The Italian fascists had concentration camps and registration of Jews, too, but did not go so far as to transport the inmates to death camps. It is the hallmark of National Socialism, i.e., instead of redistributing the wealth of capitalists, redistributing the wealth of undesirable ethnic groups. It would as much apply to affirmative action as to gassing people, removing their gold teeth and rendering their fats into soap. They differ in how far they would go to eliminate the undesirables, sometimes only economically, academically, culturally or linguistically, other times committing mass murder. But that remains my definition of fascism.
You’ve just stated that Franco wanted to ban all languages except Spanish, presumably only high Castillo Spanish at that, no dialects. That would be fascist-lite elimination, and would depend how far he went with that. Was he rounding up Basques just for speaking their native tongue in the market place, shop owners on the borders for having signs in French or Portuguese? Most likely broadcasting and publishing in other language was banned, but I’m just guessing.
But you are maintaining that there is a qualitative difference between fascism and Nazism, other than a quantitative matter of degree. Please elaborate on your definitions.
As part of the nationalistic efforts:In the first decade of Franco's rule, languages other than Castilian were "confined to private spaces". [1]
- Spanish films were produced only in Spanish. Foreign films were required to be dubbed.
- Spanish names and Spanish versions of Catholic and classical names were the only ones allowed. Leftist names like Lenín and regional names like even the Catalan Jordi (after Catalonia's patron saint, Saint George) were forbidden and even forcibly replaced in official records. Only Christian names in Spanish were allowed in official documents.
In the regime's most radical discourse, languages other than Spanish were often considered "dialects" in the sense of speeches that were not developed enough to be "real languages". Basque was different enough that it could not be taken as a debased form of Spanish but was despised as a rural language of limited currency, unfit for modern discourse. [3] This never happened at the academic level, though.
All these policies became less strict and more permissive as time passed.
Fascism is a broad nationalist movement that was present in most countries of Europe prior to 1945. It combined nationalism, a desire for a single party government dedicated to national goals and it was opposed to both socialism and international capitalism.
National Socialism in Germany was a particular brand of fascism, and it was characterized by overt racism and militarism; The mix proved deadly to millions of innocent people, as you know.
The unfortunate situation today is that we have no national governments anywhere, except maybe in Israel. It is my believe that every well-formed nation deserves a national government that pursues a well-defined nationalistic agenda in culture, immigration policy and economics. Obviously we in the USA do not have such a government. However, public discourse about nationalism is immediately sidetracked into name-calling. The use of "fascist" as an insult prevents us from having a rational discussion about public policy, and prevents us from discussing recent history objectively. Hysteria over my positive and even admiring assessment of General Franco is an example of such cognitive dysfunction.