Are Republicans fascists? Are Democrats socialists?

These and other words need protection against the perversions of politicians, so they retain their real meaning and impact.

President Joe Biden recently said that Trumpism was “semi-fascism.”

Republicans interrupted calling every proposal by any Democrat “socialism” to express outrage over Biden’s over-the-top rhetoric.

There’s no hope of reining in the rhetoric of politicians. Hyperbole is written into their DNA.

However, pragmatic liberals and pragmatic conservatives not running for office should have a mutual interest in doing what they can to deflate the hyperbole and preserve the meaning of important words in political philosophy and discourse.

A good example is how the left has, through indiscriminate use, drained the word “racism” of any meaning or impact. These days, anyone right of center, and even many in the center, upon hearing the charge of racism, simply assume that it’s coming from some woke liberal having a conniption over some perceived microaggression. In the meantime, we are left without a word to describe the real thing.

The right is in the process of doing the same thing with “socialism.” If socialism is to have any useful meaning, distinguishing it from other forms of political economy, it has to include government ownership of the means of production. 

When Margaret Thatcher was first elected prime minister, Britain was a socialist country. The government owned the enterprises producing or providing steel, coal, air travel, rail travel, telecommunications, oil and gas, even the manufacture of trucks for commercial sale. Thatcher and successors returned all of these enterprises, and more, to private ownership in the market economy.

In Europe, there are remnants of these days of true socialism, with government owning or having a large stake in some businesses. But in general, Europe now has market economies that cannot fairly be described as socialist, if that term is to retain any useful meaning.

Now, there are various degrees of industrial policy and regulation of markets in Europe, and various degrees and types of social welfare programs. Some call this mixed economies. In Europe, the term of art seems to be social democracy. But, so long as the private economy remains primarily driven by private investment and consumption decisions, guided by market price signals, it ain’t socialism, properly understood.

Some Republicans have called Biden’s student debt forgiveness policy socialism. It is ill-considered and grossly unfair to those who haven’t attended college, paid their way through college, or paid off their student loans. But it contains none of the characteristics of socialism, again if the word is to retain any useful meaning.

Donald Trump attempted a coup, trying to hold on to power despite losing the presidential election. A disturbingly large segment of Republican officials and officeholders went along with it.

Particularly with Trump remaining the power to be in GOP politics, there is reason to decry and be alarmed at the Republican Party’s lack of respect for and commitment to democratic norms. This is a fair issue to raise in this election cycle, an issue that arguably supersedes all others.

Overriding democratic norms is one characteristic of fascism. But it is not synonymous with fascism or exclusive to fascism. There are plenty of leftist authoritarian regimes in history and in the world today.

If the word fascism is to retain useful meaning, it needs also to refer to a form of political economy in which the means of production remain in private hands and responsive to market signals, but ultimately subservient and in service to the state. Paradoxically, the purest example of fascism as the description of a political economy in today’s world is China.

There are elements in the New Right who argue for a strong man exercising some authoritarian powers to protect traditional values against the predations of woke progressivism. That is part of Trumpism and reflected in the celebrity treatment of Hungary’s budding autocrat Viktor Orban.

But, while there is a desire within Trumpism to tame the influence of big tech and other big businesses, there isn’t really an appetite to make the private sector economy subservient and in service to the government. If anything, the larger impulse is in the opposite direction.

A robust argument can be had against the policies of the left or the right without perverting the meaning of words such as fascism, socialism, and racism, thus preserving them to describe the real things without diluting their impact.

There is a lot these days that needs protection from our politicians. Increasingly, language is one of them.

Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.