ABSTRACT
Increasingly today it is fashionable on the left to bash globalisation, the United States and Israel. All three are easily pinned with the fascist label, while the term fascism loses its precise analytical value and the actual fascism of the 1920s and 1930s is diluted or forgotten. Here is a typical example from London’s New Statesman in 2001:
In John Pilger’s piece, fascism is a combination of neo-Nazi skinheads, the Haider phenomenon in Austria, the geopolitical ambition of the United States, capitalist globalisation and humanitarian intervention. In short, fascism loses any definitional core. In a tasteless comparison, Pilger adds that remembering the “other” fascisms is as important as remembering the Holocaust. There can be no doubt that the ENR similarly has attempted to muddy the waters in respect of its relationship to historical fascism or neo-fascism.
