The “right” has become as careless with the word “fascist” as the left
A note to James Taranto at
Best of the Web
You wrote:
A second college has canceled a planned appearance by Ward Churchill, the pro-fascist University of Colorado professor of “ethnic studies” who cheered on the Sept. 11 attacks.
Since when does fascist (or pro-fascist) mean a person (such as this Churchill) who hates his own country and wants his fellow citizens to be mass-murdered and wants his country to be destroyed?
The word fascism has definite meanings. Here are some of them:
- the belief in a unity of government and business corporations exerting an authorian control over society;
- a massing together of people into a single unit without individuality;
- a coercive restoration of a lost cultural or national order.
How does Ward Churchill fit any of those meanings?
You should not follow the left and be using the word “fascist” as an all-purpose imprecation against people you don’t like, as a synonym for “evil.” That is intellectually unacceptable.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 08, 2005 09:22 AM | Send