Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to It's funny, even you guys have to look up the definition of fascist.....n/t

That's because there IS NO definition of fascist.

That's because there IS NO definition of fascist.

Remember the story Richard Feynman used to tell? (As best I can recall it from memory) He asked his father what kind of bird he was looking at, and his father said "robin".

"But that doesn't tell you anything", and he recited the name for the bird in several other languages. "You don't know anything about the bird unless you know what it eats, where it spends the winter, what kind of nest it makes, how many eggs it lays, and on and on." All a dictionary can do is make sure we're all talking about the same bird. It doesn't tell you anything ABOUT the bird.

Dictionaries don't answer any questions. And don't trust people who are nit-pickers about looking things up in the dictionary.

But having said that, surely this must sound familiar...

A cult of “action for action’s sake,” where “thinking is a form of emasculation”; an intolerance of “analytical criticism,” where disagreement is condemned; a profound “fear of difference,” where leaders appeal against “intruders”; appeals to individual and social frustration and specifically a “frustrated middle class” suffering from “feelings of political humiliation and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups”; a nationalist identity set against internal and external enemies (an “obsession with a plot”); a feeling of humiliation by the “ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies”; a “popular elitism” where “every citizen belongs to the best people of the world” and underscored by contempt for the weak; and a celebration of aggressive (and often violent) masculinity.

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