WHEN IS IT RIGHT TO USE THE F WORD?

 

Political terms are used subjectively. When does the right become the alt right or the hard right or the far right – and when does it tip into the F word: fascism? Like Lewis Carroll’s character, Humpty Dumpty, often when we use a word it means just what we choose it to mean. As with left wingers being called communist when they are not, people on the right can be written off as fascist when they are not. But what exactly is fascism?

 

In a way we have been poorly served by the history lessons of the twentieth century because they make us think that fascists must look and act like Nazis before we can call them fascist. This is the theory of Rosan Smits, a Dutch journalist and political scientist in her book This Is Fascism: A Wake Up Call (Atlantic Books, 2026). Fascism takes many forms, and while the answer to the question what exactly is fascism? is that there is no exactly in it, there are shared characteristics in every fascist movement. Most significantly, it advances on the public like the tide on unsuspecting sunbathers. As Lord Lane, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales said:

 

Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn’t stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband – it creeps up insidiously…step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realises that it is gone.

 

The American political philosopher Jason Stanley identifies several devices in the tool box of the fascist; here are some of them:

 

A mythic past

 

The glorious future that lies ahead can only be obtained by going back to the future. A narrative is formed about a nation’s history; it doesn’t have to be true, or even half-true. It needs only rouse people to action now by invoking hurt pride and simmering anger.

 

Propaganda

 

‘The people’ are summoned as an entity and are defined by what they are not. Enemies are sought, both from elites and marginalised communities and ‘the people’ are given tacit permission to attack them both. Phrases are repeated time and again until they sound plausible, even though these phrases may have started out as ridiculous. As Hitler said:

 

All effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands.

 

Anti-intellectualism

 

Critical thinkers like journalists, academics and clergy are denounced as untrustworthy or unpatriotic. Expert opinion is derided. Language is depleted of its richness and syntax simplified to ensure nuanced thinking is reduced; the semi-colon is eradicated. Social media platforms like X / Twitter are the perfect vehicle for this.

 

The bully lie

 

Masha Gessen describes this as the brazen lie which puts subordinates to a loyalty test. They may know it is wrong, but fidelity to the leader compels them to agree with it: the special military operation; the stolen election; the climate change hoax. Hitler (again) said that people:

more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one…something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick.

 

Victimhood

 

‘The people’ are told of plots and conspiracies planned and carried out by ‘elites’ using ‘outsiders’ to undermine them and replace them. The Nazis convinced others of a Jewish plot for world domination. Today, the internet is stuffed full of conspiracy theory, where some of them, no matter how outlandish, find wings.

 

Hannah Arendt, writing in The Origins of Totalitarianism said that extremist politics of both the left and the right subdue people ‘for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false…no longer exist’.

 

To submit properly to extremist language we need to become bored, confused, distracted and apathetic, which is an apt description of the digital era.

 

There is nothing especially new about the lie. In Isaiah 5, the prophet laments:

 

Ah, you who call evil good and good evil,

 

who put darkness for light and light for darkness,

 

who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

 

The big lie, inverting the truth, has clearly been around the block, and it is an assault on Jesus Christ who called himself the truth. This is the framework within which we must address contemporary political developments.

 

It isn’t always easy to determine the truth. Life is rarely binary like computer code and accepting this is part of a nuanced resistance to extremism. But truth exists, and should be defended. It is objective: ‘the truth’, not subjective: ‘my truth’. Jesus said the truth will set us free, but to uphold it publicly asks us to open our own lives to its scrutiny first. As David Foster Wallace once said: ‘the truth will set you free, but not until it has finished with you’.