Free Republic

Losin, Yigal. (1983). Pillar of Fire: The Rebirth of Israel--a Visual History. Israel: Shikmona Publishing Company. *(Archived screenshot)Swastika on the walls of Jerusalem's Zion Gate. Arab feelings in 1936.1936 was not a good year for democracy. The Fascist countries were seen as successful by many people. Every step taken by Hitler or Mussolini met with hesitation and trepidation on the part of the leaders of the free world. Hitler armed Germany, contraven-ing the Treaty of Versailles. The Wehrmacht marched to the Rhineland; this was a blatant violation of the Locarno Pact, according to which Germany was to keep the area...

Friday, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” long-time MSNBC personality Chris Matthews likened President Donald Trump to 20th-century Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Matthews said, “He’s doing all this on television. If you have noticed, he calls the TV cameras for the cabinet meetings he’s doing. He’s redirecting his cabinet officials, redirecting Musk. I’ve watched this guy use television like nobody’s ever done. When he went up the other night on Tuesday night, talked to the American people and said, ‘We’re paying Social Security checks to people who are 160 years old.’ Anybody who reads an obit page knows...

Meet historical fascism’s true heirs.In the famous anecdote usually attributed to Bertrand Russel, a scientist lecturing on the earth’s position in the solar system is corrected an old lady who says the earth is actually supported by a giant turtle. When the scientist asked what supports the turtle, she triumphally answered, “It’s turtles all the way down!”Since the Twenties and the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism––which eventually become the main referent of the word––the term has become an all-purpose question-begging epithet so promiscuously abused in the Thirties that, as George Orwell said in 1944, “The word Fascism has...

9 page description of Fascism. Mussolini's political party was created and named as such by himself. The name comes from Roman "fasces" which were a bunch of bundled rods representing the power of those holding them to carry out the will of the state including capital punishment. Such individuals in Roman times were known as "lictors". The essence is that the individual serves the state which is totalitarian and may have a few or just one person in charge. Hence, individuals unified in this advancement of state objectives are like the bundled rods with combined strength greater than a single...

I couldn’t get through this article, and I’ve read some crazy stuff. You must read both sides, even when your opposition has become unspooled. But this is downright low for Politico to publish this after an assassination attempt. The publication posted that Trump is like Mussolini in using such attacks for political gain: -- snip -- It’s never us that’s the problem. It’s astounding that after the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, there was a rush from liberals, who have been fanning the flames for years, that we needed to tone down the rhetoric. No, it’s...

Beneath the azure skies of the Mediterranean, a dark cloud of tyranny and violence gathered. This was Fascist Italy, a nation where Benito Mussolini's iron-fisted rule smothered the voice of dissent and liberty. It was a time marked by the infamous years between the 1920s and 1940s, where the boot of fascism stomped upon the face of humanity. One cannot forget the bombing of Guernica on April 26, 1937, a horrific act of aggression during the Spanish Civil War. Orchestrated by the German Luftwaffe with support from the Italian Aviazione Legionaria and the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, which comprised regular army...

The similarities between the Obama administration and Italian fascism have been pointed out many times. Over a dozen articles about this are on this site alone (1, 2, 3, 4). It is usually said that fascism is a strain of socialism in which the means of production are beneficially owned by private persons but controlled by the government. Both the Obama administration and Mussolini used a financial crisis to take over banks and industry. Mussolini openly assumed complete control of them, even though partial private ownership was allowed to remain. The U.S. government bailed out banks and the auto industry...

Former President Trump is “more dangerous” than some of the most notorious dictators in the history of the world, says former senator turned MSNBC pundit Claire McCaskill. “A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between Mussolini and Hitler and the use of the terminology like ‘vermin’ and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship,” the Missouri Democrat said during an appearance Tuesday on the network, first highlighted by Mediate. “The difference, though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy he believes in.” Trump recently sparked outrage for...

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Monday on his show “Morning Joe” that former President Donald Trump was using rhetoric that was the same as “Mussolini and other fascists from the past.” During a weekend rally, Trump said, “In honor of our great Veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country. That lie, steal, and cheat on elections.” Scarborough said, “I think he should probably give some pay some royalties to Mussolini’s family trust because when he starts...

Former GOP strategist turned Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt ripped into Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in a new episode of his political podcast, "The Warning." "There he is," said Schmidt, showing an image of DeSantis during his interview with Fox News in which he claimed he would "smash" leftism in the United States as president. "Governor Ron DeSantis. The Mussolini of Tallahassee, using a U.S. Navy war vessel as a visual prop just days after his disastrous launch, which spawned the fantastic hashtag, "#DeSaster." "Who is it that he wants to smash?" said Schmidt. "Is he going to arrest Bernie...

We should never have taken our marching orders from Signor Mussolini. We should have countered the proposals and the propaganda which Italy and Germany poured in to make the Arabs not anti-Jew but anti-British. The "Times" has informed us that for five pounds an Arab can be got to kill a Jew. I wonder where the money comes from?Parliamentary Debates: Official Report. United Kingdom: H.M. Stationery Office, 1938, p. 943

Russia has put forward a highly contentious list of security guarantees it says it wants the west to agree to in order to lower tensions in Europe and defuse the crisis over Ukraine, including many elements that have already been ruled out. ...The demands, spelled out by Moscow in full for the first time, were handed over to the US this week. They include a demand that Nato remove any troops or weapons deployed to countries that entered the alliance after 1997, which would include much of eastern Europe, including Poland, the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and...

As the cracks in Russia's war on Ukraine deepen, Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the West are now saying Russian President Vladimir Putin tricked them into appearing to support his invasion of Ukraine, according to an extensive investigation published Saturday by The New York Times. Many of Putin's top advisors didn't know the full extent of his plans to invade Ukraine on February 24 until they were already underway, according to The Times. Senior aides at the Kremlin were trying to read his body language, telling some that Putin had "this warlike twinkle in his eyes," the paper reported. "If everyone...

​China’s foreign minister signaled in a speech Sunday that Beijing would bolster its ties with Russia in the coming year, while defending the communist country’s impartiality on the war in Ukraine. ​ Wang Yi​, ​speaking by video to a conference in the Chinese capital, ​said China would ​​“deepen strategic mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation” with Russia.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Thursday took great exception to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling the U.S. Congress that Iran is supplying Russia with combat drones for use against Zelensky’s people. Iran leveled unspecified threats against Zelensky if he continues making the allegations. “Mr. Zelensky had better know that Iran’s strategic patience over such unfounded accusations is not endless,” railed Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani.

After nearly 10 months of war, but referring to the brutal invasion of Ukraine instead as “a special military operation,” Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday finally called it a “war” for the first time, setting off an uproar among antiwar Russians who have been prosecuted for merely challenging the Kremlin-approved euphemism. “Our goal is not to spin this flywheel of a military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” Putin said during a televised news conference following a government meeting on Thursday. “This is what we are striving for.” ...Putin has alternately said that he is seeking...

Out on the frontline, near the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman, on 8 November at 15.10, a Russian serviceman called Andrey decided to ignore the orders of his superiors and call his mother with an unauthorised mobile phone. “No one feeds us anything, mum,” he complained. “Our supply is s**t, to be honest. We draw water from puddles, then we strain it and drink it.” Russian forces had been on the back foot in the Donetsk oblast for weeks. Lyman, taken by the Russians in May, was liberated by Ukrainian forces in October. Two days before Andrey made his afternoon...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Belarus on Monday for talks with his counterpart and ally Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus leader’s office said. The Belarus presidency said Friday the pair will hold discussions at the Independence Palace, Lukashenko’s office, in Minsk during Putin’s “working visit”. -snip- Minsk said the pair will hold one-on-one talks as well as wider negotiations with their ministers on “Belarusian-Russian integration”.

Russia was "ill prepared" for the economic response to the invasion. Western countries have slapped crippling economic sanctions on Russia, and in November, Russia's economy entered a recession. Putin planned for a quick war, but "Russian guns have now been firing for almost 300 days" and "the cupboard is bare," Radakin went on to say, echoing US officials who have pointed out that Russia is running through its munitions faster than it can replenish them. Russia has lost much of the territory it managed to occupy in the early days of the invasion. A Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in recent...

Moscow has said no “Christmas ceasefire” was on the cards after nearly 10 months of war in Ukraine, with fighting looking set to drag on through the winter. ...Zelenskiy had called on Russia this week to start withdrawing its troops by Christmas as the first step towards a peace deal, but Peskov said on Tuesday there would be no peace with Kyiv until Zelenskiy accepted the “realities” on the ground – referring to Russian control over parts of four Ukrainian regions it annexed in September following coercive and illegal “referendums”. After a series of lightning Ukrainian counteroffensives, Kyiv has regained...