Speaking of fascism, and interpretations, Dick Durbin knows fascism when he sees it. Fascism involves "extremely cold air-conditioning" and "loud rap music." (And if you think that's bad, not only is my air conditioning too cold, but I fail to change the filter, which turns the thing into a giant recirculating dust pump. Plus, I have a hyperactive pit bull puppy who likes to lick people when they're trying to sleep, in violation of the Koran's edicts. On top of that, I listen to things like doowop and the Grateful Dead, which are far more fascistic than rap music.)

I realize I'm being facetious. The above traits are just some of the hallmarks of fascism. Ever the academic, James Lileks demonstrates that by using the principle of resemblance, features of fascism can be discovered almost anywhere:

Whether the Soup Nazi actually believes in exterminating the Jews and bending the nation towards race-based collectivism and militarism is irrelevant; what matters is that he doesn’t want to give you some of that yummy chowder.

If one means “religious fascism” as the use of the power of the state to achieve a particular moral objective, you could argue that progressive taxation is “fascism,” inasmuch as it assumes that the rich should pay more for the good of all, and this moral imperative should be enforced by law. I would not make that argument, because it would be vile. Progressive taxation is many things, but it’s not fascism. On the other hand, I’m at a disadvantage here; if gentlemen like Mr. Kaplan feel free to drop the f-bomb in order to claim the moral high ground, why should I stand down here in the moat complaining? So I put it to you that Mr. Kaplan is a fascist himself. Period. There you go! That's easy. If pressed, I will only note that there are some of his ideas which bear a resemblance to policies one occasionally finds in fascist states - inasmuch as he wrote comedy movies, and they had funny films in Hitler's Germany, too. I mean, draw your own conclusions, people.

(Via InstaPundit.)

NOTE: Mutable mobilizing passions can be especially helpful in this regard.

I suppose it's possible that James Lileks is being sarcastic, but I'd like to ask some hard questions at the risk of playing devil's advocate. In order for academics to really teach young people what fascism is, might it be necessary to encourage them to master the principle of resemblance?

In his review of this deconstructionist classic (which shows how barbed wire epitomizes modernity and evil), Edward Luttwak argues that the very same principle can be applied to seemingly innocuous, everyday objects. In this case, shoelaces:

...take an artefact, anything at all. Avoid the too obviously deplorable machine gun or atom bomb. Take something seemingly innocuous, say shoelaces. Explore the inherent if studiously unacknowledged ulterior purposes of that “grim” artefact within “the structures of power and violence”. Shoelaces after all perfectly express the Euro-American urge to bind, control, constrain and yes, painfully constrict. Compare and contrast the easy comfort of the laceless moccasins of the Indian – so often massacred by booted and tightly laced Euro-Americans, as one can usefully recall at this point. Refer to the elegantly pointy and gracefully upturned silk shoes of the Orient, which have no need of laces of course because they so naturally fit the human foot – avoiding any trace of Orientalism, of course. It is all right to write in a manner unfriendly or even openly contemptuous of entire populations as Professor Netz does with his Texans at every turn (“ready to kill. . . they fought for Texan slavery against Mexico”), but only if the opprobrium is always aimed at you-know-who, and never at the pigmented. Clinch the argument by evoking the joys of walking on the beach in bare and uncommodified feet, and finally overcome any possible doubt by reminding the reader of the central role of high-laced boots in sadistic imagery. That finally unmasks shoelaces for what they really are – not primarily a way of keeping shoes from falling off one’s feet, but instruments of pain, just like the barbed wire that I have been buying all these years not to keep the cattle in, as I imagined, but to torture it, as Professor Netz points out. The rest is easy: the British could hardly have rounded up Boer wives and children without shoelaces to keep their boots on, any more than the very ordinary men in various Nazi uniforms could have done such extraordinary things so industriously, and not even Stalin could have kept the Gulag going with guards in unlaced Indian moccasins, or elegantly pointy, gracefully upturned, oriental shoes.

Fascism has at last been untied!

But I do see an occasional problem which might arise when the resemblance is either overplayed, or (in the wrong hands) actually misused.

It might cause unsophisticated or bigoted people to see resemblances where none exist. For example, Sean Penn (now reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle) was recently forced to explain -- to Iranians who chanted "Death to America" -- that their remarks might be misinterpreted:

NEW YORK Actor Sean Penn, reporting from Iran this week for the San Francisco Chronicle, snared a scoop worthy of a Broder or Brownstein, interviewing Muslim cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who leads the opinion polls in the coming elections.

Penn also told Iranian film students that those chanting “Death to America” were only hurting their cause.

This puzzled me, but in another report, Penn explained that he thought there was a misinterpretation:

....I don't think it's productive because I think the message goes to the American people and it is interpreted very literally.

I think the key here is remembering that some resemblances only seem to resemble....

MORE: Here's Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (aka Daily Kos):

The torture that was so bad under Saddam, is equally bad under U.S. command.

(Via Charles Johnson.)

MORE (and MOORE): Andrew Sullivan has nominated Markos Moulitsas Zuniga for the prestigious Moore Award in recognition of Kos's "morally cretinous hyperbole."