Posted on 05/22/2016 12:36:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As I wrote in this space a few weeks ago, Donald Trump is no fascist, but there are many pundits who are calling him that. Their efforts, I think, tells us more about their ignorance of fascism than about Trump and his followers.
The latest to show off his ignorance is Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, writing in the Washington Post. Fascist movements, according to Kagan, are incoherent mobocracies with strong leaders. They had, he claims,
“ no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. ‘National socialism’ was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Fuhrer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation.
It’s fanciful to call Nazism a bundle of contradictions when, a decade before coming to power, it had a detailed diagnosis of what ailed Germany, and how to fix it. It was called Mein Kampf, and it provided the basis for the Third Reich. Kagan apparently doesn’t consider the Nazis’ racist doctrines to be explicit either, even though they were the basis for very detailed legislation, indoctrination in all the schools and universities, military operations, and eventually the Holocaust. Nazism was a great deal more than one-man rule by a charismatic leader.
As for Italian fascism, it is perverse to call it anti-clerical. In fact, Mussolini greatly empowered the Catholic Church, required religious education in the schools, and granted enhanced autonomy to the Holy See. “Successful fascism” in Italy was very much about policies. That’s why it was so greatly admired throughout the West...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
It’s so simple a caveman could figure it out.
If a person is not a full on screaming commiescum, they are, by default, a fascist.
In the minds of leftardic idiots, those are the only two options in government that exist.
It actually serves as an accurate “outer” of closet commiescum. Anyone starts throwing around the fascist slander is, in fact, a degenerate commiescum.
The only thing worse than a Fascist, is an Anti-Fascist.
America’s Utopia of the Left
I remember being about 11 years old and having teachers tell me about communism. Some of the teachers liked it, some opposed it. Didn’t matter — they talked about it. Grade School, Junior High, High School, College, and Grad School. The theory of Marxism was always part of the curriculum.
Fascism? It was never spoken of. It was just “evil”. Bad things in the world? Let’s label them “fascism”. A politician you do not agree with? We’ll call him a “fascist”.
A terrible failure in education. I say we live in a full-on Fascist society today. But we don’t admit it to ourselves, because we don’t know what fascism is.
Just found this translation of Mussolini (the father of fascism) providing his definition - he was very contemptuous of socialists/Marxists, but in the end, it’s all about Power in the hands of the very few:
Following are the exact words (translated) as written by Mussolini for the Italian Encyclopedia in 1932:
Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism — born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision — the alternative of life or death....
...The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others — those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after...
...Fascism is the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production.... Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....
After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....
...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of “happiness” and indefinite progress....
...iven that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality — thus it may be called the “ethic” State....
...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....
...For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century - repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order. If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.
They are deperate to hang some kind of label on Trump that sticks.
So far, nothing has worked.
The Ministry Of Propaganda have never had this happen before.
Decentralized control is the other side of the spectrum and includes Republicanism, libertarianism, democracy, etc.
The bottom line is, who is the sovereign? the people or the state.
Mussolini, who started out as a socialist, certainly was anti-clerical and anti-religious in his early thinking. He later learned, as other dictators did, that he could use religion for his own ends, and did so.
I wouldn't say that fascism as such was anti-clerical or anti-religious -- Tiso, the Slovakian fascist leader, was himself a priest -- but I don't think Kagan was wholly off the mark in noting the anti-religious aspects of Nazism and Italian fascism.
I wouldn't argue with the rest of Ledeen's presentation. There's a populist trend in the world today that doesn't have very much in common with the fascism of the interwar years.
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under "communism" and "fascism." As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, "the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of un-freedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."
No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
-- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Of course, we would call his "liberal of the old type" who "really believes in individual freedom" a conservative. The Left has stolen the term "liberal" as it has so many, to run from its true beliefs in collectivist statism.
Weird. That bundle of contradictions remark is reminiscent of Anne Frank famously calling herself a little bundle of contradictions.
Trump is no fascist. America has never produced a fascist.
That's nonsense, and it trivializes Fascism. FR wouldn't exist in a "full-on Fascist society". All of us either be silent, in prison or dead. Moreover the hallmark of all Fascism is hyper-nationalism (which is why the globalists label all legitimate nationalism "Fascist"). Nationalism of any sort is verboten by today's globalist elites, including those who call themselves "conservative".
People who don’t know what fascism is just need to hear “pen and phone.” Problem is they just adore when the Obama does fascist acts. Because they think they’re in the club and they’re still getting free stuff. After all, only mean conservatives and corporations are getting punished.
We live in an Oligarchy. There is a small group of government and businessmen that make the rules.
Not for lack of trying.
By far, Omugabe has approached the closest; and he's not quite done yet.
He’s a commie. And he wasn’t produced; he was spawned.
Leftists call everything they don’t like “fascism”, when they are the fascists themselves. They have lost any credibility when they throw the word around without knowing what it means.
Even worse is a link to a site that won’t provide the story unless I turn off my ad blocker.
Then there was Croatia's Ante Pavelic.
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