Wednesday, September 25, 2019
How to Spot a Fascist
(In no particular order.)
1. Matching outfits. Usually dark in color.
2. Roaming in hordes throughout the streets.
3. Carrying placards and signs with super-simple slogans.
4. Loud and noisy. Disturbing the peace. Shouting simplistic chants.
5. Destruction of public and private property: usually including burning, smashing windows, overturning vehicles and, occasionally, looting.
6. Verbal and physical attacks on bystanders, dissenters and government officials and authority in general.
7. Verbal and physical attacks on, along with a general overt show of contempt for, peace officers. Also, the military.
8. Physical suppression of dissenters. Shouting down, in-your-face verbal attacks as well as physical assaults on any who show disagreement.
9. Demand for government censorship of differing opinions. Call for emotional, financial, societal and employment restriction and suppression of dissenters. Also, rejection of traditional morals and institutions.
11. Call for boycott of dissenters businesses, restricting them from certain businesses, regulating them out of business, ostracizing them from society, from employment and from being allowed to live in certain areas. Also, going to their homes and businesses and harassing dissenters. Threatening dissenters' employers, employees, customers, financiers and any who do business with them. Use government agencies to make operating a business excruciatingly difficult or keeping finding employment virtually impossible for dissenters.
12. Controlling education and stifling any dissenter, employee or student, who dares to offer a conflicting or opposing opinion. Expulsion, fines, emotional and physical abuse are acceptable weapons to quell dissent.
13. Demand centralized government control of education and health care. Call for government sponsored, "no charge," education and medical care. Oppressively regulate a fine and/or jail those who seek education or health care from private institutions.
14. Demand government forgiveness of debt. Education, medical or otherwise.
15. Be exclusionary of various ethnic backgrounds. Homogeny, if not total, must be nearly so. Feign ethnic openness, but de facto suppress it.
These tools, along with others, were used by the Italian Fascist and German Nazi parties in 1930's Europe.
What groups do we know today who use these tactics?
