![]() I am not ‘most people,’ but I am going to guess, in a very half-assed way, that when most people refer to fascists or fascism (with respect not to history, but to contemporary events or persons), they generally intend an accusation (exaggerated or not) of the abuse of authority and power, a contempt for individual rights and liberties, and an irrational fealty to a very particular and narrow view of the way the world should be. ![]() But is this really accurate? Or does it further diminish and trivialize the historical sense of fascism? Because when you get right down to it, how many of us really know what we’re talking about when we casually refer to police officers as ‘fascist pigs’? Why fascist? And why pigs? Is it the uniforms-the authority-the right wing implications of issuing a traffic citation? Maybe. Whether you’re a teenager revolting against the ruthless Gestapo comprised of teachers, parents, and Denny’s night shift managers or you’re a fussbudget Berkeley yippie who detects a whiff of the counterrevolutionary even in the most innocuous conventions (‘I will not have a nice day! Fuck you, Big Brother!’), the exaggeration of one’s own paranoid sense of victimization by glibly appropriating the suffering of millions and millions of innocent people during World War II is always good for a larf, right? ![]() ![]() ![]() Sure, calling people ‘fascist’ is lots of fun. ![]()
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