Fascism: Left or right?

American Thinker ^ | 11 Jun, 2024 | Jay Davidson

[MtnClimber]

Words have meaning — especially words that mean the opposite of what one thinks. Clear definition has greater meaning.

Fascism allows the business to keep the means of its production, the factories or farms, but takes the output (profit). The Nazis of 1930s Germany were Fascists. “Nazi” is an acronym for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Today we call it corporatism. The end result is control.

Communism takes both the means of production and the output. The Communist Party ruled the USSR until its economy failed in the 1980s.

Both assume that the State owns everything. In truth, both imply that the individual has no rights, no individualism, no freedom. The State is all. Their slogan is “Together.” But their meaning is “Give me everything.”

While fascism and communism are social concepts, the State cannot obtain control of everything without intervening in its population’s private and economic lives. Since, in their minds, the State is all, there can be no individual and therefore no right to ownership. The State will regulate everything; tax all; and live, for a short time, off the steadily declining capital of the few remaining individuals.

Socialism is the midpoint between freedom and serfdom. It is the gateway drug to convince the weak and weary that if they give up their greedy, individual ways, and worship a government, that government will take care of them.

Socialism starts the population down the path of believing that their problems are so great (climate change, pandemics, inflation, recession) that they need a greater entity to step in. That greater entity is the State, government, bureaucracy. Show me any economic philosophy that survives communism, fascism, or socialism.

[DiogenesLamp]

More properly, he was a Marxist and the red in the Nazi flag was to appeal to Communists.

More accurately, according to the book "Leftism Revisited" by Erik Kuehnelt-Leddihn, the original Nazi flags were actually made from communist flags that they already had because the Nazi party was formed from elements of the German Communists that already existed at the time.

They simply sewed a swastika over the hammer and sickle of the communist flags they already had.

[TBP]

Leftist protestors cheer speech of Hitler quotes

[Fledermaus]

It’s all Statism.

[TheThirdRuffian]

You can still the Pink Swastika online using Brave.com, which does not rely on the Google database and has a less biased search engine. Otherwise, you are correct, Google has made it as if it never existed.

https://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Article=PinkSwastika

Gays certainly were persecuted by the Nazis (after the purge of Rohm), but it really was an afterthought or a excuse to go after political enemies or people who they thought might cause trouble (e.g., lawyers, academics, members of other political parties). Quite a few of the “gays” imprisoned by the Nazis denied being gay and there was little or no credible evidence that they were, indeed, gay.

The SS and SA, in contrast, was full of the leather scene.

[TheThirdRuffian]

The red of the Nazi flag symbolized socialism.

White, the white nation

Black swastika, the Aryan race (a subset of whites)

[Olog-hai]

Nothing right wing about fascism at all.

God does not exist—religion in science is an absurdity, in practice an immorality and in men a disease. …

— Mussolini, 1924

Fascism establishes the real equality of individuals before the nation… the object of the regime in the economic field is to ensure higher social justice for the whole of the Italian people… What does social justice mean? It means work guaranteed, fair wages, decent homes; it means the possibility of continuous evolution and improvement. Nor is this enough. It means that the workers must enter more and more intimately into the productive process and share its necessary discipline… As the past century was the century of capitalist power, the twentieth century is the century of power and glory of labor.

— Mussolini, 1935

When the war is over, in the world’s social revolution that will be followed by a more equitable distribution of the earth’s riches, due account must be kept of the sacrifices and of the discipline maintained by the Italian workers. The Fascist revolution will make another decisive step to shorten social distances. …

— Mussolini, 1941

All of this was uttered by Mussolini while in power as a fascist. Not a bit of difference between communism and fascism is what is evident here.

[Olog-hai]

Eh?

What is “unbridled individualism”?

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Gay Pride Parades, for example.

[Fuzz]

Individuals parading is merely a stroll.

[yelostar]

Words have meaning

Fascism - the word deriving from fasces.

The fasces has a curious history. It is a symbol of imperial Rome - and of authoritarian, coersive, even violent rule.

It is a constant in U.S. government, military, and other institutions' symbols, seals and representations. It's found in many federal buildings and monuments. An interesting choice for a constitutional Republic founded on the ideals of human liberty.

The ancient Romans in both the Republic (as far back as one can trace) and Empire made a familiar and highly effective spectacle out of bundling wooden rods and a single-bladed axe with leather straps into a “fasces.” They presented this instrument as a mobile kit for punishment, one intended to induce feelings of respect for the relevant authority, as well as fear.

[yelostar]

More on the fasces symbol

Fasces (/ˈfæsiːz/ FASS-eez, Latin: [ˈfaskeːs]; a plurale tantum, from the Latin word fascis, meaning 'bundle'; Italian: fascio littorio) is a bound bundle of wooden rods, often but not always including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a Roman king's power to punish his subjects, and later, a magistrate's power and jurisdiction.

The fasces, as a bundle of rods with an axe, was a grouping of all the equipment needed to inflict corporal or capital punishment. In ancient Rome, the bundle was a material symbol of a Roman magistrate's full civil and military power, known as imperium. They were carried in a procession with a magistrate by lictors, who carried the fasces and at times used the birch rods as punishment to enforce obedience with magisterial commands.

Plutarch, in his Life of Publicola, describes an incident in which Lucius Junius Brutus, the first consul, has lictors scourge with rods and decapitate with axes – components of the fasces – his own sons who were conspiring to restore the Tarquins to the throne. After Brutus' alleged death in battle, Publicola then passes reforms subordinating magisterial use of fasces for coercion to the people: consuls would lower the fasces before the people during speeches and there would be appeal to the people against a magistrate ordering capital or corporal punishment.

In the Oval Office, above the door leading to the exterior walkway, and above the corresponding door on the opposite wall, which leads to the president's private office; the fasces depicted have no axes, possibly because in the Roman Republic, the blade was always removed from the bundle whenever the fasces were carried inside the city, in order to symbolize the rights of citizens against arbitrary state power.

_______________________________

The Apotheosis of Washington is the fresco painted by Greek-Italian artist Constantino Brumidi in 1865 and visible through the oculus of the dome in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

George Washington is draped in purple, worn by generals of the ancient Roman Republic during their triumphs.... and the goddess of Liberty to his right....She holds a fasces in her right hand...

A few other examples..

All examples with axes. Yet...

The Apotheosis of Washington depicts George Washington sitting among the heavens in an exalted manner, or in literary terms, ascending and becoming a god (apotheosis). Washington, the first U.S. president and commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is allegorically represented, surrounded by figures from classical mythology.

Extraordinary - as it relates to violence and subjugation - imagery for a constitutional Republic founded on the ideals of human liberty. Or was it...

[x]

And this stuff is the real reason for the Civil War.

Little Diogenes One Note.

I did not know that.

You were better off not knowing that and a lot of other stuff that also isn't true.

[x]

Lucius Junius Brutus overthrew the kings of Rome and was regarded as the founder of the Roman Republic and an example of republican virtue.

The Liberty Head dime had the fasces on the back with an olive branch. When the Roosevelt dime was introduced after the war, the fasces was replaced with a torch flanked by an olive and an oak branch.

[Olog-hai]

My view from the outside of that is that those have the appearance of collectivism out of control.

Take note that Lenin’s USSR allowed open homosexuals to serve in government.

[Olog-hai]

I suspect Washington himself would have been insulted by “Apotheosis”.

I also noticed that such imagery seems to have become popular about a decade after the publication of the Communist Manifesto.

[Reily]

In the SA not the SS. Ernst Rohm SA chief was a flagrant homosexual. During “Long Knives” he was arrested in bed with his SA toy boy. His closeness to Hitler from the early days to “Long Knives” plus some other not well documented evidence points to Hitler as a homosexual masochist.

[Reily]

In the SA not the SS. Ernst Rohm SA chief was a flagrant homosexual. During “Long Knives” he was arrested in bed with his SA toy boy. His closeness to Hitler from the early days to “Long Knives” plus some other not well documented evidence points to Hitler as a homosexual masochist.

[TBP]

That is false. it is anything BUT “right wing.”

[TBP]

Unless the competing parties aren't really competing, but are just part of the same party. Communist Poland had three "parties" (thank you, Information Please Almanac), but they were all the same party in reality. It was Communist A, Communist B, or Communist C. Which oppressor would you rather have?