Nazi? Fascist? Christian Nationalist? Racist? Depends on the Day

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (left) met with Adolf Hitler in Munich on June 18, 1940.

Over the years, with more than 1,000 articles and essays in print, as well as a few books, monographs, and short stories, I have received my share of hate mail, emails, letters to the editor, comments, and such.

These missives are most often not an intellectual rebuttal of whatever I was writing about, but filled with general comments about how idiotic I am. Others share the sparse vocabulary of the sender, with every other word being a scatological construction or various improbable — nay, impossible — physical things that should happen to me or that I should attempt on myself.

A writing mentor of mine, the late DeWitt Copp, author of 40 or so books and innumerable screenplays, told me early on that I should never reply to these taunts and flame-thrower diatribes, but move on and sleep well. Honestly, it’s hard for me. I want to respond and defend my honor, if not my intellect! However, my dear friend’s admonition tugs on my mind.

So I pass up the opportunity, even though at times I think I’m slinking away from the duel instead of smiting my detractors with wit and charm and irrefutable arguments. But even that doesn’t always suffice; I’ve had the haters write how unreasonable and intractable I am because I don’t answer their insults and smears! Perhaps that proves my mentor’s advice was correct.

But alas, the Trump era has unleashed the dogs of rhetorical Hell on the writing world. No sentence is safe, no fact not cavalierly dismissed — while wit is most often orphaned.

In an electronic era where serious books are less often read and thoughtful essays struggle to find a home, the haters themselves have plenty of time on their hands. And they now have a new mantra chisled out of some stonefaced group of ultra radical lefties by a political consultant. The new obligatory chant is “Nazi,” “fascist,” and — if it’s a religious topic — “Christian nationalist.” “Racist” is liberally thrown in as a classic standby. After all, who isn’t a racist?

Dear Haters, Here’s the Education You Missed

Much of this is promulgated in the Western world, at least now, by the giant “media blob” of conformity that envelops it like a slimy jellyfish, producing far more supercilious sameness and directed radical messaging than real news.

Now my emails are filled with these approved buzzwords. I’m variously called a Nazi, fascist, Christian Nationalist, racist — and sometimes I’m accused of all of them in one rant! If you’re following the pro-criminal, pro-murderer, pro-violence, and anti-American hysteria being unleashed on the land by Democrat leaders in Congress and the various blue state leaders — and the thugs with Antifa and other radical, Marxist, and communist groups — you’ve noticed that every sign and every chant has one or more of these now ubiquitous labels. For an extra-intellectual flourish, all the signs come with the F-word in front of Trump’s name, just in case you didn’t get the drift.

I pine to respond, reminding the sender that such criticisms require remedial historical education and possibly a visit to a certified mental health professional. A Nazi, of course, is an adherent to the principles and aspirations of the now defunct National Socialist Workers’ Party of the German dictator and mass murderer Adolf Hitler. (I want to ask them if the name of the party holds any clues about the origin of the demonic dark hole from which his Mein Kampf emerged.) A Nazi is a vicious, inbred Marxist who demands blood and duty from every facet of society, controls all political institutions, and alone controls all speech and the press. The Nazis ran not an “authoritarian” but a “totalitarian” government. I seriously doubt many of the haters even know that.

A fascist, I want to instruct my detractors, is indistinct from a Nazi. “Fascism,” which got its name from an ancient Roman symbol of bound rods and an ax head called a fasces, representing the power of government and the courts to inflict corporal punishment. The term “fascism” became prominent under Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy; his nationalistic movement, which camouflaged his wicked and dictatorial game plan, included absolute power, murder, and a one-party state controlling every lever of institutional Italian life. He and Hitler might as well have been kinfolk.

The Great Struggle

But no matter. Both Nazism and fascism bear the stamp of totalitarianism and share the DNA of Karl Marx and other madmen wanting to destroy God and faith, disembowel the family unit, uproot capitalism, crush democracy and individualism, and perfect the “managerial” elite that would run a new world prison. As always, the radicals accuse conservatives of doing that which they are actually guilty of. So, Obama and Biden and their policies are lionized as “progressive” while poor Donald J. Trump is a budding “authoritarian.” Go figure.

Now, everywhere you look, you have deranged leftists — truly radical and unequivocally dangerous — being choreographed by every Democrat leader in Congress and the radical media blob, as well as has-been, out-of-office officials, pushing the meme like bees in a hive.

So much for serious political discourse and civility that so-called “moderates” (think David Brooks here) yearn to reestablish in modern life. The hard truth is that in today’s media-driven environment, such a rapprochement is unlikely to occur until something shakes the culture, shifting it in one direction or the other. And just such a shift seems afoot, certainly in America, and increasingly across Europe and the English-speaking world.

All of this turmoil reflects the eternal struggle that has been afoot throughout human history — darkness vs. Light. Tyranny vs. freedom. Fear vs. Hope. Someone wrote a great Book about all of this. But now I’m preaching, and I’ll surely get a nasty note.

Michael Giere writes award-winning commentary and essays on the intersection of politics, culture and faith. He is a critically acclaimed novelist (The White River Series) and short-story writer. A former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas, he was a senior executive in both the Reagan and the Bush (41) administrations, and in 2016 served on the Trump Transition Team.