CHOOSE YOUR WORDS carefully, or so the mantra goes. But not all words are carved out evenly. Some have more weight, greater gravity and demand a higher level of seriousness before being unsheathed.
When writing about or discussing such heady topics as migrant rights, xenophobia and racism in Ireland over the years, I’ve only occasionally used words like “fascism” and “Nazi”. There were a couple of reasons for this. Principally, I didn’t want to dilute the singular evil of 20th century European fascism. The crimes committed under these regimes were so grave that to evoke them in a contemporary context shouldn’t be done flippantly. A high bar must be cleared.
There was another reason: I worried about being accused of hysteria. Those who reach for the political F-word are often charged with doing so cynically for no other reason than to bring the conception of evil to the mind’s eye and elicit an emotional reaction. It’s a cop out, their opponents say – a signal they’ve lost the argument.
It’s obvious to me now that these fears were a folly. The sad, scary, deplorable escalation in anti-migrant actions in Ireland over the last few years – and recent months, in particular – comfortably reaches the threshold for what can be considered fascist. The word has become impossible to swerve. When every impulse within tells you something is fascist, it’s your duty to say so.
What is and isn’t fascism is constantly being debated, sometimes to the point of distraction – the conversation on whether Trumpism can be considered fascism has never really ceased. Still, before going any further, it’s useful to describe what I mean here. It is true that the word is too often used as a shallow epithet for any politics a person dislikes or behaviour they see as autocratic and overbearing. On any given day, a teacher might be called a fascist by an 11-year-old pupil for not entertaining their nonsense.
To put it with as much brevity as I can, fascism is an extreme form of exclusionary nationalism that creates a hierarchy of human importance based on perceived lineage and blood. Its characteristics include the yearning for a strongman leader, the erosion of democratic norms to force its establishment, the belief in racial supremacy or nativism, and the demonisation of people who fall outside this idea of nationalism – people who tend to be vulnerable minorities.
There are, of course, a lot of steps for a country to take before it goes full Germany 1933. But each gesture towards fascism, every action or statement that is itself fascistic, should be called exactly that.
The recent scapegoating of minority communities in Ireland for the suffering and frustrations of the majority – whether proposed as a policy in electoral politics or circulated via grassroots activism – is fascist and racist (another word we shouldn’t shirk using when appropriate). Many different kinds of immigrants are finding the government’s failures in housing and healthcare being laid at their door, but it’s international protection applicants who are currently at the sharpest end of the discourse.
It’s high time we came to terms with a depressing new reality — attempts to dehumanise these asylum seekers evoke Nazism. Words like “vermin” are used in some circles (particularly online) to influence people to view their fellow human beings as such. This is vital to the fascist project. Lower people to the level of insects, and nothing, not even the violence and arson we’ve seen, is unreasonable.
This intensification has graduated to attempts to stop people from moving into a community based on nationality. There is no non-fascist reading of empty houses being tagged with “Irish only or the house burns” graffiti.
The very notion that people should have the right to control who lives in their community is an odd thing. Put it this way: If a new private apartment block is under construction in your area, not for a second would you believe you should have a veto on who buys or rents there. Yet it’s regularly suggested that this should change based on immigration status. The belief people should have the power to stop a foreigner from moving in next door is fascistic.
Much of this anti-immigrant activism is driven by the notion of antique bloodlines that must be protected. This often manifests as a belief in the “Great Replacement”, a conspiracy theory that posits that there is a plot designed to undermine or “replace” the political power, culture and populations of majority-white Western countries.
It’s created a political equation that’s impossible to square: Ireland is “full”, yet many who say so advocate for emigrants to return and Irish women to have more children. It’s almost as if stopping immigration has nothing to do with its perceived strain on society and everything to do with anxiety around demographics.
If all this sounds unfair to the so-called “good people with genuine concerns” engaging in anti-immigrant actions – not the “real” fascists, just those who are comfortable in their proximity – then there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern fascism operates. It requires just a base of support in the community, a small corner of the mainstream, a kernel of legitimacy. With that, the bullying and persecution are made possible.
As important as it is to not use these words lightly, it would be worse not to learn from the past. History folds back on itself; it anticipates what is to come. If it looks like fascism it’s because we know what fascism looks like. Don’t let it hide behind some useless veil of respectability.
Dean Van Nguyen is the author of the forthcoming Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur, due out next year on White Rabbit (Ireland/UK) and Doubleday (US).
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