Fascism As Vague Epithet
Some have argued that the term "fascism" has become hopelessly vague in the years following World War II, and that today it is little more than a pejorative epithet used by supporters of various political views to attempt to discredit their opponents. This view dates back to George Orwell, British writer and author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, who in 1944 famously remarked:
...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 ... Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathisers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
Orwell's observation predates the formulation of the Godwin's law, considering nazism and fascism as partially overlapping notions.
Read more about this topic: Definitions Of Fascism
Famous quotes containing the words fascism, vague and/or epithet:
“Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human race is imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf; it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)