Yes, Ian Kershaw is precisely right! It is very difficult to define because it is a means by which one, either a person, a party, an ethnicity, whatever, pursues and attempts to preserve power regardless of the will or interests of the people they intend to have power over.
The difference here is that anti-fascists have ethical and moral standards, create and support political systems that make it possible for them to loose, celebrate those losses.
It’s difficult to define a barbarian, but you definitely know it when they come to your town.
No, you are putting forward one particular definition as the "right" one, and arguing all contrary definitions should be ignored, even when proposed by esteemed scholars in relevant fields – which is the complete opposite of Kershaw's point.
Ahh, so we lack a definition, no one is fascist, and killing political dissidents is equivalent to fair and legal elections.
Good is equivalent to evil, because both are hard to define.
He can’t be a monarchist, he doesn’t believe in mercantilism, which random authority says is an essential part of monarchism. Plus, how do you define monarchism? You can’t.
Humanity is so fucked.
(Btw, this problem has been decisively solved by the paradox of tolerance, and was solved in the 40’s, when the apparently undefinable, thus never repeatable, original fascists did their thing.)
> Ahh, so we lack a definition, no one is fascist, and killing political dissidents is equivalent to fair and legal elections.
No. One can condemn a regime even if one doesn't agree with labelling it "fascist".
I'm sure we both agree that North Korea is a brutal and inhuman dictatorship, but I wouldn't call it "fascist" and I doubt you would either. Because "brutal and inhuman dictatorship" is what really counts here, not whether it is "fascist" or something else.
Putin's regime is closer to some Middle Eastern or Latin American military dictatorship than to 1930s/1940s fascism. 1930s/1940s fascism was highly ideological, Putin's regime is post-ideological (Putin doesn't care what your ideology is so long as he gets to stay in charge)
> You are making a distinction without a difference.
I think it is obvious that your objectives are very different from mine. What's "without a difference" given one set of objectives is a key difference given another.
> That you do so with such voraciousness, makes it seem like you are keen to defend those labeled fascist/authoritarian/etc.
No. I'm interested in having a historical argument about how to define "fascism" as part of "history for history's sake". You seem by contrast primarily interested in defining words to rhetorically assist you towards some political end.
> Split hairs all day, the gulag doesn’t care.
I've lived my whole life in Australia. I think it is very unlikely that the current or any foreseeable future Australian government is going to start putting people in anything resembling gulags. To suggest otherwise is rather alarmist.
The difference here is that anti-fascists have ethical and moral standards, create and support political systems that make it possible for them to loose, celebrate those losses.
It’s difficult to define a barbarian, but you definitely know it when they come to your town.