America: You're starting to scare me.

My old friend twitter brought to my attention the How To Take Back America Conference held this past weekend in the old U.S. of A.

One of the speakers at this conference was Kitty Werthmann, author of Freedom to Dictatorship in 5 Years. Kitty, an Austrian-born survivor of the Third Reich, has believed that Democrats are some sort of communo-fascist hybrid for some time. This time, however, she gave a talk to a packed house on "How To Recognize Living Under Nazis & Communists."

Now, it's no secret that I'm not particularly sympathetic to the tenets of early 21st century American Republicanism, especially the really, really right-wing stuff.

Even so... whoa guys (& girls trying to cope with those pesky feminist attacks on marriage and motherhood). Seriously?

The vitriol being spewed by some of the more... enthusiastic elements of what used to be the right wing fringe are starting to frighten. They're rabid, illogical, and open about their professed right to violence as a possible tool in the fight to take America back from... the communists? the fascists? the feminists? the atheists? (I'm genuinely not sure here - I usually lose the thread of the argument somewhere around the references to the middle part of the second amendment).

I've decided that the best way for me to help America dial back the scary rhetoric and go back to good old fashioned partisan mudslinging is to lend some clarity to some of the terms that most readily apply to the ideas that Mrs. Werthmann and the other folks at the Eagle Forum are so keen to toss out into the body politic. I'm thinking that if we get some clarity around what all these dirty words mean, perhaps we can go back to insulting each other the way nature intended: like we're all 5 years old.


Without further ado then...
Marxism: They hate capitalism, the state, laissez-faire economics, corporations, alienation, exploitation, the bourgeosie and stating their philosophy in a way that would be easy for proletariats (or Joe Plumbers or whatever) to understand. It has also been rumoured that they hate industrialization, but this is difficult to prove because, as previously noted they hate making their philosophy easy to understand. Dudes with crazy beards are good as are labour unions, solidarity, and political plurality. So is class warfare, as long as the proletariat wins.

Calling someone a Marxist is kind of like calling someone an anarcho-syndicalist. It's not naughty if you're correct, because they likely ascribe to intellectually complex ideologies that are probably dangerous to the standard of life that you love and either currently enjoy or aspire to, and they're probably pretty proud of that (pysche! insult turns into a compliment!). If you're wrong though, it's more stupid than naughty. People who aren't Marxists aren't Marxists, and the ones who are get mad when you try and give bourgeosie jerks the distinction of having attained such socio-political enlightenment without them having earned it. Besides, no one really understands what you mean.

Also, Marxist ≠ Communist (or communist!)

Communism: Communists hate private property, people who say they're socialist but really aren't, Marxists who disagree with them, corporations and the bourgeosie. Soviet communists (which are a bit different than just regular communists) also hate Americans and thinking for themselves. Communists (in theory, at least - tbe Soviet communists are again a bit different) like egalitarianism, stateless societies, common ownership of everything, revolutions and big government.

It is widely held that Soviet communists proved that communism is an inoperable ideology - this hypothesis has not been tested widely though.

In America, calling someone a communist! is a fantastic insult. Americans have a proud history of labelling all kinds of dissenters as communists!, regardless of whether or not they have anything to do with Stalinism, Soviets, or even communes. Even school children know that communists! are bad. As a matter of fact, being called a communist! in America has almost nothing to do with communism. So keep at 'er, folks. As long as you mean 'communist!' in the uniquely American homage-to-McCarthyism kind of way and not in the 'someone who subscribes to a communist ideology' way that much of the rest of the world understands it. Because if you mean that second thing, you're being silly again.

Fascism: They hate communists, capitalists, class warfare, political systems with more than one party, and agreeing on universal ideological tenets. Money's good though. So are dictators, differentiated socio-cultural identities based on a common mythology, and successful corporate enterprises that get along with the dictator and makes lots of money.

While lots of people think it's very naughty to call someone a fascist, it isn't, really, because no one actually knows what fascism is. Least of all actual fascists.

Nazism: They hate communists, capitalists, class warfare, political systems without armbands, peace, Europe, America, and lots of religious minorities, stateless peoples, sexual minorities and persons with disabilities. They like secret police, armbands, war machines, and big government public affairs bureaus.They also generally enjoy building large mechanized systems with which to put an end to that which they dislike.

It's very naughty to call someone a Nazi. Seriously. I wouldn't do it if I were you.


And, our two bonus definitions

Godwin's Law: (updated to the parlance of our times) "As a threaded online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." In other words, the more you talk about something that is increasingly tangential to the actual issue, the more likely you are to call your opponent a Nazi. You may or may not be right in this assertion, but the magnetic draw of probability will certainly impair your judgment on this front.

If you fulfill Godwin's law during the course of a discussion, it is extremely likely that you have made yourself and your argument look silly.

Reductio ad Hiterlum: Wikipedia isn't super-helpful here as the article seems to have been written by some sort of pedantic debator who thinks that logical fallacies are self-explanatory.
The basic gist is that this is an extension of Godwin's law: while some Nazi/Hitler comparisons are valid, most follow the principle of reductio ad Hitlerum, which holds that most references to Hitler abandon both logic and reality in order to make an emotionally-charged and argument-ending point that offers a conclusion totally devoid of context, usually via drawing a ridiculous parallel between their opponent and Nazis.
It goes something like this: Hitler wore pants. Because Hitler is bad, pants are also bad. Anyone who wears pants is a Nazi (and Nazis are, of course, bad).

If you utilize the reductio ad Hiterlum model of reasoning, you have definitely made yourself and your argument look silly to everyone except the people who agreed with you before you started talking. Also, you should probably stop wearing pants.

According to The Economist, Godwin's law and the principle of reductio ad Hiterlerum can be taken together to give us the following rule:
"in most discussions... the first person to call the other a Nazi automatically loses the argument"

You lose, Kitty Werthmann.


Poopyhead.