How specific situations are inevitably resulting in deviations from ideology of socialism and fascism here in the United States in 2008.

The word fascism has come to mean any system of government resembling Mussolini's, that

• Exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
• Uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
• Engages in severe economic and social regimentation,
• Engages in corporatism1

In an article in the 1932 Encyclopedia Italiana2, fascism is described as a system in which "The State not only is authority which governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life, but it is also power which makes its will prevail abroad. For the Fascist, everything is within the State and neither individuals nor groups are outside the State. For Fascism, the State is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative...."

Mussolini, in a speech delivered on October 28, 1925, stated the following maxim that encapsulates the fascist philosophy: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State". Therefore, he reasoned, all individuals' business is the state's business, and the state's existence is the sole duty of the individual.

Besides totalitarianism, a key distinguishing feature of fascism is that it uses a mass movement to attack the organizations of the working class: parties of the left and trade unions. Thus Fritzsche and others describe fascism as a militant form of right-wing populism. This mobilization strategy involves Corporatism or the Corporative State. And all terms that refer to state action to partner with key business leaders, often in ways chosen to minimize the power of labor unions.3 Mussolini, for example, capitalized on fear of an imminent Socialist revolution 4 finding ways to unite Labor and Capital, to Labor's ultimate detriment. In 1926 he created the National Council of Corporations, divided into guilds of employers and employees, tasked with managing 22 sectors of the economy. The guilds subsumed both labor unions and management, but were heavily weighted in favor of the corporations and their owners. The moneyed classes in return helped him change the country's laws to raise his stature from a coalition leader to a supreme commander.

The movement was supported by small capitalists, low-level bureaucrats, and the middle classes, who had all felt threatened by the rise in power of the Socialists. Fascism also met with great success in rural areas, especially among farmers, peasants, and in the city, the lumpenproletariat.5

Does this sound familiar to what is occurring in our country today?

Unlike the pre-World War II period, when many groups openly and proudly proclaimed themselves fascist, since World War II the term has taken on an extremely pejorative meaning, largely in reaction to the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis, who were allied with Mussolini during the war.

Crimes against the citizens in the America started on September 11, 2001, perpetrated by our Republican government administration. They have been continuing since then. The public is not getting the information because of the complete black out of the corporate media to report the travesties that are continuing to occur in our country.

Today, many groups are proclaiming our current government fascist. For the past eight years we have heard that our current Republican government has had little regard for its citizens and has been very arrogant in issuing orders with disregard for our laws and its people. Most people often have minimal understanding of what the term fascist actually means.

The term "fascist" or "Nazi" is often ascribed to individuals or groups who are perceived to behave in an authoritarian manner; by silencing opposition, judging personal behavior, or otherwise attempting to concentrate power. More particularly, "Fascist" is sometimes used by members of the Left to characterize some group or persons of the far-right or neo-far-right. This usage receded much following the 1970s, but has enjoyed a strong resurgence in connection with Anti-globalization activism.

Fascism, in many respects, is an ideology of negativism: anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-Communist, anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, etc., and in some of its forms anti-religion. As a political and economic system in Italy, it combined elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism.

Nazism and Fascism

Nazism6 may be considered either a type of fascism or a notable offshoot of fascism. It differed from Italian fascism in the emphasis on the state's purpose in serving a racial rather than a national ideal, specifically the social engineering⁷ of culture to the ends of the greatest possible prosperity for the so-called "Master Race" at the expense of all else and all others. The only purpose of government under fascism proper was to uphold the state as supreme above all else, and for these reasons it can be said to have been a governmental statolatry, which is the object of all legitimate human aspiration at the expense of all else, including personal welfare and independent thought.

While Nazism was a metapolitical⁸ ideology, seeing both party and government as a means to achieve an ideal condition of its people, fascism was a squarely anti-socialist form of Statism.  Statism is a term to describe an economic system where a government implements a significant degree of centralized economic planning or intervention, as opposed to a system where the overwhelming majority of economic planning occurs at a decentralized level by private individuals in a relatively free market, where all economic decisions and actions by individuals regarding transfer of money, goods, and services are voluntary, and are therefore devoid of coercion and theft.

The Nazi movement, at least in its overt ideology, spoke of class-based society as the enemy, and wanted to unify the racial element above established classes. The Fascist movement, on the other hand, sought to preserve the class system and uphold it as the foundation of established and desirable culture. This underlying theorem made the Fascists and Nazis in the period between the two world wars see themselves and their respective political labels as at least partially exclusive of one another.

Fascism versus Socialism

While certain types of socialism may superficially appear to be similar to fascism, it should be noted that the two ideologies clash violently on many issues. The role of the state, for example: socialism considers the state to be merely a "tool of the people," sometimes calling it a "necessary evil," which exists to serve the interests of the people and to protect the common good.

Libertarian socialism is a political philosophy dedicated to opposing coercive forms of authority and social hierarchy, in particular the institutions of capitalism and the state. Meanwhile, fascism holds the state to be an end in and of itself, which the people should obey and serve, rather than the other way around.

The citizens of this country have had to obey and serve by force if necessary since 9/11. Fear is constantly placed on individuals at all levels by the mere fact that you must do what you are told or pay the consequences; from losing your job to deportation or incarceration. Constitutional rights of its citizens have been ignored by our law enforcement agencies and by our current Republican government.

A fascist government is usually characterized as "extreme right-wing," and a socialist government as "left-wing". Others such as Hannah Arendt and Friedrich Hayek argue that the differences between fascism and totalitarian forms of socialism (see Stalinism⁹) are more superficial than actual, since those self-proclaimed "socialist" governments did not live up to their claims of serving the people and respecting democratic principles. Many socialists and communists also reject those totalitarian governments, seeing them as fascism with a socialist mask. (See political spectrum¹⁰ and political model¹¹ for more on these ideas.)

Mussolini wrote in his 1932 treatise, The Doctrine of Fascism (ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile): "Outside the State there can be neither individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, syndicates, classes). Therefore Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State."¹²

Although Italian fascism proclaimed its antithesis to socialism, Mussolini's own history in the socialist movement had some influence on him. Elements of the practice of socialist movements he retained were:

• The need for a mass party;
• The importance of building support among the working class; and
• Techniques relating to the dissemination of ideas, such as the use of propaganda.¹³

Critics point out that Marxists and trade unionists were the first targets, and the first victims, of both Mussolini and Adolf Hitler once they came to power. They also note the antagonistic relationship which resulted in street fights between fascists and socialists, including:

• The 1936 Battle of Cable Street in London of Trotskyists and members of the Communist Party of Great Britain against Mosely's supporters, and
• Street fights in Germany prior to Hitler's coming to power.

A more serious manifestation of the conflict between fascism and socialism was the Spanish Civil War, mentioned earlier in this article.

Fascism occupies a place on the political spectrum as the capitalist equivalent of communism, wherein a system that supports "economic liberty" is constrained by its social controls such that it becomes totalitarian.

The push by our Republican government has been to aggressively eliminate our unions. This plan has been in effect for the past decade. Our members in the various unions are just becoming aware today that this is and has been true .

Practice of Fascism

Fascism in practice embodied both political and economic policies, and invites different comparisons. Some writers who focus on the politically repressive policies of fascism identify it as one form of totalitarianism¹⁴, a description they use to characterize not only Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, but also countries such as the Soviet Union, The People's Republic of China or North Korea. It should be noted that "totalitarianism" is a catch-all group which includes many different ideologies that are sworn enemies to each other.

History will include the United States in the definition above, we are living this now!

However, some analysts point out that certain fascist governments were arguably more authoritarian¹⁵ than totalitarian. There is almost universal agreement that Nazi Germany was totalitarian. However, many would argue that the governments of Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal, while fascist, were more authoritarian than totalitarian.

I theorize that when all is done, the Republicans that have taken charge of our government for the past two decades have in fact worked towards a configuration of authoritarian/totalitarian government that has been in effect throughout our history of this country. The constitution was written to make its citizens aware of this possibility. Not too many people were watching or paying attention for various reasons. Now we will all pay for this apathy.

Writers who focus on economic policies and the use of state apparatuses to broker conflicts between different classes make even broader comparisons, identifying fascism as one form of corporatism which is a political system in which legislative power is given to corporations that represent economic, industrial, and professional groups. In its Corporative model of totalitarian but private management, the various functions of the state were trades, conceived as individualized entities making up that state. Further, it is in the state's interest to oversee them for that reason, but not direct them or make them public because such functioning in government hands undermines the definition of the state. Private activity is in a sense contracted to the state so that the state may suspend the infrastructure of any entity in accordance with their usefulness and direction. Corporatism was a political outgrowth of Catholic social doctrine from the 1890s. Some highly controversial parallels have been drawn embracing not only Nazi Germany, but also certain parts of Roosevelt's New Deal¹⁶ in the United States. It was widely believed that the depression was caused by the inherent instability of the market and that government intervention was necessary to rationalize and stabilize the economy.

History repeating itself again, George W. Bush... Historic Swindle¹⁷

  William Greider: Paulson's rescue plan is all sugar for the villains, lasting pain for the rest of us. Don't let Wall Street get away with this without enacting significant reform.

Henry Wallace¹⁸, wrote in 1944 during his term as vice president of the United States, "American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists¹⁹, the deliberate prisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K.²⁰ type of demagoguery." [Wallace, 1944]

Here we are in 21^st Century America fighting between Fascism (Republicans) and Socialism (Democrates). Our last best hope is that Senator Barack Obama will be our next President. This will not eliminate what has occurred to this country over the past two decades. But he will help to try and reverse what has been done.

We will all pay for the apathy by us in our government affairs.

Watch for uprising by Americans what will later be called a Revolution like no other we have seen or read about in this country...it’s just a matter of a short time now.

With the media blackout in effect, there are many issues and events that are occurring that many Americans are not hearing or seeing.

Watch and listen to the progressive radio Nova and WCPT, internet websites run by the people; (not CORPORATE MEDIA), BBC cable networks, and magazine articles The Nation and Mother Jones that are coming out with the information first hand. You will not see or hear any of this on the current TV or cable networks viewed in your area. Don't even waste your precious time trying...

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