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

[dqueue]

My own 'understanding' of fascism aligns with what has already been said, the coalescing of corporation and State, with a tinge of religious fanatacism thrown in for the pious among us. Gingerly wrap that in layers of propaganda.

What happens as fascism grows beyond, or detached from any one State? Ostensibly the corporations circling power tend to be multinationals. The seats of power, too, seem to get pretty murky in their national alignment. Uncharted territory? Or have we been here before?

[justdrew]

well, it can get really mixed up, particularly in actual history...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Fascism

but the main thing is, if the authoritarian tendencies in the population were dealt with, there'd be no base for any sort of crap to grow in.

[bks]

At the core of fascist ideologies is an aggressive contempt for what it perceives to be weak. Could be women, Jews, the poor, socialists, etc.

[Elvis]

---

Teachers have told me that Fascism should be capitalized, but I think by now it's more than just the name of a 20th century Italian movement; fascism is a word, a word we need, so it's good to look closely at its meaning(s) and not let it get away from us.

Some have argued that the term "fascism" has become hopelessly vague in the years following World War II, and that today it is little more than a pejorative epithet used by supporters of various political views to attempt to discredit their opponents. This view dates back to George Orwell, British writer and author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, who in 1944 famously remarked:

.

..the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else ... Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathisers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.[36]

Orwell's observation predates the formulation of the Godwin's law[37], considering nazism and fascism as partially overlapping notions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

That said, FDR made this essential point about fascism:

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 29, 1938. Message to congress.

[compared2what?]

That is good to know then, I have read that quote attributed to him in countless text books and on the net. Goes to show you cant trust much of what you read anymore. But the quote is pretty accurate in any case.

Another famous (and accurate) quote with questionable origins:

"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." - ?

http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/03 ... g-a-cross/

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "When fascism came to America, it came wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." ?
The US is not a fascist state yet, but many of the building blocks are in place. Corporations and Government becoming pretty much one and the same, the creeping police state, the war on whistle-blowers and wikileaks, the borderline religious worship of the military, the full-blown religious hatred of muslims, the financial crisis and future shock making more and more people look to strong, decisive leaders, the war on minorities drugs, etc.

^^You probably can't have freedom of speech in a fascist state at all, but you definitely can't have enough of it to say THAT.

It's a happy distinction, for once.

Yay.

______________

In re: The OP.

Obviously, I wouldn't say the U.S. is now a fascist country. Personally, I don't even see much sign of a creeping police state. Or at least not significantly more or one than there sometimes has been in the past without triggering a full-on loss of freedoms. (Which is not to say that kind of thing isn't always an evil, all on its own, btw.)

But I obviously would say that there are more incipient signs of what might later develop into a fascist coup nowadays than I really feel comfortable seeing, since I just did say exactly that on the "Fuck Obama" thread.

I'll try to make a list. But generally speaking, even if nothing else was going on: There are just a whole lot of parallels between the present-day U.S. and (to choose a well-known example) Weimar Germany. And societies that are on the wain in the way that America's presently is do tend to veer towards fascism when their economies go south.

So some movement in that direction is probably just human nature, which never learns, evidently.

[semper occultus]

.....fwiw I've noticed the idea of "corporatism" sometimes misapplied on this board & other fora as something to do with industrial corporations etc...."corporations" were a Catholic idea of social organisation -something like a guild - that was sort of vertically arranged to represent different socio-economic groups & meant to be some sort of structure resistant or antithetical to horizontal class stratification....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

[jingofever]

I think 82_28 hits it on the head with empathy. Fascism is a sort of sociopathy. I think it is a mistake to try to shoehorn various regimes into the mold of historical examples or to cross off the fourteen characteristics of fascism. Fascism is denying the autonomy of other states or people.

[D.R.]

Simply put;

In Communism the State owns the means of production.

In Fascism the means of production owns the State.

Both are authoritarian, and it's obvious which side is winning...

[brainpanhandler]

.....fwiw I've noticed the idea of "corporatism" sometimes misapplied on this board & other fora as something to do with industrial corporations etc...."corporations" were a Catholic idea of social organisation -something like a guild - that was sort of vertically arranged to represent different socio-economic groups & meant to be some sort of structure resistant or antithetical to horizontal class stratification....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

Thanks semper. That'll learn me.

I went looking for a clip of Sgt. Schultz saying, "I know nothinK" and found the following instead wherein the narrator uses the term "war corporatism":

[Hunter]

.....fwiw I've noticed the idea of "corporatism" sometimes misapplied on this board & other fora as something to do with industrial corporations etc...."corporations" were a Catholic idea of social organisation -something like a guild - that was sort of vertically arranged to represent different socio-economic groups & meant to be some sort of structure resistant or antithetical to horizontal class stratification....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

Back then that was very true but today it doesnt apply as such and does refer to actual industrial corporations from everything I have studied. It would refer to private sector corporations like blackwater and the privatization of military and police for example. But you are correct at one time it referred more to professional guilds.

[DrEvil]

That is good to know then, I have read that quote attributed to him in countless text books and on the net. Goes to show you cant trust much of what you read anymore. But the quote is pretty accurate in any case.

Another famous (and accurate) quote with questionable origins:

"When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." - ?

http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/03 ... g-a-cross/

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "When fascism came to America, it came wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." ?
The US is not a fascist state yet, but many of the building blocks are in place. Corporations and Government becoming pretty much one and the same, the creeping police state, the war on whistle-blowers and wikileaks, the borderline religious worship of the military, the full-blown religious hatred of muslims, the financial crisis and future shock making more and more people look to strong, decisive leaders, the war on minorities drugs, etc.

^^You probably can't have freedom of speech in a fascist state at all, but you definitely can't have enough of it to say THAT.

It's a happy distinction, for once.

Yay.

True, it's still ok to say it, but is it a good idea to do so? If I was a US citizen, how many statements like that would I have to make before I was flagged as a person of interest?
The way I see it, overt censorship isn't necessary anymore. It's easier to just watch everyone and do pinpoint interventions when necessary.
There is also the problem of self-censorship. The mainstream media isn't censored, but it might as well be. They do a better job themselves than any government censor.

[Hunter]

And then there is this:

If they breach the Ecuadorian Embassy we can be certain the entire charade of freedom is officially over.

Embassies are hallowed sovereign ground, not to be trespassed. Ever. This is the most sacrosanct, fundamental, inviolable principle of international relations, explicitly codified in both the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) and the Vienna Convention on
Consular Relations (1963). Article 27 of the latter, for example, states that “the receiving State [the UK in this case] shall, even in case of armed conflict, respect and protect the consular premises, together with the property of the consular post and the consular archives.” International law seems pretty obvious here. Yet British police stand ready to storm the embassy, arrest Assange, and tear down decades of diplomatic precedent. In a way this is almost poetic. Assange is the man who exposed western diplomacy for the fraud that it is. That he would be sent to his death by an egregious violation of its most fundamental principle seems strangely appropriate.

Regardless, the whole affair is perhaps the foulest example that western governments will ignore their own laws, or selectively apply them, whenever they see fit. Legal precedent means nothing. Rule of law means nothing. Free speech means nothing. Their own treaties mean nothing. It’s unbelievable. Anyone in the west who honestly thinks he’s still living in a free society is either a fool or completely out of touch. If that seems too radical an idea, consider that ECUADOR is now the only nation which stands to defend freedom and human rights against an assault from the United States, the United Kingdom, and their spineless allies.
The west has just become a giant banana republic. Have you hit your breaking point yet? If not now… when?

People will stop working at embassies if this happens, the embassies will close down and international relations will crumble the world over, it is REALLY THAT BIG OF A DEAL, those people work there with the assurance that they are safe and that real estate cannot be penetrated or breached for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER. The fact that they are EVEN DISCUSSING THIS SHIT is fucking mind blowing.

[Canadian_watcher]

well, it can get really mixed up, particularly in actual history...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Fascism

but the main thing is, if the authoritarian tendencies in the population were dealt with, there'd be no base for any sort of crap to grow in.

I completely agree with this.

[JackRiddler]

Some of these answers have been very good in defining, on the one hand, the emotional qualities of social interaction that can be usefully described as fascist (82_28) and, on the other, the political qualities of explicitly fascist ideology, movements, parties or states.

So I'm quoting several of those below.

I think it would be useful at this stage to disentangle different ways in which the word is applied.

I think we can distinguish three types of usages, although they shouldn't be seen as mutually exclusive:

The fascist drive: Extreme authoritarianism coupled with a particular fetish for power expressed in outbursts of often arbitrary brutality, generally against the designated out-group and the weak. This can be highly individual. It is extremely patriarchal with a violent cult of manhood, that must be said up-front, although it may simultaneously allow selective images of women as warriors as well as faithful nurturers of the national offspring. Fascism's primary appeal is to stupid, violent, frustrated, fearful men. (As an aside, it should be noted that there are types of authoritarian personalities that are not fascist and do not fetishize violence, even if they recognize it as the necessary bottom-line for order.)

Ideological fascism, movement fascism or "classical fascism" is the particular organized form that developed out of 1890s militarist nationalism and came to the fore in many European nations in the 1920s and 1930s, very much in response to the rise of communist revolution as well as the perceived depravities of liberal bourgeois society. Its global faith was that racially-defined nations are at war with each other for survival and supremacy. The nation is the required state religion. Society must be forged with violence into a unity that actively excises and ritualistically destroys the designated others and all who won't conform to the national way. All persons receive a defined role within a steep hierarchy that is considered organic and natural; in a functioning society, we are all parts or cells of a single body. Deviations cannot be tolerated and must be punished. And yet all this is in the service of traditional elites and those who were already rich and powerful. In the ideology, it is the modernist, foreign-influenced or internationalist abandonment of supposed national traditions that cause the chaos that the fascists arise to vanquish, so naturally they view their radicalism as a defense and renewal of conservative values. In the actual history, it was the majority of traditional elites and the powerful, again in several nations from Italy in 1922 to Spain in 1936-9, who chose to become or to support fascist parties as a response to real economic and political crisis. I should mention that all this was positively bathed in the idea that this was true "freedom," and I think that's still a word fascists like to front today. Also, fascism is going to take on an intensely particular national character in each nation, so that fascists regimes will not all look the same from the outside, and of course they are unlikely to label themselves fascist.

Third is the fascist way of governance, the mass-psychological handbook of how to use fear, hatred and national flattery; the institutional technology and ideological tropes that can actually be detached from a generally fascist worldview and deployed by any state or large organization. These techniques preceded and were also mutated within the classical fascist states, and continue to be developed and adapted and remain available for use to this day.

It's untrue to simply call the US fascist, although I'd say a large part of the Republican Party has become ideologically so, and the likes of Limbaugh and Beck and the political Islamophobes a la "libertarian" Pamela Gellar as well as many of the televangelist Christianists are clearly would-be fascist rulers, not to mention leaders of movements large and small; though luckily the movement members are mostly obedient job-drones in the normal economy and otherwise couch potatoes. (Alex Jones is small-potatoes whose main contribution has been to muddy the waters around the so-called "conspiracy" issues beyond reclamation.) I've often said that if the German variant of fascism (its own species, indubitably) required total mobilization of all popular resources to enable a relatively small country's plans to conquer, the American leviathan's post-fascist imperialism does best when 80 percent of more of the people simply sleep. Gives a whole new meaning to Silent Majority.

Meanwhile, the highly compartmentalized and segregated realms of nation-state and society include many institutions that make use of fascist governance: within the prison-industrial complex, the military, the "drug war" and "war on terrorism," the reaction to protest and strong social movements (ranging up to mass imprisonment and assassination), and of course in the way that many corporations handle their "human resources." It's hard to look past the many elements of fascist ideology or rhetoric within the political discourse, and the degree to which these are far more top-down than in Nixon's time (when the white majority entered the grip of a genuine popular reaction). The US state has often supported regimes overseas that are classically fascist or neo-fascist, such as the Condor nations among many other examples. The US has been a pioneer of the fascist toolkit, establishing research programs and international schools of torture and violent counterinsurgency. The state has prepared and wargamed for decades for the contingency of implementing a full and open military rule in the name of freedom, if this is ever considered necessary; and the expansion and perfection of the surveillance regime is the most impressive achievement in that effort.

Finally, the term is absolutely subject to abuse and has been watered-down from over-use and projection. So we have PC fascists, feminazis, the idea that Obama leads a fascist movement, Islamofascists - these tend to come from people on the right who confirm that "projection is powerful" - and, of course, over-easy application by leftists of the fascist label to any authoritarian or arbitrary policy.

And as a post-script, it is useful to distinguish between what I've called classical or ideological fascism as opposed to post-fascism (the passing of the "toolkit" into the common realms of governance, which can also come in a liberal form) and neo-fascism (explicit attempts to revive classical fascism).

At the core of fascist ideologies is an aggressive contempt for what it perceives to be weak. Could be women, Jews, the poor, socialists, etc.

Capriciousness in law and how it is meted out. A general lack of concern, amidst the subjects for one another. Fear. A contradiction in simultaneously being for your nation but do everything you can to destroy it as corporations hollow it all out.

A government with a lack of empathy. A government with built in rules of empathy, but they remain rules, they don't emerge from the human heart, all the while remaining capricious enough to be incomprehensible yet set in stone.

Money and religion.

War.

Distrust.

Surveillance.

The State is more important than its many communities.

Total control over how the children are raised.

Rigidness and totally careless for those who do not have the means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Fascism promotes political violence and war as forms of direct action that promote national rejuvenation, spirit and vitality. Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations to commit or threaten violence against their opponents.

The fascist party is a vanguard party designed to initiate a revolution from above and to organize the nation upon fascist principles.

- cult of extreme nationalism

- totalitarian ambition

- expansionist imperialism

- fetishised masculinism

- blurred demarcation between the state and corporation

That said, FDR made this essential point about fascism:

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 29, 1938. Message to congress.

[compared2what?]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "When fascism came to America, it came wrapped in the flag and waving a cross." ?
The US is not a fascist state yet, but many of the building blocks are in place. Corporations and Government becoming pretty much one and the same, the creeping police state, the war on whistle-blowers and wikileaks, the borderline religious worship of the military, the full-blown religious hatred of muslims, the financial crisis and future shock making more and more people look to strong, decisive leaders, the war on minorities drugs, etc.

^^You probably can't have freedom of speech in a fascist state at all, but you definitely can't have enough of it to say THAT.

It's a happy distinction, for once.

Yay.

True, it's still ok to say it, but is it a good idea to do so? If I was a US citizen, how many statements like that would I have to make before I was flagged as a person of interest?

I don't really know how to answer that question, being....Well. You know. Not an NSA employee. But fwiw, to the best of my knowledge and awareness, you would be free to make those statements daily for the whole of your life without ever being subject to any reprisals from the United States government whatsoever.

I mean, there would probably be files with your name on them somewhere that hadn't been looked at since they were opened. But as long as you weren't doing anything that was significantly more threatening to the system than expressing condemnation of it, I doubt that it would do anything more threatening to you, either.

^^Again, I'm not saying that's not an evil all on its own. It not only very much is but also very much has been since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, at the very least. Maybe longer. What it isn't is fascism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, or any other -ism that disallows difference, dissent and non-compliance by practicing brutally suppressive tactics and preaching sociocultural/political lockstep uniformity.

The way I see it, overt censorship isn't necessary anymore. It's easier to just watch everyone and do pinpoint interventions when necessary.

Well....I guess I'm not sure what you mean. But if you're talking about stuff like the crackdown(s) on Occupy, or Julian Assange, or Anonymous, it's reprehensible, shouldn't be tolerated, and...isn't exactly censorship now that I come to think of it. But never mind. Close enough.

Also, once again, it's neither new nor literally fascist.

There is also the problem of self-censorship. The mainstream media isn't censored, but it might as well be. They do a better job themselves than any government censor.

They suck, for the most part. The mainstream media coverage of Bush v. Gore, in particular, was right down there with the all-time national lows of going along to get along with the government. There was just no excuse for that. And there are a number of other examples, too.

But it's just not true that we might as well be living under a regime of censorship. Information that outrages the government does see daylight in the mainstream media fairly regularly. Granted, it usually either doesn't outrage the audience/readership, or doesn't move them to act on that outrage, or -- nine times out of ten, I'd say -- doesn't strike them as anything all that important, or interesting, or relevant to their lives, or (quite possibly) comprehensible. However, it is there.

And besides that, the MSM aren't the only game in town. The burgeoning wilds of the internet are also right here, being not censored, for those who take an interest in such things.

_______________

I'm sorry if I seem persnickety. That's not my intention. It's just that there are places like China (or Burma, or Equatorial Guinea, or Iran, etc), where they evidently haven't yet heard that overt censorship isn't necessary anymore. It makes an appreciable difference.