not at the moment looking at it, though I do recall that when I read it I found parts of it too narrow and parts of it too broad.

If the definition is limited to the actual tenets of the Italian Fascist Party, that's one thing, but if it gets generalized outside that context, the task of definition becomes troublesome. Even in the Italian context, people will disagree about which aspects of Fascist rule were the ones that were truly definitive and which were incidental. For instance, the anti-Semitism was a late arrival to Italian fascism, roughly contemporaneous with the alliance with Germany - so is racial thinking and bigotry part of the definition of fascism or not? Or is it an inevitable consequence of nationalism, which is a related but distinct concept?

The word gets tossed around pretty loosely. For instance, host and will think that the Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns was fascist, and came up with some twist on the concept of "corporatism" to justify it. I can think of lots of bad ways to describe the bailout but fascist is definitely not one of them. The bailout didn't involve commandeering large businesses to the service of the government and the military. It was unwise and unduly generous to JPM, and saddled the govt with stuff it shouldn't be saddled with (to my mind, they should have let Bear file chapter 11, but that's a discussion for another day) - but it wasn't fascist. It makes some people feel better to label things they don't like "fascist." But then they shouldn't be surprised when other people use the same trick to criticize things that they like.

03-26-2008, 01:54 PM	#161 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	RB, I'm afraid that if you look at the historical academic literature you'll find a marked inability to provide a definition of fascism that is generally acceptable. You will find such definitions by people who have a political interest in defining the term in ways that suit them. That's why I linked the Orwell quote about fascism now being used as a general term to refer to political ideas the speaker doesn't like. I'm not quibbling right now with your definition because I'm not at the moment looking at it, though I do recall that when I read it I found parts of it too narrow and parts of it too broad. If the definition is limited to the actual tenets of the Italian Fascist Party, that's one thing, but if it gets generalized outside that context, the task of definition becomes troublesome. Even in the Italian context, people will disagree about which aspects of Fascist rule were the ones that were truly definitive and which were incidental. For instance, the anti-Semitism was a late arrival to Italian fascism, roughly contemporaneous with the alliance with Germany - so is racial thinking and bigotry part of the definition of fascism or not? Or is it an inevitable consequence of nationalism, which is a related but distinct concept? The word gets tossed around pretty loosely. For instance, host and will think that the Fed's bailout of Bear Stearns was fascist, and came up with some twist on the concept of "corporatism" to justify it. I can think of lots of bad ways to describe the bailout but fascist is definitely not one of them. The bailout didn't involve commandeering large businesses to the service of the government and the military. It was unwise and unduly generous to JPM, and saddled the govt with stuff it shouldn't be saddled with (to my mind, they should have let Bear file chapter 11, but that's a discussion for another day) - but it wasn't fascist. It makes some people feel better to label things they don't like "fascist." But then they shouldn't be surprised when other people use the same trick to criticize things that they like.