What Is Fascism?

[chlamor]

Laurence Britt identifies 14 characteristics. Too often we (including myself) wish to simply write these neocon chickenhawks off as Nazis or Fascists. I tend to think there is a good body of evidence to substantiate those claims. However, it is equally important to point to the present conditions and present characteristics of the U.S. society at large. Is fascism here? Has it perhaps always been lurking if not embedded in the fabric of our culture?

1.)  Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2.)  Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights 
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3.)  Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
   The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. 
4.)  Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5.)  Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6.)  Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7.)  Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses

8.)  Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9.)  Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10.)  Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. 
11.)  Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts
12.)  Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations
13.)  Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14.  Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.


www.oldamericancentury.org

[Jamastiene]

1. And I once asked

how nazi Germany happened. How did people get that way? I wish I didn't know the answer from first hand experience with the neocons. :puke:

[Eloriel]

6. Here's how it worked in Germany

according to one author who was there at the time. I consider this a MUST READ (and must bookmark) for all DUers, and in fact, all Americans:

They Thought They Were Free
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

[Canuckistanian]

2. Scary. That is too real.

Except for the assassinations, the rest is chillingly familiar.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. The big diff

Fascists were almost always socialists. Granted, it was corporate socialism, but they were still socialist parties.

Fascist thinkers were also usually romanticists; hence, the connection with Nietzchean Existentialism.

Here's the central piece of the Futurist Manifesto:

Manifesto Of Futurism (F.T. Marinetti, 1909)

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.

3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.

4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.

6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.

7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

9. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.

10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.

11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

The Fascists were obviously different than the modern Neo-Cons. For one thing, the Fascisti were hot-blooded romantics; the Neo-Cons are cold, manipulative robot managers. Those who have read Rand's books like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead will see the parallels of sentiment immediately.

--p!

[Stop_the_War]

4. Uh, fascists are right-wingers

you need to really study your political spectrum

[Dogmudgeon]

5. What are you saying?

If you're assuming that socialism = leftism, it's your deficiency, not mine. That idea is strictly a postwar phenomenon and was strongly promoted by conservatives eager to wash away the stench of their collaboration with the Fascists.

Fascism was very clearly socialist, although, as I pointed out, it was a far different kind of socialism that we're used to thinking of.

Actually, left-wing socialism was usually called Social Democracy at the time, and that's still a popular label for it. What used to be called Liberalism in Europe was what we would call Libertarianism. Of course there were differences, but the core ideologies were very close.

In each case, the reactionary ideology was crafted to fit the ruthlessness of the tyrants and their regimes.

--p!

[chlamor]

8. Fascism as characteristic

Control. As all of our congealed ideologies are laden with cultural accretions I think it more useful to examine the characteristics of any situation rather than to make a determination based on -ists and/or -isms. We live in a fascist country I contend due to how tightly our lives, mostly in an economic way, are controlled. The number of people who suffer and die from this form of soft fascism is incalculable.

Socialism means alot of different things to different people. The U.S. military is probably the largest socialist entity in the world at the moment. "Sorrows of Empire".

And then we have the free-market fundamentalists who are probably the most powerful group of fascists on the planet at present. Your post is thoughtful.
Dignity-Sovereignty-Ecology

[Jamastiene]

7. Yes,

you are right, but fascists, at least in the case of nazis, were a sick twisted form of right wing socialism. You know by the right for the right only. In other words they believed in helping themselves only.

[Disturbed]

9. Corporatists.

Mussolini's definition of fascism is the marriage of corporate and state power.

New Right Wing

The New Right Wing Agenda
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0613-02.htm

"The most important implication of all this is that large segments of the domestic and world population are no longer seen as worth worrying about. On one level, this is just racism and classism. But there’s more than that going on. In the past, capitalism was optimistic and assumed that it would keep expanding, which provided the basis for a “corporate liberalism” that saw everyone in the world as a potential consumer and/or laborer - and therefore having some potential worth. But the new reactionaries see the future as much more of a zero-sum game. Partly, this is an expression of their incredible greed and corruption - their incessant efforts to rip off wealth for themselves and their narrow sets of cronies. In any case, the result is that most of Africa, large swaths of Latin America and Asia, and significant parts of the domestic US population have been simply written off -individuals who may arise from the trodden mass are welcome as junior partners, but there is no concern at all for the general well being of these sectors beyond token PR and the limited need to keep local elites from causing too much anti-American trouble on the world stage.

"The amazing thing is that the right wing fundamentalists have been able to seize power and win a large amount of support - or at least acquiescence -- among the US electorate. The people I talk with point to a number of contextual reasons. First, this country lacks any significant institutionalized alternative.

The Democratic Party is both complicit and fratricidal. The labor movement is the only really powerful potential organized opposition, but they are ideologically scattered, organizationally weak, and under unremitting attack. In addition, the powerful role of money in shaping our electoral outcomes is another key ingredient in the right wings success, as well as in keeping liberal (much less radical) alternatives from gaining influence in the Democratic Party.

[Lone_Wolf]

10. Correct...

Fascism is a very right wing ideology. Here is part of a great article about Fascism by Michael Parenti:

"Fascism is a false revolution. It makes a revolutionary appeal without making an actual revolution. It propagates the widely proclaimed New Order while serving the same old monied interests.

Before World War I, Benito Mussolini was a socialist, but the minute the wealthy classes in Italy offered him financial support and power, he didn't hesitate to switch sides. (We know about people who switch sides, don't we?) And with the huge sums he got from wealthy interests, Mussolini was able to project himself onto the national scene as the leader of a movement that specialized in attacking unions, peasant farm cooperatives, socialists, communists, and anarchists. After World War I, to maintain profit levels, the large industrialists and big land owners had to slash wages and raise prices. The state, in turn, had to provide the big owners with massive subsidies and tax exemptions. To finance this corporate welfarism, the populists had to be taxed more heavily, and social welfare expenditures drastically cut. (Does all of this sound familiar?) But the government wasn't completely free to apply harsh measures because many Italian workers and peasants had their own unions and fairly strong political organizations. With demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, factory takeovers, they won substantial concessions in wages and work conditions and the right to organize and were able to defend their standard of living. To roll back that standard of living and to get the economic changes that the plutocrats and tycoons wanted, the ruling interests had to abolish the democratic rights that helped workers and peasants defend that standard. The solution was to smash their organizations and their political liberties. The leaders of industry, along with top bankers and agribusiness associations, met with Mussolini to plan and finance the so-called "Fascist Revolution." Within two years after seizing state power, Mussolini had shut down all opposition newspapers and crushed the socialist, liberal, Catholic, democratic, and republican parties, which together had commanded about 80% of the vote.

In Germany, there was a very similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists. German workers and farm laborers had won the eight-hour day, unemployment insurance, the right to unionize. They had built very powerful political organizations, but heavy industry and big finance were in a state of near total collapse. Business wanted to cut wages and get tax-cuts and massive state subsidies to revive profit levels. The German tycoons greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, and the Nazi party was propelled onto the national stage."

Rest of the article is here:

FASCISM: A FALSE RVOLUTION