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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is pretty simple: The left applies the term “fascist” to anyone who disagrees with them.
It isn’t any more complicated than that. They have no idea what it means.
Benito Mussolini was a Communist who couldn’t secure the nomination of that party in his quest for Prime Minister.
So he broke away and set up what he called “The Fagot Party” (Fascist in Italian.)
He then rode a populist wave.
Some of the Fascist tactics included: showing up at oppositional rallies. Fascists would lock hands, block roads and do other things to prevent supporters of the opposition from having their rallies.
Fascists would often set it up so they outnumbered the opposition. Although threats were seldom overt, the sheer numbers were intimidating.
The strategy worked. The Fascists eventually were swept to power.
Mussolini then governed as a Bernie Sanders style Socialist. In fact, the very definition Mussolini laid out for “Fascism” was the concept that the people could have private property as long as they were serving the public interest.
Didn’t take long for the Fascists to nationalize the banks, the hospitals, factories, major shops and property owned by people who didn’t support the Fascist.
This was all done in the name of “the people”. Some were concerned, but their criticism was swept aside for “the greater good”.
One of Benito’s targets was “the greedy”.
Now I see a lot of these ideas being pushed and tactics being used in American politics in 2016.
But none of them are coming from Trump’s side.
We are all living with fascism now: takeover of General Motors, followed by dissolution of Cadillac franchises (which just happened to be predominantly owned by political adversaries of Obama); takeover of the institution of marriage; takeover of the entire health care industry; takeover of all student loans; it goes on and on.
It is easy to understand. Leftists make their living taking simple, obvious things and obfuscating them into opacity. (Then they mock conservatives who insist that it is really not that complex.)
Leftists have to make everything incomprehensible, so that they can avoid their twin demons: truth and right.
NAZI Germany was a good example of fascism (versus communism - not that I think they are that much different: tyranny is, ultimately, tyranny.)
Willy Messerschmitt and Ernst Heinkel were both brilliant, and both were allowed a certain amount of freedom to run their companies.
However, Willy was much more in Adolph’s good graces than Ernst. As a result, some superior designs by Heinkel languished, while less advanced designs by Messerschmitt were given production.
(This was to the good of the Allies cause, by the bye.)
Historically, Fascism was a well-developed doctrine that had supporters and admirers in nations throughout the world. As such, it's an example of how supposedly intelligent people can be taken in by a false but attractive doctrine.
Despite the outcries of the Leftists, Trump is no Mussolini.