Letter writer confused on definition of fascism
To assist April Gibson to understand some of her errors in thinking I feel it is important to point out that it is healthy to have disagreement and debate regarding political discord. It is not acceptable to accredit a political philosophy to a group of people based on race, religion, creed, sexual orientation, or gender. I say this because of Ms. Gibson’s offensive letter of March 9, “Not everyone to the right of Karl Marx is fascist”.
I question Gibson’s understanding of the definition of fascism and suspect she is confusing it with Nazism. According to Robert Paxton, professor emeritus, Columbia University, fascism is “a form of political practice distinctive to the 20th century that arouses popular enthusiasm by sophisticated propaganda techniques for an anti-liberal, anti-socialist, violently exclusionary, expansionist nationalist agenda.” Anti-Semitism is not one of the key characteristics of modern fascism.
When accusing someone of using both strawman arguments and red herrings in a single sentence but using phrases such as “systemic liberalism”, “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, and questionable references to “Moral Foundation Theory”, as rebuttals in her self-proclaimed superior argument, that argument tends to lose credibility.
But what was most profoundly offensive in her last letter of March 22, was trying to insinuate that Ms. Quast has some sort of a cognitive deficit and that is the reason she simply can not seem to grasp her reasoning and agree with her. Her meaning is crystal clear and utterly shameful and disgusting.
Sharon Jackson
Koksilah
