NEW YORK – In
2015, “fascism” once again became the highest-octane political epithet in
general use. Of course, the temptation to apply the fascism label is
almost overwhelming when we confront language and behaviour that superficially
resembles that of Hitler and Mussolini. At the moment, it is being widely
applied to cases as disparate as Donald Trump, the Tea Party, the National
Front in France, and radical Islamist assassins. But, though the temptation to
call such actors “fascist” is understandable, it should be resisted.
At its creation in the 1920s (first in Italy and then in Germany),
fascism was a violent reaction against a perceived excess of individualism.
Italy was scorned and Germany was defeated in World War I, Mussolini and Hitler
claimed, because democracy and individualism had sapped them of national unity
and will.
Read what the Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, Robert O. Paxton, said on Project
Syndicate - “Is Fascism Back?”
(Climate change is
bringing on many things, among them an inequality that is uncovering right-wing
Fascist-like politics that are about control and the erosion of human freedom;
a freedom that will be an essential ingredient of any sweeping society wide
changes needed if we are to avoid the worst of a disrupted climate system.
Maybe, a first glance, Professor Paxton’s views might appear irrelevant to
climate activists, but avoidance of the worst of climate change is going to
about governance and anything that remotely resembles Fascism simply sucks the
oxygen out of the societal processes that will be the keystone of humanity’s
confrontation with its greatest ever struggle – Robert McLean.)
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