Know the history of the words

Must we suffer the angsty rhetoric about “fascism” again? This time some are screeching that term about the East Bonner County Library Board election among other things, and their usage of it is just as factually and historically incorrect as it was in the last election cycle. Here’s a history lesson for those that skipped their modern European history classes:

The word fascism is derived from the Latin fasces, a bundle of rods surrounding an axe that was used by Roman magistrates as a symbol of governmental authority. It referenced the federal nature of the original Roman governmental structure, signifying strength emanating from a collective will.

The 20th-century political ideology known as fascism emerged from a similar homage to collectivism rooted in the early 20th-century Italian trade unions known as fasci (plural of fasces). The radical socialist Benito Mussolini adopted the term when founding the Italian Fasces of Combat to similarly symbolize the collectivist principle inherent in socialism which he reorganized around national identity.

Like socialism and communism, the ideological underpinning of fascism is the subordination of the individual to a collective political identity organized around ethnicity, class, and/or nationality. It is distinct from its collectivist cousins only in that it advocates state control over the means of production for the benefit of the collective as opposed to state ownership of them – a devilishly clever, if minor, distinction.

I hope we can be more accurate in the use of the term going forward.

ANITA AURIT

Sandpoint