by Eric J. Weiner
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Shadi Hamid, contributing writer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, states reproachfully that “Donald Trump’s election (in 2016) led to a whole cottage industry of thinking that fascism is near, right here at home.” For many scholars and writers in this proverbial “cottage industry,” Joe Biden’s victory will do little to change their minds regarding what they see as the growing threat of fascism in the United States. For Hamid, this is a mistake with serious implications. He is concerned that people who reference fascism to describe what is happening in the United States, either as a warning of the unforeseen terror to come or as an analysis of what is already happening, are confused about what fascism actually is. To highlight the dangers of relativistic thinking in regards to fascism, he quotes George Orwell who wrote, “I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.” Orwell’s point and Hamid’s fear is that when words/concepts become relative—when signifier and signified float willy-nilly along the shifting winds of power and ideology—they risk undermining the critical capacities of language. More specifically, Hamid argues that the relativity of the term is causing these scholars and commentators to ignore examples of “real” fascism when they occur. The consequence of this ignorance, he argues, negatively impacts the people who are struggling to survive fascist violence throughout the world. Hamid writes,
Words matter because they help order our understanding of politics both at home and abroad. If [Senator Tom] Cotton is a fascist, then we don’t know what fascism is. And if we don’t know what fascism is, then we will struggle to identify it when it threatens millions of lives—which is precisely what is happening today in areas under Beijing’s control. Chinese authorities have tightened their grip on Hong Kong. And while the world watches, they are undertaking one of the most terrifying campaigns of ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide since World War II in Xinjiang province, with more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs in internment camps, as well as reports of forced sterilization and mass rape.
In the face of Hamid’s concerns, and in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory, what should we make of the scholarship and academic journalism that resurrects and reconstructs the concept of fascism to explain what is currently happening in the United States or to warn people about what is politically probable if the Nation doesn’t radically change course? Read more »