On 23 Jan 2025, at 12:42, Michael Benson:
It's fascism. Sometimes a cigar really is a cigar.
đŻ
Weâve had nearly a decade of experience with educated, seemingly
cultured people indulging in this kind of scholastic quibbling and what
I call Arendtsplaining: âitâs not *really* âfascismâ because it
doesnât meet [X or Y criterion peculiar to 1930s Europe].â
Iâll never forget those golden moments when people â again,
educated, seemingly cultured people â argued that J6 wasnât *really*
a âcoupâ because it failed, or because the armed forces werenât
involved.
Note the centrality of negation in both arguments: they invoke some
notionally authoritative abstract model then fault reality for failing
to comply with it. In that respect, I see these kinds of digressions as
consistent with the *applied platonism* thatâs consumed so much of
leftism â a by-product of its retreat into the academy, imo.
This function of this kind of pedantry seems to be ritual: under the
guise of conceptual precision, its mainly serves to (a) prop up the
speakerâs sense of superiority, and (b) shift the focus from *what is
to be done* to *how should it to be named or defined*?
Liberal denialism runs very deep indeed, and thatâs how this
obscurantism is best understood.
Cheers,
Ted
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