As the leftist “Antifa” do their best to continue to escalate the protests, it’s fun to be reminded that not only is their ideology incoherent, but even their self-appointed name is virtually meaningless.
What is “fascism,” anyway? Can any mask-wearing, baton-wielding Professor or proselyte answer that question?
Unless people have changed a lot since 1944, I doubt it. Orwell in the Tribune, 1944:
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else…
By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.
It is evident that circumspection is not in vogue these days. Probably it never was. How can one avoid smirking at a movement that betrays its own ignorance in its very name?
It reminds me of the “woke” movement, which illiterately makes an adjective out of a past-tense verb, thereby wedding a false ideology with yet another misuse of language.
Orwell believed that sloppy language led to sloppy thinking; no modern neuroscientist would agree with him, since science, unlike many social movements, has advanced since 1944. I propose instead that sloppy thinking leads to sloppy language; and that those of us who refuse to think sloppily will also resist the abuse of our language. I have often wondered, for instance, whether the widespread inability to detect (and reject) circular reasoning explains the constant misuse of the phrase “begging the question,” which no one appears to any longer understand.
Equally laughable is the #MeToo movement, who unwittingly named their movement with a synonym of the bandwagon effect, which accurately describes their behavior and motivations. Is latent feminist resentment among confused coeds the cause of the regrettable misuse of the word “hysterical” to mean “hilarious?” Or just a viral malapropism that ruined yet another beautiful word? We can never know.
All in all, I think it fair to pronounce of the leftist would-be revolutionaries: Wherefore by their grammar ye shall know them.
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