Thanks to digg or reddit I was reading an essay by George Orwell (somewhat ironically on a ) where he argues that the word fascism had lost any real meaning and now simply meant \"something not desirable\".
It seems to me, and perhaps this is because I am no longer an undergraduate, that the word \"fascist\" is not much in common use, and in fact the only recent public use of the word I can recall is in describing militant Islamist movements (such as Al Qaeda) as \"Islamic Fascists\".
I can't say I've ever read a dictionary definition of fascism, so I looked it up and got this:
\"a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism\"
Wikipedia has (of course) a longer description, but this sentence is quite nice:
Many different characteristics are attributed to fascism by different scholars, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, corporatism, totalitarianism, collectivism, anti-liberalism, and anti-communism.
From both of these it seems that describing radical Islam as fascist is not too wide of the mark, but the question is what we're becoming in the course of opposing it, especially in the light of the sacrifices we had already made in opposition to communism.","$updatedAt":"2024-06-05T10:51:18.523+00:00",path:"the-f-word",_created:"2024-07-09T20:34:04.424Z",id:"69",_modified:"2024-07-09T20:34:04.424Z","$id":"69",_path:"post/path=the-f-word"}}