Apparently it is “unhelpful” to “go around branding people as fascists”. Whenever I have used the F-word recently (which is a lot) I have been picked up on it, even by otherwise like-minded friends. The suggestion is that writers, especially, have a duty of care when deploying inflammatory language, and a concomitant responsibility to exercise caution. I suppose the complaint is that the people currently being called out as fascists, or near-fascists, are not, in fact, fascists. (Though of course this complaint rides the line between accepting that they might be, and asserting that they aren’t. It’s a kind of, “Even if they were fascists – but who are you to say such a thing? – it wouldn’t be helpful in the general discourse to call them fascists.”)

Perhaps the concern is that there may be real, actual fascists out there, who should be being targetted for criticism, but they’re being ignored because people are focussing their ire on those innocent near-fascists.

All I know is that citing fascism has become a faux-pas in contemporary political discourse. Clearly nobody is actually a fascist and it would be wholly wrong to brand someone in that way. (Just as nobody is actually a racist — they may merely “have concerns” about immigration.)

So if you think someone’s a fascist, you have to be coy about it. (An American Democrat friend recently mentioned Trump’s “alleged” corruption over lunch — she felt the need to qualify it, even though she herself was in no doubt about his corruption. When I asked her why she used the word “alleged” — after all, we were at the dining table, not in court — she didn’t know. It feels like a similar reluctance to call a thing a thing.)

But what, as our 10-year-old asked in the car this week, actually is fascism? I admit I struggled to give a simple answer.

So I had a read up. It’s hard to define. It’s a collection of unpleasantness. Here’s the first of Wikipedia’s “scholars’ definitions” — from Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay “Eternal Fascism”, listing fourteen characteristics of fascist ideology.  

1. “The Cult of Tradition” — a fancy way of asserting it was all better in the good old days.
2. “The Rejection of modernism“, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture as a descent into depravity. A fancy way of asserting it was all better in the good old days.
3. “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism. Remind You Of Anything? Who needs experts?
4. “Disagreement Is Treason”. Remind You Of Anything? Pretty much everyone has been denounced as a traitor since 2016 – judges, civil servants, lawyers, journalists, MPs, peers, campaigners, businesses…. If you haven’t been called a traitor, you’re probably not opening your mouth.
5. “Fear of Difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants. Remind You Of Anything? You don’t need me to give you examples.
6. “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups. The “just managing”?
7. “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s ‘fear’ of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings; see also anti-Semitism). Remind You Of Anything? The dastardly Treaty of Lisbon, anyone? The EU Army?
8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will. RYOA? For example, the EU is claimed to be mired in bureaucracy, and ineffective… but simultaneously cunning and exploitative of its upper hand over us in negotiations. They’re either brilliant or useless, depending on which conviction suits the sentence. And sometimes even in the same sentence.
9. “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Time to “don khaki and take up arms,” anyone?
10. “Contempt for the Weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group.
11. “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”.

12. “Machismo”, in which Fascists hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” Sounds like a world-view in which there are women you “wouldn’t even rape.”
13. “Selective Populism” – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People.” RYOA?
14. “Newspeak” – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning. “Brexit means Brexit”? “Fuck Business”?

Don’t know about you, but if that’s fascism, it seems there’s a lot of it about. Fascism may be a nebulous concept, with characteristics and traits, but with few — and possibly no — necessary conditions. But we know it when we smell it.

No one (yet) is going to put up their hands and call themselves a fascist. And often, an individual will hold only some of these positions.

But taken together, the discourse of today undoubtedly has this toxic odour, and it is up to us to shout whenever we detect it. Every single time. Without fear of causing offence. Without fear of being “unhelpful”. History teaches us that this is one arena in which a strategy of timidity may prove catastrophic.

If it helps, don’t brand anyone anything. Brand ideas instead. If ideas look like fascism, sound like fascism, smell like fascism, you are free to say so. You must say so.

If a thing’s a thing, call it a thing.

UPDATE, 29 August 2020: The British Union of Fascists openly displaying their flag in Trafalgar Square.

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