Fascism, according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd Ed., 1993 (p. 700) is defined as follows: “1. A governmental system led by a dictator who, having complete power, forcibly suppresses opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”
In a speech given by President Donald Trump in Minnesota, ostensibly to promote the tax reform bill forwarded by the GOP, he demonstrated every one of those characteristics. I’m old enough to remember Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, and since I heard Trump, in his inauguration (coronation) speech mimic these fascist dictators with his declaration “I alone can save you,” I have waited for the GOP majority to rein in this narcissistic madman, which, much to my despair, it has not done.
When will these powerful members of Congress represent the good of the people before he concentrates the wealth of the nation in the hands of the toadies who see their personal advantage in his actions? Will they manage to remove him from office before he abolishes the present protections of our environment, of the poor, of the sick? Before his appointees abolish every regulation, maximizing the greed and venality of the earth-rapers? Before he abolishes the impartiality of the legal system to which we aspire by nominating federal judges who share his agenda rather than respect the law? Before his lack of forethought and restraint and civility and his nasty mouth brings us into a nuclear war?
I sincerely hope so. I hope he can at least be restrained until the midterm elections when, if we cannot impeach him, we can remove those in power who enable and support him.
Istar Holliday
Arroyo Grande
This article appears in Dec 14-24, 2017.
Trump is certainly a fascist, a con man, a serial liar & all around amoral, disgusting scumbag, but his legions of proudly stupid supporters are a real existential threat to this nation & to the world. Hitler did not arise in a vacuum & he did not personally construct a death camp or slaughter millions of innocent people. No, it took millions of enablers; active perpetrators, eager collaborators, millions more complacent “good” Germans & other Europeans who remained passive or ambivalent about the horror engulfing the world at the time to carry out the Holocaust & launch a global war. Likewise, Trump would still be a smarmy tabloid TV celebrity if it weren’t for hoards of drooling redneck idiots & depraved billionaire slimeballs who swept him him into office. Evil thrives because a lot of horrible people, driven by base passions ,empower dictators & support them. No one man has supernatural power to do terrible damage. It takes many willing hands , hearts minds to accomplish that.
Nazism was a coupling of “left” and “right”. To say progressivism doesn’t fit the definition of Nazism is like saying the Democrats never had “Klanbake”. Progressives loved the fascist economy in the 1920’s through 1930’s, dreaming of the day when the business cycle was eliminated. Progressive era market intervention necessitated further interventions because measures fail to achieve desired goals. More interventions ensue, establishing our corporatism.
Most mistake, as Marxists do, Nazism as only “right”. National Socialism was not capitalism. Private ownership of means of production was in name only. Substantive ownership was the government’s. Wage and price controls from 1933 to the war, were socialist ideals enacted with the help of militarism. Surplus value be damned!
The ancestors of the National Socialists economic model, J.G. Fichte, J.K. Rodbertus, and F. Lassalle were fathers of socialism. Socialist intellectuals J. Plenge, W. Sombart, and P. Lensch praised the collectivist WW1 economy and provided the leading ideas for the German Youth Movement between the wars, and for the masters of National Socialism, O. Spengler, A. Moeller van den Bruck, and F. Zimmermann, to fuse socialism with nationalism using militarism.
Go far enough left or right and you end up the same place, totalitarianism.
– Fiscal Sanity1
Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic
Americans . . . who are convinced that the present economic
system is washed up . . . and who wish to commit this coun-
try to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the
affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management
of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of
great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every
year and spending them on all sorts of projects through
which such a government can paralyze opposition and com-
mand public support; marshaling great armies and navies at
crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation
for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding
to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning,
regeneration, and domination all to be done under the
authority of a powerfully centralized government in which
the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress
reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fas-
cist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the
sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism
masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.
As we survey the whole scene in Italy, therefore, we may now name all the essential ingredients of fascism. It is a form of social organization
1. In which the government acknowledges no restraint upon its powerstotalitarianism.
2. In which this unrestrained government is managed by a dictator the leadership principle.
3. In which the government is organized to operate the capitalist system and enable it to function-under an immense bureaucracy.
4. In which the economic society is organized on the syndicalist model, that is by producing groups formed into craft and professional categories under supervision of the state.
5. In which the government and the syndicalist organizations operate the capitalist society on the planned, autarchial principle.
6. In which the government holds itself responsible to provide the nation with adequate purchasing power by public spending and
borrowing.
7. In which militarism is used as a conscious mechanism of government spending, and
8. In which imperialism is included as a policy inevitably flowing from militarism as well as other elements of fascism.
Wherever you find a nation using all of these devices you will know that this is a fascist nation.
– John T. Flynn