…is very thin:
In Argentina, everyone acknowledges that fascism, state capitalism, corporatism – whatever – reflects very leftwing ideology. Eva Peron remains a liberal icon. President Obama’s Fabian policies (Keynesian economics) promise similar ends. His proposed infrastructure bank is just the latest gyration of corporatism. Why then are fascists consistently portrayed as conservatives?
Because the Left are always historical revisionists. They have to be to sucker the next generation of rubes.
Um, considering the Italian Fascists, the German Nazi Party, and Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, Spain under Franco, Argentina under Peron, various central European states between the world wars, etc. — the stuff most of us point to as Fascist, we see some common characteristics:
1. Extreme nationalism (government-encouraged patriotism)
2. Militarism (respect for armed forces, war and threats of war as primarily foreign policy tools)
3. Government control over what is nominally a free- market economy, coupled with denunciations of Socialism
4. Government rapport with established religion
5. Racism, either tolerated or enforced
6. Subordination of state offices to party control, downgrading the traditional civil service, etc.
To most people in most of the world, these look “conservative.” The US is unique in viewing them as “liberal”.
Fascists seem conservative to communists and other ‘international’ socialists, because of the nationalism (extreme or not) and the willingness to use the military for purposses other than wars of ‘liberation’. I guess that later point makes Obama and George Bush both Fascists. And racism ‘tolerated or enforced’ could include our own congressional black caucus and Department of Justice.
@mike,
Nationalism and militarism was the traditional normal for almost all European national governments going back to the Dark Ages. The English, French, Prussians, Swedes, and Spanish fielded huge armies and hung traitors long before fascism was even a notion. Aside from war and threats of war, their only other foreign policy was marrying off royal heirs, and even that was directed at forming useful military alliances.
There are a couple reasons that fascism/Nazism is remembered for its emphasis on military might.
For one, fascism did it consciously as a fundamental revision to the Marxist theory of international revolution of the working classes. During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Marxists asked why the workers weren’t uniting in the predicted revolution, and Marxist theory was revised to reflect the idea that the working class responded more to nationalist patriotic impulses and dynamic, military leadership. So Mussolini, Hitler, and the other fascist leaders paraded around in military uniforms. This put them in contrast to previous Marxists who dressed in workmen’s coats and denied any recognition to nation states or the military, which they viewed as the tools the upper-class used to control the working class. So Fascism’s nationalistic and militaristic aspect is only odd when comparing it to other early branches of Marxism. Of course during and after WW-II communism was also wildly nationalist and militaristic, and in WW-I all the belligerents were wildly nationalist and militaristic, even though none of them were fascist or communist. Compared to European governments prior to the post-war period, nationalism and militarism were about the only aspects of fascism that were normal.
The other reason fascism is remembered for such is that it was the last form of European government to rely on militarism. After WW-II, Europe was changed into a collection of largely peace-loving governments that lost their capacity for large scale war. Yet prior and during WW-II just about every European government was also nationalistic and militaristic, but the Nazis and fascists started the war (and lost it badly), so their nationalism was bad but the nationalism and military might of Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and the United States during the war was good.
The Nazis didn’t denounce socialism, they embraced it. They were, after all, called The National Socialist Workers Party. They carefully explained to everyone that Nationalism was their foreign policy and socialism was their domestic policy.
The Fascists were never comfortable with Rome, or the King of Italy, their tolerance varying according to political expediency. The Nazis were even more uncomfortable with established religion, especially Judaism.
Mussolini’s Fascist Party was staunchly anti-racist, declaring that tolerance for all races and religions set Italy apart from exploitive racist, capitalist systems found in England and America. The Nazis, of course, had a race-based theory of just about everything.
The party was the state. As revisionist Marxism, fascism doesn’t have any room for an opposition party because fascism knows the Truth (with a capital ‘T’) about how society should be organized and run. An opposition party would just represent people who disagree, not ony marking them as wrong, but as disloyal to the party, the state, and thus society itself. Of course attempts should be made to re-educate them, so they see the errors in their thinking, but jail, labor camps (so they contribute to society) or extermination are also efficient options.
tl; dr: Nationlist Socialism vs. International Socialism
Dean Kennedy — I am really not a fan of racial quotas and a whole lot of DoJ efforts to “expand equality.” However, most folks think the idea is that these government efforts will in fact change society in some fashion so that people are not _punished_ for being in a racial minority. I.e., we will take some efforts to make sure second generation Italian and Japanese and Polish kids get admitted to college and even some poor blacks, even if your grandpa and your friendly town banker and your real estate guy get unhappy about Guineas and Nips and Polacks and Nig-Nogs being treated like white folks.
To put it gently, this isn’t Nazi-style racism.
Why do you think it is?
George Turner.
Thanks for the history lesson. After half a century’s worth of reading history, I found it …. informative.
Thank you for sharing.
3. Government control over what is nominally a free- market economy…
Fascists explicitly denounced capitalism, so yeah. Fascism calls everything it does “freedom,” so to be nit-picky I’d use the phrase “nominally a private-sector economy.”
…coupled with denunciations of Socialism
Because Socialism as it was practiced was rooted in decentralized power. Not enough czars.
“Fascism denounces democratic socialism as a failure. Fascists oppose it for its support of reformism and the parliamentary system that fascism reject.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_and_ideology#Democratic_socialism
4. Government rapport with established religion
So all those Democrats who hold political rallies in black churches are right-wing?
Fascism is universally totalitarian, thus established religion is competition for the hearts and minds of the masses. Any rapport is aimed at castrating the church. There is room for only one Alpha and Omega.
5. Racism, either tolerated or enforced
“The idea that the Nazi’s were right wing seems to boil down to the idea that racism (and nationalism) is a unique and defining trait of the right. But this is transparently false; Mecha, the Hispanic-power group, is avowedly leftist, racist,and nationalist. The Black Panthers and other black supremacists were leftist.”
http://dailypundit.com/?p=2149
Certain Brits will tell you that the racist, collectivist BNP is leftist and fascist.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-bnp-is-left-wing-and-fascist.html
Affirmative action in the form of enforced quotas are both racist and leftist.
6. Subordination of state offices to party control, downgrading the traditional civil service, etc.
Uh, what do you mean by “downgrading the traditional civil service?” When I see that phrase I imagine the civil service get smaller. For bureaucracies, Fascism, democratic socialism, and Communism are like (unpoisoned) quadro-triticale to tribbles.
Hitler in particular saw the civil service as one of the three pillars of the State: “The wonderful might and power of the old Empire was based on the monarchical form of government, the army and the civil service” (Mein Kampf, Chapter 10, 3rd-to-last paragraph).
Or are you saying that under Fascism the “traditional” bureaucracy recedes as a “non-traditional” bureaucracy emerges? I kinda think that both go on the rise.
Got a question, if Nazism and the Heritage Foundation are both right wing, what do they have in common? And if Communism is leftist, how does it differ from Fascism?
It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve spent reading history if you’ve drawn the wrong conclusions.
THERE’S A LINE!!!???
It’s not useful to use the words left and right when discussing politics anymore. The propaganda organs have done a great job of confusing people as to their definition. Better to pick 6 to 8 fundamental issues to calibrate on and thus describe a political ideology. Personally I focus on human liberty, which is not limited by third parties (government, religion or otherwise) as long as the life, rights and property of others is respected. That’s too simple for most and I’m no political philosopher so I’ll spare you my personal definition of the 6 to 8 issues, and leave it to human liberty to be the catch all. For most folks, “fascist” has become just another way to say “a political form featuring policies I don’t like.” That’s not technically true, but that’s the way our public discourse has gone lately.
Nota bene: by my system of definition the US is a democratic fascist state at this time. More on that another day. Before you get excited – think Italian fascism – corporatism. And NO that is NOT government by corporations. I do wish people would actually pay attention to what words mean.
RKV, one of the problems with the term “fascist” being so distorted is that leftists who claim to oppose fascism in all its forms will sign right up for most Fascist programs. Heck, the Fascists stayed in Italian politics (since we never bothered with a real purge of them), and just restarted the party under the name Italian Social Movement (MSI). The party played a key role in some Christian Democrat coalition governments, drawing votes away from the Italian Socialist Party (and you can only draw votes from parties that compete for the same segment of the popullation).
By the late 1960’s MSI finally accepted democracy instead of desiring rule by elite, well-educated experts (perhaps one day the US mainstream media will come to a similar acceptance). By the 1990’s it drifted to the right (center-right) so some of the members branched off to form the National Alliance party, merging with the Italian Liberal Party. As I recall, the leader of the NA party was part of Berscoloni’s cabinet.
I’m sure in a few decades all the leftists will claim Hugo Chavez was a right-winger, since his speeches and policies leave him open to a copyright infringement lawsuit by Mussolini’s family, and since Mussolini was right wing… well, there ya go.
THERE’S A LINE!!!???
Line forms to the left, please.
Brezhnev is showing his mother how well he’s done. He shows her his suite in the Kremlin, his dacha in the country, his Black Sea villa, his Zil limousine.
‘All very nice, dear,’ she says. ‘But what will you do if the Bolsheviks come back?’
The above joke was funny in the USSR, but there was no Nazi equivalent. Why is that? I think it is because Fascism and Socialism/Communism have different goals. I’m interested in hearing an explanation from one of you here who thinks the two movements have the same goals.
Bob-1: I’m interested in hearing an explanation from one of you here who thinks the two movements have the same goals.
I think that brings up a salient point: we have to ask why, time after time, people fall for the Communist line of thinking. After all the examples of tyranny and genocide, from the Soviet Union to Red China to Cuba to Cambodia to Vietnam — and on and on and on, hundreds of millions dead, billions enslaved — why do some people think Communism is still a worthy goal? One theory is that people believe that the ends can be separated from the means. They buy into the utopian propaganda of brotherhood and equality, and set aside every single dark episode of how Communism actually works, and follow leaders who only have the thirst for power in their hearts.
I think Asimov said it more succinctly: “People Are Stupid!”
Bob-1: I’m interested in hearing an explanation from one of you here who thinks the two movements have the same goals.
Fascism and Communism are two different political philosophies, so of course they’re going to differ here and there. But they share two critical goals: state control over both the culture and the economy. Communism takes the latter a step further and take actual ownership of the means of production.
Leftists of the West differ with Fascism and Communism over these two goals only by degree. They’re the ones grasping for micromanagement of the economy and pass speech codes and institute “diversity” curricula that waters down non-Western evils.
I don’t have time now for a full reply to to you, Alan and BBbeard, but thanks…
I do think it would be instructive to compare jokes told by Germans during the Nazi era with jokes told by people living in the USSR. It is a way to identify the similarities and differences in the two ideologies.
Also, compare both of those sets to jokes told by Americans about Nazis and Soviets (subtracting out jokes that could be told about any group of foreigners, like the classic jokes about [insert ethnicity here]). You might find that Americans view Soviets and Nazis differently than the people subjected to their propaganda and oppression did.
Bob-1: You might find that Americans view Soviets and Nazis differently than the people subjected to their propaganda and oppression did.
More than you know, apparently. I would hazard a guess that most Americans buy the Hollywood narrative that fear of Communism was something trumped up by ambitious politicians, that Joe McCarthy and Joe Stalin were pretty much equivalent Joes, and that the targets of the “witch hunt” of the forties and fifties were illusory. Of course, it’s hard to get farther from the truth, as anyone who has spent any time behind the Iron Curtain (or studied the VENONA papers) knows.
One of the benefits of being a physicist is that I get to meet many educated people from a lot of different countries. I have met a number of leftists who have fond imaginings of idyllic life in the workers’ paradise — people who have been brought up short by others who actually had to live and survive in that “paradise”. You might be surprised to find out how many of those survivors revere Ronald Reagan for his stand against the Evil Empire. I even know folks who changed their name to McCarthy when they escaped Romania, out of respect for you-know-who.
Hmmm, I have a fair number of friends either from Eastern Europe or who live in Eastern Europe now (mostly Hungary and Croatia, but some from Poland and Russia). Not a single right winger in the bunch. All the ones who came here and became American citizens vote for Democrats. The ones in Europe vote for left-wing parties. But you won’t find any of them describe the communists as anything other than thieving murderers.
Croatia is a particularly interesting case here (in very sad way) as they first suffered on Communism (while Yugoslavia’s regime was milder than Russia’s, it had plenty of torture, theft, etc), and then they suffered due to right-wing extremism. I know two Croatian pathologists who first had professional trouble due to their anti-communist stance, and then they got stuck in Vukovar in 1991, with all that implies. Lots cynicism, no love for the communists, but a deep suspicion of the right wing too.
Hmmm, I have a fair number of friends either from Eastern Europe or who live in Eastern Europe now (mostly Hungary and Croatia, but some from Poland and Russia). Not a single right winger in the bunch. All the ones who came here and became American citizens vote for Democrats.
Shorter bob: “I don’t know anybody who voted for Nixon.”
He really needs to meet other people outside his box and expand his culture.
Bob-1 said:
The flaw in that plan is the German’s lack of a sense of humor. ^_^
A Soviet man stands in line all day and finally gets up to the counter, where he asks for a piece of fish. The clerk says, “Are you crazy? This is a bakery! We don’t have any bread. The store without any fish is across the street.”
A Czech girl listening to state radio asks her mother, “Will we have money once we achieve true socialism?” Her mother replies, “No dear, we won’t have any of that, either.”
Breshnev got an important call at his dacha and wanted to get back to the Kremlin in a hurry. He ran out to his limo, told his chaffeur to get in the back, and tore out onto the roadway at breakneck speed. A pair of Soviet police saw the speeding limo and gave chase, knowing that the latest Party congress had said that traffic laws would be equally enforced. They pulled the limo over and one of the cops went out, talked to the driver, and came back shaking as the limo sped off. The other cop says, “Comrade, why didn’t you give them a ticket?” The shaken policemen said, “I couldn’t, he was too important.” “Too important?” “Yes, I don’t know who the man was, but Breshnev was his driver.”
***
Anyway, the goals of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism are actually the same, the establishment of a true socialist state, much as described by Marx. As Hitler said, to understand Nazism you have to read Marx. Mussolini knew very little aside from Marxism until sometime after WW-I (and he and his Fascists took power in 1922).
Both the Fascists and Nazis, however, witnessed the disaster of the Soviet attempts to implement state control by immediatey eliminating business owners, so they said that step would be delayed for a more orderly transition. Both the Nazis and Fascists made the pragmatic argument that business owners and managers were the people who actually understood how to run the business, and that the state would serve to help both them and their workers achieve harmony.
Mussolini (who grew up in a communist household and whose only prior jobs were as a communist agitator/propagandist, Marxist labor union organizer, and editor of a string of socialist party newspapers) faced the odd fact that traditional Marxism didn’t apply well to Italy, where most businesses were family owned. What was the pitch going to be “Workers of the world, overthrow your parents and grandparents and seize the business and property that was going to be yours anyway, which you’ll have to run with half as many workers because you’ve just eliminated them in the purge?”
So he went even further left than Marx, fusing Marxist socialism with anarcho-syndicalism, then started theorizing to generate his third path to true socialism, with class warfare replaced by a struggle between capitalist exploiter nations and oppressed working class nations like Italy. Everything he based his new ideas on was either hard core socialist, communist, or anarcho-syndicalist, as he didn’t really know anything else.
(Odd fact: Antonio Gramsci, who many consider to be Marxism’s greatest 20th century thinker and whose work is still cited by Democrat party thinkers out of Berkeley and other universities, only held one job, as a writer working under Mussolini, who was his editor.)
Still, all three are just variations on bizarre social conspiracy theories, and the violent disagreements between them are like watching a heated argument between a Ferengi, a Romulan, and a Klingon at a Star Trek convention. All three are true believers, but nothing they believe is remotely connected to reality.
Leland, I have plenty of friends who vote Republican — just none from Eastern Europe. And how did my comment differ from bbbeard’s except in polarity?
–
I will now savor George’s comment.
I know two Croatian pathologists who first had professional trouble due to their anti-communist stance, and then they got stuck in Vukovar in 1991, with all that implies. Lots cynicism, no love for the communists, but a deep suspicion of the right wing too.
Well, you gave us two reasons they have a beef with the Commies. (The military leaders indicted for their role in the Vukovar massacre were veterans of the Yugoslav People’s Army.) Why do they distrust the right wing?
he above joke was funny in the USSR, but there was no Nazi equivalent. Why is that? I think it is because Fascism and Socialism/Communism have different goals. I’m interested in hearing an explanation from one of you here who thinks the two movements have the same goals.
Bob, you make the typical leftist error of thinking that the paving stones to hell are the most important, or even a significant issue. But it doesn’t matter to the millions of brutalized and/or murdered victims.
Honest. I know they’re being unreasonable, but they just don’t give a damn.
Rand,
Your logic would lead to the condemnation of justifiable wars because of all the dead bodies. The USA has been in the right when conducting its wars, but explain that to the completely innocent parents of the children killed by US bombs. They don’t give a damn either. And they aren’t being unreasonable — their justified grief doesn’t necessarily lead me to conclude that the US was wrong.
You can focus on the dead bodies all you want (Good for you! Seriously!) but don’t think that you’re making a point about ideology, nor are you correcting my “typical leftist error”. The USA has used quite horrible means to try to arrive at good ends, and our intentions did matter.
—
Alan, you’re right regarding Vukovar itself. However, much of the Yugo conflict wasn’t one-sided, and as it played out, Croatia fell victim to rightwing extremism.
Bob: And how did my comment differ from bbbeard’s except in polarity?
BBBeard: I have met a number of leftists who have fond imaginings of idyllic life in the workers’ paradise — people who have been brought up short by others who actually had to live and survive in that “paradise”. You might be surprised to find out how many of those survivors revere Ronald Reagan for his stand against the Evil Empire.
Bob: I have a fair number of friends either from Eastern Europe or who live in Eastern Europe now (mostly Hungary and Croatia, but some from Poland and Russia). Not a single right winger in the bunch. All the ones who came here and became American citizens vote for Democrats.
Bob (doubling down and proviing my point); I have plenty of friends who vote Republican — just none from Eastern Europe.
I stand by my paraphrase and recommendation.
ou can focus on the dead bodies all you want (Good for you! Seriously!) but don’t think that you’re making a point about ideology, nor are you correcting my “typical leftist error”. The USA has used quite horrible means to try to arrive at good ends, and our intentions did matter.
Just because you don’t think I’m making a point doesn’t mean I’m not. Intentions in fact do not matter in this context.
Bob-1: And how did my comment differ from bbbeard’s except in polarity?
Both are stories are anecdotal, as you and I both realize. So also is your attempt to get at the truth by analyzing humor. How do you know there weren’t equivalent jokes about Nazis? Do you hang around with ex-Nazis?
FWIW Hitler was only in power a dozen years, most of them terribly busy, what with invasions and wars are all that. The Communists ran the Soviet Union for about seventy years, most of those stifling and bureaucratic, with only the occasional war and gulag deportation and forced-collectization-induced famine. Are these really comparable in terms of intrinsic humor? Is it easier to joke about the KGB than the Gestapo? Does that really tell you anything about the nature and brutality of these two species of leftism? If the question is whether you would rather live in the Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany, the answer is NO.
The righeousness (or lack thereof) of US wars can be judged against Just War Theory. I am unaware of any similar standard for the Gulag or Auschwitz.
Bob-1: I’m interested in hearing an explanation from one of you here who thinks the two movements have the same goals.
…and let’s consider the “goal” of leftists. Perhaps I am in a minority, but I find the idea of living in a utopia where all production is collected and redistributed, where all persons wear the same state-approved, er, people-approved clothes and live in the same houses in communities whose plan is set by some technocratic board of elders, utterly repellent. You get zero points in my book for trying to force this utopia on people.
And you know, apart from all the mass murder and oppression inherent in forced collectivization, one of the things that most offends me about leftists is that they have no clue about how economies actually work. All they have is a template based on an erroneous theory of value. The fact that this template has resulted in not only mass murder and oppression, but also widespread poverty, does not seem to induce even a moment of introspection in the earnest Communist.
All they have is a template based on an erroneous theory of value. The fact that this template has resulted in not only mass murder and oppression, but also widespread poverty
When the notion that the most common denominator is fair then poverty will always be the final answer, and sometimes the rounding error gets dealt with in a bloody manner.
Here’s a Spiegel article on a book about Nazi-era humor.
Bob-1, you can begin your analysis. 🙂
Bob, may I introduce you to Karol Markowicz? Now you don’t have to be so absolute.
The issue is control of others. By that measure, American politics today looks a lot like others in the 30’s. Which is quite different from our founding.
Take all the voted upon laws away and we’d still have enough bureaucratic rules to keep everybody in slavery.
BR may have 31 flavas of ice cream, but it’s all still ice cream.
Well put Titus… I wonder how many think yer talking about ice cream?