Stop calling Trump a fascist

Trump shares none of these characteristics. He might be a bully, a cynic, and a misogynist. His statement to Bill O’Reilly over the weekend drawing a moral equivalency between the United State and Russia was disgraceful and idiotic. His casual comment about destroying the career of a Texas state senator who wants to reform civil-asset forfeiture laws was thuggish and disturbing. He incessant tweeting is irritating and foolish and needs to stop.

But Trump’s not a fascist, and nothing he’s done since taking office suggests he’s setting America on the path to a fascist dictatorship.

The corruption of “fascist” is but one example of the pernicious habit of sloppy thinking that’s plaguing our public life. Dropping the term from our political discourse when it doesn’t apply is an important step, but it should be just the beginning. Words are ideas, after all, and ideas have consequences. The mishandling of “fascist” and other such terms will, in time, cause us to lose grip of their meaning, which would be dangerous.

In the meantime, it should suffice to stop calling Trump a fascist and recognize, as Orwell did, “that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”