The name Nazi itself came from official name NSDAP - National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei - National Socialist German Workers' Party. Classic Fascism allows private ownership but relies partially on corporatism as means of total economic control, while not necessarily ownership of all means of production. As Goebbels said, "Why own when you can control?" This allows some individualism and reward of initiative and, while socialist, is a more efficient economic system than Communism, which has fallen under its own weight everywhere. This is why these days we are seeing formerly Communist countries like Russia and China relaxing the state's ownership and moving towards more economically efficient fascist system, while remaining essentially socialist and statist in nature.
Shortly before Gorbachev's "perestroika", his predecessor Leonid Brezhnev tried to explain away harsh economic conditions and failures as not yet having a complete Communism, but rather Soviet Union being still in a stage of "advanced socialism".
"Progressives" is just another name that "liberals" in the West adopted when "liberal" became discredited and associated too closely with policies and ideology of Soviet communism. In fact, Henry Wallace, FDR's Vice President and friend of Joe Stalin, ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket and was endorsed and supported by Communist Party USA.
More recently, faced with the fall of Communism and its discredited economic system, "Progressives" / "liberals" moved away from the notion of government ownership and into government control through "taxation, restrictions and regulations". Also, some leaders (most visibly, Tony Blair in UK and Bill Clinton in USA, via DLC platform, as well as Hillary Clinton; Paul Martin in Canada and Kevin Rudd in Australia) of different left-wing Labour / People's / Workers' / Progressive parties in the West started advocating an economic system of Third Way, which is a close integration of government and private enterprise, especially large corporations.
If Third Way sounds a lot like a mask for fascism, it's because it is. That's where "Progressives" are really moving, whether most of them realize it or not. of course, they don't want to be associated with fascism, they are just trying on different - new or well forgotten - names or terms. Ironically, for a long time, they have taken to using the term "fascist" and "right-winger" to attack and discredit anyone who disagrees with them, when they are correctly accused of favoring communist or socialist philosophy, and because the term, unfortunately, is much more pejorative than "communist" or "socialist". It simply serves as a convenient counter argument for "leftists" commonly associated with "socialism" or "communism" but not "fascism".
The view that Fascism is a right-wing ideology became fixed, incorrectly, after Hitler and National Socialists (Nazis) persecuted, among others, German Communists, who were understood to be left-wing. Somewhat similar to what happened earlier in Russia around and after Communist Revolution, with a hard split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (factions of Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) over relatively minor differences in proposed direction and policies.
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It seems that we are in complete agreement, starting with ALL of these being left-wing and collectivist philosophies.
Yes- when many use the word “fascist” they are simply using it as a pejorative. I wrote earlier, “When people were calling Bush “fascist”, that was simply a smear. I challenged them to define fascist, and when they were unable to respond, I educated them and they were reduced to calling him monkey instead. Dear Leader has been RULING as a fascist (most recently demonstrated by his town hall antics).”
When I am labeling Dear Leader and Pelosi, etc., Fascist, I am NOT using it as a pejorative. I am attempting to describe as accurately as possible the system of government they espouse and are trying to bring about, and is the thrust of the argument in that other thread. I ran into a problem, though, when researching the question.
Nazi vs. Fascist: They don’t want to eliminate “class” in society (They don’t want to be saddled with the same health care as the masses, and have never bashed their rich, “high-class” or “elite” supporters.) That leads to the determination “Nazi” does not describe them as well as “Fascist”.
Now, referring to http://open-encyclopedia.com/Fascism they appear in almost every way to operate PRECISELY as Fascists but never goad people into a frenzy by extolling the virtues of the United States. They don’t really do it with racism, either- they merely use that as a pejorative. Their goal seems to be completely “one world” or “globalist” instead in all that they try to do.
To distinguish socialists from communists, refer to http://open-encyclopedia.com/Communism ... Communism, I’ve heard it argued, has never been implemented. Apologies to Marx and Engels, but it is the supporters of communism who make that argument. Communism as it is now defined requires that there be NO “state”.
So, can we properly refer to Dear Leader et al as “Communist”? Here again we run into their definite love of CLASS and elites in society. I have not been able to discover a word that describes Fascism without nationalism.
Either we stipulate that the “whole world” is the “nation” for Dear Leader et al, or we need a new word for their desired governmental system. I proposed “CommuFascist” earlier for this MORE EXTREME form of Fascism.
The whole point, though, is that whether this philosophy is called CommuFascist, or “Progressive”, analysis reveals that Dear Leader, Pelosi, and ALL these super-liberals are espousing a MORE EXTREME FORM of Fascism. Dear Leader is a “one-world” Mussolini.
We are being generous to these leaders of our nation when we describe them as Fascist, not pejorative.