The “right” has become as careless with the word “fascist” as the left

A note to James Taranto at Best of the Web

You wrote:

A second college has canceled a planned appearance by Ward Churchill, the pro-fascist University of Colorado professor of “ethnic studies” who cheered on the Sept. 11 attacks.

Since when does fascist (or pro-fascist) mean a person (such as this Churchill) who hates his own country and wants his fellow citizens to be mass-murdered and wants his country to be destroyed?

The word fascism has definite meanings. Here are some of them:

- the belief in a unity of government and business corporations exerting an authorian control over society;

- a massing together of people into a single unit without individuality;

- a coercive restoration of a lost cultural or national order.

How does Ward Churchill fit any of those meanings?

You should not follow the left and be using the word “fascist” as an all-purpose imprecation against people you don’t like, as a synonym for “evil.” That is intellectually unacceptable.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 08, 2005 09:22 AM | Send