Fascism, Neither Pure Nor Simple - part I

(Fascism is)"the most misused, and

over-used word of our times"

"An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism"
Professor Roger Griffin,
Prominent author and lecturer on Nazi history
Oxford Brookes University, UK

In researching this topic, I tried to cover a variety of serious authorities in order not to let myself be suckered into too narrow or biased an understanding. It was important to me to use my existing knowledge as a beginning, but to make a serious effort to be certain I had a balanced, complete overview for a fair and evenhanded piece of writing. I lead this piece with a quotation from Professor Griffin, because so much of what I encountered came back to his work in the field, and the quote so succinctly summarizes what I found. The big three in the field consistently regarded by historians and political scientists as the defining experts are Griffin, along with Robert Paxton and Stanley Payne.

If I could distill what I researched, building on my previous understanding, into a single observation it would be this: that the word Fascism is used interchangeably with Authoritarianism, sometimes correctly, but most of the time incorrectly. Authoritarianism would be a more correct word than Fascism as it is used more than 90% of the time, a figure that is my own rough estimation from researching so far. That 90% usage reflects either an incomplete, or significantly erroneous understanding of one or more aspects of Fascism. The error in usage distributes fairly evenly across the spectrum of political ideology, from left to right; it is NOT the purview of one side alone. And it is THAT aspect, the distribution of the wrong usage, that seems to be at the heart of why the word is so misused. Nearly EVERYBODY uses it improperly, to some degree, and MOST use it improperly to a large degree.

The correct, well researched, well accepted definitions are not particularly hard to find or understand. What seems to be consistently underlying the misuse is applying it not as identifying an actual historic or contemporary fascist political movement, but using it derogatorily as an epithet or pejorative term against another political group or position than one's own to discredit it.

This broadly derogatory use of the term is not new, by any stretch. The consistency with which the term has been kept in use pejoratively is unparalleled by any other word I can think of, with the possible exception of "Nazi". The following quotation from George Orwell, author of "1984" and "Animal Farm" hit on this back in 1944, when he wrote "What is Fascism".

Orwell said:
"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... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’."

Obviously, it doesn't require familiarity with every single reference in the quote to understand that the term was being used all over the place, by every political point of view against nearly every kind of possible target, until any coherent meaning other than 'bad' is completely gone from common usage. That dates back to World War II, and the association with Fascism and atrocities. Prior to the close association with atrocities, there were some who were critical of Fascism as a movement, for different specific aspects of it, but there was not the quality of such broad condemnation in the name. Pre-atrocity criticism was specific. There was a definite sort of 'tipping point' in the usage.

While the Orwell quote can be taken as an attempt to be funny or sarcastic, it was less an exaggeration than you might think. Right now, I can do a web search or a search at my local library and turn up an overwhelming pile of data detailing references to fascism, nearly all of it incorrect. The right calls the left fascist, the left calls the right fascist. And some - although fewer - people in the middle are equal opportunity misusers of the word, calling those on the further edges of BOTH sides fascist for not being in the middle. Incorrectly. All, or very nearly all of them.

Obviously, I cannot end a piece on fascism here; that would be useless. Simply claiming it is used poorly but often, VERY often, is not enough. I asked for constructive criticism from the owners of both of the blogs that I write for, and it was consistently that I write 'long'. Well...but LONG. (You can stop laughing any minute now - I know it's true.) So to do justice to the topic, I'm going to try a new way to shorten up but still cover the content. I'm going to write in 'parts'; this is only part I.

I haven't determined exactly how many parts there will be; but only a few. My goals in writing, given my research to this point, is to present what fascism is correctly and accurately. Part II will be a brief (yes, brief!) history of the movement, its early roots and the 'inter-war' era developments; 'Italian' fascism and the related European movements (like the Spanish 'Falange') circa WWII; and post-WWII developments.

Next will be a brief description of what the central, core tenets of fascism are; what you need to have present in a political or social movement to BE fascist. Why not just present that information? Because without connecting it to the actual, historic fascist movements that CREATED the term, it remains ill defined. In making the effort to write this, to do it well and fairly, objectively, it is my intention to lessen, if only by those few who read this, the use of the term incorrectly. When I am done, whoever reads these words WILL know the difference between correct and incorrect use of 'fascism', small or capital F, and I hope will choose to use it correctly afterwards, and ONLY correctly, and may even choose to correct others using it wrongly.