You know when Richard Spencer got punched on camera and all the crazy leftists said he deserved it for being a Nazi? I had literally never heard of Richard Spencer until then and had no clue who he was. When they said “He’s a Nazi”, I heard “He’s one of the good guys because the people who call the good guys Nazis are calling him a Nazi”. Turned out he actually is a Nazi and not a good guy at all but that was not my first assumption. And that’s what happens when you cheapen terms.

Yeah, me too: whenever I hear the term “far right”, “fascist” or “nazi” these days, my first assumption is that they’re simply using hyperbolic terms for Conservatives or Republicans, and hence none of those things at all, just half of the ordinary voting population.

There must be some actual nazis out there in the world, but the word has been so misused it has entirely lost the power to shock or reliably relate to anything real. It’s like that old parable, “The Boy Who Cried Fascist”.