Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pantulis 265 days ago
Agreed, but being a conservative or right wing person does not equal being a fascist. We should be reserving those words to the people that really deserve them, otherwise the word loses the meaning.
2 comments

We as a society keep coming up with more and more esoteric definition of "fascist" just to avoid having one that fits modern day political actors. I feel like the word has far more meaning here, where it's used to describe a set of policy prescriptions than it is as only referring to a list of groups with all criteria for entry erased.
Personally it seems the other way round, more and more esoteric definition of X so you can label your opponent it and discount everything about them without having to debate. Hence why I had to ask if he actually is one.
Let's start with the simplest definition I could find, just to walk you through it.

> "(n) an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization."

Is this what DHH is advocating for? Absolutely. I'll skip past right wing because that part is obvious. Nationalistic in terms of "non-Londoners" being used interchangeably with immigrants, a person from Birmingham meets his "Native London" criteria, and using that criteria for social organization.

Pretty cut and dry for anyone using just the basic dictionary definition. Obviously, there's a version with more stipulations and exceptions you'd rather use but those can be safely filled under "overly esoteric".

[flagged]
And this is why these very serious words have lost their power. Racist, Sexist, Fascist.... When half the country is deemed to support "literal" Himler, or when Elon Musk, or Jews with family impacted by the Holocaust, are called Nahtzees, then these words have been diluted to mean nothing.

I hope people who so overused&misused these words are happy with what they achieved.

Congratulations you made these words lose all power. I would have preferred a world where these words still had serious meaning attached to them.

I agree the words are misused, it is the boy who cried wolf. Hence why I had to ask if DHH was X.
So who does he support that is fascist?