FROM GRAMMAR NAZIS TO FASCIST GRAMMAR

National Review

 

From Grammar Nazis to Fascist Grammar

By Abigail Anthony

February 14, 2025 10:25 AM

 

“Grammar Nazi” generally describes a person who (somewhat annoyingly) corrects other people’s grammatical errors. It’s generally considered a pejorative, insofar as most people don’t want to be dubbed a “grammar Nazi,” although it doesn’t quite qualify as a slur that, if said aloud, will get an employee sent to Human Resources. There’s just something rather unserious about the term: No sane person thinks that a stickler for subject-verb agreement is equivalent to the guy who locked the door on the gas chamber.

 

Or so I thought.

 

A woman on Twitter/X posted the benign comment, “You guys really do need to stop saying ‘casted’ though it’s getting scary,” and she further stated, “I think correcting peoples grammar on the internet is pretty annoying, but I think ‘casted’ gaining popularity is scary [because] it’s coming at a time when language and comprehension abilities appear to be on the decline.” There’s nothing remarkable about these posts; it’s easily ignored general commentary about education and an irregular verb. But someone replied to say that “this is fascism.” That person — who, perhaps predictably, has a Palestinian flag in the username — added the following: “Scare mongering about declining grammar/‘language mastery’ is fascism. You’ve got folks in your comments whining about all the ways language should be changing according to set grammatical rules. That’s fascism pal.”

 

That’s right, pal: The politics professor who requires citations in MLA format also wrote the Nuremberg Laws, On Writing Well by William Zinsser is a sequel to Mein Kampf, and the red squiggly line beneath a misspelled word in an electronic document is a red arm band.

 

Quite frankly, I don’t think it requires an essay to explain that noticing overregularization — a grammatical error resulting from applying a regular rule to an irregular word, such as adding “-ed” for the past tense of “cast” — is not fascism. But the great irony is that, if we accept that “whining about all the ways language should be changing according to set grammatical rules” is in fact “fascism,” then many left-wingers qualify as “Nazis,” evidenced by the linguistic policing that is socially and institutionally enforced under the guise of promoting “inclusivity”: Use the “correct pronouns” in accordance with self-declared “gender identity” because “misgendering” is a punishable sin, but say “people with uteruses” even when women want to be called “women.” Capitalize “Black” but not “white” because the latter would indulge “white supremacists.” Those twitching people in the streets have a “substance abuse disorder,” not an “addiction.” No, that isn’t a “blind person,” that is a “person who is blind.” Do not, under any circumstances, say “illegal” or “alien” when talking about immigrants because no human is illegal, you bigot. But, just to be clear: There’s nothing authoritarian about requiring you to follow the guidance of “inclusive language” manifestos.