EAllusion wrote:Droopy wrote:
Actually, as a matter of political ideology and psychology, it doesn't.
Well your unsupported assertion that belies the received wisdom taught as basic fact from the high school level on up is good enough for me. Elements that are described as fascist happen to statistically correlate with other elements that are found in the deep right of the political spectrum.
The "deep Right?" What is that, specifically?
Coupled with the tradition of calling it "right" and you have the basis for putting it on that part of the spectrum.
So at base, your entire point is supported by nothing more than
argumetum ad populum? Well, as I suspected...
Again, the 2-pole political spectrum is a useful fiction. People who obsequiously worship police officers and favor significant deference to them tend to be the same people who think English should the official US national language.
Pure nonsense, of course, as the class "people who worship police officers" would appear to be a very inconspicuous class (one you likely made up) and the desire to have English as the official language of government agencies, offices, and the public schools, is about as "fascist" as a desire to check IDs at polling places. All of this points back toward the long understood reality that "fascism" is a hodgepodge of concepts and ideas that one can throw at others as an attack word, without ever having to define it. It is of note, however (especially when you get out of the late 20th century and look at definitions by early 20th century fascists and students of statist ideology themselves, where you clearly see that virtually all the salient elements of fascism, in some form, emphasis, or application, are common to the Left as well), that at its core, fascism is simple a particular interpretation, or manifestation, of central themes and premises common to the entire Left, but alien to classic liberalism.
Those people tend to be the same people who get upset if someone isn't wearing an American flag pin and tend to favor robust military spending to go along with an aggressive military.
More apples and oranges nonsense, in this case, comparing what would, at best, be a tightly wound individual neurosis with a perfectly rational and traditional concern for national security. Really,
really E, I can see through all of this, and its just the same old traditional leftist/secularist rhetorical jousting lacking, however, the kind of intellectual substance or educational depth to make any kind of case.
Since fascism itself is considered far right, having views that correlate with it throws you into that part of the spectrum.
A substantial and long standing historical analysis, dating from at the least the 1940s, has been in strong disagreement with this view, a view that, as pointed out, originated in Soviet propaganda during the period of the "Popular Front," and had specific goals, one of which, and which has been fantastically effective, was to pollute and corrupt intellectual discourse and understanding throughout the West by confusing and corrupting language. Our modern "political correctness" is the direct descendant of the war on language of the old Left of that era.
I don't need luck. I need basic awareness of history.
Which you patently don't have, as you are patently not well read enough to pontificate to me regarding what "fascism" is or is not, apparently having imbibed the received wisdom long ago, and having found that satisfying, ceased any process of critical thinking regarding it from that point onward.
e.g.
Fascism takes over from the ruins of Liberal Socialistic democratic doctrines those elements which still have a living value. It preserves those that can be called the established facts of history, it rejects all the rest, that is to say the idea of a doctrine which holds good for all times and all peoples. If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century.
- Benito Mussolini [Though really ghostwritten]
You're going to have to do a great, great deal better than this. There is a vast literature on the theory and practice of fascism, dating to the 20s, of which this tiny, narrow snippet is not going to make your case.
Let's take a look at what a well known western scholar, F.A. Hayek (unfortunately, an intellectual hack of no particular distinguishment or mental acuity) had to say:
The character of the danger is, if possible, even less understood here than it was in Germany. The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will, who, by their socialist policies, prepared the way for the forces which stand for everything they detest. Few recognize that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies. Yet it is significant that many of the leaders of these movements, from Mussolini down (and including Laval and Quisling) began as socialists and ended as fascists or Nazis. In the democracies at present, many who sincerely hate all of Nazism's manifestations are working for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny. Most of the people whose views influence developments are in some measure socialists. They believe that our economic life should be "consciously directed," that we should substitute "economic planning" for the competitive system. Yet is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?
Or, here's what eminent Harvard Sovietologist and mental midget (and fascist, of course) Richard Pipes has to say:
Well, the notion that Communism and fascism are diametrically opposed is something that was fostered by the Communist party, by the Communist International. In the 1920s, basically the International defined fascism as any anti-communist movement.
Exactly as the virtually the entirety of the modern Left continues to do today, as this thread sadly testifies, but not with respect to neo-communism and traditional communist ideologies only, but with respect to the "progressive" political and social Left per se.
If you were anti-communist, it doesn’t matter what platform, you were automatically fascist. So that even the western democracies were called fascist. This is a meaningless term. I use the term Fascism concretely, to apply only to the Italian fascist party and the Nazi to the Nazi party. Later these two movements had a great deal in common. They were one-party states which gave the workers considerable input into the running of the state, that used socialist slogans without giving them really socialist rights. I mean, the same thing was true in the Soviet Union. They bannered about socialist slogans but they came nowhere near fulfilling socialist programs. And they felt a great deal of empathy for each other, all these fascists and communists, because they had a common enemy. The common enemy was liberal, democratic, capitalist state. They hated it, all of it, equally. And they had a great deal of admiration for each other. You know, Hitler, at the height of the war which his troops were waging with the Russians in 1942-1943, spoke freely to his associates about how after having triumphed over Stalin he will make Stalin his governor over Russia. And Mao Zedong, when he was criticized for killing so many of his associates during the Cultural Revolution is quoted as saying, “Look at Hitler. The more cruelty, the more revolutionist zeal.” They greatly admired each other and hated equally well the Roosevelt’s and the Churchill’s and the other democratic leaders in West.
And if this next statement is not understood, you may as well bow out of the historical discussion altogether:
Mussolini’s party was a right-wing party but only to some extent, just as the Nazi party. These were not conservative parties. They were radical, radical nationalist parties, which in the programs very much maintained the socialist ideals. For example, Mussolini’s corporate state workers participated in the decision making in the business enterprises. They had as much say in some respects, as did the owners of factories.
Mussolini did shift to the right gradually because I think he was afraid of the power of the communist and the socialists, and since he was a dictator and wanted dictatorial power he felt that one has to suppress these parties and they were suppressed.
But the devil is in the details:
Mussolini, contrary to prevailing opinion, was not born a fascist; Mussolini was an extreme left-wing socialist. He came from a socialist family, an anarchist family. He was an extreme socialist. And in the early 1900s was really a kind of counterpart of Lenin in the Italian socialist party. He chased out the reformers. He wanted a revolution. He wanted a tight party. Like Lenin, Mussolini lost faith in the working class. He thought the working class consisted of accommodators, appeasers and he wanted to bring revolution from above, a militant party. And when he chased out the reformist from the socialist part of Italy and became editor of the main organ of the Italian socialist party, Lenin congratulated him. Not by name but he wrote an article in which he praised what the Italian revolutionist had done.
Then came the war, World War I in 1914 and Mussolini was stunned to see how much stronger nationalism is than class antagonism, because it was always said among socialists that nationalism is not something that the workers share. According to Marx, the workers have no fatherland. They only know their class. It turned out that was not true at all. And the workers very happily went to massacre each other in World War I. Mussolini very quickly drew the conclusion from this and said all right, the class struggle is an important thing and it guides history, but it’s a class struggle not within nations but between nations. So, he sort of married, combined socialism and nationalism. He said there are “have” nations and “have-not” nations. Italy is a have-not nation. We have to defend our interests. And of course Hitler did the same, although Hitler never had the socialist background.
Von Mises:
Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the archenemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods.
Anyone who really wants a more balanced understanding of the sibling resemblance of Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism to National Socialism and Fascism, can do no better as an introduction than this lecture by Pepperdine economist George Reisman:
http://mises.org/daily/1937I'll post it below in its entirety, as its a very important primer on the actual history involved as over against the standard, formatted mainstream media/academic/public school stories we all grew up with (and all of this other scholarship and critical thinking has always been available, just ignored).
Yeah, I know you mostly like what McCarthyism was about.
Yeah, you don't know what your talking about, either about the history of McCarthy or about what I think about him (which I've made crystal clear on this board many times before).
So, here's a CFR on how I "like" what "McCarthy" was about.
Maybe it didn't have enough torture for you. It's the grand irony of this thread. Maybe you should just cut your losses and stridently claim that McCarthyism was a leftist thing.
"Torture?"
McCarthy's behavior was his own, and had no ideological coherence save in his own mind, and spawned no movement or political school of thought called "McCarthyism." "McCarthyism" is, indeed, another scary fairy tale of the Left intended to delegitimize simply being a classical liberal of any kind, and of opposing the progressive Left. McCarthy's obnoxious and immoral behavior, with some of the people he accused and prosecuted, is another matter, and is not arguable.
Corporatist economics is found both on the right and the left ends of the political spectrum.
Indeed, as the present U.S. administration is showing with vigor (as well as, to a lesser extent past administrations and congresses since the 30s).
You're just begging the question if you define it as a left-wing thing.
I haven't. I've said that fascism, German National Socialism, and internationalist class socialism, are all sibling ideologies with very similar core assumptions and perceptions, which happily, is inarguable from a serious critical perspective. The problem is determining just what the "Right" or "fascist" really is, as it doesn't seem to mean much beyond "anti-Left."
Yes, it does refer to substantial state involvement in the economy, but that isn't a leftist thing by definition. Republicans agitating for oil subsidies aren't socialists by that fact alone.
Don't mix what members of an American political party do with an ideology. That's sloppy thinking. American Republicans who agitate for oil subsidies and Democrats who agitate for subsidies for "green" technology are both statists creating a system of crony capitalism and a body of rent seeking private investors and corporate CEOs, but this does not attach to them an ideology.
Obama is an ideologue pursuing an ideological vision. Another Democrat may be ideologically neutral (or disinterested) but may be simply buying votes. Obama is also buying votes (though welfare for the poor, the middle class, and the corporate/union world) but, at the same time, following an ideological vision. Bush was a statist and interventionist pursuing a non-ideological, Keynesian policy because Keynesianism is the default economic policy of preference as it justifies continual centralization and control of the economy in the state (the state "doing something"). Gore is both an ideological fanatic and a crony capitalist (and the balance between the two isn't at all clear).
Fascism just happens to involve a right-wing example of state involvement in economic activity.
In other words, Fascism looks like Socialism in many ways, but because Leftists decided, immediately after June 22, 1941, that Hitler and Mussolini were now national enemies, they became "right wing" and opposed to all that is "left wing."
Got it.
The people who spend their time railing against multiculturalism? Those are almost inevitably xenophobes.
They're also fascists and Nazis, E. Don't limit yourself to just one of the traditional leftist shibboleths.
There are examples of xenophobia that exist in what otherwise are left-wing groups. Unions, for example, often have xenophobic tendencies because of job competition. But that doesn't mean xenophobia is somehow a left-wing thing.
Job competition creates xenophobia? Resentment would be enough.
Vicious anti-immigrant fervor is almost exclusively a right-wing phenomenon in the US at the moment,
As I don't know of any such existing "anti-immigrant fervor" among the broad political Right (another category you've made up, but that's fine, its kind of growing on me), but, as to anti-whatever fervor, have you ever heard of La Mecha, or La Raze (both having a strong presence on many U.S. university and college campuses)? The "Reconquista?"
Have you ever heard of
The Baseline Essays, the theory of Ebonics, Afrocentrism (very popular in the academy), Bell Hooks, Ward Churchill, Manning Marabel, Jeremiah Wright, Edward Said, Noam Chomski, The New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, the ISM (International Solidarity Movement), Cultural studies etc.?
All excellent examples of either primary or derivative cases of an intellectual cultural, national, racial, and ethnic socialism (deeply grounded in both racialism and Marxian/cultural Marxist concepts and categories) known as multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, in its virulent anti-liberalism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and tribal/identity collectivism, crosses numerous intellectual boundaries.
There's a state where people can be pulled over and demanded to produce papers if they are too Mexican looking, for goodness sake.
CFR (as if this would, by itself, have anything to do with
fascism, even if true).
Xenophobia is obviously found on the right, and fascism happens to involve it.
You're probably right, humans being what they are, and whatever the "Right" really is, xenophobia is also a salient aspect of the Left. National Socialism, a major phenomena and outgrowth of the Left, was riddled with it, as is contemporary multicultural identity collectivism.