Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the United States a “fascist” country at a recent event — a rally for a man, socialist senator Bernie Sanders, who vows to prosecute citizens who’ve committed no crime. The irony was lost on many, notably Ocasio-Cortez herself, who also advocates government control over most every facet of Americans’ lives.
Though the avowedly socialist Democrat representative from New York has said in the past that she doesn’t use the term “fascist” lightly, many would point out that she uses it incorrectly. For example, a guest hosting on Tucker Carlson Tonight’s Thursday edition, commentator Mark Steyn asked, “Do you think AOC actually knows what fascism is?”
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To this, his guest, John Daniel Davidson of the Federalist, answered, to put it in my own words, that the congresswoman has an inverted conception of fascism. To her it’s simply a “scare word,” he said, that means “the government, the Democratic Party, doesn’t have control over health care, education, major industries; the Green New Deal is never going to happen. That’s all it means; it doesn’t have anything to do with actual fascism” (video below).
Unfortunately, though, Ocasio-Cortez isn’t alone in hurling pejoratives in ignorance. In fact, her recent comments — made at a Monday Bernie Sanders rally in Venice, California — were in response to a heckler who insisted our nation was fascist. (Pro tip: It’s probably not a good idea to take your lead from the loudest, most unhinged audience member in attendance.)
But with the way terms such as “Nazi,” “fundamentalist,” “white supremacist,” “misogynist,” “fascist,” and so many others are tossed around today, those disgorging them should instead just hiss, “You’re doubleplusungood!” That would at least accurately relate the accuser’s emotions and spirit.
As for “fascism,” however, what does it really mean? And who in our time exhibits it or something akin to it?
Some may wonder if vowing to prosecute oil company executives for engaging in lawful commerce — violating the Constitution’s prohibition against ex post facto laws — as presidential contender Senator Sanders (D-Vt.) has done (tweet below), smacks of fascism.
Here’s a prediction: we are going to win, pass a Green New Deal, and criminally prosecute the fossil fuel executives who destroyed the planet. https://t.co/FjKCHcUHuk
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 19, 2019
Whatever the case, let’s actually examine the term.
Born in Italy, fascism’s name likely derives from the fasces (Latin), which refers to a bundle of rods with a projecting axe blade that was carried before a Roman magistrate as a symbol of power.
As to the ideology’s definition, we only have to look to a man who worshipped power and was perhaps fascism’s main founder: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). “Everything for the State, nothing outside the State, nothing above the State” epitomized it, he said.
Now, what group most closely reflects this dictum today?
Like Ocasio-Cortez, Mussolini also had been a socialist. In fact, he was actually the editor-in-chief of the Italian Socialist Party’s newspaper, “Avanti!” (which means “Forward!” — one of Barack Obama’s slogans).
Mussolini didn’t appear to have left socialism, either; rather, it left him. He was rejected by the party for advocating Italian involvement in WWI. It was then that he made a lateral move to fascism.
Also like Ocasio-Cortez was Italian politician and self-styled “philosopher of fascism” Giovanni Gentile. Reminiscent of someone condemning fascism but then advocating all encompassing state power, he also indulged doublespeak, though likely with more self-awareness and sophistication than does the ex-bartender. “The maximum of liberty coincides with the maximum of state force,” is one of his infamous lines.
None of this means Ocasio-Cortez a classic fascist, however. Contrary to myth, authentic fascism actually spurned racial agendas (note: Nazism appears a very different ideology altogether). Mussolini himself insisted, “National unity has no need of the delirium of race” and stated in a 1930s interview that nothing could convince him in these modern times that pure races even still exist.
In contrast, Ocasio-Cortez and her crew trade on identity politics continually. Banging the white boogeyman as they play divide and conquer is their bag.
Returning to similarities, Ocasio-Cortez does exhibit an authentic fascist’s hatred of America. Aside from incorrectly claiming that our nation is fascist, she also on Saturday said that we’re “not an advanced society,” and has in the past implied that America is just “10 percent better than garbage.” (Irony: It’s in Democrat-run cities that leftist policies are causing actual garbage to pile up.)
All this said, one reason we argue about isms’ meanings is that their application isn’t the best way of labeling destructive beliefs. There’s a more fundamental term: evil.
Evil existed long before Mussolini & Co. conjured up fascism, long before Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto or Robert Owen birthed his ill-fated early 19th-century socialist commune. It exists everywhere betwixt the Garden and Heaven, and perhaps we’d be more likely to see it if we weren’t busy fobbing off old mistakes as fashionable isms.
Photo of Sen. Bernie Sanders with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: AP Images
