That movie was so fascist

It really bothers me whenever people spell the contraction of ‘you are’ as ‘your.’
Maybe it’s the editor in me – I’m not sure. But it drives me nuts. Even when texting, I type “ure.”

Yeah, I’m lame like that. I guess you could say it’s a pet peeve.

But what really gets me – and I mean, as a history major, really gets me – is the recent trend in political discourse of interchanging the terms ‘communism’ and ‘fascism’ as well as the relative frequency with which they are employed.

You’ve seen and heard it.

Signs that declare “fascists are now in control,”  and commentary like Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele’s comparison of a pro-Obama song to “the type of propaganda you would see in Stalin’s Russia or Kim Jong Il’s North Korea” have littered our T.V. screens and front pages.

YouTube videos entitled “Yes We Can: Barack Obama = Joseph Stalin” and Take Back America Conference workshops with the title of “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists” muddy our sound bytes and Google results. 

I, too, have even had the recent pleasure of being compared to Hitler. Either Obama and I have a lot more in common than previously thought or the use of Hitler metaphors is out of control.

At the rate we’re going, ‘fascism’ and ‘communism’ will soon be handy phrases for use in everyday language.

“Yeah, I saw that Michael Moore film. It was terrible – in fact, it was fascist!”
“Dude, I can’t go out tonight. I have to study. It’s so communist.”

Never mind that most people guilty of this over usage and confusion probably can’t even correctly spell fascism or tell you who Karl Marx is. The looseness with which these designations have been thrown around recently is much more problematic than that.

These two words represent distinct ideologies, conceived at separate points in history in vastly different circumstances and political climates – and each with various, discrete, catastrophic results. They are complex and contradistinctive political systems – not synonyms for the word “bad.”

Obama is not a fascist. Or a communist.

You might disagree with him, but he certainly does not prescribe to either philosophy. If you think he does, then you have ultimately failed at grasping what the denotations behind these powerful words actually are.

Communism is a type of social organization in which property is held in common so as to produce a classless society. Fascism allows for state control of every aspect of national life and glorifies total subjugation of the individual to the state.

Or, in the words of Les Adler and Thomas Paterson as they appeared in The American Historical Review, “The Marxian philosophy looked for social and economic improvement among disadvantaged people, whereas, as Hans Buchheim has suggested, fascism was designed not to improve mankind, but rather to destroy that part it disliked.”

That’s not to say that similarities don’t exist between the radical regimes.
Yes, they both employed a form of authoritarian rule. And yes, in practice they both allowed for the murder of millions under Hitler and Stalin (although the murders occurred for different reasons).

That, however, is where the similarities stop. And since Obama’s Great Terror has yet to commence, let’s please stop with the historically inaccurate comparisons.

When your friends and family members start disappearing in the middle of the night, and we’re required to live by the motto “Believe! Obey! Fight!” – then, and only then, will these terms be appropriate.