Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Chris Kromm wrote:
>
> >Which doesn't make eugenics any less fascist -- it merely points up the more
> >totalitarian aspects of Margaret Sanger and other birth control advocates,
> >rather than any sort of progressive character of sterilization, no?
>
> Maybe I'm quibbling over mere words, but if socialists and corporate
> liberals once supported eugenics - and probably many secretly do now,
> but they're too embarrassed to admit it - then why label it fascist?
> There's a certain kind of leftist who disdains capitalism for its
> inefficiency, and thinks they could do a better job managing the
> thing - and eugenics is part of that.
I think one needs to go further. "Fascist" has become not only a useless but a positively obscurantist phrase. I do not think that at the present time leftists should use it even to describe self-labelled "fascists" as fascists. Fascism was a particular development within a very specific moment in world history, that of the economic crisis separating the two great wars. It is as incorrect a label for contemporary authoritarian (and/or racist) tendencies as was "bonapartist" as a description of hitler. I think the label makes it more difficult to understand what happened in Latin America during the '70s, and is equally useless or obscurantist for describing the authoritarian states in the Arab world. Not counting the United States, Israel is probably the most ruthlessly repressive state in the world today, but I really don't think it useful (however tempting as poetic justice) to describe it as fascist.
"Totalitarian," having been abused by both Arendt and whats-her-name from Georgetown, should also be retired from active usage.
Carrol