Re: CHAT: Support/Oppression of Conlanging

Christophe Grandsire sikyal:

> >  Indeed, I'd argue that German society 1933-39 was more similar to
> > France's than to the Soviet Union's. So, if I were trying to uphold
> > some meaningful definition of "Fascism" more narrow than
> > "totalitarianism", I would say that Stalin was no Fascist.
> >
>
> If I take a narrow definition of Fascism, Stalin was fascist. You have to
> realise something: the political landscape is not a line going from extreme
> left to extreme right. It's a circle. Both extremes are most often
> indistinguishable. They may have different ways of looking at things, but
> practically they are identical.
This is certainly true, if you're simply talking about practical things.
We already have a term for this: totalitarian. Totalitarianism can be
motivated by any number of things, however, and the motivation is what we
use to distinguish the other words in this discussion.  Hitler, thus, was
fascist (totalitarian right), while Stalin was, er, Stalinist
(totalitarian left--we don't have a really good term for this). If your
narrow definition of "fascist" includes Stalin then your narrow definition
needs to be revised.

> > Surely, utilizing nationalism for strengthening the ruling group
> > doesn't by itself make you Fascist?
> >
>
> Yes, when it goes as far as xenophobia and deportations. They may have
> defined differently the "groups to hate", but both Germany and the
> Soviet Union had them. And both used deportation camps (calling them
> "gulags" doesn't change what they are). To me that's a pretty good
> definition of fascism.
Except that that's not the definition of fascist at all.  Hitler was
fascist before he killed a single Jew. Mussolini never did a very good job
of killing anyone, but he was also fascist.

> Of course, if you add that fascism *has to* be of
> extreme right, then the Soviet Union was not fascist.
But fascist *does* have to be extreme right--that's the word's definition!
Conflating "fascist" with "totalitarian" serves no purpose, except to be a
verbal brick for pot-headed protesters to throw.

> But as I said,
> since practically there was no difference, why making one? Let's keep
> definitions simple.
I don't know why we make this distinction, but it does seem like a good
one to make.  Totalitarians, while they all do similar things, are
motivated by different things, and our terminology reflects this
difference. In this case I'm not trying to complicate the definition, but
merely preserve its original meaning.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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