Wrong use of "Fascism"

[Falconiano]

I'm worn off by this.
I keep hearing people around the internet (including a couple posts here too) using the word Fascism to describe any dictatorship.
Even in Company of Heroes 2, Russians call the Germans as Fascists.
I am completely pissed at this.

Fascism comes from "fasci", in Italian that means a bunch of rods tied up to an axe that Romans used as emblem of power back then.
That's why Mussolini used the symbol, and called his ideal "fascism".
So if there are no fasces and short bald guys with black shirts involved, it's not fascism.
Call it dictatorship or whatever you want, but fascism itself specifically died dozens of years ago with Mussolini hanging in the square.

Sorry to sound pedantic but I'm tired of hearing fascism as synonim of dictatorship.
It's like calling Nazism as Stalinism, it's irritating.

 

[Lillefix]

As far as I know Nazism was a kind of fascism. Do you disagree with this?

Nazism, or National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus, the first part pronounced as "Nazi"), is a variety of fascism that incorporates biological racism and antisemitism

 

[Borachio]

I expect you object to the wrong use of the word "mafia", too.

As in "there's no such thing as the Russian mafia", blah, blah, blah. "They're just gangsters," blah, blah, blah.

Spoiler :

Everyone knows that mafia is a kind of fibre used for weaving baskets and the like.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Washington, DC has fasces and bald guys in black.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Fascism comes from "fasci", in Italian that means a bunch of rods tied up to an axe that Romans used as emblem of power back then.
That's why Mussolini used the symbol, and called his ideal "fascism".
So if there are no fasces and short bald guys with black shirts involved, it's not fascism.
Call it dictatorship or whatever you want, but fascism itself specifically died dozens of years ago with Mussolini hanging in the square.

If that was the case I think no one would actually ever heard of fascism. It has certainly become well known for other features which are perhaps shared even by some modern day goverments. But thanks for pointing out the details.

 

[Cutlass]

The Russians may have used it wrong, but in terms of including it in the game, I'm fairly certain that the Russians did use it. So the error is not with the game, but with the people back in the day.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm worn off by this.
I keep hearing people around the internet (including a couple posts here too) using the word Fascism to describe any dictatorship.
Even in Company of Heroes 2, Russians call the Germans as Fascists.
I am completely pissed at this.

Why? Historically the Soviet Union referred to Nazi Germany (and pretty much anyone they didn't like) as 'Fascist'.
Although one can quibble over whether Nazism was strictly speaking fascist given how comfortable it was with the conservatives and its emphasis on pan-national aspirations, for common discussion Nazis Germany falls under the 'fascist' heading.

 

[Tahuti]

Fascism is far less racially oriented than NSism. Very strictly speaking, Fascism doesn't need to be racist (though it doesn't rule it out either), and Fascist xenophobia is usually limited to cultural and citizenship factors than descent, notwithstanding opportunistic implementations of racial discrimination to become friends with the Nazis.

However, during WWII, the Nazis were referred to as Fascists too; that's historical fact.

 

[Kyriakos]

Maybe some movements such as the (Croatian) Ustase are something in between fascist (WW2 Italian) and nazi? They did use symbols of both and have enough connections to both, particularly the WW2 Ustase.

 

[JollyRoger]

It is my understanding that you can throw a roll of tape in lieu of having fasces and short bald guys with black shirts.

 

[Angst]

Fascism is not inherently Italian, it's a specific governing form.

 

[Traitorfish]

To the extent that an academic consensus exists, the line as I understand is drawn somewhere between the untenably broad definition of popular usage and the unreasonably narrow definition advanced here by Falconiano.

On the one hand, far-right movements contemporary to or partially inspired by Italian fascism, such as the National Socialists or the Austrian "Christofascists", are not considered "fascists" because they have a different historical and intellectual background. Nazism, in particular, owes rather more more to a volkish than a fascist conception of nationhood.

On the other hand, the category cannot be limited simply to Italian Fascismo, but must be extended to heterodox and/or non-Italian movements which paralleled or derived from Italian fascism. Aside from anything else, the intellectual origins of fascism lie in France pre-1900 rather than in Italy post-1918, so to claim some uniquely Mussolonian origin is simply not plausible.

There are still grey areas- where the Ustase fascists who introduced racialism to their ideology, or racialists who adopted the appearance of fascism?- but constricting "Fascist" to the Italian party is no more helpful than restricting, say, "Liberal" to the British one.

 

[Snorrius]

I'm worn off by this.
Fascism comes from "fasci", in Italian that means a bunch of rods tied up to an axe that Romans used as emblem of power back then.
That's why Mussolini used the symbol, and called his ideal "fascism".
So if there are no fasces and short bald guys with black shirts involved, it's not fascism.
Call it dictatorship or whatever you want, but fascism itself specifically died dozens of years ago with Mussolini hanging in the square.

I feel your pain but this is something which can not be change much unfortunately. A lot of terms have a correct meaning and an additional profane meaning used by profanes. In an internet-community dominated by profanes one is bound to hear nonsense of such kind on regular basis. We, the enlightened ones, should be forgiving to those who were not so blessed by the ability to read books and enjoy original oeuvres and who have to rely solely on profane mass-media. We can not expect of them to really sit and read the "Doctrine of Fascism" by Benito Mussolini to form their own opinion instead of repeating someone other's.

Sorry to sound pedantic but I'm tired of hearing fascism as synonim of dictatorship.
It's like calling Nazism as Stalinism, it's irritating.

... but I do admit it is hellishly annoying.

 

[Kyriakos]

English native-speakers often have little time or ability to learn the correct etymology of foreign terms, so they replace it with their own (eg Tyrant, which just means one who rose to power in an illegal way, not one who is by definition cruel).

Iirc in Australia they even are too bored to keep using some English terms, and break them up to simpler English ones. For example an author is just called "a writer of books" (i guess in juxtaposition to a writer of airplanes) 1

 

[Falconiano]

I hate it because it's like calling all Asian people as Chinese.
Fascism is only what happened in Italy because no other country had FASCI.
You might say dictatorship, but fascism is wrong if referred to non-fascist regimes.

 

[Falconiano]

To the extent that an academic consensus exists, the line as I understand is drawn somewhere between the untenably broad definition of popular usage and the unreasonably narrow definition advanced here by Falconiano.

On the one hand, far-right movements contemporary to or partially inspired by Italian fascism, such as the National Socialists or the Austrian "Christofascists", are not considered "fascists" because they have a different historical and intellectual background. Nazism, in particular, owes rather more more to a volkish than a fascist conception of nationhood.

On the other hand, the category cannot be limited simply to Italian Fascismo, but must be extended to heterodox and/or non-Italian movements which paralleled or derived from Italian fascism. Aside from anything else, the intellectual origins of fascism lie in France pre-1900 rather than in Italy post-1918, so to claim some uniquely Mussolonian origin is simply not plausible.

There are still grey areas- where the Ustase fascists who introduced racialism to their ideology, or racialists who adopted the appearance of fascism?- but constricting "Fascist" to the Italian party is no more helpful than restricting, say, "Liberal" to the British one.

The ideology ITSELF is not unique of fascism - but Fascism is unique of the only nation who used Fasci as their symbol.
Saying Nazism is para-fascism is correct, but saying Nazism IS Fascism is incorrect.

It's like using the word "Marxism" to describe Communism in the Soviet Union.
While Communism in Soviet was inspired by Marxism (so they say), it is not real Marxism.
Then again, nowadays you hear people deem Obama communist -_- so no surprise there...

 

[Darkflight]

I hate it because it's like calling all Asian people as Chinese.
Fascism is only what happened in Italy because no other country had FASCI.
You might say dictatorship, but fascism is wrong if referred to non-fascist regimes.

Calling asian people chinese is quite obviously wrong. Calling certain dictatorships fascist is maybe not totally technically correct, but is far closer to correct.

To paraphrase (I'm not sure I am getting it totally correct) The Big Bang Theory:
Sheldon: More wrong?!? Wrong is an absolute state and is not subject to gradation.
Stuart: Of course it is. It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it's very wrong to say it's suspension bridge.

 

[JollyRoger]

It gets even more tricky when you are trying to distinguish between Groucho Marxism and Harpo Marxism. Mark's Cubanism does contain a German element though.

 

[Snorrius]

On the other hand, the category cannot be limited simply to Italian Fascismo, but must be extended to heterodox and/or non-Italian movements which paralleled or derived from Italian fascism. Aside from anything else, the intellectual origins of fascism lie in France pre-1900 rather than in Italy post-1918, so to claim some uniquely Mussolonian origin is simply not plausible.

That's right, though an average profane usually associate term "fascism" with Hitlerian Nazism or, in more general sense, with any kind of rulership labeled as such by mass media.

 

[Falconiano]

That's right, though an average profane usually associate term "fascism" with Hitlerian Nazism or, in more general sense, with any kind of rulership labeled as such by mass media.

That's the root of the problem: mass medias continue to misuse terms, generalize and stereotypize anything.
From religions to forms of government. So people who only inform themselves through medias (the majority, sadly) will have a distorted view on these things.
Meh. Just had to vent this somewhere.