No -- but it is sloppy thought and bad politics. Do you really think that eveyrone who has ever committed anal rape is a fascist. We have a really nasty situation in the U.S. and it is getting worse. But to call it fascist is as silly as to call arsenic a broadsword. Both will kill you but in quite different ways. This sloppy use of the term fascist blinds people to the real threats to human rights in the u.s.
Carrol
^^^^^
Marxists have to build unity of the workers' and women's liberation movements. Expanding the reference "fascist" to include violent male supremacists - the personal is political - offers one possible way to achieve this.
Marxist _men_ in particular should take the lead in finding ways, and they will be _new_ ways, of building solidarity and identity between the workers' and women's movement.
But there is more. This man is not only a rapist, anal or otherwise. He is a Bushite, carrying the whole nine yards of Bushite fascist ideology. We should argue that there is not an accidental coincidence of his violent male supremacy and his Bushite ideology. Scratch a rightwinger and find a woman hater.
It is this type of creative thinking that should go on in the theoretical meetings we have when we step back from "activistism." Everybody wants creative thinking, release from Marxist dogmatism. OK . Here's some creative thinking.
Calling this usage "silly" is gratuitous insult without any supporting argument. In fact, the arguments of the danger of fascism in the U.S. are extremely serious, and to call them "silly" is politically irresponsible.
Preserving the word "fascist" to refer only to people who are identical to the fascists of 80 years ago , now that's silly pedantics. How does it help the workers' political cause to abolish the usage "fascist" for reference to the most virulent enemies of the working class ? Not one bit. All it does is leave working class partisans speechless in the face of the greatest threats to our cause. What term have you offered as a substitute that would carry the same emotional and intellectual impact as "fascist" ? None. So, now we confront a highly organized and persistent rightwing movement in the U.S. _with predominant influence on the state power_, and if left up to you, we have no way to talk about it because we have no term for it.
Finally, the dogmatic approach to use of the term "fascist" squanders the propaganda opportunity to pin the right wing with this gross offender of most people's consciences. Carrol, in the name of neat thinking, would let this opportunity pass, make no effort to hammer home the link between this spectacularly violent male supremacy and the general rightwing ideology of today. Let the rightwing try to claim that there's no connection. And don't help them.
Get a little sense of how to promote ideas to U.S. Americans. You're dealing with Americans. When the rightwing has a mess, you nail 'em with it, before the next day when the story will be gone forever.
Charles