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Re: Racism

Subject: Re: Racism
From: Helmut Richter <hhr-m@xxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:43:15 +0100
Newsgroups: sci.lang
On Sun, 30 Dec 2006, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > > Scripsit Brian M. Scott:
> >
> > >>> No, these days "racism" is a general-purpose curse word
> > >>> that has no  denotation; it expresses its user's strongly
> > >>> emotional disapproval of  something.
> >
> > >> Depends very much on who's using it;
> >
> > > Not any more. As soon as a word has been widely taken into
> > > curse use, it  becomes virtually impossible to use it in
> > > any other way, except perhaps in  limited circles, such
> > > as scholars who can really agree on using such a word  as
> > > a term.
> >
> > While it has certainly started down that road, I don't agree
> > that 'racist' has reached that point.  'Fascist', yes;
> > 'racist', no.
> 
> "Fascist" has been rescued from the brink of meaningless opprobrium
> (which seems to be what Jukka means by "curse") by the Bush
> administration, which has largely embraced fascism in the classic
> Mussolini sense of interpenetration of business and government.

The Bush administration uses the word "fascist" in a non-derogatory way to 
describe their policy? This is news to me.

-- 
Helmut Richter

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