Webster didn't get his dictionary from a discrete meeting with some cave spirit.
Though there is a problem of ambiguity if word is reused (adjusted) for different meaning, while books (and people) from 1940 still continue using the old meaning.
(just pointing out that meaning of words of dead people also matter)
Do you see why this is a dangerous path to go down?
Seeing it as a dangerous path implies some voluntarily action and that is not exactly the mechanism at hand.
If dehumanization occurs, and people then counter that phenomenon, new words and new meanings will appear naturally just like they always have. Old words will stop being employed. There will still be confusion for a while but it's never really a significant problem. Semantic differences are a symptom of fundamental disagreements rather than a cause.
Look at the word "alt-right" for instance: it filled a need, appeared quickly, was initially criticized as a euphemism but rapidly took on more specific and non-euphemistic meaning. For the younger generations, calling anyone left-wing a communist in the way you describe is already hilariously passé and associated with boomers.
Consider how the meaning of epicurean has evolved due to Christian influence over time. Now matter how much education people get on the topic of the original philosophy, it will not be sufficient to erase the alternative meaning of the word.
It's certainly not the same as with Fascism and I would probably agree with the OP in this thread that the main is reason is that while people have seen plenty of movies about Hitler et al, the same can't be said for Mussolini. The Italian origins of the word seemed to have been lost largely due to historical ignorance..
The difference here is that this is not something that an intervention can fix, unless it could somehow compete with decades of cultural interactions and signifiers from billions of people. It's not a case of containing anything: that's essentially an anthropomorphization similar to seeing evolution as having intent. That is why the idea of wanting to educate people in the hopes of enforcing "correct" wording is fundamentally flawed because it has almost nothing to do with how words actually change or stay the same.
The prescriptive/descriptive discussion doesn't mean much to me (although DFW has a great essay on it if you are so inclined). I just wanted to throw my 2c in with the guy being downvoted, because I think he's right. I think the extent of Average Joe's historical knowledge is basically whatever Hollywood has made movies about. AverageJoe thinks that the Nazis are Nazis, and Fascism is a more generic term which contains the Nazis and other 'far right' groups.. and who knows, maybe _it is that_ now, but lets be honest how we got here - that nearly everybody, even the most vocal 'anti-facists' are historical ignoramuses. They think that by merely existing they have the necessary information to assert their opinions on historical/political movements. It's a joke
I would say it's pretty clear that you're the one with the poor understanding of fascism.
Apparently historical facts are downvoted now?
>99.9% of the people throwing around the word fascist today have little to no understanding of what that political ideology means.
The author explains in the first line of the article, that he was a member of the fascist youth wing. Do you really think he doesn't know what it is? If you think he doesn't, I'd certainly be interested in hearing why.
>I’m relying on the definition from dictionaries and historians
The author is a historian.
>Considering that the label of fascism is usually being used with reference the the Nazis (ironically almost never to the actual Italian fascists themselves - a symptom of the historical ignorance I mentioned), I’m gonna say yes, the word has a specific meaning.
The author is Italian, so again it seems strange to accuse him of conflating Nazism with Italian fascism. Especially because the article compares the two in detail.
I merely said it was ironic that people calling others fascists don’t usually refer to the group who invented the concept.
He didn't call you a Nazi. What he said was: you're alleging the misuse of a term, but you're doing so while being very vague and giving brief, angry replies to comments all over the place, and this... pattern... is characteristic of bad-faith and/or extremist commenters on threads about anything posted almost anywhere.
If you have some information you want to talk about in detail, I suggest you do so; it is much nicer to carry out discussions when we don't have to guess what the point is.
Why that is controversial, I have absolutely no idea.
I generally agree, which is why I tend to have a very high bar for calling someone a Nazi.
However, "fascist" is a rung below that. I have generally taken the definition to mean "ideologically selective disrespect for [democracy/rule of law/both] motivated by both a claim of victimhood and a belief in the superiority of [some ethnic/cultural heritage], where particularly the claim of victimhood involves some kind of secret manipulation on the part of [political activists/foreigners/minorities]".
It is unfortunate that a major political party in my country has come so close to satisfying this definition ever since the Ukraine affair (confirmed extensively by John Bolton in his recent book), which I spent some time studying/developing around 2016 mostly to ensure that I would be intellectually consistent in determining whether there were actually fascists in the US government. It has never been with eagerness that I called anyone a fascist.
What kind of argument is this, exactly? Nazis were Fascists in an objective, demonstrable way. That's not something that's up for debate, and it is extremely suspicious for anyone to attempt to correct the record on this.
It's like people who are "skeptical" of the holocaust. That's not skepticism, it's antisemitism, because the Holocaust isn't up for debate. There are millions of pieces of evidence that it occurred to the degree we understand it to have occurred, just as there are millions of pieces of evidence that the Nazi party was fascist.
Italians may have "invented" fascism (mostly just coined the term), but they were not historically unique, and they certainly aren't the only fascist movement ever to have occurred.
The arguments you make sound like the kind of cryptofascist politics that come out of white nationalist groups that aim to normalize modern day right-wing extremism. If you don't want to get grouped together with those people, consider not talking exactly like they do about far-right nationalism and authoritarianism
Thank you for reminding me to never, ever discuss politics on this website. No one even reads what you wrote and instead projects their own inane political universe onto you. No thanks.
> the list gets wielded in a way to stick the 'fascist' label on someone, and not much else.
rather than throwing shade on Eco's specific usage.
For what it's worth I agree with the sentiment that most people using the word "fascist" couldn't give you an accurate definition of the original meaning of the term. You could argue that there's a new word "fascist*" that means "authoritarian and mean", but when making specific historical reference to the original term "fascist" it's sometimes important to strictly use the original definition (inasmuch as there was a strict original definition; part of Eco's thesis I think is that Fascism has always been somewhat amorphous).
For example if you're comparing and contrasting the rise of the Nazi party in Germany to modern Trumpism, or making a claim about historical communist systems of governments leading to tyranny, then you need readers to interpret you as using "fascist" or "communist" (no *). If you're trying to get your tribe riled up on cable news then you are probably using "fascist*" or "communist*".
I think it's OK to rail against people mis-using "fascist*", but I think it's about as futile as complaining about people mis-using the words "literally" or "comprised of".
fas· cism | \ ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm also ˈfa-ˌsi- \
Definition of fascism
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
Does the definition of the 99.9% not fit in with that?
As a glib riposte to your last statement: Truth may not be a matter of upvotes, but language definitely is.
As I said in another comment, it’s become a byword for “person with right wing opinions that I disagree with.”
If 99.9% of people disagree with you on the meaning of a word, you are wrong. You are the one incapable of communicating your ideas in a way that others can understand.
The opponents of Hitler in Germany during the rise of the Nazi party called Hitler and his party "Fascist". The namesake of Antifa, "Antifaschistische Aktion", was founded in Germany in 1932. To insist that Nazis were not fascists isn't commitment to linguistic accuracy, it's Nazi Apologetics and historical revisionism.
On the other hand, I do think an unsettling number of Americans would be totally fine ruling by authority and force, as long as the person in charge was from their own political party. So as far as that goes the label is appropriate.
The exact same situation happens with the word communist, excerpt with the roles reversed. Both are symptoms of falling educational levels, lack of historical knowledge, and an increasing drive to dehumanize and polarize the opposition.