With Time Fascism we mean that sometimes time restrictions are used in a way that should be characterized as oppressive, intolerant, dictatorial and/or aggressive.
Babies and toddlers are expected to develop within a certain time-frame. Those who for various underlying reasons do not sit, crawl or read or should be known by the authorities, so they can help and ensure the best treatment. However, many children develop in other directions and at other paces. Early support is often beneficial for lots of conditions but the framework is often rigid. There is also a risk that a child will be defined as someone with a developmental or learning disability, and more importantly the environment will behave to conform this “fact “. However, many children do not follow “normal development” and they nevertheless grow up to became successful people.
IQ tests and other learning performance tests have time limits. If you have not solved the problems in a certain time-period, you get a lower score or even fail. But what if someone is able to solve all the problems in 24 hours, and then performing better than the average student? Notwithstanding that in some countries they define entrance levels for higher education at the age of 10.
To get a passport, or other official documents, we are bound to opening hours. Mostly we have to take an holiday to fulfill our obligations as a citizen. However, the government should work for citizen and should open their offices like shopping malls, who are welcoming their clients they depend on.
At the age of 18, if you want to go to university you should have A-levels in a couple of disciplines. What if someone is brilliant in mathematics, but lacks sufficient fluency in a required language? He or she will not be admitted to an university, because they had not acquired some skills in a certain time. What if the person could acquire that extra skills later?
To be on time when having an appointment is a good business habit, so you don’t waste time for the person you have made the appointment with. But maybe by being late you give the person an opportunity to reflect on his or her functioning or even time to clean up the desk?
We understand that an individual, institution or group we have called a Time Fascist will find the way we selected examples to be highly offensive and inappropriate. We just tried to show how authoritarian and intolerant power-holders use time as means for repression, which in some way is homologous with fascist ideology: that is governmental suppression of individual freedom.
