Posted on 11/20/2013 6:41:01 PM PST by annalex
As a matter of fact, yes, I am a member of the Pinochet fan club. The Left made up a bunch of crap about Pinochet...And the fact is, he saved Chile from the fate that Venezuela finds itself in today.
He kept his troops within his own borders, and didn’t suffer any other country’s troops inside to “help” him govern. In that he was very smart. But totalitarianism is totalitarianism, and while a non-expansionist totalitarian dictator is better than an expansionist one, I wouldn’t sing any paeons to any of them.
Good points all Eleutheria5 and a sound scholarly post. The homosexual aspect of the Nazis though, particularly concerning Rohm, has been disputed by some historians though many agree it did exist in the ranks of the Sturmabteilung (all those blond haired young men in jodhpurs and leather boots) some doubt that Rohm was actually a homosexual and that more over accusing him of being gay was an aspersion much as it is today. But Hitler did speak of the disgust at the scene that confronted him in Rohms hotel room at Bad Wiesse during ‘The Night Of The Long Knives’’.
I see fascism different than communism in that although both are totalitarian systems, fascism gives the pretense of private ownership. Yes you can own your own home but we(the state) are going to tell you how you’re going to live in it. We’ll control and tell what you can eat, drink or do(sounds like current situation, eh?) Yes you can own your own business/factory but we’re going to control the production process. We will tell what you will make, what you will pay your workers and yourself, that is if we let you. I see fascism as the ‘’softer sell’’ than communism which makes no pretense of private ownership of anything.
Guess that’s why he hired a bunch of free-market economics professors from the University of Chicago to resurrect Chile’s economy.
There’s also the letter Rohm wrote Hitler from, I think Colombia, in which he deplored the lack of ‘culture’ there, and stated that he intended to spread it. I mostly rely on Konrad Heiden’s Der Fuhrer, translated in 1944, for the info on Rohm, so was unaware that anyone disputed it. Heiden was very definite on the subject, and how Rohm employed his boy toys to help him keep the rank and file faithful to the party line. Von Ludendorf even complained of the homosexuality in the ranks, and Hitler wrote something to him in response that Heiden characterized as ‘unprintable’.
Here’s how I differentiate them. Communists believe in eliminating members of a class. Fascists believe in eliminating members of other races. Islamists believe in eliminating members of other religions. Their common denominator is that some group or other must be eliminated, and usually that Jews end up classified as being among the undesirables. Then and only then can they have their version of paradise on earth.
Yeah,those Chicago lawyers seem to helping out another dictator-wannabe currently occupying The White House.
I remember reading an account of Lady Astor who met Stalin in some diplomatic situation in Moscow at the height of “The Terror’’(as the Russians still call it) and she rather pointedly asked “When will you stop killing people?” Stalin replied ‘’When it is no longer necessary’’.
I must confess I haven’t read much about him, and apparently you have. So perhaps you could tell me. Since Spain is relatively homogeneous, with few minorities to pick on, did Franco ever do anything unpleasant to the Basques and the Gypsies, or descendants of novocristos? Other than crushing dissenters, which, if I can believe Hemingway in For Whom The Bell Tolls, the leftists in Spain reciprocated, and disregarding an election, he doesn’t seem to have had much opportunity to do nasty fascist stuff.
The omelet chef who broke a lot of eggs but forgot to buy a frying pan, which explains why people had to stand in long lines for food.
>> And it was a war that saw the German nation and its people commit the most horrific and monstrous crime in the history of man on this planet.
While I would agree their crimes were horrific and monstrous, “most in the history of man on this planet” would seem to imply they are on top of the leaderboard. They are tens of millions back, meaning that as bad as the Nazis were, there are a few regimes that were significantly worse.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Significantly worse? How so? Turning mass murder into an almost industrialized process?
Typo! Oh, well too much Thanksgiving feasting and middle aged eyesight . Anyway castle boy you sure a hoot.
Look at the numbers on the leaderboard. They speak for themselves.
A tip of the hat to Salazar, as well.
The Portuguese could have done worse...in fact, they did, after Salazar was dead and they stupidly voted Commie.
Franco's Spain wasn't totalitarian, at least not after 1945. There was some censorship, natural in the aftermath of a leftist revolt, and Spanish was the only official language, that is about all; and the system was liberalizing all along. The economy was thoroughly capitalist.
What race did Franco try to eliminate? Your definition applies to nazism, not fascism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.