Are Fascists and other haters of freedom really growing in numbers, or is the Internet a particularly rich stomping ground for them? Either way, they revolt me.
It would be great if you were correct. However, with the world in ecconomic recession, now is the very time when they may be able to gather additional support.
And not only in recession. I agree with Melanie Philips that the political impotence and incoherence of Labour is giving the BNP one hell of a chance. Nick Griffin is the smartest party leader in the UK (not that it takes much to be), has spotted a market opportunity, and has been exploiting it with impressive skill. The market gap is for a small-c conservative party with no PC nonsense and which makes the white working class welcome. Time and time again, in blogs such as Melanie's and the like, I find people asking: "if not the BNP, then who shall I vote for?" The huddling of all the main parties in a very small area of the PC centre-left is the same phenomenon that has allowed the hard right to make enormous gains in Belgium and Austria, and but for the electoral system, we would be seeing BNP members in Parliament even now. In the recent London assembly elections, they got one member, which means that they must have got hundreds of thousands of votes. They have some forty councilmen across England and are becoming a genuine
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The latter is most certainly true, since the Internet is a particularly rich stomping ground for pretty much any fringe movement, whether repulsive or admirable (or, most commonly, innocuous). I don't think an online network of loonies has much of a tendency to grow, exactly, but the sense of community probably does empower them in the sense of confirming their beliefs and making it less likely they'll drift away.
So I don't know any way to tell if the former is true or not, based simply on Internet impressions. Personally, I tend to think that anti-freedom movements are expanding, though fascism in the narrow sense is way down towards the bottom of things to worry about. ("Fascism" has no meaningful broad sense in English, as George Orwell pointed out back in 1946.)
You will pardon me for pointing out that you do not have to lecture an Italian historian on the meaning or meanings of Fascism. When I spoke of Fascists, I meant exactly that: followers and admirers of Mussolini, enemies of freedom, nationalist-activist-Nietzschean will-worshippers. Go thou unto Damian Thompson's blog and thou wilt find them - especially, to my disgust, an Italian who signs himself Mundabor.
I didn't think I was lecturing, just drawing a distinction which is too seldom made in everyday discourse. I wouldn't have bothered in a note to you, but I've always thought blog comments are directed to a public audience at least as much as to the blog owner.
I am perfectly aware of the existence of real no-kidding fascists and, though I haven't looked for them on the Internet, I'd be amazed if there weren't spots where they congregate. I don't know enough about Damian Thompson to be able to tell how surprised I should be if his blog comments are one of them.
He is a conservative Catholic and a homosexual, two things that ought to discourage out-and-out Fascists. However, some Fascists live under the delusion that Fascism and Christianity can be reconciled.
Are Fascists and other haters of freedom really growing in numbers ...
Yes, because the dying-out of the Greatest Generation and the successful conversion of "fascist" from a specific ideology to a general swear-word means that only historians remember who they actually were and what they believed.
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So I don't know any way to tell if the former is true or not, based simply on Internet impressions. Personally, I tend to think that anti-freedom movements are expanding, though fascism in the narrow sense is way down towards the bottom of things to worry about. ("Fascism" has no meaningful broad sense in English, as George Orwell pointed out back in 1946.)
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I am perfectly aware of the existence of real no-kidding fascists and, though I haven't looked for them on the Internet, I'd be amazed if there weren't spots where they congregate. I don't know enough about Damian Thompson to be able to tell how surprised I should be if his blog comments are one of them.
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Yes, because the dying-out of the Greatest Generation and the successful conversion of "fascist" from a specific ideology to a general swear-word means that only historians remember who they actually were and what they believed.
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