[Lore]

Cid is correct and about as screwed up a deffinition as I've heard KJ.

[SeaGypsy]

I always thought Fascism is the process whereby the majority supports a leader to destroy minorities or a particular minority. The primary requirement being hard times & a convenient scapegoat. The Fascist leader takes on a Christ like status with the power to heal or kill without question. Like AA though, they run out of enemies eventually then eat themselves.

[Lore]

Fascism,in its simplest terms is the merging of corporate and government interests. It’s when corporations have taken over the government.

Socialism, is where the average citizen is directly involved in the production of goods and services. The ownership belongs to the people not the oligarchs.

[onlooker]

It seems your definition of Fascism Lore perfectly describes the US. Socialism in accord with Cid is good but not to the point of Communism whereby it becomes authoritarian like the USSR or China.

[Lore]

Strict Communism is the requirement that private property is not allowed. No one owns anything. Everything is owned by the government. I don't know of any society having been able to adopt this?

[Rod_Cloutier]

My teen daughter and her friend were accosted and warned about wandering into a kids only park. Where only children under the age of 10 and their parents are allowed into it. This is fascism at large, this is paranoia and it is the opposite of liberty.

Fascism has many faces, and the faces of fascism are ugly.

[vox_mundi]

If you make one small change ....

Strict Communism is the requirement that private property is not allowed. No one owns anything. Everything is owned by the government church. I don't know of any society having been able to adopt this?

... you have a pretty good description of a monastic order.

[AgentR11]

Except with a monastic order, all the participants are volunteers. It works because they all share a similar objective or purpose.

[AgentR11]

Except with a monastic order, all the participants are volunteers. It works because they all share a similar objective or purpose.

[SeaGypsy]

Volunteers or kidnapped young enough to not know the difference.

[KaiserJeep]

Simply put, Fascism is the act of forcing others to behave differently using the powers of government. Fascism is the opposite of personal freedom and personal responsibility.

Fascists will deny their guilt forever. They cause great evil, great misery, and endless death. Just because they don't have this as a primary motive, they don't accept their responsibility for the misery of others. The co-existence of racism and ethnic hatreds and economic hatreds among Fascists and anti-Fascists is confusing to some, but these things are entirely separate from whether or not one is forcing another to behave differently, by abusing the authoritarian powers of government.

In the world of today, more Fascists exist than ever before, and most of them live in China. In that place, in an effort to control their population, surging thanks to mechanized agriculture and modern medicines, they even attempted to limit the number of children in a family to a single one. That this ultimate Fascist act originated from a virulently Left-wing, nominally Communist government, is immaterial.

Here in the USA, the world's largest nominal Democracy, recent Fascist acts include:

1) A national retirement system (Social Security) where the government steals some of your money, pretends to be holding it to secure your retirement for you, and spends it like drunken sailors, to enable the desires of our economic oligarchs. We used to save money for our own retirement, consistent with our ability to do so. The establishment of SS (FDR signed the Social Security Act in 1935) destroyed many of the personal responsible habits the Founding Fathers believed they had protected via the Bill of Rights. (The Social Security system was based upon a German retirement system from the Weimar Republic period, arguably the fertile ground in which the Nazi's grew).

===> Before this, If you could not afford to save, you lived in a rural area, scratched a living out of the soil and owned chickens and pigs, perhaps as a tenant farmer with a lot of kids and grandkids. This scheme obviously could not work for an elderly urban person, which is why we had retirement plans as earned company benefits and organized labor movements.

2) Abdicating the responsibilities (people of faith call them "Christian responsibilities") we all have to care for the indigent and the unfortunate victims of natural disasters, by enabling our citizens to accept Federal and State relief monies and by establishing FEMA and other forms of government intrusion into private lives. Americans have always been generous people, but for the period since WW2, enough of us have believed in the expanded role of government that these feelings and teachings have pretty much been destroyed.

3) Establishing a national healthcare system in two acts, called Medicare/Medicaid (amendments to the Social Security act signed by LBJ in 1965), and Obamacare (2010). These two things together make it possible for people not to work, and not to even have to pay to get their diseases treated, and yet allow for them and their kids to survive and prosper. Congrats on that, some inner city residents have been on government dole for 4 to 6 generations (and those generations are getting shorter as teenaged pregnancies increase). Likewise, with the national dole, homeless encampments have grown everywhere, but especially in warm places like California, Hawaii, and Florida.

4) TBD (Read on, then I'll tell you.)

[rant]
Starting to get the idea? The desire to use the government to replace the role of your Nanny, and the "Peter Pan" desire never to grow up and face the responsibilities of an adult, have spawned growing Fascist movements across the globe. In the Scandahoovian countries (called "Socialist Lite" by many of you) these Fascist tendencies are running rampant. The easiest way to understand this is to read the "Millenium Trilogy" (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/The Girl Who Played with Fire/The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest).

Believe me, none of these things are the permitted government roles as described in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to refocus for a moment on the USA. Nor for that matter is it the responsibility of the USA to be the policeman of the world, or the liberator of the oppressed petroleum reserves of the Middle East.

Nor is it (and this one will strike home with many of you) the responsibility of the Nanny government to force real people to behave differently in order to protect a mythical being called Gaia by some, and Mother Nature by others.

The Green movement is the ultimate act of Fascism. I warned you that only actions mattered, and not the motives for them. Nor am I demonizing those who want to save the planet - only noting their Fascist actions in that regard. Which is why:
[/rant]

4) The ultimate implementation of Fascism is the Environmental Protection Agencies, both Federal and State.

Are YOU a Fascist? Do you want to force your will on others, and even believe that you do so for the "Good Of All"?

Because I am the opposite of a Fascist, which is why I rub many of you the wrong way. I self-describe as a "Classical Liberal". I sometimes say "libertarian" (never capitalized) because so many who are really Fascists at heart misconstrue "liberal" today. My 10 core beliefs:

1) Liberty as the primary political value
2) Individualism
3) Skepticism about power
4) Rule of Law
5) Civil Society
6) Spontaneous Order
7) Free Markets
8 ) Toleration
9) Peace
10) Limited Government

To learn more about people like me: http://www.slobodaiprosperitet.tv/en/node/412

(Yes I chose that web site among many others because it amused me.)

[Cid_Yama]

Rant? More like far-right diatribe. Now that you've finished your regurgitation, please clean up after yourself.

All you are doing is calling anyone who disagrees with your ideology(or should that be idiot-ology) a Fascist.

Fascism is an actual term that refers to a specific thing, you can't just redefine it to suit you.

Oxford Dictionary

fascism

Line breaks: fas|cism
Pronunciation: /ˈfaʃɪz(ə)m/

Definition of fascism in English:
noun
1. An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.

1.1(In general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practices.

The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in Italy (1922–43); the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist.

link


Some of us have been around since WWII and know what a fascist is.

Recent right-wing efforts to expunge right-wing from the definition, are merely a fascist attempt to redefine the very language we use.

In the early 1930s, a coalition of America’s wealthiest industrial magnates hatched a scheme to topple the Roosevelt Administration and replace it with a fascist dictatorship.

The conspirators were fuming over the 1932 election victory of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Once in office, the new president pledged a raft of measures to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression,which were known collectively as the New Deal. He was also an advocate for the abandonment of the gold standard, something that horrified many elites. F.D.R.’s critics condemned the president’s policies for placing the country on what they saw as a slippery slope to outright Bolshevism.

In 1933, the conspirators planned to recruit 500,000 military veterans from the First World War through various American Legion branches. They even pledged $3 million to buy weapons for their half-million man army so the troops could capture and hold the American capital. Once the seat of power was theirs, the plotters would install an ultra-nationalist and business-friendly regime modelled after Mussolini’s Italy. (Many conspirators were also admirers of Hitler even before the Nazis came to power, largely because of his ardent anti-communism).[3]

The cabal planned to offer command of their rebel army to a celebrated U.S. Marine general by the name of Smedley Butler. The 52-year-old veteran of the war in France had also fought counter-insurgencies in Latin America and the Philippines and was perhaps the most respected military leader in the country.

Just a year earlier, Butler had publicly voiced support for a march on Washington by Great War veterans who were demanding the government make good on its promises to provide benefits. On the orders of then-president Herbert Hoover, this so-called Bonus Army was eventually broken up by another well-known military leader of the day, General Douglas MacArthur. The Business Plotters felt that Butler’s patriotism along with his popularity among veterans would make him an ideal leader for their putsch.

Little did the conspirators realize, Butler had long-since become a critic of corporate greed, seeing it as an engine that drove many of America’s foreign wars. In fact, in 1935, he committed his thoughts on the matter to a famous book entitled War is a Racket.

In 1933, an American Legion leader involved in the plot approached Butler, during which time he offered him command of the rebel army. The decorated war hero immediately alerted Washington of the plot.

The McCormack-Dickstein committee, which would go onto become the House Committee on Un-American Activities, examined the allegations, declaring that there was some evidence of a scheme by Wall Street elites, anti-communists and fascist sympathizers. Even though the findings were declared by Congress to be “alarmingly true”, no charges were ever laid against anyone involved in the plot.

“The [committee] received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient,” Congress declared. [4]

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And you, KJ, are their ideological step-child.

[AgentR11]

We do this both with the word "Fascist" and "Terrorist"; we use them almost like a very generic "the enemy" or "the bad guy". But they aren't. They are *very* narrow, specific things.

Fascism is that right wing ideology, where state and corporate spheres become deeply intertwined; and then reinforced with a totalitarian government style. People can *LIKE* their Fascist government a lot, and can (and have) voted such things into power, knowingly. Fascism WILL deliver on time trains, it WILL keep food in the shops, it will stomp the piddle out of regular crime. If it stopped there, it'd almost be ok to ignore. But it never does.

Terrorism is a form of asymmetric warfare that inflicts trivial levels of damage on a target to produce an irrational, fear based response to the attack. It is absolutely true, terrorists have killed some Americans here, and have killed a few hundred Russian and French folks over there. We kill more of our own in bar fights. (its just 1 or 3 at a time, continuous) Yet, terrorism absolutely consumes political energy for policy and action.

If something stops being "fascist" or "terrorist", then people really need to use the right word.

Now, I do disagree with the notion that Republicans pursue a fascist objective; there's simply too much of the free market, individualism, and distrust of government to fit the definition. That doesn't mean we're all nice an fluffy though! Rather, just that the word "fascist" is the wrong word.

This goes for our side as well, calling Obama a communist is absurd. The guy's barely a sneeze away from a brazen Neocon. In fact, most American politicians are so similar on almost all actionable issues that its really kind of funny that we get so riled up at each other. The huge range of political viewpoints that exist in Europe, or heck, even Russia, is completely nonexistent here.

So no, Republicans aren't fascist; Democrats aren't communists. We're all a bunch of center-right yahoos who want nothing more than to keep the gravy train running just a little bit longer.

[Lore]

Mussolini was in favor of corporate power and viewed corporations as an important part of a country and that of the government. The merger of government and corporations is the basis for what he called Fascism to differentiate it from Socialism.

[KaiserJeep]

Correct, and he was a labor organiser and a follower of Karl Marx's teachings when he wrote his Fascist documents, and personally defined the term.

It is interesting that the world is still so much in shock from the actions of the National Socialist Labour Party in Europe during WW2 that other followers of Marx - including most college professors and the authors of the OED, deny that the man at the center of their political philosophy displayed Fascist tendencies before Mussolini named the concept.

Cid will not admit to his own Fascist beliefs, any more than the those who seek to redefine the very word.

I'm tired of talking about the word Fascism, with people who are so dense that they insist that one flavor of goose-stepping authoritarian is infinitely better than another flavor of of goose-stepping authoritarian. Meanwhile everything they right here is about forcing other people to change behavior and beliefs. The world view of such people does not include themselves as Fascists - that couldn't possibly be true, and if WE were in charge as we should be, YOU would keep your mouth shut and salute me when I passed with my allegiance proudly displayed on my clothing:






Folks, NONE of these people want limited government, nor do most of you.


Admit to your dark desires:



...and NO, you are not doing it for our own good.

[onlooker]

"a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition" I think this is a worthy general definition of Fascism. I think we can all agree that one particular person serving as a dictator is not required. I think the merging of Corporations with governments is more akin to a Plutocracy being a rule of the few financial elite. I have come to believe that US has become a combination of a Plutocracy, Oligarchy and Kleptocracy which which in reality in NO better than any traditionally Fascist States that have existed. What unites all these types are their disregard for the common man's interests and one or another form of repression. In the case of the US it is fascinating because the most effective form of repression that has been practiced in this country has been subtle, a buying into the norms, myths and tenets of Capitalism that has enabled the elites to rule without very much opposition. You can call it a deceptive repression obtained via distractions and material comforts as well as massive disinformation enabling a form of brain washing as well as passive acceptance.

[Keith_McClary]

The ultimate implementation of Fascism is the Environmental Protection Agencies, both Federal and State.

You forgot compulsory education and monogamy.

[Lore]

Yes, Mussolini's picture got cut off showing Hitler behind him rolling with laughter and pointing his finger.