Quibbling about the flavors about authoritarianism is like quibbling about the flavors of shit. "No no, this is pig shit not chicken shit, it's completely different in a way that is totally irrelevant to the person being forced to eat it."
No, words mean things and if you use them randomly people will not take you seriously.
If you start telling me about how Syria has a serious problem with fundamentalist Baptists I am just going to assume you have no idea what you're talking about.
The meaning of words shifts over time. Fascism and authoritarianism are colloquially conflated so often that if you make a stink about somebody calling the GDR fascist, people are going to assume you are either an apologist for the communist flavor of authoritarianism, or an autistic pedant.
Alright, then what do you think I should call what used to be called “fascism” ? Since it is really quite a different thing from Soviet Block-style communism (even if both are bad!) and so could use a different word to describe it.
Authoritarian encompasses both Soviet Bloc-style communism as well as what I used to think was called fascism. However the other poster is claiming fascism now means both. So I need another word to describe the specific thing that I used to think was called fascism.
Yeah, I'm with your original definition. I think it's important to distinguish between left wing and right wing authoritarianism as they tend to be quite different.
