St James’ Club, Piccadilly, W1
5 March 1938
SIR,—I am moved to write to you on a subject that has long been in my mind, by an anecdote I have just heard.
A friend of mine met someone who—I am sure, both you and he himself would readily admit—represents the highest strata of “Left Wing” culture. The conversation turned on the “May-fair” jewel robbers and the Socialist remarked that they exhibited “typical Fascist mentality.” This seems to me an abuse of vocabulary so mischievous and so common, that it is worth discussing.
There was a time in the early twenties when the word “Bolshie” was current, it was used indiscriminately of refractory school children, employees who asked for a rise in wages, impertinent domestic servants, those who advocated an extension of the rights of property to the poor, and anything or anyone of whom the speaker disapproved. The only result was to impede reasonable discussion and clear thought.
I believe we are in danger of a similar, stultifying use of the word “Fascist.” There was recently a petition sent to English writers (by a committee few, if any of whom, were English professional writers), asking them to subscribe themselves, categorically, as supporters of the Republican Party in Spain, or as “Fascists.” When rioters are imprisoned it is described as a “Fascist sentence”; the Means Test is Fascist; colonisation is Fascist; military discipline is Fascist; patriotism is Fascist; Catholicism is Fascist; Buchmanism is Fascist; the ancient Japanese cult of their Emperor is Fascist; the Galla tribes’ ancient detestation of theirs is Fascist; fox-hunting is Fascist … Is it too late to call for order?
It is constantly said by those who observed the growth of Nazism, Fascism, and other dictatorial systems (not, perhaps, excluding USSR) that they were engendered and nourished solely by Communism. I do not know how true that is, but I am inclined to believe it when I observe the pitiable stampede of the “Left Wing Intellectuals” in our own country. Only once was there anything like a Fascist movement in England; that was in 1926 when the middle class took over the public services; it now does not exist at all except as a form of anti-Semitism in the slums. Those of us who can afford to think without proclaiming ourselves “intellectuals,” do not want or expect a Fascist regime. But there is a highly nervous and highly vocal party who are busy creating a bogy; if they persist in throwing the epithet about it may begin to stick. They may one day find that there is a Fascist party which they have provoked. They will, of course, be the chief losers, but it is because I believe we shall all lose by such a development that I am addressing this through your columns.
Evelyn Waugh
[Mr Waugh is very enigmatic about the author of the remark to which he objects, but a similar comment was made to us by a friend who based his opinion not upon political bias but upon a conversation he had had with two of the guilty men. Moreover, anyone who, like Mr Waugh, has studied the growth of Fascism and Nazism, knows that among the most active champions of these movements were a number of young men with tastes which a repugnance or disability for work prevented them from gratifying. These, too, did not stop short of either brutal assaults or common dishonesty in their efforts to improve their position, and they can now be seen alike in Italy and in Germany enjoying the agreeable sinecures which their violence has earned. We do not suggest that the mentality of the Mayfair gangsters is that of all Fascists, but it is a historical fact that Fascism attracted men with just such a mentality and just such an economic position. Finally it will not have escaped Mr Waugh’s attention that at least one of the guilty men had been active in selling arms to General Franco. We agree, however, that to call fox-hunting “Fascist” is a gross abuse of language.—Ed. New Statesman and Nation]
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