There are echo chambers and then there is whatever you call it when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow joins CBS’s Stephen Colbert on The Late Show as that duo came together on Tuesday to promote the former’s book about America, fascism, and the 1930s and mourn that there are people—mainly former President Donald Trump—who also insist on calling other people fascists.
Colbert observed that Trump seems to welcome the idea that people throw around fascist and Nazi analogies around him, “He must think that that's a good thing for him and his campaign and my question to you is from what you've learned about starting fascist movements and fascist movements in America is given that fascism is essentially an attractively lazy political tool, why do you think it has so many people on the right in America right now interested in it?”
Maddow didn’t exactly answer that question, instead choosing to focus on Trump and his alleged attempt to turn the word “fascist” into something that has no meaning, “Well, I think that he is inviting us to call him a fascist and he's doing these things so that—”
After Colbert interrupted to ask if he “just played into his hand,” Maddow continued, “Well, I am too. I mean, the thing-- you can't ignore it, right? You don't have a choice. He is yanking our chain. He does want to be talked about in these terms, but also, it’s important that you pointed out that he, in that speech, also called his critics fascist.”
Maddow further alleged, “He wants fascist just to become a random political epithet, just an insult that everybody uses that means nothing. In the same way that he took fake news—fake news was a thing, but then he decided all news was fake news and now fake news is just this term that means nothing.”
The problem for Maddow and Colbert is that while they appear to reject relativism when it comes to the idea that calling people fascists is out of bands, the left has spent years saying every little thing conservatives do is fascism. For example, they call Trump rival Gov. Ron DeSantis a fascist for “banning books” even when the author of some of those books agrees they aren’t for young children.
Colbert then alluded to Newspeak from 1984, “Well, because there can be no authority other than the authoritarian and no one can label him with anything including something as accurate as fascist so that all has-- meaning has to be undermined. George Orwell talks about it. There can be no meaning to anything other than what the state says the meaning is.”
Orwell also wrote that fascism has come to mean “something not desirable” and it wasn’t Donald Trump he had in mind when he wrote that.
Still, Maddow mourned, “So, he’s sapping those words of their meanings so we can't criticize him by calling him a fascist because he says everything is fascist.”
Speaking of sapping words of their meanings, can Maddow and Colbert define what it means to be a woman?
Here is a transcript for the November 14-taped show:
CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
11/15/2023
12:08 AM ET
STEPHEN COLBERT: He must think that that's a good thing for him and his campaign and my question to you is from what you've learned about starting fascist movements and fascist movements in America is given that fascism is essentially an attractively lazy political tool, why do you think it has so many people on the right in America right now interested in it?
RACHEL MADDOW: Well, I think that he is inviting us to call him a fascist and he's doing these things so that--
COLBERT: So, I just played into his hand, is what you’re saying?
MADDOW: Well, I am too. I mean, the thing-- you can't ignore it, right? You don't have a choice. He is yanking our chain. He does want to be talked about in these terms, but also, it’s important that you pointed out that he, in that speech, also called his critics fascist. He wants fascist just to become a random political epithet, just an insult that everybody uses that means nothing. In the same way that he took fake news—fake news was a thing, but then he decided all news was fake news and now fake news is just this term that means nothing.
COLBERT: Well, because there can be no authority other than the authoritarian and no one can label him with anything including something as accurate as fascist so that all has-- meaning has to be undermined.
MADDOW: Yes.
COLBERT: George Orwell talks about it. There can be no meaning to anything other than what the state says the meaning is.
MADDOW: That's exactly right.
COLBERT: Okay.
MADDOW: So, he’s sapping those words of their meanings so we can't criticize him by calling him a fascist because he says everything is fascist.
