I’ve been doing some research, and I’m under two impressions.
1st impression: Fascism is a synthesis between left: communism, socialism, globalism, liberalism, reformation, revolution and right: capitalism, nationalism, conservatism, countereformation.
2nd impression: Fascism is an extreme right wing ideology: corporatism (as in: government intervenes on behalf of the rich), nationalism, conservatism, imperialism, racial supremacism.
Please clarify—
note: maybe this belongs in the hall of questions… I don’t really care
It seems Fascism may be; Government serves the historically strong and/or majority (rich, healthy, straight, white capitalists) against the historically weak and/or minorities (poor, unhealthy, crooked, black workers). Crooked as in; gays, drug addicts, criminals, etc.Either that or it is an eclectic ideology
Fascism is simply complete control by a single party/organization.
What economic/political views that party has are entirely up to the party in question.
Khrone’s got it. Whether or not a country can be considered Fascist basically boils down to two questions:
1.) Is there only one political party present in a country in which it can reasonably be inferred that the citizens would prefer to have multiple political parties?
ADDENDUM: If so, is it actually codified that no other political party be allowed to exist to the extent that there are actual criminal/civil sanctions for the establishment, aide or support of a separate political party?*
*The addendum is simply to determine degree. If the answer to the first question is yes, it’s still a Fascist Government.
2.) Is the government Authoritarian to the extent that they codify and enforce laws pertaining to matters of life that go over-and-above the administration of government?*
Fascism as autocracy, or oligarchy, a single party state.
Fascism as big government, authoritarianism. By this definition, all western countries could be considered fascist, as all western governments interfere and intervene in matters of education (public schooling), the family (the state can take your children away), lifestyle (the state regulates our food and drug consumption, our sex lives), the economy (health care, minimum wage), etc… religion, not so much, although, in some states and provinces I think, certain religious institutions are exempt from taxation. I suppose where you draw the line between libertarianism and authoritarianism is somewhat arbitrary and… personal. The state also sujects us to constant and all encompassing, pervasive surveillance. For example, in the UK, there’s one camera for every three people. Does this qualify the UK as, Fascist? What about naked body skanners at the airport, 1% of the population being held in prison, warrantless wire tapping, prolonged, indefinite detention, legalized torture (waterboarding), no fly lists, etc? Continuous, consecutive wars, corporate bail outs, I mean, our governments regulate virtually ever facet of our lives, so does this qualify our countries as fascist, or does the fact that we have… two parties… wow two, exempt us from being fascist? Also, many of the measures the so called progressives have implemented (affirmative action, etc) could be constituted as fascist, as they promote one race, sex, or lifestyle at the expense or to the detriment of another or… the other.
In addition to fascism as, well, the opposite of “progressivism”… regressivism? ? When the state promotes the healthy, the majority, the powerful, the rich, males, whites, etc, at the expense or to the detriment of their respective opposites.
…and fascism as the synthesis of all political dichotomies (public vs private, revolutionary vs reactionary, etc).
Well… how do we go about resolving this word, this concept, or do we simply leave it as ambiguous with multiple definitions? Perhaps Khrone and Pav are right, but I didn’t just pull these definitions out of a hat, I received them (or at least I think I did) from various websites, documentaries and books.
1st definition, is good, pretty much the exact definition.
2nd definition, is a little off. Whether the government is controlling or not depends on the exact government in question, not fascism. A fascist state could be run by a group that believes in privacy and the freedom of choice so long as you are party of the party in power.
3rd is again dependent on the exact government. A fascist government could actually support minorities and the weak. They can support who ever they want.
4th is reasonable.
The 2nd and 3rd are connotations of fascist governments simply because the most recent fascist governments (Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, Stalin’s governments) had those traits. A fascist government could allow people all the freedom in the world. If all the government does is decide what day of the week is casual Friday, letting individuals choose for everything and anything else, and everyone in the government is in the same party and agrees it is a fascist government.
Not tyrannical or exploitative or “evil” but fascist none the less.
I think the defining word is repression. Fascism is at the extreme end of governing via repression.
Edit : On a further note repression may not be enough. Tyranny or dictatorship are also extreme froms of repression. What set fascism apart from those two i think, is a kind of mass military mobilisation of the public with ideology and symbolism.
Nope, nope, nope. What you describe is Totalitarian National Socialism (the Nazi party and those like it).
Fascism is simply control by a single party.
If the catholic religion was a government, it would be fascist since it is controlled by a single party.
If a fascist party wishes, it can literally do nothing. If everyone belongs to the same party in a democracy it is a fascist government.
So then, if it’s a single party state, even if the party is egalitarian, libertarian, and pacifist, respecting individual human rights and the rule of law, it should still be considered, fascist? ? I’m sorry, but I can’t accept this, as I’m pretty sure that’s not what Giovanni Gentile, Benito Mussolini and The Nationalist Fascist Party had envisioned for fascism. Perhaps having a single party state is an important criterium for discerning a fascist state, but I don’t think it should be the only criterium.
Interesting, so for you, the actual policies of the party are irrelevant. For me, the policies are just as, if not more relevant. Fascism is indeed, an ambiguous term. It requires clarification.
In theory no, in practice yes. Our political leaders are preselected at Bilderberg. The lobbyists, including Goldman Sachs and the Israel lobby, dumped enormous amounts of money into the Obama and Mccain Campaigns. The republicrats are two branches of the same tree, a tree watered with blood, oil and money.
You are close, but fascism isn’t really a left/right synthesis. It is a third-way solution that agrees with many Communist critiques of liberalism (as in, free market economy + democratic/republican government) while rejecting its conclusions. How that third-way is actually walked is interesting and different. In some cases, you get a clear case of corporatism mixed with autocracy (most clearly seen in Fascist Italy), a fusion of Catholicism and fascist thinking (in Spain, an interesting parallel to liberation theology in South America) and a fusion of romanticism and fascism in Nazi Germany.