The exact same situation happens with the word communist, excerpt with the roles reversed. Both are symptoms of falling educational levels, lack of historical knowledge, and an increasing drive to dehumanize and polarize the opposition.
Webster didn't get his dictionary from a discrete meeting with some cave spirit.
I would say it's pretty clear that you're the one with the poor understanding of fascism.
Apparently historical facts are downvoted now?
Though there is a problem of ambiguity if word is reused (adjusted) for different meaning, while books (and people) from 1940 still continue using the old meaning.
(just pointing out that meaning of words of dead people also matter)
Do you see why this is a dangerous path to go down?
Seeing it as a dangerous path implies some voluntarily action and that is not exactly the mechanism at hand.
If dehumanization occurs, and people then counter that phenomenon, new words and new meanings will appear naturally just like they always have. Old words will stop being employed. There will still be confusion for a while but it's never really a significant problem. Semantic differences are a symptom of fundamental disagreements rather than a cause.
Look at the word "alt-right" for instance: it filled a need, appeared quickly, was initially criticized as a euphemism but rapidly took on more specific and non-euphemistic meaning. For the younger generations, calling anyone left-wing a communist in the way you describe is already hilariously passé and associated with boomers.
Consider how the meaning of epicurean has evolved due to Christian influence over time. Now matter how much education people get on the topic of the original philosophy, it will not be sufficient to erase the alternative meaning of the word.
It's certainly not the same as with Fascism and I would probably agree with the OP in this thread that the main is reason is that while people have seen plenty of movies about Hitler et al, the same can't be said for Mussolini. The Italian origins of the word seemed to have been lost largely due to historical ignorance..
The difference here is that this is not something that an intervention can fix, unless it could somehow compete with decades of cultural interactions and signifiers from billions of people. It's not a case of containing anything: that's essentially an anthropomorphization similar to seeing evolution as having intent. That is why the idea of wanting to educate people in the hopes of enforcing "correct" wording is fundamentally flawed because it has almost nothing to do with how words actually change or stay the same.
The prescriptive/descriptive discussion doesn't mean much to me (although DFW has a great essay on it if you are so inclined). I just wanted to throw my 2c in with the guy being downvoted, because I think he's right. I think the extent of Average Joe's historical knowledge is basically whatever Hollywood has made movies about. AverageJoe thinks that the Nazis are Nazis, and Fascism is a more generic term which contains the Nazis and other 'far right' groups.. and who knows, maybe _it is that_ now, but lets be honest how we got here - that nearly everybody, even the most vocal 'anti-facists' are historical ignoramuses. They think that by merely existing they have the necessary information to assert their opinions on historical/political movements. It's a joke
>99.9% of the people throwing around the word fascist today have little to no understanding of what that political ideology means.
The author explains in the first line of the article, that he was a member of the fascist youth wing. Do you really think he doesn't know what it is? If you think he doesn't, I'd certainly be interested in hearing why.
>I’m relying on the definition from dictionaries and historians
The author is a historian.
>Considering that the label of fascism is usually being used with reference the the Nazis (ironically almost never to the actual Italian fascists themselves - a symptom of the historical ignorance I mentioned), I’m gonna say yes, the word has a specific meaning.
The author is Italian, so again it seems strange to accuse him of conflating Nazism with Italian fascism. Especially because the article compares the two in detail.
> the list gets wielded in a way to stick the 'fascist' label on someone, and not much else.
rather than throwing shade on Eco's specific usage.
For what it's worth I agree with the sentiment that most people using the word "fascist" couldn't give you an accurate definition of the original meaning of the term. You could argue that there's a new word "fascist*" that means "authoritarian and mean", but when making specific historical reference to the original term "fascist" it's sometimes important to strictly use the original definition (inasmuch as there was a strict original definition; part of Eco's thesis I think is that Fascism has always been somewhat amorphous).
For example if you're comparing and contrasting the rise of the Nazi party in Germany to modern Trumpism, or making a claim about historical communist systems of governments leading to tyranny, then you need readers to interpret you as using "fascist" or "communist" (no *). If you're trying to get your tribe riled up on cable news then you are probably using "fascist*" or "communist*".
I think it's OK to rail against people mis-using "fascist*", but I think it's about as futile as complaining about people mis-using the words "literally" or "comprised of".
On the other hand, I do think an unsettling number of Americans would be totally fine ruling by authority and force, as long as the person in charge was from their own political party. So as far as that goes the label is appropriate.