[jmacusa]

More like cousins. Fascism gives the pretense of private ownership. Yes you can own your factory but we(the state) control the production process.Yes you can own your own home but we're going to tell you how to live in it. What you can set your thermostat at. What kind of light bulbs you will use and what kind of(low flush) toilet you will have and what kind of health insurance you must buy. (sound familiar?) Socialism, which to me is out and out communism makes no pretense of private ownership at all. Everything belongs ''to the people''(the state). What all three, if you will, have in common, besides being totalitarian systems, is no private ownership of your thoughts, your speech or writings. I hate all three of them and anyone who believes in them. My kid brother is an Obama supporter, big time. He and I haven't spoken to each other since my mothers funeral eight years ago. I could give a rip where he is or what he's doing quite honestly.

[GeronL]

bump

[Zionist Conspirator]

More like cousins. Fascism gives the pretense of private ownership. Yes you can own your factory but we(the state) control the production process.Yes you can own your own home but we're going to tell you how to live in it. What you can set your thermostat at. What kind of light bulbs you will use and what kind of(low flush) toilet you will have and what kind of health insurance you must buy. (sound familiar?) Socialism, which to me is out and out communism makes no pretense of private ownership at all. Everything belongs ''to the people''(the state). What all three, if you will, have in common, besides being totalitarian systems, is no private ownership of your thoughts, your speech or writings. I hate all three of them and anyone who believes in them. My kid brother is an Obama supporter, big time. He and I haven't spoken to each other since my mothers funeral eight years ago. I could give a rip where he is or what he's doing quite honestly.

There is one major component of Fascism--especially the Catholic, Mediterranean, non-nordic Fascism practiced in greater or lesser degree by Fascist Italy, Franco Spain, Salazar Portugal, Vargas Brazil, Dollfuss Austria, and perhaps Peronist Argentina (though I'm not sure about this last one) that most Americans completely miss noticing because it is so radically different from anything they are used to. And that is the abolition of an ideological/partisan parliament in favor of a legislative body made up of various occupational groups (in Italy this was called the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations). The goal was to replace representation by ideology with representation by the various functions of society (Fascist "corporatism"). In Spain and Portugal, political parties as such did not exist at all, because they were considered unnecessary and undesirable. The whole point was a population wholly "organically" united by societal function like a living body, which was the original meaning of "totalitarianism" as advocated by Mussolini.

Of course, Nazism's racial obsessions have become the prime definition of "fascism," especially on the left. Because of America's unique racial situation (a situation older than the country itself), Americans naturally are drawn to this issue. The original Fascist corporatist concept, so essential to capital-F Fascism, is scarcely noticed by any American politician or philosopher of politics.

I note that at least two of the regimes enumerated above (Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal) are held in high regard by even conventional American conservatives. How familiar those admirers are of the corporatist ideology I do not know.