The usefulness of the term "fascism" is not analytical but rhetorical. It is a warning or alarm, like "the Redcoats are coming". In power, the tea Republicans will institute measures that will harm and kill many members of the working class, as with the recent drastic cuts in food stamps that the tea Republicans in the House of Representatives just did. It doesn't have to involve concentration camps.
On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Shane: "I disagree totally. There is no agreed definition of the term--on
> the contrary, there are as many definitions as there are definers--and
> usages of the term,"
>
> [WS:] True. But this can be said of many concepts, for example civil
> society. While vague and imprecise, it nonetheless played a very useful
> role in Gramsci's analysis, explaining quite a bit (i.e. why communist
> revolutions in Western Europe failed) and what is to be done for those
> revolutions to succeed. The analytic usefulness of the term fascism comes
> from the fact that there is a fundamental difference between "ordinary"
> conservative movements and what for the lack of better terminology can be
> called fascist reaction. Ordinary conservatives merely preserve the status
> quo, whereas fascist reaction is a revolutionary - so to speak - movement
> that aims at overhauling the status quo by revolutionary means (just as
> left wing revolutionaries want) but in the direction opposite to that
> desired by left wing revolutionaries. Corey Robin had it right on the
> target.
>
> We can of course argue whether the use of an ambiguous and emotionally
> charged term is appropriate for denoting the phenomenon dubbed "fascist
> reaction" - and I will be more than happy to use another term as long as
> it clearly expresses the nature of the beast as fundamentally different
> from "ordinary" conservatism.
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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