“What term, then, is the right one? None — fascists, white nationalists, extremists — fully encompass the men and women in this mass. Watchdog groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center have spent decades tracing the intricate ideological differences among various fringe sects: neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, Klansmen and so on. Yet when these impulses collect into one group, it’s impossible to arrive at a simple, low-syllable explanation of their particular ugliness.
But that’s precisely why “Nazi” was, originally, such a useful word. It was never intended as an incisive diagnosis. It was a snappy, crude, unfussy insult, repurposed and wielded by people the Nazis intended to dominate, expel or kill. It contains a larger lesson, which is that we do not have to engage in linguistic diplomacy with people who want to destroy us. We don’t have to refer to them with their labels of choice. There is a time for splitting hairs over the philosophies of hateful extremists, but there’s also great value in unambiguously rejecting all of them at once with our most melodious, satisfying terminology. “Nazi” is not careful description. But careful description is a form of courtesy. “Nazi,” on the other hand, has always been a form of disrespect.”