You're probably a fascist
Or so I hear. Or at least soon to be.
That seems to be the idea behind what I see on here in leftist spaces quite often: "Thinking A can't be X is fascist thought." "Fascist" can be replaced with other groups like TERFs or SWERFs. Basic gist is that if you have a single wrong sort of thought, it's a slippery slope into fascism.
And we've all had those thoughts.
But the more I hear it, the more it starts to sound like a thought terminating cliche, ie. a repeated phrase in a community that indicates you're doing a wrongthink, so stop. It also has a kind of echo of choice feminism, which is when everything a woman does is feminist if she does it with #PoliticalConsciousness and questioning any of those choices makes you an anti-feminist.
And no, this is not about microlabels or neopronouns. I know someone over there thought that. But it does come up with identity labels a lot. Anyone can identify as anything and if your thought don't range from neutral to positive, you're having a fascist thought and need a self-criticism session. Your feeling bad.
(I'm not quite sure if this applies also to when one is forcefully and unwillingly included under an umbrella but maybe that's another tale to be told.)
You can see why this is a difficult thing to talk about because what I just said could just as well be part of something rather horrible. And the reason I'm not referring to any specific cases where this has happened is that I haven't really had an issue with any. My problem is with the argument itself.
Sometimes I think people go for the "that's fascistthought" argument because they actually don't know how to argue their point. They got big feelings and know they want to say something but they can only respond with "Stop that" and in come the thought terminating cliches.
And it is a tempting idea! This is the basic rule that we can live by. This is The One Rule. We figured it out, you guys. No conversation needed, everything else is wrongthink. It's the others who need to self-reflect, not me.
And yeah, truth is you can't prevent someone from using this or that term. There's no term/identity/label police and you can't actually be one. But does it mean you're becoming a fascist because you feel a bit hinky about that? Probably not. But do you have to take it when someone says you don't belong or can't use a term? No.
See, there's this thing called "conversing in good faith". Yeah, I know we don't do it anymore (if we ever did). The other people are just too Impure for that, aren't they?
germansingergirl
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
andulkaphoto
