Don't be fooled: not all fascism looks like Adolph Hitler.
Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States democratic system, said "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country".
Project for a New American Century: www.newamericancentury.org
!["I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country".](http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/049/0600/0642.jpg){kind=link}
Pooch, you just now figured out that we are a corporatist welfare/warfare state? Seriously, you think Bush, Cheney and the gang were the originators of this? OMG!!!! LOL!!!!!
ReplyDeleteorlin sellers
Some of it looks like public private partnerships and captive markets like Obamacare created.
ReplyDeleteOrlin just pointed out that it pre-dates Bush/Cheney, but you're blaming Obama????
DeleteI didn't blame Obama for it. I merely pointed out that his proudest achievement--touted by your side often enough--created a captive market for the Insurance Companies.
DeleteOf course it predates Obama, and Bush and Cheney, and even Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter... The tactic predates the whole country.
My point was merely to point out that your side's favorite achievement of the past couple years was a huge handout to insurance corporations. Unfortunately, the truth stings, so you had to deflect.
I'll be interested to see Mikeb's snide remarks regarding this conspiracy theory.
ReplyDeleteI don't see any theory about it.
DeleteIt seems that as people get closer to either end of the political spectrum, conspiracy theories become increasingly important.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a lot of truth to the fact that big special interests pressure US presidents to do that they want. Is that a conspiracy theory?
DeleteWe know special interests try to influence politicians in general. That's not what makes this sound like a conspiracy theory. Its the way the organization is portrayed and the imagery used. The extreme right does it with the Tides Foundation, Teresa Heinz Kerry and George Soros. It's the same tactic and it's dishonest, regardless of who does it.
DeleteFascists are just as bad as Progressives. They are ready, willing, and able to trample on anyone or anything that isn't beholden to their worldview.
ReplyDeleteNeither extreme is compatible with the "live and let live" approach to life.
Fascism was an authoritarian movement started by Mussolini in 1919, which came to power in Italy in Oct. 1922. Later it became the name for similar movements in other countries, among which German national socialism is the most prominent. By 1940 fascism had become a form of societal organization with adherents in almost every nation. The name of “fascismo” is derived from the Latin “fasces,” denoting in ancient Rome a bundle of rods with an axe, borne before Roman magistrates as a symbol of authority.
ReplyDeleteThe origins of the fascist movement are found in the wave of disillusionment and exacerbated nationalism which swept Italy after 1918. Even before WWI, Corradini propagated a doctrine of extreme and belligerent nationalism, which fanned enthusiasm for the Libyan War of 1911 and imperial expansion. The poet d’Anninzio had exalted in verse the mission of a victorious Italy and the love of danger, adventure and war. In the military coup by which he and a legion of black-shirted followers gained possession of Fiume in Sept. 1919, and during the 16 months in which he as Duce ruled the city, d’Annunzio introduced a constitution foreshadowing the “corporative state” and all the rites, salutes, allocutions and mass shouts which later became characteristic of the fascist movement. Mussolini before 1914 had been a leading member and editor of the Italian Social Democratic party, but he had always represented the tendencies of revolutionary syndicalism with their emphasis on direct action and enthusiastic will. Against the attitude of his party, Mussolini supported Italy’s entrance into the war in the fall of 1914; on November 15 he founded his own newspaper, the Popolo d’Italia, in Milan, which called itself an organ of combatants and producers and carried the social revolutionary motto by Blanqui, “Who has steel has bread,” and Napoleon’s saying, “The revolution is an idea which has found bayonets.” In the social unrest and moral confusion which followed WWI, Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento in Milan. The new group had no definite program; at first Mussolini was still a revolutionary syndicalist, who propagated the expropriation of the land, the mines, and all means of transportation. It was not until the beginning of 1921 that he allied his group openly with the propertied classes, with the landowners and the industrialists. But whatever his sociological affiliations, he was moved throughout by a fierce nationalism and by the love of violence and adventure. When he ran for a parliamentary seat in 1919, he got less that 5,000 votes out of 346,000. But the deep social unrest prevailing in Italy in 1920 gave Mussolini a chance, and though the danger of any bolshevist or socialist success had entirely faded by the end of the year, Mussolini and his squads of violent young men appeared to the frightened upper classes as a guarantee of security. Thus, with the army conniving, Mussolini’s followers set for themselves the task of “restoring order” and breaking up the socialist movements and organizations. With a boastful ruthlessness, with the proud sacrifice of all ethical scruples to success, the local squadristis, under the leadership of men like Grandi, Balbo, Farinacci and others, set out for the conquest of power in the name of youth against what they called “the tottering parliamentarism” of the “senile” and undecided liberals.
The lack of resistance on the part of the government, the army and the police, emboldened the fascists who had formed themselves into the national fascist party in Nov. 1921.
ReplyDeleteIn 1922 Mussolini abandoned his original socialist, anti-monarchist and anti-Catholic program. He had no definite doctrine to offer. “Our program is simple: we wish to govern Italy. They ask us for programs, but there are already too many. It is not programs that are wanting for the salvation of Italy, but men and will power.” On Oct. 28, 1922, the march on Rome was staged. Though the fascists and the nationalists were outnumbered in the Italian parliament by ten to one, and though with some show of resolute action the fascists could easily have been stopped, the king refused to sign the proclamation of the state of siege which his government had prepared, and on Oct. 29 invited Mussolini to form the new government. Though the new prime minister at first accepted a coalition cabinet and preserved some of the forms of the liberal state, within a very few years all the trappings of parliamentarism were gone, all other parties outlawed, all civil liberties and constitutional guarantees suppressed, and a full dictatorship established. The process was accelerated by the reaction of the country and of the civilized world to the murder of the socialist deputy Matteotti, in June 1924, on the eve of his exposure of the graft and corruption of the fascist party. Highest fascist officials were alleged to have been implicated in the murder. Though he professed to fight bolshevism, he successfully adopted its methods, without, however, being able to carry them in the different climate of Italy as far as they were carried in Russia and later on in Germany. The different squadristi organizations had been reformed on Feb. 10, 1923, as the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale.
Fascism in its beginnings was not a doctrine and had no clearly elaborated program. It was a technique for gaining and retaining power by violence, and with an astonishing flexibility it subordinated all questions of program to this one aim. But it was dominated from the beginning by a definite attitude of mind which exalted the fighting spirit, military discipline, ruthlessness and action, and rejected contemptuously all ethical motives as weakening the resoluteness of will. Fascism is power politics and realpolitik in their most naked form; all theoretical considerations are subservient to what is regarded as the “inexorable dynamics” of the factual situation. Ultimately everything depends upon the will of the leader, decisions which are blindly obeyed and immediately executed. Thus fascism could present itself as a bulwark of the social order against social revolution, Marxism and the proletariat, and could become the propagandist and spearhead of a proletarian world revolution against conservatism and wealth, against bourgeoisie and capitalism.