Thread by @george_jazzcat

THREAD
(I) I've had some pushback for daring to liken our current state to fascism. In fact, I've been calling it "medical fascism" since March 2020; a term I picked up from the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (though I believe his term is "hygiene fascism")

(II) As the child of Holocaust survivors and as a person raised under Communism, I dare say I have more insight into our current predicament than do observers and commentators who have never lived under a tyrannical regime. I get scolded for using the term "fascism" lightly,

(III) which - it's being alleged - disrespects those who fought and died fighting the *real* fascism. I think the confusion stems from the fact that a lot of American and Western members of the commentariat equate the term with gas chambers and electrified fences.

(IV) It doesn't need to be that way, at least not initially. Fascism is the obsessive governmental focus on a problem (a problem that is magnified and augmented by relentless fear campaigns). As a result of this obsession, the government then curtails basic rights

(V) - travel, assembly, expression - which it claims is vital in order to defeat the problem. Individual rights cease to have importance because now we are "all in it together" and must remain united until the problem (enemy) is vanquished. This dictum remains identical

(VI) across Communist or fascist tyrannies: for the Germans, the unifying problem were the Jews ("vermin") For the Soviets, it was "class enemies" (incidentally often Jewish as well). For Kim Jung Il it's simply anyone who doesn't see he's God. Unity must be maintained

(VII) and in the name of that unity, all measures and proscriptions are permitted. In 2021 the "enemy" is a respiratory virus but governmental methods do not differ, except in severity (so far) Vaccine passports, limited opportunity, curtailed speech (lest it be "misinformation")

(VIII) I'm here to tell you that the Communists also always labeled any morsel of truth that penetrated the Iron Curtain "misinformation". The term "medical fascism" is entirely appropriate. Do I foresee concentration camps in the near future? I do not, although some of

(IX) the so-called "quarantine hotels" aren't hotels, let's be honest with ourselves. If we avoid calling things what they are, if we pervert language (George Orwell warns of this with extreme lucidity), the fascists have already won. And that is why I refuse to mouth slogans:

(X) STAY SAFE, WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER, GET VACCINATED, MY MASK PROTECTS YOU!
Fight the language and you'll be fighting your enslavement. Go along with these "necessary measures" and you are locking your own handcuffs with keys handed to you by your munificent rulers