Fascism's History
From iGeek
- The idea of Socialism goes back to the Persian (Zoroastrian Priest) Mazdak (524), the 3rd Century Mauryan Empire of India, or even Aristophanes Greek (Athenian) comedy Assemblywomen (391 BC), if not before and communal tribalism. It's an old idea, that has never works (for long), which is why it was mocked 2400 years ago in Athens.
- It was re-popularized with the French Revolution (1789) and the idea of eating the rich. Which also ended in the disaster that has been France: a fallen under-achieving and bitter empire.
- Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels preyed on this new populist ideas by writing their propaganda pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto in 1848: just in time for the "Spring of Nations" a series of revolutions in Europe. They later wrote a discredited economic propaganda book, Das Kapital in the 1860s.
- For a while, this coalesced the Socialist movements around Marx's Communism, but as Marx's predictions were falling like 750,000 dead Soviets under Stalin's purges, and capitalism had not crumbled as predicted (and was thriving), there was a fracturing of the movement. The schism was between the denialists who ignored the evidence against Marx and stuck with Revolutionary Socialism (Marxism/Communism/Leninism), and the new incremental Socialists (Fascists) who wanted a better way to get to centralized authority (command economy) without the disruption of a revolution. They invented their "3rd Position" on property rights, as the plan for how to migrate an economy to Socialism.
- The Fascist Leadership all came from Socialism (a branch that supported crony-socialism and unionism called Syndicalism), and their goals were all Socialist, but instead of a revolution led by the workers (where the leadership would install friends and family of the party to run the industries/sectors), they believed in Democratic Socialism (progressive reform into Socialism), where the leaders would be voted into power and would tax/regulate/control businesses, and let the ones that followed orders continue as proxies for the government, instead of seizing the means of production from the start. (Less disruption to economies). The rallying cry was "first brown, then red" as in Fascism (Brown) was an incremental step towards the ultimate goal of Socialism (Red).
- Their symbol (and the word "Fasces") is a bundle of sticks tied together, often with an ax in the middle, representing "all of us, are stronger than one of us" and collective power. Their primary belief (symbolized by Fasces) means collectivism (the State) over the individual (western liberalism/individualism). They did big rally's as a way to bind people to that collective community (to tolerate and cheer the tyranny of the majority).
- National Socialism was the German branch of Fascism, that added in the cultural components of Germany (anti-semitism and more imperialism), but that was not required to be fascist since Italy and other Fascists didn't subscribe to either.
- Fascists despised the status quo and considered themselves progressive (forward-looking), and were not attracted by a return to bygone eras. In other words, they were the opposite of conservatism or right-wing movements.
- The progressive left in America supported the fascists, and the fascists borrowed the left's ideas and celebrated them back... until the war. After the war, the left needed to distance themselves from their brethren, so in the 1950s and 1960s, they invented the canard that Fascists/National Socialists were a right-wing movement: even though the Fascists had nothing in common with the right wing. So they pretended that left wing authoritarianism was something that doesn't exist (it does), and pretended that all authoritarianism was right wing (it isn't).
The left was so successful at subverting the truth that when you point this stuff out today, the miseducated will ignore the history or facts presented and attack the informed/educated as out-of-their minds.
Fascism is socialism
After Karl Marx's Das Kapital in the 1860s and 1870s, Socialism (which far predated him) coalesced around his beliefs (Communist branch of Socialism).
However, Marx's Communism failed to deliver on its promises:
- According to Marx, the natural progression was Feudalism -> Capitalism -> Communism.
- But Capitalism wasn't falling to Communism and was stable. Marx felt that Capitalism was flawed as all resources would pool with the few, thus the distance between the worker and 1% would grow (as would resentment), therefore the most capitalist countries (Germany, U.S., England) would fall first (and soon). It didn't happen.
- Instead, things had gotten better for developed countries workers and they increased stability over time. It was non-capitalist and poorly industrialized Russia that collapsed into communism (starting in 1906, and ending in 1917).
- And it didn't happen by the workers spontaneous rising up (as promised) but by elites in Universities and elsewhere driving the change.
- Plus, Marxism's violence, despotism, economic ruin, and famines, wasn't at all what was promised or other Countries wanted to mimic.
Marxist theory was broken (as to why/how), so the Socialists needed new theories to be invented to justify their beliefs.
Schism
Marxist Communist-Socialism fractured into two schools, Leninists and Fascists. Both were revolutionary socialists (Marxists). Both accepted that Marx had been wrong, and that spontaneous workers revolutions (what they promised and desperately wanted) wouldn't just happen on its own, in stable developed countries.
- Leninists felt that by exploiting foreign workers, Capitalism was still thriving on the backs of workers -- but because it was foreign workers, they had bought off the domestic ones (or underclasses). Thus outside forces were necessary to drive Communism to the less enlightened.
- Fascists, knew that revolution wouldn't work in stable developed countries, so they needed a more incremental and pragmatic approach to Socialism: one where you'd transition from private owned business and personal property to state owned, through an intermediate step -- where the state controlled private business (the means of production) and private property through proxies. The owners were TEMPORARILY allowed to keep their businesses (and avoid nationalization), and people could keep private property, but only as long as you were doing what the state wanted. But once they taxed, regulated and lawed their way past a certain point, they could finish the transition to Socialism. The intermediate step was called the 3rd Position.
- Socialist Academics contributed to the rise of the 3rd Reich by supporting this ideology. [1]
| Third Position |
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Fascisms view of individuals and property rights:
Thus everyone was part of the collective (a ward of the state). You could have corporations, businesses and private property, but only if they were putting the interests of the state first (as defined by the political class). Mussolini described it as a "merger of state and corporate power", over the individual (anti-libertarianism). (The same rhetoric and position as the Occupy Movement). Today we'd call it Crony Capitalism, or a regulatory state -- private business being the proxies of government, along with government subsidies to support them (Solar Power, Electric Cars, subsidies like that). So capitalism is an individualist (libertarian) ideology, while Communism, Socialism and Fascism are all collectivist (authoritarian) ideologies. more... |
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