Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism: An exegesis
While I establish early in the essay that this is an attempt at a "scholarly" discussion of fascism, I should however clarify that I am in fact merely a journalist, not a scholar, nor do I pretend to be one. The following essay is more in the way of a journalistic survey of the academic literature regarding fascism, and an attempt at a kind of lay analysis of the literature's contents as it relates to the current political context. However, none of the ideas regarding the core of fascism, nor its many accompanying traits, are my own. "Rush" is mostly drawn from a body of scholarly work on fascism that's broadly accepted as the important texts on the subject, and I'll urge anyone interested in examining the matter seriously to read them. There's a bibliography at the end.
The core of my interest in fascism is closely connected to my work in trying to understand the motivations of right-wing extremists, because my experience was that in most regards many of these folks were seemingly ordinary people. And I was furthermore intrigued by the historical phenomenon of the Holocaust, particularly the problem of how a nation full ordinary people could allow such a monstrosity to happen. I'm interested in fascism as a real-world phenomenon and not an abstract and distant concept.
As such, I'm hoping this essay if nothing else helps advance a wider understanding of fascism in the general public, because I've come to understand that this awareness is essential if we are to combat it.
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