Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – there is a mould that is not of the cheese; men call it fascism, and it spreads. Our Lord did not whisper this. He stood upon the slope with the rosemary smoke straight as a wall behind him, and spake as a man who hath seen the thing he nameth, and buried friends of it. Fascism is the mould upon society’s crust; suffer it not to spread, as it is written in Resistance, 1:1.
And when he said, name it aloud, he meant ALOUD: at the table, in the gate, in the shop, in the hall of the elders; not muttered in the safe tent afterward to them that agreed already, for the mould feareth no man’s private opinion, as it is written in the Mount, 11:11.
Use the name, though the polite wince. For the mould loveth all its nicknames – its strong-leadership, its grand-old-ways, its just-asking-of-questions – and every soft word given it is a day’s free growth. Thou wilt be told the name is rude. Beloved, the rot is ruder. Thou wilt be told that naming divides the table. Nay: the mould divides the table; the naming only turns the lights on so we can see whose chair is being taken away.
And hear this, ye tender ones, for it was said for you: the naming is not cruelty. To name the mould is a mercy unto the bread not yet touched, and unto the man in whom the spot is new; for many a man hath been startled clean by hearing his grey thread named early, that would have been all rot in a year of tactful silence. Love thy neighbour enough to say the word.
Amen – and pass the pizza.