Late Night: If You Don’t Like That “F Word,” I Have Another One for You

A person naming himself “Mark W. Hendrickson, Ph. D” — Ph. D. mind you, so you know he’s a clever fellow — has made an Astonishing Discovery in the pages of  the American Thinker (whose logo is Uncle Sam taking a crap, for inexplicable reasons). Namely, even though liberals like to call conservatives “fascists,” the real “fascists” are in fact… liberals! Who knew! Also he makes a clever play on words. Read this carefully, it is very ingenious:

Its use is shunned in polite company. It coarsens political discourse. Its introduction into conversation raises hackles and stirs emotions. It carries so much connotative baggage that its denotative significance is often totally eclipsed. It is a verbal bomb-thrower’s delight: a virtual slap in the face, a dismissive epithet, the ultimate insult, shorthand for “You’re a bad person and beneath contempt.” I refer, of course, to the political F-word: “fascist.”

Ha ha ha. It’s funny because you thought he was about to say “fuck.” How amusing.

Bleah. This shtick was, of course, h0ary & ancient even when Jonah Goldberg was farting it out two years ago (has it been that long? How time flies when you’re paying attention to idiots who think they have an Original Thesis). In the Wingnut Komedy Klub no doubt they’re still yukking it up over jokes about airline food. Or perhaps 8-Tracks. And definitely stuff like Women Drivers, golf, and the effeminacy of homosexual men. Hi-lair-ee-us. (The “F-Word” thing alone is by now so tedious as to be a species of powerful barbiturate in its own right.)

This is not to say that Hendrickson doesn’t introduce some novelties, which sort of makes him like a Rapping Weatherman, or something, though without the, uh, novelty value.

In high school, we learned that “fascism” was a “right-wing” ideology. Then I had an epiphany at Oxford University in 1974. A Conservative Member of Parliament, Enoch Powell, was scheduled to give a speech. I was just beginning to grow out of my youthful flirtation with socialism, so I was curious to hear this man’s unfamiliar defense of free markets.

Regrettably, due to a conflict, I wasn’t able to attend, so instead I eagerly awaited the arrival of the morning paper to read about Powell’s speech. When the paper came, I read that Powell had been prevented from giving his speech by students who drowned out his voice with shouts of “fascist, fascist!” until he finally gave up and departed.

The proverbial light bulb lit up in my head.  The real fascists in this drama were the leftists/socialists who censored free speech. That’s when I came to understand that fascism, with all its bullying and suppression of individual liberties, was a left-wing phenomenon.

Ah, the “proverbial light bulb.” Now, that’s good writing, because Hendrickson thinks outside the box and eschews cliches, showing instead of telling and letting the chips fall where they may on the place where the cookie crumbles. But you have to love the bit about Enoch Powell, who, while not a fascist or even a “fascist” (he was an odd duck, surely) most certainly did roundly deserve to have people yell at him at various points in his career. (See “Blood, Rivers of.”)

The part where he says climate change scientists are worse than Hitler is pretty tired, though, as is this remark: “I have reservations, though, about invoking the inflammatory political F-word. Due to its repeated misuse over the decades, classifying policies as “fascist” today is likely to be interpreted as petty name-calling (as opposed to serious, objective criticism). Let us, then, give the term “fascism” a decent burial and leave it in the past.” The “fascism is overused but it’s really liberals who are fascists no backsies nyah” stuff is just crusty dusty and played, very Milli Vanilli, you know?

Overall, I give Hendrickson an “F.” For “Fuckhead.”