Playing ‘Pin the Tail on the Fascist’

James A. Montanye

President Joe Biden’s recent labeling of Republican political candidates as “semi-fascists” has
raised eyebrows and hackles, both in Washington and on the hustings. Maryland’s current
Republican governor and apparent presidential aspirant, Larry Hogan, amplified Biden’s
comment a few days later when commenting upon the “authoritarian” streak developing within
the Republican Party. Such is the new-normal in the game of politics.

Political commentator Johah Goldberg, in his comprehensive book Liberal Fascism: The Secret
History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday, 2007),
provides useful guidance for understanding the political game’s pragmatic foundations.

Goldberg begins by noting that “[t]here is no word in the English language that gets thrown
around more freely by people who don’t know what it means than ‘fascism.’ Indeed, the more
someone uses the word ‘fascist’ in everyday conversation, the less likely it is that he [or she]
knows what [they are] talking about. ... [P]ut simply, writes Gilbert Allardyce, ‘we have agreed
to use the word without agreeing on how to define it’” (pp. 2–3). Rational ignorance in politics is
nothing if not pragmatic.

“In short,” Goldberg explains, “‘fascist’ is a modern word for ‘heretic,’ branding an individual
worthy of excommunication from the body politic. The left uses other words [as well]—‘racist,’
‘sexist,’ ‘homophobe,’ ‘christianist’—for similar purposes, but these words have less elastic
meanings. Fascism, however, is the gift that keeps on giving. George Orwell noted this tendency
as early as 1946 in his famous essay ‘Politics and the English language’: ‘The word Fascism has
now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’” (p. 4).

“From the beginning,” says Goldberg, “fascism was dubbed as right-wing not because it
necessarily was right wing, but because the communist left thought this was the best way to
punish apostasy (and even if it was right-wing in some long forgotten doctrinal sense, fascism
was still right-wing socialism)” (p. 44).

In sum, the “major flaw” and intrinsic irony of tarring conservatives as fascists “is that fascism,
properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been,
of the left ... an inconvenient truth if ever was one” (p. 7).

Fascism’s meaning was defined a century ago by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He used
the term to represent a “totalitarian” (also his term) political system under which everything was
self-contained within the state, nothing was outside it, and nothing was permitted to be against it.
Mussolini’s utopian vision entailed a nanny state to which everybody belonged, and were
lovingly cared for. Fascism thus represented a spiritual union between citizens and their
government, a union that ostensibly was humane rather than tyrannical. In the end, however,
Mussolini’s vision was unsustainable, Italian citizens became disillusioned, and Il Duce was
removed from office after two decades.
Surprisingly, fascism began, in sad fact, not under Mussolini, but instead, as Goldberg
documents, under the progressive presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

Goldberg describes fascism comprehensively as “a religion of the state. It assumes the organic
unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is
totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is
justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our
health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or
through regulation and social pressure. ... Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and
therefore must be defined as the enemy” (p. 23).

Fascism, by these lights, is an inaccurate characterization of today’s conservative Republican

Party candidates who oppose in principle everything that President Biden and his progressive
Democratic Party represents.

Consider now whether conservative and libertarian Republicans exhibit a similar authoritarian
bent. Although their rival vision for creating Heaven on Earth by tweaking “the soul of the
Nation” is radically anti-progressive, their enthusiasm and blind faith often exhibits the fervor of
fundamentalist religions that use shibboleths (e.g., “stolen elections” and “right to life”) to
identify tribal membership within a clownish cult of personality.

Fundamentalism in theocratic and secular religions entails similar characteristics. The

psychotherapist Mortimer Ostrow, in Spirit, Mind, & Brain: A Psychoanalytic Examination of
Spirituality and Religion (Columbia, 2007), identifies these characteristics as “unusual zeal,
separatism, authoritarianism, religious stringency, intolerance of the deviations of others,
aggressiveness or defensiveness or both, an apocalyptic frame of mind, a belief in the inerrancy
of the scripture they value, intolerance of alternative translations and of modern commentaries,
intolerance of all sexual language and activity except for marital sex” (p. 174). This is an
inadvertently apt characterization of American politics today.

President Biden’s recent comment clearly is wrong on the facts, but is right in the context of his
secular religion’s spirit. Governor Hogan, by comparison, aptly chastises members of his own
religion for being authoritarian and overly zealous. Voters once again must choose between the
evil of two lessers.