Fascism: What exactly is it and how do you recognize it?

[compared2what?]

CW, you really shouldn't have equated c2w?'s light touch of denial (or aversity to apply the term too readily) a Limbaughism. That was wrong.

JackRiddler, you really should not feed the bears. Why is it I've been more successful at ignoring the bait to derail this thread than you?

That being said, I respect you. I'd point you to a sampling of Limbaugh's style so that you might understand what I meant. Here he is defending the Iraq war by trying to point out that highway deaths are more of a problem:

On his August 23rd radio talk show (read the complete transcript here), Limbaugh used the most preposterous argument to date in defense of the war in Iraq:

Now, the number of highway deaths in this country, 43,443 in 2005, is 40 to 50 times our troop losses in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Well, ten or 20 times at least. And a whole lot more deaths per month than any civil war in Iraq, if there was or is a civil war in Iraq. I don't know whatever happened to "if it bleeds, it leads," but there's a whole lot more bleeding on our highways than in the war zone in Iraq out there, and a whole lot more dying going on in the American highway system than there is in the so-called civil war in Iraq. I don't hear a word from John Kerry who served in Vietnam or John Murtha or Joe Biden or Howard Dean. For every Cindy Sheehan, there are 40 to 50 mothers who have suffered far worse heartbreak. Cindy's son gave his life for his country, not for going to the drugstore.

In fact, the roadway deaths is at a highest level in 15 years, 43,443 Americans every year, ladies and gentlemen, and we're here turning ourselves into rags, pretzeling ourselves into contortions over the combat deaths in Iraq, regardless and mindless of the heroic mission that is taking place.

To me, there's a comparison. If you disagree, you disagree - but this thread is about fascism, not about what I did or didn't say to her Highness. I'm handling it, she's (trying to) handle it. Can we leave it alone?

Her Highness?

I would have let it be, if you'd been able to.

It wasn't the Limbaugh comparison, alone. There was also the rage that I hadn't left and/or mockery of me for not leaving.

And it's not like it's the first time you've brought it up. Or the "big-brains-so-called" schtick. Or the "Her highness" schtick. I mean, you drag that shit-flingng around from thread to thread. It's kind of like a personal signature. You're account's been suspended for it. None of that applies to me. So please don't try to pretend that I started a personal fight with you, or reacted overdramatically to a completely non-hostile approach. I didn't.

Just desist, please.

Thanks.

[JackRiddler]

Did you write the first poem? I'm going to pass on critiquing it for now and deal with the prose.

You're evading. I found it convenient to make a list of specific examples of roles in fascism at different stages - all of them obvious - that are obscured by your blindered, self-comforting approach to fascism as something conveniently foreign. I don't ask for your literary critique, but an answer in an argument. If you're going to avoid content, we should wrap this up.

Among other things, fascism is a kind of political reaction and degeneration that visits modern and modernizing societies when they enter severe economic crisis. It is usually a disease of capitalism.

It can visit them. I don't know if it's a requirement of those circumstances...

No shit. Hair-splitting pedantry. Desire to attack rather than have dialogue. Evasion.

As well, under a too-vague set of defining characteristics, it's hard to figure out just what modernity has to do with the phenomenon. For example, if I partake of Canadian Watcher's definition,

Above I spent pages proposing definitions. You're not interested in talking to me, or about the stuff. You bring in whatever and whomever you find convenient so that you can convince yourself you've won something. A game of appearances. Your behavior in recent threads should have taught me not to expect honesty, integrity or solidarity from you.

Neither do I. But is profiting from fascism in itself fascist?

Yes, it is. Fascism, especially fascism in power, loves business. The opportunists are as essential as the true believers. Social climbing, careerism, and cosying up to profit from the disruptions and demands fascism causes have always been integral. It is not restricted to the Brandstifter (the "arsonist") but arises in the collaboration between Biederman (respectable bourgeois) and Brandstifter. Most of the Biedermen got off and prospered in the post-fascist orders. And if you finance a fascist coup d'etat in another country "merely" for your own profit, you don't get any excuses. You are fascist.

This was of course all in the part I arranged as a poem, so you got to evade it.

Also, this is a very long sentence that is at the very beginning of getting harder and harder to understand with any precision.

The too stupid and lazy to follow along defense? Okay. No problem. Henceforth you'll get few words from me.

You've excluded most of what I've said on the basis of format. Convenient.

Personally, I haven't belonged to any particularly blessed demographic here for any considerable amount of time, myself. I am a lifelong pauper, really, with all the lack of privileges that attend that position.

Evasion.

[JackRiddler]

Thank you for the serious response, c2w? I feel like we've clarified the questions.

.

CW, unlike some people I could name, I think you're real. As in, genuine, driven by truthful motives. (Also: a very talented artist.) I wish you weren't so mean in your fights with c2w?. I'm just saying.

[JackRiddler]

As troubling as the term may be, one need to face the reality, I believe, that it is fascism itself which has evolved, rather than one or another nation "tending" or "moving" towards it. Anyone looking for a photo-repeat of the past will be caught looking forever.

Fucking brilliant. Thank you.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

As troubling as the term may be, one need to face the reality, I believe, that it is fascism itself which has evolved, rather than one or another nation "tending" or "moving" towards it. Anyone looking for a photo-repeat of the past will be caught looking forever.

Fucking brilliant. Thank you.

My pleasure, and thank you.

[crikkett]

Thank you c2w? for my new avatar. It's exactly what I was looking for!

[barracuda]

You're evading. I found it convenient to make a list of specific examples of roles in fascism at different stages - all of them obvious - that are obscured by your blindered, self-comforting approach to fascism as something conveniently foreign. I don't ask for your literary critique, but an answer in an argument. If you're going to avoid content, we should wrap this up.

I'm not evading. I just didn't want to deal with the poem, bro. I didn't know if it had some context I might be unaware of like Tucholsky's Roses.

Your poem poses a series of questions. The end result, to my ear, comes down to the difference between the existence of fascists in America (which I do not deny), and whether or not we are living in a fascist state, i.e. a totalitarian police state conforming to certain characteristic attributes.

Before they send out death squads
Before pageants in the square
Before the leader speaks law from the balcony
Before the women shudder and the men howl with victory,
Before the bad elements disappear, the cowards are shot fleeing
Before the show trials
When they're still in brownshirts and bloody on the street
Or no, before that,
When they're still good burgers in the beerhall,
Suited and groomed dandies at the club
Angered by what this nation has become
Spitting about parasites and degenerates,
Saying, there ought to be a law,
I'd like to wring their necks,
One day a rain will come,
Look at all these sluts,
Are they fascists?

My contention here is that fascism as a system has definable characteristics which are exemplified through the targeted use of paramilitary squadristi, ostracization of social groups deemed lesser, intense community building via a pageant of masculinized nationalism versus a perceived conflicting force, and near-complete silencing of political opposition, usually with violence.

The dandies at the club spitting about degenerates and parasites, as you put it, may in fact be ready to become fascists. If on the one hand "Few people are entirely immune to the fascist drive," some people embrace it eagerly, obviously.

My question is: is racism, abhorrent though it may be, equivalent to fascism? I would say no - all racism is not fascist.

When the arms and advisers sail to your key ally in the region,
When they are regrettably bastards, but your bastards,
Killers and sadists, but graduates of your school,
Planners of hunger and rape, but graduates of your school
Profiteers of blood and slavery, but always with other graduates of your school,
When you're only in it for the profit, and better you than the competition,
When anyway the Communists forced you into this fiendship with the devil,
When the only burning you do is from 30,000 feet or nine thousand miles distance
Does that make you a fascist?

Agan, I would ask if the presence of a military is in itself evidence of fascism. And let's face it - we all profit in one way or another from the outrages perpetrated in our name by our military. Does that mean that you and I are fascists?

No shit. Hair-splitting pedantry. Desire to attack rather than have dialogue. Evasion.

You're not addressing my question: how does modernity figure as a requirement of fascism? What makes fascism different from similar types of oppression which occurred before the modern era? My opinion is that the answer has to do, again, with aesthetics, specifically modern aesthetics, for example, see: Marinetti.

Above I spent pages proposing definitions. You're not interested in talking to me, or about the stuff. You bring in whatever and whomever you find convenient so that you can convince yourself you've won something. A game of appearances. Your behavior in recent threads should have taught me not to expect honesty, integrity or solidarity from you.

You said several pages ago:

It's untrue to simply call the US fascist

Which is what I'm saying as well. It is something else. And as I said to dada upthread, I really don't care what you call it. If it pleases you to call it fascism, go ahead. I prefer to reserve that terminology for governments that rather narrowly and closely reflect the characteristics I set forth above.

Fascism, especially fascism in power, loves business. The opportunists are as essential as the true believers. Social climbing, careerism, and cosying up to profit from the disruptions and demands fascism causes have always been integral. It is not restricted to the Brandstifter (the "arsonist") but arises in the collaboration between Biederman (respectable bourgeois) and Brandstifter. Most of the Biedermen got off and prospered in the post-fascist orders. And if you finance a fascist coup d'etat in another country "merely" for your own profit, you don't get any excuses. You are fascist.

You and I both profit from what you call fascism in innumerable ways.

The too stupid and lazy to follow along defense? Okay. No problem. Henceforth you'll get few words from me.

Look man, if you write your responses here as free verse poetry, don't expect me to be all happy about it. I'm not looking to critique a creative writing exercise, so if you want to put forth a page long run-on sentence for me to parse, it had better be elegant enough for me to follow. No one likes to be forced to read bad poetry.

Let some air out of the balloon, please.

Meanwhile, if you really want dialog, address the substance of my post and try to ignore my acerbic nature, because that's sort of just who I am.

- Is there any oppression that you wouldn't qualify as fascist? What's the difference between oppression and fascism?

- If you live under fascism and reap the rewards of fascism, does that make you a fascist, even though you complain about it?

- Are there any countries that we can safely say we should not call fascist?

[brekin]

Remember Rick from The Young Ones?
His definition of "Fascist!" was basically
anyone who disagreed with him. Here is one of his poems
on Fascism....and Cliff Richards.

[Project Willow]

But....Wait. I guess that on consideration. I'm not sure whether you're saying, "Don't blithely discount real fascist acts committed by the American state," (in which case I'm saying, "I don't!") or whether you're saying, "It's a fascist system, don't kid yourself," (in which case, I think we differ).

Or you might be saying some whole other thing. Of course. Please enlighten me.

I'm saying I live in a fascist country.

It's winter 2007, there is knock on my door, a cadenced knock, sometime between 3 and 4:30 am. A part of me hears the knock, gets up, and opens the door. Two men enter. They know my boyfriend is asleep in my bed. One of them takes out a syringe. We go back to the bedroom and my alter lifts up the sheet. The man with the syringe injects something into the bottom of my boyfriend's foot. The sleeping man stirs but he doesn't wake up.

They take me back out to the kitchen. The man who had the syringe is a neurologist. I know who he is in normative life, but through mutual contacts I've been able to surmise he is also in a controlled state when he performs these accessings. The other man carries himself like a military thug, muscular, bald, in his early fifties. Parts of me have known him for years.

The neurologist issues trigger codes. He wants to test the viability of some important programming, to see if there's been any leaking or breakage due to my work in therapy. He runs through a short list of alters and programs. When one part is brought out, the military man removes a handgun from his jacket and holds it to my head. A new threat is issued, and the barrier around once operational parts reinforced.

I don't want to re-remember the rest, which is quite horrific, and occurred right at my kitchen table where I would get up the next morning and have breakfast.

A few days later I recount this scene to my therapist. She is frustrated and angry that the one compliant alter let them in, "Why did you let them in!" I didn't. This is the tipping point for her, and despite years of our working together, effectively the end of our relationship.

Eventually I build up enough courage to tell my boyfriend. He is very angry that I didn't tell him right away, and I imagine, frightened. He is careful with his words, but it's clear he doesn't want to believe me. Then I show him the puncture wound in his foot. We never speak of it again.

However, most of my neighbors don't live in a fascist country, their experience is wholly different. A person can't dismiss something that is outside of their awareness, and the mass public does not want to be aware. They don't want to know this kind of fear. They fight to maintain their illusions, (even in the face of abuses actually reported by the MSM), and so many of the fascistic acts of the state remain unchallenged, and secret, even if that secrecy is due to various failures rather than overt control. The network to which the two men in my story belong also grooms politicians for high level office, people for whom the general public votes, thinking they are making a relatively free choice.

So this is different than in a classic fascist state, where targeted violence, and other forms of control, would occur in the open. The system we have is more sophisticated and subtle, for the majority, for now anyway.

As troubling as the term may be, one need to face the reality, I believe, that it is fascism itself which has evolved, rather than one or another nation "tending" or "moving" towards it. Anyone looking for a photo-repeat of the past will be caught looking forever.

What do we call it?

[dada]

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.

- Henry Wallace, "The Danger of American fascism" article in NYT, 1944

http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm

I would say that in America today, you can clearly see that purposeful coalition in action.

(Sorry for posting at the same time as you, PW. Had I seen your post I would've let it stand for a while before posting. It seems the message that "another post has been posted while you were typing" doesn't happen when two posts happen in the same minute.)

[compared2what?]

Still, fascism is alive and well in America. Or so it seems to me.

That's definitely true.

We just don't live in a fascist state.

When it's phrased that way, I really don't think we do.

Not to split hairs -- or to look for an exact replay of the past, or anything of that nature -- but....Oh, wait. I see that you already got there in your very next sentence.

Maybe the term should be reserved for a very select set of criteria.

I don't actually think it's excessively selective to reserve the literal use of a descriptive term for the condition it literally describes, when speaking in literal terms about something for diagnostic purposes. Due to treatment implications. So.

Not to split hairs -- or to look for an exact replay of the past, or anything of that nature -- but, by definition, a literally fascist state is (among other things) a literally totalitarian state. By which I simply, impartially mean: "That's how the word fascist is defined, for literal usage purposes." Likewise, by definition, a literally totalitarian state is (among other things) one in which the state both has and exercises total control of all aspects of the political system, at every level.

To say that's not the case in the contemporary United States does not automatically mean, by default, that the contemporary United States is a land of liberty, opportunity, equality and liberty. For example, I might say that the United States is not a totalitarian regime because the electorate is too politically apathetic for such rigorous tactics to be necessary. Or I might say that the United States is not a fascist regime because the oligarchs aren't interested in ceding control to the state. Or whatever.

I'm not even sure I understand why it's politically advantageous to say that we do live in a fascist state, to be honest. From a remedial perspective, I mean.

What label then would you put on our happy little utopia, if you had to?

I don't think there's just one that fully fits the bill. I guess that it's a plutocracy, effectively. But that's not a politically appealing term. I guess it would depend on the context.

[compared2what?]

But....Wait. I guess that on consideration. I'm not sure whether you're saying, "Don't blithely discount real fascist acts committed by the American state," (in which case I'm saying, "I don't!") or whether you're saying, "It's a fascist system, don't kid yourself," (in which case, I think we differ).

Or you might be saying some whole other thing. Of course. Please enlighten me.

I'm saying I live in a fascist country.

Then we don't disagree.

Also, more to the point, I hear you.

[compared2what?]

I guess that this...

I'm saying I live in a fascist country.

Then we don't disagree.

versus this...

We just don't live in a fascist state.

When it's phrased that way, I really don't think we do.

...probably appears to call for a little clarification.

Or maybe not. I don't know. But fwiw, it just seems axiomatic to me that you can't address a complex problem without identifying it accurately. So when speaking of the system overall, it strikes me as important to the point of imperative to say that it isn't fascist. Classically or otherwise. It's corrupt, broken, amoral, wicked, uncaring, inefficient, and lots of lots of other evil things. Including "more than capable of sometimes using tactics or following policy the inhuman deplorability of which is such that the word "fascist" is specially reserved for its description."

And I don't think that's a contradiction, unless reality is.

[barracuda]

...for diagnostic purposes. Due to treatment implications...
...
From a remedial perspective

Because really, what other reason is there to ask the question of the OP?

[brekin]

I think technically some places in the U.S. could be Fascist zones. Areas or "company towns" where one or a few corporations control the local government (maybe even the state legislature) and the local police and courts are in lock step with their wishes. They can outwardly have the pretense of following democratic norms and forms but their power structure and execution is Fascist. Think of a small town with one or two industries owned by one family who has got brothers, uncles, aunts and uncles who occupy all the seats of power in law enforcement, the pulpit, the school, the courts, etc.

This is hard to do on a large state or federal level though. Just because your family is the biggest industry in a state and you are the governor and your brother is the mayor of the largest city (or those individuals aren't related but just in collusion) doesn't gurantee you will get everything you want all the time. Even say federal agents under a supposed Fascist power structure knocking out people in areas under its jurisdiction are still going into democratic enclaves. If they reproduced their structure though in those enclaves then they would make it Fascist. Even areas where corporations are dominant and have undue influence in the state apparatus aren't technically Fascist because that influence isn't monolithic, if for no other reason than the various corporations are in competition with each other (usually) and there are other checks on their power. I'm sure many towns and cities wouldn't mind being Fascist if their standard of living went up and the power structure wasn't too flagrant and gratuitous in their exercise of power.