Fascism is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly bad it is.
I mean you may think it’s unpleasant when someone calls you stupid, but that’s just peanuts to fascism. Listen.
To be fair though, better minds than the one responsible for this introduction have faltered. You might like to consider that, on a scale of 1 to 10, fascism scores 71,619,481.03. The simple truth is that the sheer badness of fascism will not fit into the human imagination.
Fascism is hard to pin down. The spectrum of opinion is not, as many simplistically imagine, straight. Rather, it curves like a rainbow. Imagine travelling so far to the East that you reappear in the West. The extremes of right wing and left wing thought meet on the dark side of the political moon.
Which brings us to the Daily Mail. Describing rival paper The Guardian as “Fake news, the fascist Left and the REAL purveyors of hatred”, these words, even if true, drag the Mail down to the same level.
How dare another paper disagree with the Mail! They must be fascists! Anyone who rattles the Mail’s brittle cage is necessarily a fascist. ‘Fascist’ seems to be the insult du jour, like kids calling each other ‘gay’ whilst having not the least concept of what the word means.
The paper which openly supported fascism is the run-up to World War 2 supported the French far-right with the same zeal this year. Pots and kettles, Daily Mail.
I quote directly from the Editor’s Code of Practice as laid down by the Independent Press Standards Organisation:
“1. Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.”
The following are all genuine Mail headlines:
“Crush the Saboteurs”
“Apologists for Terror”
“Enemies of the People”
“Corbyn Plan to Bankrupt UK”
It is remarkable that this filthsome rag is allowed to print such material on a regular basis. Maybe we should no longer let sleeping watchdogs lie.
Fascism is not a fixed evil, but it is clearly far too bad. Although the Daily Mail’s owners, employees and readers are clearly free to hold and express whatever opinions they wish, the paper’s noxious tactics of loading every headline with malicious spite and name-calling those who disagree with them are repugnant in the extreme. We all know that too many people fail to read beyond the headline. And they copied my swag.
Fascism: loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.
