Episode 150 - The Language of Fascism  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Go Make Things Podcast]] - Full Title: Episode 150 - The Language of Fascism - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/ecfb5521-edb1-4459-a2be-e6b1964ff96d ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Hidden Fascism** - Fascist language often appears benign, reasonable, and quiet. - It uses euphemisms like "child safety" or "educational choice" to mask harmful intentions. Transcript: Chris Ferdinandi When we think of fascist language, we often think of overt calls for violence, direct assaults on people, and anger. And sometimes that's exactly what it looks like. But often, it's benign. It's quiet. It's reasonable. And that's what makes it so dangerous. The language of fascism is people just asking questions, quote-unquote. It's people complaining about free speech in echo chambers when you exercise your right to not listen to them. It's cute phrases that sound good but are dog whistles for terrible things. Things like child safety, protecting families, educational choice, prioritizing veterans. Those all sound like great things. Who wouldn't want those? Until you realize that they're euphemisms for banning trans kids from sports or controlling women's bodies or destroying public education or demonizing immigrants. ([Time 0:00:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f3c2d8e2-13e1-42e7-a978-2c07ae8cbbab)) - **Educate First** - Address harmful language by first attempting to educate the person. - Explain why their words are harmful and offer an opportunity to learn. Transcript: Chris Ferdinandi People with neurodivergence sometimes struggle to communicate with neurotypical folks and vice versa. I generally recommend a two-step process. First, try to educate. If the person isn't immediately obviously a bad actor, you ask them to clarify or explain what they said. You explain to them why what they said is harmful. Sometimes people literally just don't realize, especially if you're someone who comes from a background of a lot of privilege, you have all these biases. You don't always have awareness of them. And you'll say something that you don't realize is hurtful or harmful to someone else. And then someone points it out, and it's an opportunity to learn. If that doesn't work, and a lot of times it doesn't, that's when you escalate. ([Time 0:03:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d816f5b6-c59e-4380-aa29-e24e60dd814b)) - **Escalate When Necessary** - If education fails, escalate by rebuking, blocking, and reporting. - Consider your privilege and safety when escalating. Transcript: Chris Ferdinandi Now, what this looks like will also vary based on who you are and how much privilege you have. If you don't have a lot of privilege, escalation is going to look a lot different than it might look for someone like me who has a ton of social privilege. Because, you know, there are career and safety concerns around this. So those are all really valid. I'm not trying to imply that everybody should just throw caution to the wind every time they see this. But I have a ton of privilege. I like to advocate for people who don't. I will rebuke, block, and report as appropriate, on the situation. The important thing, though, is you want to make it really clear to both the person and everyone else who's watching that the words and the behavior are wrong, that they're socially Unacceptable. ([Time 0:03:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/85349cb8-8fa8-4769-a0c4-d5983a17ac28)) - **Public Denouncement** - Publicly denounce harmful behavior. - Make it clear that such words and actions are unacceptable. Transcript: Chris Ferdinandi It's really, really, really important to model that this behavior is not okay. Because if you do it quietly, if you do it politely, it normalizes that kind of shit. And we don't want that. There's no room for agreeing to disagree around our trans people fully realized, valid human beings? Like, I'm not going to entertain that shit. You can go fuck yourself, right? Like, we're not having that conversation. Now, if you're lucky, you'll belong to well-cultivated communities that are insulated from this kind of stuff. ([Time 0:04:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9dab2f89-4796-4db3-a6fc-47f57ea0c250)) - **Be Prepared** - Prepare to see more of this behavior in the future. - Don't let people politely express abhorrent views; challenge them. Transcript: Chris Ferdinandi But it's very likely that you're going to see more and more of this in the coming weeks, months, and years. Don't let people politely say abhorrent things. Don't pay attention when they complain that you're being mean when you tell them how awful they are. If you're feeling vulnerable right now, I want you to know that I have got your back. You can reach out to me anytime. I am always happy to listen, to help in any way that I can. I want to support you. I want to help you. I want to make this. I want to reduce the pain as much as I can. If you're in a position of privilege, I really encourage you to use that to defend people with less of it because there's going to be a lot of people who are going to be really hurting for A really long time and we all need to look out for each other. Thank you so much for listening. I know this was kind of a heavy episode for a tech podcast. I promise I'll pivot back into more strictly tech-focused topics, probably not, next time, but it won't be as heavy as this nonetheless. ([Time 0:05:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b90fe8a-a69d-4b19-8f5f-0fc5cf433e41))