Of Ff-Words And The F-Word

I seem to have deleted the latest comment from "Break Dancing Jesus" (who attempts to comment here several times per day in the "this post refers to someone of whom I have never heard/contains a word I do not know, therefore the fault must be in you" terms also beloved of Jon), in which he accuses me of "facism". Does anyone, even BDJ, know what "facism" is?

Anyway, it has apparently been noted on the blog of one Oliver Kamm (like BDJ, one of those people who were put down for Oxbridge from birth like the preceding eleven generations of their families, so think that that makes them clever, or at least well-educated), that I hate the Welsh. Not a bit of it. Bevan was Welsh. Many of the most staunchly conservative, patriotic, pro-worker and anti-Marxist Labourites were, and are, Welsh. The anti-war tradition in Wales is second to none, as is the closely related Christian Socialist tradition. Wales is, and has been for a very long time, a major centre of rural radicalism.

Leo Abse is Welsh and sat for a Welsh constituency, as were and did several of his fellow Labour anti-devolutionists in the Seventies, including Neil Kinnock, towards whom Kamm nurtures a particular hatred, as of course any upper-class sectarian Leftist must. The Welsh (English-speaking and Welsh-speaking areas alike) rejected separatism decisively in those days, and their apparent later endorsement of it was not only by a whisker on a very low turnout, but even then delivered in distinctly questionable circumstances.

But BDJ, no doubt like Kamm, only knows (or thinks that he knows) one thing about the Welsh, namely that they speak Welsh. Well, no, actually. Eighty per cent of them do not. Good luck to the other twenty per cent, but they are rarely working or lower-middle-class, as good as never white, largely tribal Tories (First Past The Post masks the Tories' popularity in Wales), and routinely employed at public expense because they have convinced successive Governments that Welsh is a pre-requisite for any job worth having in Wales. In parts of Wales, it is. But in most of Wales, it is not. And it does bear repetition that all Welsh-speakers in Wales, every single one, are completely bilingual in Welsh and English.

All of this is just as was predicted by Leo Abse, mention of whose name undoubtedly so enraged BDJ (who has never heard of him) and Kamm (and who has probably tried and failed to read at least one of his books - not always right, but always beyond Kamm or BDJ).

As for Fascism, which I assume that BDJ meant, I have been wondering for some time whether there is really any such thing. Can anyone think of any feature, even one, common to all designated Fascist regimes and not found in any others? I can't.