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 It’s no secret that hurling names about is as common in the political world as it is in a grammar school playground. One oft-used pejorative is “fascist,” which, along with racist, sexist, homophobe and others, tends to be least understood by those who utter it most. And because these damning terms are used wantonly, more to discredit than describe, they tend to be misapplied. Then, soon, calling someone a fascist becomes akin to calling him a snake: more a vague impugnment of character than a characterization of methods and goals.

Rhetoric aside, however, I’ve come to realize that true fascists do exist in our time. But who are they? How can they be correctly identified? To discover the answer, let’s start with a trip down Bad Memory Lane.

Another word that makes the rounds these days is “Brownshirts,” which, as many know, harks back to the SA, a paramilitary organization that was instrumental in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. The Brownshirts were the adolescent Nazi Party’s muscle, squelching opposition through violence and intimidation. Shout-downs and beat-downs were their stock-in-trade, making their name a metaphor for fascist intolerance and oppression.

Now for a little current events. There was a university, some speakers and an audience. The speakers had been invited to the university in the name of intellectual debate and free expression. The audience, however, would have none of it. Intolerant of the views being aired, they shouted-down the speakers and repeatedly called one of the black representatives “nigger.” Then, in a final fit of hatred and rage, in quintessential Brownshirt style, they stormed the stage violently, squelching voices that would have contributed to a fruitful exchange of ideas.

But what was the university? And, more to the point, who were the speakers and the audience? Were the guests communists or advocates for illegal immigration and the audience right-wing ideologues? No, not at all.

This fascistic display occurred at vaunted Columbia University, ostensibly a bastion of free expression. The speakers were with the Minuteman Project, the organization of citizen border sentinels. And the mob posing as an audience comprised those who despise such individuals: leftists. Leftists who did the Brownshirts proud.

Then, there once was a woman who traveled to the University of Arizona to give a speech. But members of the crowd didn’t like what she had to say, and a couple of them attacked her, hurling pies. Now, this isn’t the first time this lady has been targeted with violence, and she now travels with bodyguards.

But who was this woman? Was she a member of GLAD beating the drum for the legal sanction of anti-marriage or a terrorist sympathizer criticizing US interrogation techniques? No, she was conservative pundit Ann Coulter, and her offense that night was to dare to defend the institution of marriage. And, needless to say, those who tried to silence her were her leftist foes.

And you don’t have to be famous to feel the left’s wrath. On more than one occasion conservative student newspapers have been burned, and even one of my editors related a story to me about being shouted down by colleagues during a previous career in academia.

Lest you think this is unusual, errant blips on the radar screen, know that this is standard practice on university campuses today. Liberals are afforded the right to speak mostly unfettered by disruptive voices, while conservatives are subjected to as much abuse as today’s Brownshirts can get away with dishing out.

Getting back to the more fashion conscious fascists of yesteryear, once the Brownshirts had helped catapult the Nazis into power, the SS (sometimes called the “Blackshirts”) was created. Among other functions, the SS served the regime’s agenda by arresting, questioning and punishing those who expressed the politically incorrect thoughts of the day. It was effective enough so that many German people wouldn’t even express dissent within earshot of their own children.

Fast-forward again, and we have the story of a 14-year-old working class girl in England named Codie Stott. Recently she said something in her classroom to which her teachers didn’t exactly cotton. In fact, her words didn’t find favor with the government, either, and she found herself cooling her heels in a jail cell for three and a half hours. Mind you, this wasn’t for the commission of an untoward act, but for mere use of the tongue.

So what was Codie’s grave transgression? Did she threaten the life of the Queen? Was she a hippie advocating the replacement of tea time with a trip to an opium den? Perish the thought.

What happened was that Codie had been assigned to work on a project with a group of five Asian students, four of whom couldn’t speak English. And the fifth was probably limited to the pidgin variety. After being seated with the quintet and instructed to discuss the subject matter in question, the foreigners commenced speaking amongst themselves in Urdu (don’t ask), a language Codie couldn’t understand, prompting her to approach the teacher and request placement elsewhere. The teacher’s response was to scream, “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police.”

And she was.