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Conceptual stretching: why everyone you dislike is a fascist, or a communist, or both – Part I

Massimo Pigliucci · 13 Oct 2026

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    When a label applies to everything it describes nothing, and we lose the ability to notice the real thing.

    Their wordsBecause, arguably, when a word applies to everything it describes nothing, and the cost is not pedantic but epistemic: we lose the ability to notice when the real thing shows up.

  2. Our reading

    Communism is a subset of socialism, not a distinct political position.

    Their wordsCommunism, according to Karl Marx, is stateless, classless, and post-scarcity, but it is a sub-set of socialism, not a distinct political position.

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