Are they all fascists?

[pilchardman]

Sorry, but racism is central to Fascism.

Was racism central to Franco? I'd argue not.

 

[Thora_v1]

Sorry, but racism is central to Fascism. If you don't accept this then clearly you don't understand the meaning of the word.

Some kind of belief in racial/national/religious supremacy is pretty central to fascism isn't it?

Conversely, the other thing that pisses me off is people who accuse anyone who's racist of fascism.

 

[TAE]

I really don't see racism as being a fundamental part of fascism, though the two have certainly gone hand in hand at times. For fascism to work in praxis, there often has to be some kind of "them vs us" which makes people follow the regime's insane commands. But that "them vs us" needn't be racist.

Like Sunburn said, fascism is very hard to define, but my understanding of the word (and the attitudes behind it) is that it has a lot more to do with a desire for absolute power than anything else.

 

[Sunburn]

Was racism central to Franco? I'd argue not.

I would suggest that Franco was more of a right wing, authoritarian conservative (He was Catholic, supported the established elites etc) than a Fascist.

Racism is central because Fascism is primarily concerned with one race, nation or 'Volk'. Racial puruity is supreme. The master race is superior to all others and has the right to conquer and enslave other inferior races. This is a fundamental characteristic of Fascist regimes. I would say that only Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and some of their puppets (e.g. the Ustase) qualify.

 

[N_igma]

Racism is central because Fascism is primarily concerned with one race, nation or 'Volk'. Racial puruity is supreme. The master race is superior to all others and has the right to conquer and enslave other inferior races. This is a fundamental characteristic of Fascist regimes. I would say that only Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and some of their puppets (e.g. the Ustase) qualify.

Don't want to start a debate but define race though.

Hitler argued for an Aryan nationhood, there are countless Aryans in India and they certainly weren't white, nevermind having blonde hair and blue eyes.

To me, fascism is more about authoritative control to persue one's agenda. Meh it's a hard one indeed.

 

[General Ludd]

Was racism central to Franco? I'd argue not.

I'd argue that Franco wasn't fascist. But I'dalso argue that it is idea of some kind of superior community, be it national or religious, that is an essential criteria, not that of racism.

 

[General Ludd]

To me, fascism is more about authoritative control to persue one's agenda.

But that neither provides a useful definition for society, or a useful label for the form(s) of government found in Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy.

 

[General Ludd]

there are countless Aryans in India and they certainly weren't white

Not by the Nazi Party's definition of Aryan, which in a way is what matters here.

 

[TAE]

fas·cism
1. often Fascism
a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

I don't see anything wrong with that definition of fascism.

 

[Sunburn]

I don't see anything wrong with that definition of fascism.

You haven't been paying attention, have you?

 

[General Ludd]

The first problem with that definition is that it creates the need for a new word, wibblism say, to describe Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and any other 'fascist' wibbilist movements, whilst excluding conservative dictatorships, Communist states and liberal democracies.

The second problem is that it includes regimes so different that they don't fit together into any analysis. The ojvect of categorisation of regimes is to allow them to be analysed, and the definition you've given certainly doesn't allow that.

 

[TAE]

You haven't been paying attention, have you?

Well do enlighten me.

BTW, note that it says "and typically a policy of " which also means "not necessarily".

 

[General Ludd]

BTW, note that it says "and typically a policy of " which also means "not necessarily".

So it's even less precise?! Your definition essentially comes down to 'anything that is not a liberal democracy', which is a useless definition.

 

[TAE]

The first problem with that definition is that it creates the need for a new word, wibblism say, to describe Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and any other 'fascist' wibbilist movements, whilst excluding conservative dictatorships, Communist states and liberal democracies.

I don't see a need. Some people would describe Israel as a racists democracy, but do we really need to invent a word for that?

 

[General Ludd]

Well if we want to prevent such regimes appearing again then it's necessary to look at the common circumstances in their emergence, what crisises allowed them to come to power, and what circumstances in countries where fascist movements failed prevented them from coming to power.

Why have any words at all?

 

[TAE]

Words arranged in sentences are just fine for that purpose. We don't need a word for everything.

So it's even less precise?! Your definition essentially comes down to 'anything that is not a liberal democracy', which is a useless definition.

No it doesn't and it's not "my" definition anyway.

 

[General Ludd]

Some people would describe Israel as a racists democracy, but do we really need to invent a word for that?

Do you think it's in some meaningful way different from other forms of democracy? (including that of the USA in the 19th century for example)

If so, did it, any other similar democracies, emerge in particular circumstances and develop in a specific manner? If so then there is use for such a category, because it'll make analysis of the development of such a government easier, and so help prevent the formation of such governments in the future.

 

[General Ludd]

No it doesn't and it's not "my" definition anyway.

So which regimes that aren't liberal democracies do you think are free of 'opressive and dictatorial control'?

 

[Pickman's model]

So which regimes that aren't liberal democracies do you think are free of 'opressive and dictatorial control'?

sealand.

if it's still going.

 

[N_igma]

Some people would describe Israel as a racists democracy, but do we really need to invent a word for that?

There are people of all races living in Israel.

 

[General Ludd]

Since this thread has been full of short, stupid posts, and I can't be bothered to rewrite what I've written before here's a couple of posts (the second of which is mine) from a better discussion of this topic elsewhere.

I've always found Trotsky relatively helpful on this subject. He wrote a series of essays about fascism and predicted from the late 20s onwards that Germany would become a fascist country. Trotsky's idea of fascism however is somewhat limited to the classical conception of 'the petit-bourgeois party army' type of fascism, and fails to provide adequite description for a fascism that is dissimilar to Mussolini's Italy (e.g. Nazi Germany, Shintoist Imperial Japan circa WWII).

Liberal commentators are distinctly unhelpful on this subject, concerning themselves with 'anomie' and the use of the state to produce dictatorship supported hypercapitalism, as if the liberal state was not already an arm of capitalism. Equally frustrating is that the left instantly resorts to invective against Nazism the moment the topic of fascism is raised; the idea that fascism is based on a racial identity is frequently postulated and it's a myth that is quite irritating. Franco did not concern himself with the extermination of the Jews. Hussein's Ba'athists only decided to integrate 'Islam' into their Weltanschauung following the impending US/Franco-German assault on Iraq during the gulf war - until that they were secularist and nationalist.

I personally don't even think that fascism need be 'nationalist'; I suspect that, likewith proto-fascist German groups that plenished paeons to 'natural' life fascists could very well be anarchistic in organisation.

I personally would postulate that a good definition of fascism would be:-

Any group of people or inidividuals, either by teleology, or by statements (be they contradictory, or the result of an amalgum of contradictory statements) that one ruling group or individuals are superiorly equipped to rule, either by the result of adherence to specific doctrinal precepts, or by reference to multifarious ideas which would result in the adherence of the mass of people, who then take control of the state.

I think that the definition betwixt 'liberal democracy' and 'fascism' is threadbare. Capitalism is only slightly different from Stalinism - the difference being that the scale of the rule by the managerial class is supranational rather than national. At the end of the day what we eat, how we socialise, what we do in our leisure time, even how we fuck is defined by a tiny ruling class with power concentrated in an absolute maximum of 50 corporations and a dozen or so states.

Solidarity,
Nick

The best one line definition I've read is:

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behaviour marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants who, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

(Which is stolen from the excellent The Anatomy Of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. Also good are An Essay on the Interpretations of National Socialism (1922-75): The Nazi Question by Pierre Aycorberry and The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems of Perspectives and Interpretation by Ian Kershaw. I've also found it really helpful to read books on nationalism, Nations and Nationalism by Hobsbawm and Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson in particular.)

In response to Nick's post I'd go to the other extreme and say that only Italy and Germany have had fascist regimes*, the other regimes sometimes labelled as such lack the modernism and the mass base of fascism. Franco and Pinochet, the most commonly offered examples of other fascist regimes, were both essentially conservative dictators, who wanted obedience from the masses and to limit the power of the state to allow traditional elites to rule through property, religion and inherited power rather than the mass enthuiasm and total power sought by fascist groups. And whilst what you say about Franco and the Ba'athists is true, it doesn't in anyway explain why they should be considered fascist.

That our lives are to a significant extent controlled by a very small group of people also does not mean that the social system in the west in essentially indistinguishable from that seen in the USSR. That both are oppressive class systems does not mean they are the same, else for example it would be impossible to offer any analysis of why the USSR collapsed and the west didn't. Treating everything as the same greatly reduces your ability to analyse the world.

I also disagree with Chomsky on his comparision between the media in the west today and violence in fascist society. As I haven't read Chomsky's writing on fascism I'm relying just on your post but violence in fascism took on extra properties. It was much more than a means of social control, (which admittedly is also true with the media but in a different way) it was embued with aesthic and redemptive properties, through violence and war the Germans/Italians would redeem the failing of the past liberal states and establish their true superiority and the nation's youth would be strengthened.

Classing fascism as a dictatorship of the ruling class is also pretty useless, it covers so many regimes as to have no value. Tito's and Hitler's regimes are so different that there's very little you can say useful that applies to them both beyond the blindingly obvious. The definition also completely removes everyone who isn't in the ruling class from your understanding of fascism and, as with anything else, looking only at the rulers and not at the ruled and how their consent or dissent played a role in the development of fascism leaves you with a very onesided analysis. Fascism was a mass ideology, and as such must be distinguished from military dictatorships say.

*Although there have been many fascist movements, the Arrow Cross Party-Hungarist Movement of Ferenc Sxalasy won 750,000 out of 2 million votes in 1939. The government of Hungary at the time though was a well-entrenched conservative government who had no intention of sharing power. The Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania won 15.38% of the vote in 1937. In Belguim the Rexists won 11.5% of the vote in 1936 before the conservative establishment united against Degrelle (the Rexists' leader) and the Rexists quickly disappeared. The Dunch Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (NSB) won 7.94% of the votes in Holland in 1935 but also declined very quickly.

 

[TAE]

I agree with much of what Nick Durie said there.

So which regimes that aren't liberal democracies do you think are free of 'opressive and dictatorial control'?

I could ask what liberal democracies do you think are free of 'opressive and dictatorial control'?
This too is meaningless.

Feel free to write to the various dictionary publishers and tell them that their products are defective. All in all I think that definition describes the general usage of the word 'fascist'/'fascism' very well.

There are people of all races living in Israel.

Indeed there are and I didn't say I agree with that view.

 

[General Ludd]

I could ask what liberal democracies do you think are free of 'opressive and dictatorial control'?

None. Which is one of the reasons I think the definition you're using is worthless - it describes everything and so helps us understand nothing.

Feel free to write to the various dictionary publishers and tell them that their products are defective. All in all I think that definition describes the general usage of the word 'fascist'/'fascism' very well.

I don't care what dictionaries say about serious topics though. They couldn't be more irrelevant. And when it comes to proper discussions on the nature of fascist rule I don't about about the 'general usage' either - it'd be impossible to discuss communism or anarchism here if we stuck to the dictionary definitions.

I'm much more interested in what experts on fascism (academic or other) have to say about it, and they universally make use of the kind of definition I've proposed.

 

[TAE]

The point is that "opressive and dictatorial control" is a major attribute of fascism.

Another way to put it is that no government is ever completely free of fascist tendencies.

In any case, you clearly have a completely different understanding of what fascism means so there's not much point continuing. We are using the same word for two different things.

 

[General Ludd]

Another way to put it is that no government is ever completely free of fascist tendencies.

What is a fascist tendency? Do you mean all governments share common features with fascism? The answer to that is clearly yes, but again it says nothing - claiming to represent the best interests of the population is a major attribute of liberal democracies so did Hitler show liberal democratic tendencies?

If these tendencies are shared by all governments what is it that makes them fascist? Surely if no government is free of them then those tendencies are as much communist or liberal as fascist? In which case I again ask, what is the use of your definition? What you are doing seems to me like saying that mp3 players are CD players because both play music.

 

[Sunburn]

The point is that "opressive and dictatorial control" is a major attribute of fascism.

But far from the only attribute

Another way to put it is that no government is ever completely free of fascist tendencies.

You could say that, but it doesn't mean very much

In any case, you clearly have a completely different understanding of what fascism ... We are using the same word for two different things.

You are using the word incorrectly.

Mussolini coined the word Facism to describe his regime's ideology. This ideology was shared by Nazi Germany and some of their puppets. As yet, no other regimes have had all their unique characteristics(and hopefully none ever will). To describe other regimes as Fascist is therefore inaccurate.

 

[TAE]

Mussolini coined the word Facism to describe his regime's ideology.

And since then the usage of the word has changed and become more general. That's language for you.

 

[nino_savatte]

And since then the usage of the word has changed and become more general. That's language for you.

Nope. Sorry, I can't go along with that: fascism is fascism. Not even Thatcher was a fascist - though she kept company with a notorious semi-fascist - but even the usage of the word there is somewhat questionable.

It's like pbman chucking around the word "commie" - it's a hijacking of language for the purpose of adding colour to speech...in other words it's emotive rhetoric.

 

[TAE]

It's how the word is used.

I could stand here and argue that 'martyr' is anchient greek for 'witness' but that would not help us discuss the motives of people who use the word to mean 'dying for a cause'.

 

[General Ludd]

It's how the word is used.

Not in any serious writing on fascism.