Video: What fascism is...and isn't

Roger That!

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Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism is IMO the best primer on fascism

Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of
different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.

https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

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A terrible definition. For example not every possible Democratic Socialists state is fascist, even if they all have the state controlling the means of production. In contrast, Scandinavian socialism there is a government that organizes labor and capitalists together for (hopefully) mutual benefit, but private ownership is still a thing. This is not normally, in itself, considered fascist even though the state does steer corporate interests.

My definition: Fascism is a social revolution that is willing to use any means necessary to achieve its intended goals, whatever those goals may be.

It needs a pretty broad definition because there isn’t a lot of agreement on precisely what Fascism is. Is it authoritarian, is it right-wing, is it left-wing? Yes, usually, sometimes. But why is fascism always authoritarian? because it’s a type of social revolution that is willing to use any means necessary to establish its ideological goals. Violence, atrocities, war, suppression of free speech, personality cults, and more are “on the table” when it comes to fascists trying to reforge a nation.

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"The group is more important than the individual”
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

Clearly, Spock is also a Fascist.

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@wait_really is wise, I think, to bring up Eco’s description of Ur-fascism, and I like your more generic version, but if I may, I’d offer my own even more basic definition: Fascism is a totalizing ideology that forms around the central concept of there being humans who do not have moral standing, meaning, their suffering does not matter and is, perhaps, even a good to be actively sought.

I think this definition is helpful because it also encompasses the limited fascisms that exist within specific contexts within societies that are, themselves, not entirely fascist. Consider the prison system which often features on BoingBoing as an example of extravagantly fascist behavior—it all stems from the central premise that there are people (the convicted) whose suffering is an end unto itself or, at a bare minimum, doesn’t really matter.

Any such dismissal of fellow-humans as not really mattering is like a foreign body which slowly poisons everything that comes into contact with it and builds fascism around it, recreating the same patterns over and over because if you have people who don’t matter then it is so very easy to imagine them in a conspiracy against you (they are, after all, victims of your conspiracy against them) and thus meaning you need to defend against that Other and since you need to defend yourself you need to close ranks and establish a firm border and a para-military means of defense and so on and so forth.

This is a maximally broad definition, but I feel it captures most of the variety in the use of the term. I think it may perhaps be marginally more workable than your definition, @anon32019413, because it can also encompass that particularly American brand of fascism which has no real ideology it wishes to advance either way, no coherent vision, but is merely a Rorschach pattern that servers to show everyone what they wish to see in order to unite them, the Real Americans, against Fake Americans.

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Yeah, that’s the problem when one simplifies too much.

So what do we traditionally think of Fascism as-- well, as authoritarianism. Mussolini came up with the name, and that’s what his Italy ended up being, and then they allied themselves with another authoritarian state (who then also got referred to as “the Fascists” despite calling themselves something else.) He makes an important point about “the group” but he should really say “the nation”, because the “enemy within” are basically considered outsiders and non-citizens (see: the Nuremberg Laws), whereas communist authoritarians tended to think of all humanity as a possible member of their movement. Promotion of corporate interests as well is important, so we could say Fascism is an authoritarian oligarchy which uses xenophobia as a rallying tool.

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I think that Che Guevara would support that. Was Che a fascist?

What you are calling fascism I think is totalitarianism by another name. “Everything within the state , nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” as il Duce said (although interestingly he never went full bore totalitarian).

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the Kims, Pol Pot all are fascists by this definition. And Trump is not, or we’d all be in internment camps by now.
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image

From Paxton’s Five Stages of Fascism.

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of course, corporate interests refers to

and not necessarily to Società per azion

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spock

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“the merger of state and corporate interests” is quite different from “the state controlling the means of production”. The state exists (essentially) to mediate public and private interests. A fascist state is one where the state interests (meaning the interests of the ruling circle) are considered to be the only interests of the society. Corporate interests are literally the governing principle of a fascist state. And not general capitalist interests, but the private interests of the specific people running the show.

The ‘any means necessary’ that you mention is an important tool of this lens, and part of where the idea comes from that fascists can be socialist. They say whatever it takes to get into power. The same way modern Republicans often claim to adhere to Christian morals.

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This whole debate is quibbling over linguistic definitions of meaning. So I’ll be a grammar Nazi and assert that the correct adjectival form of Fascism is Fascistic. Anyone who disagrees is a Fascist.

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The state steering corporate interests is not what most people would consider a merger of the interests of the two.

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It means what ever WE agree it to mean. That is, if you are trying to communicate. I see too many people who think they can refute an argument by redefining a key word in it away from what the writer meant. That’s disingenuous.

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Fascism is counterrevolutionary, inherently reactionary, not revolutionary nor interested in any sort of intellectual progress of any sort- the truth as it pertains to the fascist is already known, not a thing to be looking for.

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Did anyone else have problems when he got to the puppets?

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Thanks for noting this very specific definition of corporatism. At the very least it will make our Libertarians a little less uncomfortable with the implication suggested by @Tim_Carpenter’s defintion that their precious for-profit corporations are the only non-state organisations complicit in fascist regimes (although historically they’re usually very co-operative).

Really, though, what it illustrates is how totalising fascism is. Every organisation, from the auto club to hunting association to a trade union to an arms manufacturer, gets a swastika or other symbol of the fascist state branded on it in one way or another if it wants to survive under such a regime.

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Then I say the noun is Fascisticism. And anyone who disagrees is a Fascisticismist.

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Well just look at the term “nazi”, short for “national socialist”.

So nationalism (our country is great) + socialism (the third reich actually had some pretty progressive policies when they weren’t brutually oppressing people).

Now take those to the extreme. We’re nationalists - so we love our country. We need to provide for it, even at the expense of other countries (why hello poland!). And if things aren’t going well, that’s not dear leader’s fault, it’s, uh… the jews!

Personally I hesitate to throw labels around. If pressed I’d self describe as “left libertarian”, but I’m not opposed to a well run government like some in Scandanavia. I’ve been accused of being a “crypto-anarchist” but just because I believe in encryption doesn;'t mean I want to live in an anarcho-syndicalistic commune.

(I’m also a big believer in the Median Voted Theorem - sadly some of the best political philosophies simply aren’t appealing to lower IQ people and thus won’t gain traction in America)

Except both Nazis and Fascists were in direct opposition to Socialists, they simply spawned from recruiting in Socialist circles. Their rise in both influence in power came by buddying up to industrialists afraid of communism and socialism, and their political power came from capitalists joining forces with them to outnumber the communists and socialists.

Their history is not complicated, it’s just that people tend to take Fascist (a political group founded on ignore what I do and listen to what I say) at their word and not through their actions. On paper, they proposed a method of helping the working man very similar to self-help experts saying things like “clean your room.” Then they would make sure the wealth of the economy went to them and their buddies while saying it didn’t.

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