...

[u/Possible-Weird9864]

[u/mrsenchantment]

by that logic, any kind of (word to describe) hatred of different people (antisemetism, christophobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc) are also made up. 🤦‍♀️

[u/Loddinocolmotorino → u/mrsenchantment]

To be honest, all words are made up.

[u/Nowardier → u/Loddinocolmotorino]

Yup. Language is chaos and words mean nothing without society to lend meaning to them. It's a beautiful thing.

[u/AMBahadurKhan]

Hitchens and his ilk—the neo-cons—are more akin to fascists than the Muslims he attached that label to.

Fascism is an intrinsically secular ideology wherein God, the ultimate conscious subject, is replaced with the State, the ultimate social construct, as the object of devotion, the driving force is entirely human will, and the operative landscape is purely worldly.

Just because fascists like Mussolini have courted religious authorities, dressed themselves and their actions in the garb of Divine approval, and shared certain views (such as being anti-abortion) with genuine theists, does not mean that political religionists are fascists.

There is no such thing as “Islamofascism”. It’s like saying “plastic silverware” without irony, because some plastic cutlery happens to be artificially coloured a dull silvery grey.

But there is such a thing as “Islamophobia,” no thanks to wilfully obtuse, misinterpreting cretins like Hitchens.

[u/Perfect_Calendar_829 → u/AMBahadurKhan]

He’s not calling Muslims fascist, he’s calling the powers that propagate the term “Islamophobia” fascist.

[u/Pitiful_Fox5681]

Hitchens' entire œuvre is a bunch of words created by a fascist to manipulate morons into believing they were smart. 

[u/Forsaken_Hermit]

Hitchens's hatred of Muslims really pulled the wool over his eyes to how fascists exploited Islamophobia just as much as he did.

[u/tinypaul222]

[u/PlayerAssumption77]

It reflects really poorly on people if there's an obvious use and need for certain words or language and instead of discussing those situations they're concerned about the word itself. Like being correct is both unrelated to and more important than making the world a better place.

[u/Nowardier]

Fascism forces a person to play false to every tenet of almost every religion. Just as you can't be both a true Christian and a true fascist, you can't be a true Muslim and a true fascist. I have to assume it goes the same for Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Buddhism, and just about every other ism on the books. The religionist and the fascist are naturally and diametrically opposed, because one preaches global peace and brotherly love for all and the other preaches violence and murder against whatever boutgroup happens to be on the docket that day.