President Obama has done something far more serious. He has already, in less than 100 days, moved the U.S. economy further towards fascism. Sean Hannity and other critics keep criticizing Obama for his socialist leanings. But the more accurate term for many of his measures, especially in the financial markets and the auto market, is fascism.How is this helpful? Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples' understanding of what the Obama administration is doing? All this does is drag the specter of Hitler into the conversation. And the problem with Hitler was not his industrial policy--I mean, okay, fine, Hitler's industrial policy bad, right, but I could forgive him for that, you know? The thing that really bothers me about Hitler was the genocide. And I'm about as sure as I can be that Obama has no plans to round up millions of people, put them in camps, and find various creative ways to torture them to death.Here's what Sheldon Richman writes about "Fascism" in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:
Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society's economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the "national interest"--that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.
If he does, look, I take it all back. Use the F-word freely. Hell, I'll hide you in our spare bedroom when the state police squads come looking for you. But until then, can we stick to less inflammatory terms? Surely creative and intelligent adults can find ways to critique Obama without pointing out that Hitler was also a very effective speaker.
The problem is all those people who say "fascist" when they mean "nazi" have so distorted the understanding of "fascist" that innocents - such as you - then adopt absurd opinions such as the one you give here. I understand that referring to the Nazis as Fascists started as Stalinist propaganda. How it lingers on. A handy way to remember the distinction is to recall that a disproportionately high number of the early Fascists were Jewish and virtually all were Italian. Hitler had nothing to do with it.
Maybe it was the actions of those fascists that actually, you know, governed that cause them to be "conflated" with nazis.
I understand that referring to the Nazis as Fascists started as Stalinist propaganda.
Then you understand wrong. You might want to actually read some of the writing of the early fascists, which is readily available. Or consult the record on things Hitler actually said about Italian fascism, which is also readily available.
I think the Right must be imploding--it's losing the message discipline that was its only admirable feature. Now they can't even stick to the Obama-as-socialist meme without some nobody saying they've got it all wrong, because he's really a fascist. Now we need someone to pointout that when you get down to it Obama's really a Salazar-style corporati(vi)st.
You must feel very giddy that we are headed towards permanent one-part rule which is actually exactly like fascism!
Hitler!?
No, speaking of Bush/Obama fascism, to me, strongly invokes that other guy.
Godwin's Law!
Can Godwin's Law be invoked when the first person to mention Hitler is the creator of the post?
Megan went straight to Hitler even when the person she quotes didn't. He spoke of a form of government that predated Hitler, but in Megan's unhistorical view, fascism is somehow synonymous with Nazism....
Rich in PA:
Given that Obama's policies so closely resemble Italian Fascism, I think the time has come to acknowledge that Obama's critics are, in fact, the LEFT, and the Democratic Party has become the party of the extreme Right Wing.
(Not to single Obama out, Bush definitely started us down this road, especially during his second term.)
Maybe in fact Italian Fascism was left.
Not to do the Godwin's law thing, but a good friend of mine, since past, was a young man, a trained tool and die maker during the hyper inflation years in Germany. He was in his mid 20's, living at home with no work. Pretty dreary situation.
He said that within two weeks of Hitler gaining power, he and thousands of others received a letter telling them where to report for work. He worked steadily from then until he was called up to for the eastern front during the war. He was lucky to survive.
There are many ways to engender economic activity. Very few are compatible with freedom.
Oh, his future wife (they didn't marry until after the war since they weren't sure whether they would survive) worked in a social services agency during the war relocating people from areas damaged by fighting.
What Obama is doing is very similar to what we have seen in Canada, what the US saw during the progressive era. We will see if Obama has any internal limits to his desire to control. Or whether the division of power within the constitution will provide an effective limit.
Derek
From the Jargon File
http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/Godwins-Law.html
I've always been somewhat suspicious of Godwin's Law - What if a Hitler comparison *is* apt?
"That's what the Nazis did!"
"Godwin's rule! You lose."
"B-but they are making Jews wear stars, and herding them into railway cars-"
"What? You're still here??"
Godwin is irrelevant, because nobody is calling Obama a Nazi or Hitler.
People are calling him a fascist, which the educated among us know (or at least should know) is not necessarily the same thing.
No one thought Hitler might order millions rounded up and murdered until they started finding the camps.
And no, I'm not implying that Obama will do so. I'm just saying that things like this aren't exactly advertised at town hall meetings and addresses to joint sessions of congress.
This is a misconception that many people have, but in fact Hitler discussed the necessary elimination of European Jews regularly... It was on the first page of Mein Kampf for heavens sakes, asserted throughout the text, and repeated in his many, many speeches.
The problem at the time was that Germans had become so cynical that they thought he was just playing to his right wing, and that he really didn't mean it...
Megan,
Nazism is not the synonymous with fascism. It is just an example of a fascist movement. The terrible fact that Hitler killed millions of Jews, Gypsies, and other innocents is irrelevant to the discussion of whether or not he led a fascist movement. I agree with Rich, it seems to me that, so far at least, Obama is more of corporatist.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
-- Benito Mussolini, as quoted in Crossing the Rubicon (2004) by Michael C. Ruppert and Catherine Austin Fitts (taken from Wikiquote)
Joshua,
Thanks for the quote and the apparent correction.
That translation is a little misleading in English because the word 'corporatism' is little-used and so is frequently assumed to be related to corporations in the modern company sense. In 20s Italy, it refers to organizations representing industries, workers, agrarian groups, etc., i.e., collective rather than individual concerns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
Good clarifying point -- although it is worth noting that they are related to corporations in the modern American sense in that both are legal entities separate from the persons that form them.
A few points.
First, it bears remembering that fascism as a socio-political movement was actually pretty popular here prior to World War II. It only later became (inappropriately) a synonym for a totalitarian regime. The Nazis were not fascist but explicitly socialist (hence their party name -- The National Socialist German Worker's Party). Only Mussolini's Italy was explicitly fascist, and this government found favor with (among others) FDR in the United States prior to the outbreak of war.
Second, I find it disingenuous of Megan to assert (as she seems to) that the Nazi-led genocide was unconnected to other parts of their political philosophy. It wasn't. Racism was in the blood and bone of the National Socialists from the very first, and it echoed in every aspect of their domestic policy. The Nazis didn't start right off with the killing -- first they expunged jews from the businesses, schools, and government offices. Then they restricted their rights of movement and property-ownership. Then they incarcerated them. Then....
Third, there is a fine line between corporatism and fascism (and in my mind, no line at all). Democrats are protesting that Obama didn't "take over" GM, but when you can fire the guy who runs things then you are the guy who runs things. The United States government has explicitly guaranteed the GM warranty program. What is this if not classical fascism? It's not the same as saying that Obama is a tyrant or a genocidal maniac (though they day is still young); it is simply to point out that the government has now suborned a privately-run business to governmental ends. That's what fascism is.
Finally, this is not the first time this has happened. FDR's Great Leap Forward New Deal government was pretty plainly fascist in both operation and intent, right up through World War II. (However, at least during the war years, this governmental control of industry might have been necessary to focus production.)
Megan, you're too smart not to understand the point I'm making here. Call it corporatism or fascism -- it's pretty much the same thing, and Obama is the prime mover.
Wow Megan. Someone mentions Fascism now you have to retaliate by bringing up Hitler? It would have been better had you said nothing at all.
Megan, way off here. First of all, its econlog, not Fox News - most of the readers probably have a relatively sophisticated understanding of the ideas already. Secondly, Obama's supporters have been refuting charges of "socialism" by returning to the most simple definition. While I would agree he doesn't desire government ownership of the means of production, classical liberals need a word for his creeping collectivism. What do you suggest? "Corporatism" might work, although I think just as you worry for fascism, it may add very little to most people's understanding. I like fascism because it inflammatory, but should anyone actually look to the definition, the might find it fits.
If you go to the door of the president's office you will see a fasces there engraved. If he doesn't want to be called a fascist he should, at least, you know, get a new door.
But seriously, pretty much everybody was fascist or authoritarian socialist in the WWII era, and FDR and friends were right up there with Franco and Musolini in stirring nationalism and command economics. Calling for "The New New Deal" is calling for a second helping of American fascism, unless you specify the New New Deal as being completely different from the Old New Deal.
Look, there are important, principled criticisms that need to be made of Obama's policies, just as there were obvious lines of attack on his campaign promises open to the Republicans before November. But they seem to be hiding in plain sight, while Fox, and Limbaugh and whoever else waste their breath trying to decide if he is a socialist, or fascist, or Nazi, or a supporter of one world government. These aren't criticisms, they are slogans, and people who live on a diet of slogans end up with fat heads.
I'm confused. I must admit I did not read the entire source article, only your excerpt, but it seems to me that you, and not the author, was the one who introduced rounding up people in camps. In fact, the prototype example of fascism, in Italy, never went this direction.
To avoid this whole confusion, I usually use the term "Mussolini-style fascism" since we do seem blinded and incapable of looking past Hitler whenever that word is mentioned. But I think the discussion of Mussolini-style fascism is as least as relevant as the frequent discussions on this and other sites of the causes of the great depression. While Italy adopted the model before the Depression, many nations considered emulating it as a response to the Depression. I think the evidence is fairly clear that FDR was an admirer of certain aspects of this model, and his National Industrial Recovery Act emulated many mechanisms at the core of Mussolini's model.
I actually think the author is correct - Mussolini style fascism, and the modern European corporate state, are better analogs to describe where this Administration is heading than socialism.
it seems to me that you, and not the author, was the one who introduced rounding up people in camps. In fact, the prototype example of fascism, in Italy, never went this direction.
I recommend you watch a movie called "The Conformist".
Mussolini style fascism, and the modern European corporate state
It seems that a model which implies that all the democratic postwar West European states have been fascist throughout their existence is a model that generates more confusion than it resolves. Notably, the model implies that the UK, having defeated Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, became fascist under the Labor government elected in 1945 and has remained so since. It is true that our up really IS down from the perspective of a Chinaman, but taking that model to heart and running around saying "down" when you mean "up" seems like a silly thing to do.
Counterpoint: was Rome under Augustus, and those following, a republic or empire? I say that any model that implies that all governments of Rome starting anywhen from Sulla to Augustus are "imperial" or "fascist" is "not silly".
By David Henderson's criteria George H.W. Bush moved the US towards fascism when he nationalized the S&L's. Obama has not (and never could plausibly) moved to set wage or price levels -- unlike that biggest American fascist of them all, Richard Nixon. George W. Bush, obviously, became a huge fascist when he took over AIG and made GM and Chrysler heavily-subsidized "state champion" firms. (As if Boeing weren't one already!)
It's not clear what exactly Henderson means by "moving towards fascism" but it is clear that if Obama's moves to set conditions for further bailout funds for GM and Chrysler constitute "fascism", then the nations of France, Japan, Germany, and Italy have been in a state of permanent fascism since 1945; Britain remains largely fascist with only minor moves away from fascism since Thatcher; and South Korea, despite its transition to democracy in the late 1980s, is still thoroughly fascist. For non-fascist countries it seems we must look to such beacons of freedom as...hm. Not sure, actually. Sweden refused to bail out Saab, right? Maybe they qualify.
Read Henderson's post, not the 80% fragment that was quoted. He does cite Bush's bailout actions as evidence.
Clearly, we need a new word for "fascism". Of course, that word will eventually be linked to genocidal Nazism by those who don't like to be called fascists, and then we will need yet another new word.
These aren't criticisms, they are slogans, and people who live on a diet of slogans end up with fat heads.
...which is, you know, a slogan.
When you name something plainly and in public, that is a type of criticism. You may call a whore an "escort" to avoid huring her feelings and to spare the johns embarassment, but calling her a "whore" is the more honest approach. You do not change the whore's essential nature (or absolve the johns) by calling her by some less-embarassing title. A whore is what she is, a whore is what she should be called. If she dislikes the name, she should find another business.
The same goes for politicians in double, triple, quadruple measure. Politicians live by half-truths and outright deceit, and almost never show their true faces. Well, name them -- strip away their masks and show their faces to all. If they, and the body politic, can live with the creature then exposed so be it.
Huh, this adds an interesting moralistic dimension, but where does that get us? A whore turns tricks for crystal meth, or to feed her children, or to pay for her PhD... Politicians lie because the press is corrupt, because they have great personal reputation and can coast on that, or they know that a lie all of their constituents believe is easy to tell and not very risky.
But no, they're all whores. We don't need to think about why anybody actually does anything, they're all just dirt and we can file them away under the Bad People category. Clearly, we good people are nothing like them, we would never fall prey to the same things, we have nothing to learn.
The problem with the whole "fascist" tag is that it ends the argument. Anyone who defends your enemy becomes a fascist or a fellow-traveler. You can see this dynamic already in the right-wing press of this country; they really don't care how we find ourselves in this situation, or if any policy actually works, or if our political leadership is currently popular, legitimate, and respected. It's all just fascism! Your enemy being fascist means you don't have to offer a viable counter-proposal.
The difference between fascists and nazis is that nazis were fascists, but fascists weren't nazis (in particular, Mussolini found race-based thinking idiotic).
There is a perfectly fine word for what the original post is describing: corporatism.
There is an even better and more accurate word for what the original post is describing: collectivism. Granted, it doesn't provide the scare value of "socialism" or "fascism", but it does provide an accurate and precise description of Obama's actual policies, and promotes an honest debate about the appropiateness and desirability of such policies.
I assume that everybody here is actually interested in such a debate, and not here to score cheap propaganda points.
Collectivism is a vague term. It has no clearly established historical usage, and so it's very hard to say what it means. A football team is a collective. Microsoft is a collective. The US Army is a collective. A family is a collective. Which of these kinds of units does collectivism propound, and if you're opposed to collectivism, which of these kinds of units do you find objectionable? Corporatism, in contrast, has a very clear history of usage and thus a fairly clear definition.
"Collectivism is a vague term. It has no clearly established historical usage, and so it's very hard to say what it means."
Matt,
The virtue of this word is that it forces the person using the term to actually present an honest argument detailing how an economic policy is geared toward ends that serve the wants or needs of particular groups over the wants or needs of the individual, and why that is bad or good. They can't simply invoke the word and score cheap propaganda points.
Megan writes:
I think you've got it backwards, Megan. Henderson doesn't use the word Hitler anywhere, he just says that Obama's economic policy more closely resembles fascist policy than any other.
Your argument is the same as saying that Henderson shouldn't call Obama an effective speaker because using the phrase "effective speaker" might remind you of Hitler, and what people really remember about Hitler isn't his speaking technique, it's the mass murder.
I don't know how many people associate Nazi Germany with fascism -- it seems to me that when people think about Fascist government, architecture, or industrial organization, they usually think of Mussoli's Italy as the primary example.
J Mann,
You may not know many people who associate Nazi Germany with fascism, but fascism is associated by many with the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany as well as the authoritarian regimes of Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain. Megan may be leaping to a conclusion that fascism automatically equates in the mind of most people with Hitler instead of Mussolini, but she is right to denigrate Henderson for using an argument that generates more heat than light.
Well, if we are not allowed to refer to "fascism," I think "communism" should be retired for similar reasons. (Some lefties might argue that "capitalism" is similarly offensive).
I don't really object, as long as there are new words we can use for the old concepts. Is "corporatist" the PC substitute for facism and "collectivist" for communism?
I guess as long as people know what those terms mean, it's acceptable, but even so, a gentle suggestion is better than a spanking here, since Henderson was using a term accurately and McArdle was objecting that it reminder her of something offensive.
J Mann,
Is Henderson really using the term accurately when he cherry-picks when making his comparison? Henderson makes no mention how fascism was a violently anti-Bolsheivist political movement, and how Fascist domination of the private sector was done in order to gear the national economies of Italy and Germany to a war footing. Where does Henderson show how Obama is engaging in anti-Bolsheivist rhetoric, and is trying to center American life around militarist values?
When you can show me that, then you can assert that he is using the term accurately. Until then, Megan was correct to verbally spank him.
Henderson is an economist, and he's clearly talking about
economic organization. If I say that a given building is closer to fascist architecture than any other style, is it necessary that I intend that the architect be anti-Bolshevist?
Even if we limit ourself to the economic aspects of fascism, you and Henderson come up short. Fascist domination of the private sector was done as part of its attempts to put Italy and Germany on permanent war footing, even during peacetime. What part of Obama's economic policies are gearing the American economy toward a war footing, and centering American society around militarist values?
Now, if Obama starts turning Detroit into an extension of the defense industry, and GM starts retooling its assembly lines toward making Abrams tanks (while incorporating GM's hybrid engines into the design of the tanks), then you and Henderson would actually have a leg to stand on.
If you and Henderson are actually concerned about using accurate comparisons, why not compare Obama's policies to the nationalization policies carried out by Labour goverments in the UK during the post war period? Isn't that scary enough for you?
(replying to eltoro @ 1:57 here as comments only nest finitely)
That's a great point, eltoro. The policies of post-war Britain were quite scary and a good example of where I fear America could be headed soon. I do think those policies should be considered as at least related to the ongoing broadly fascist current in the political sphere of western civilization at the time, and ones that being part of the Anglosphere, and Labour/Democrat political traditions at that, are a particularly apt example.
Bravo, El Toro! I'm totally down with "no, Henderson is wrong on the facts because economically, fascism is distinguishable from Obamism for the following reasons . . ."
That's a discussion I'd love to read. (I freely confess that I am not enough of an economic historian to contribute to it, but I love it!) I'm not sure whether the war footing is an essential component of fascist economies or just a good fit with them, but I'm interested in the discussion.
Megan's "You shouldn't say 'fascism' because it reminds me of Hitler" isn't nearly as interesting.
Joshua,
I do think that you are defining fascism too broadly. What you refer to broadly as fascism is better described an anti-laissez faire economic policies established in response to economic crises experienced in the West during the period between World War I and World War 2. These would include the command economies imposed in peacetime by authoritarian and totalitarin governments of both the left (Communists in the Soviet Union) and the right (Fascists in Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany), economic nationalization efforts on the part of Western liberal democracies such as the UK, and the establishment of economic safety nets and the welfare state in FDR's US and Clement Atlee's UK.
Note that while the economic crises that served as the rationale for these policies occurred between World Wars, the implementation of these policies continued well into the post World War 2 era. A pushback on the part of pro-laissez faire forces did occur in the West, but these efforts didn't achieve political fruition until the beginning of the Thatcher/Reagan era.
(replying to eltoro @ 3:41 here as comments only nest finitely)
I'd agree to that generally; however, I would add that the moves are not only anti-laissez-faire but anti-communist as well.
Of course, my political map puts fascism, communism and liberal anarchism on the periphery with moderatism in the middle. Republicanism and Democratism, in terms of actual policy implementations rather than rhetorical positions, are fighting back and forth over the territory of moderatism, but I still hold that they are closer fellow travelers with fascism than with either communism or liberal anarchism. Others may have very different ideas about the relationships between these and other living political philosophies that naturally lead them to a very different picture, but I confess to being a partisan of my own.
but she is right to denigrate Henderson for using an argument that generates more heat than light.
No, Megan was wrong on all accounts. Megan appears to suffer from the belief that she can interpret an authors signs without respect to his/her signifiers. What Megan embarked upon, in her attempts to push aside the argument presented by Henderson, was a bit of creative writing rather than interpretation of the piece Henderson actually wrote.
By applying her own signifiers to Hendersons text -- which took no regard for the intent of the text, nor can be ably defended by investigating the clues within the text -- she was able to create a situation in which honest debate gets stifled.
This is no different than cries of Racism from leftists when someone attacks an Obama Administration policy. It's dishonest, and it's a tactic that is favored by Progressives, and definitely the academic elite.
The fact remains, unless you can use the clues presented within Henderson's text that he intended to draw parallels between Hitler and Obama, you're doing a disservice to honest discussion by bringing up such a point.
Agent W,
Actually, it is Henderson who is doing a disservice to honest discussion, not Megan. Megan is right to point out how fascism is a loaded word, and brings up the spectre of Hitler in the minds of many. She is not claiming that Henderson is drawing a parallel between Obama and Hitler. For you to claim that is an example of you interpreting Megan's signs without respect to hier signifiers.
But even if I grant you the idea that Megan's response was too hysterical, how is drawing a comparison between Obama and Mussolini (which Henderson clearly does) any more conducive to a honest discussion? Henderson makes cherry picked comparisons to policies pursued by Mussolini and by Obama without noting the context in which they were carried out. Obama's policies are being carried out in the context of a financial bailout of failing private sector firms on the part of the US government. He is not imposing governmental control over firms that are not recipients of government bailout funds, and he is not imposing control over the private sector in an attempt to center American society around militarist values like Mussolini and Hitler did with Italian and German society.
Now if Henderson had bothered to mention how Fascism subordinates the workings of the private sector toward the goal of putting a society on a war footing even during peacetime, and then showed examples of Obama militarising our private sector (GM making Abrams tanks for example), then he would truly have been promoting a honest discussion in the 1st place, instead of delivering cheap propaganda points.
Likewise, if Henderson had simply referred to the far more relevant example of nationalization policies pursued by Labour governments in the UK during the post WWII period, he would have been engaging in a honest discussion. Instead, he shaves the corner of a factual square in order to make it fit into his round argument.
Megan,
Well, I agree with you, but two points:
I kinda like watching the leftists get a taste of their own rhetroic. Hopefully they will be more circumspect about employing this device going forward.
Second, as Hayek would say, limitation of economic freedom is not some separate domain from limitation of social freedom. Human activity is economic activity; there is no distinction except that which we create. Socialism is "totalitarianism light" - and many times a transition to full blown totalitarianism.
"I kinda like watching the leftists get a taste of their own rhetroic. Hopefully they will be more circumspect about employing this device going forward."
Jay,
On the contrary, you right-wingers are encouraging leftists to be even less circumspect about employing this device. Moreover, since you right-wingers are now indiscriminately conflating right-wing authoritarianism with leftist economic policies, you are simply encouraging leftists to equate the right wing preference for military solutions to foreign policy dilemmas and the right wing embrace of torture as a tool of national defense with the militarism and tyranny of left-wing dictators like Stalin. (It doesn't help that the Bush-Cheney administration embraced torture methodologies like the ones used by the KGB in the Gulag Archipelago.)
It is too bad that no one one has written a book on exactly this subject.
Megan explicitly refused to read it because her then-new clique claque of left-leaning DC friends didn't think it was cool, and she said about as much on this blog. Historically, it's a very helpful book even if you think (as I do) that Goldberg ultimately overstates his case.
More's the pity because she might have avoided leaping straight from a discussion of fascism to invoking Godwin's law, especially since the only paragraph of Henderson's post she did not post adds this:
"President Obama shouldn't get all the blame. Former President Bush took us a big step in that direction with his bailout. But when a President actually fires the president of a major company and decides to change the terms of that company's warranty on its products, that President has taken a major step. (H/T on the warranty point to Tyler Cowen.)"
There were fascist nations without genocide, Spain being the primary example. Franco was a fascist through and through but he had no racial agenda.
Yet, what I gather from your post is that even if Obama started initiating Franco like programs we could not call him fascist just for Hitler's sake. I think that's a cop-out.
If Obama summarily executes 15-25,000 Republicans, outlaws the GOP, carries out extended purges leading to the deaths of 38-150,000 more GOP sympathizers and "unreliables" (note: these are all Spanish figures; the US figures should be multiplied to reflect larger population size), establishes a national religion and represses all others, criminalizes homosexuality and the use of languages other than English, outlaws all non-government-controlled labor unions, etc. then yes, I think we can start calling him a fascist.
This is a notably stupid post, for reasons that have been explained in detail already. Facist != genocidal maniac. (Stalin was not a fascist, for example. Nor was Mao.)
Name me a fascist leader who did not rule by terror, carry out mass purges, and execute thousands of political opponents.
(crickets)
Your argument in the above fragment runs as follows:
1. Some genocidal maniacs are not fascists.
2. Obama is not a genocidal maniac.
3. Therefore, Obama is a fascist.
But hey, who needs logic? That's for those condescending coastal elite types who look down on real Americans.
(replying to Matt Steinglass @ 2:18 here as as comments only nest finitely)
Engelbert Dollfuss?
It's hard to respond to this without falling fully into no-true-Scotsman territory. I think FDR is fair game although many would disagree.
Franco's killings were in the context of civil war. Remember that the Republicans were no saints, they also killed tens of thousands of people and oppressed religion up the point of massacring priests and confiscating Church property. Vengeance is not sufficient moral justification, in my mind at least, but nontheless Franco was not attempting any kind of genocide.
Franco after the civil war was a fascist in the way that a modern government would be: autarky, cartels, corporatism ect... And as far as the labor unions go, we have basically already reached that point because Obama has declared his intent to tailor employment contracts to the national interest, reserving the right both to seize firms and to abrogate contracts. And if that doesn't work, he also reserves the right to shove a Bill of Attainder, ex post fact law, or both at the same time to get what he wants.
In that context, its hard to see how the unions will maintain any sort of bargaining independence in the coming years, even if the government's actions are to the worker's benefit.
As it happens Franco executed tens of thousands of people just AFTER he had won the Spanish Civil War, but really, who cares? I have no idea what you're trying to argue here. Here's the sequence of this argument: Dude says Obama is a fascist because he's increasing government involvement in corporate economy. Megan says that's a stupid thing to say, because the word "fascist" inevitably entails military autocracy, rule by terror, and mass murder, none of which apply to Obama. You say, well, no, fascism doesn't necessarily mean military autocracy, rule by terror, or mass murder -- look at Franco's Spain! I point out that, in fact, Franco's Spain was a military autocracy ruled by terror that carried out mass murder. You say, well, but the Commies made him do it, and anyway it was just a few tens of thousands of people, not genocide. What earthly relevance does this have to anything?
Fascism entails military autocracy, rule by terror, and mass murder. Obama is not remotely involved in any of the above, hence Obama is not a fascist. End of stupid, tedious story.
What's the point of having words that mean things if we can't use them because of how they were used in the past? It's interesting to me to discuss the administration and how it compares with past regimes. History has a tendency to repeat itself (though not exactly) so knowing what has happened in the past and how it happened is useful and words are how we discuss the past.
I would like to add that the current regime (Obama + Congress) has discussed setting limits on executive compensation and already sets minimum wages based on "fairness." It's not that big of a step to setting "guidelines" for other compensation. Once you invoke "fairness" as a standard, you can justify a lot.
The scary things is that I've heard a lot of people say that "capitalists" have had their chance and by their unethical behavior have justified a response by the "people" via the government. I would find that argument more compelling if I thought that the government would actually act in the best interest of the people...
"What's the point of having words that mean things if we can't use them because of how they were used in the past?"
Earnest Iconoclast,
You can use them so long as use them with accuracy, and not to engage in cheap propaganda points. The fascist analogy would hold up better if you actually took the time to look at the whole of Mussolini's implemenation of fascism, and found that Obama's policies really do compare to Mussolini's in all important ways, and didn't just cherry-pick details to fit your predetermined scheme.
For example, one of the keys aspects of Mussolini's Fascist movement was its violent opposition to Bolsheivism, and its denigration of all remotely left-wing political movements as agents of creeping Bolsheivism. Now, the last time I looked, it was the Republican Party, not Obama and the Democrats, who have engaged in this rhetoric. In addition, fascist domination over the private sector was done as an outgrowth of the militarist values that formed the core of fascist ideology. The private sector was left alone by Mussolini, so long as it was geared to putting Italy on a war footing. Again the last time I looked, the party promoting militarist values was the Republican Party, not Obama and the Democrats. Now, if Obama forces GM and Chrysler to start building tanks instead of cars, you might actually have a legitmate case for comparing him to Mussolini.
Meh. FDR was a Democrat. A Democrat that got us into World War II. A Democrat that instituted a command economy and internment camps. A Democrat whose administration a pretty good example of what fascism looks like in the American social context. Now, I agree that the Democratic rhetoric sounds less fascist than Republican rhetoric and that the Republicans have done more than their fair share to screw things up of late but, as the ancient Vulcan proverb says, "only Nixon could go to China".
"Meh. FDR was a Democrat. A Democrat that got us into World War II."
Yeah, it's not like the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which led to Congress declaring war on Japan, and which in turn led to Germany declaring war on the United States. Apparently WW2 was a discretionary war like Gulf War 2 in your view.
"A Democrat that instituted a command economy and internment camps."
No mention of course that unlike Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin and Tojo, who instituted command economies during peacetime and put their nations on a war footing in anticipation of a Great Power war, FDR instituted a command economy after the US went to war (just as Churchill instituted a command economy in the UK after the UK went to war). No, according to you putting a nation on a command economy during wartime is the equivalent of putting it on a command economy during peacetime.
Moreover, according to you, FDR's violation of Japanese-American civil rights is the equivalent of Hitler's concentration camps geared toward the Final Solution. Never mind that the armies sent by FDR to fight the Nazis actually played at least a minor role in liberating the people held in those German concentration camps. No, FDR was just another fascist according to your logic, but unable to recognize his fellow travelers.
"A Democrat whose administration a pretty good example of what fascism looks like in the American social context."
So if FDR was really a fascist, why did fascist sympathizers like Charles Lindburgh oppose the US entry into World War 2. After all, if FDR had made the US into a fascist country, then a victory by the US meant a victory for fascism, American-style. In addition, why didn't FDR ally himself with Japan and Germany against the Communist Soviet Union, since he was a fascist fellow traveler with Hitler and Mussolini?
I think Mr Spock would find your argument to be highly illogical. Of course, logic dictates that you agree with the Soviet Union's argument during the Cold War that the US opposition to the Soviet Union and to Communism was motivated by fascist sympathies.
So how long have you been a Godless Red, Joshua?
(replying to eltoro @ 1:33 here as comments only nest finitely)
I claim that FDR's depression-era economic policy is part of a cultural phenomenon known as "fascism" that was in vogue in western civilization at the time. Any claims of "equivalence" between his policies and those of leaders of European regimes that made up that political tradition are projected, I do not make them.
As to alliances: fascism is nationalist. I suggest that the contingencies of national identity and accidents of history may be more relevant than ideological concerns in the determination of the alliances made by fascist, proto-fascist, or quasi-fascist regimes. Along such lines, I think antagonism between the USA and USSR during the cold war was driven substantially by nationalistic or cultural concerns in addition to ideological ones.
I am neither Godless, although my religious beliefs are an intensely private matter and decidedly not mainstream, nor Red, although I confess an alignment with the (matte) black section of the political spectrum. I am aware that I would be considered so by the common rubric of the Cold War era, but I do not identify as such.
Allow me to congratulate you on your running with the Spock thing. Bravo, sir.
(replying to eltoro @ 1:33 here as comments only nest finitely)
From a 2007 Reason article:
Wherever we place the threshold, can we agree that FDR admired some aspects of Fascism, and that the Fascist leaders of the day recognized some familiar strains in new deal policy? When Mussolini and Volkischer Beobachter chose to highlight, as their evidence of a move toward/sympathy for Fascism, a state which "no longer leaves the economy to its own devices" and “demand[s] that collective good be put before individual self-interest” can reasonable people agree that to the extent those principles animate policy, the policy at least has that in common with fascism, or resembles fascism?
If you (eltoro) can't admit that FDR was in some respects Fascist, then we really won't get anywhere on Obama.
"When Mussolini and Volkischer Beobachter chose to highlight, as their evidence of a move toward/sympathy for Fascism, a state which "no longer leaves the economy to its own devices" and “demand[s] that collective good be put before individual self-interest” can reasonable people agree that to the extent those principles animate policy, the policy at least has that in common with fascism, or resembles fascism?"
No, we cannot. We can say that such policy is motivated by collectivist concerns, or that it has a skepticism or even hostility toward laissez-faire economics. We can even point out that collectivist concerns and skepticism/hostility to laissez-faire economics can be found in a variety of economic policies, include fascist and Communist ones. However, we cannot simply say that it has things in common with fascism, or resembles fascism, without engaging in a misleading argument. It ignores the salient fact that the collectivist concerns animating fascist economic policies are not the same as those animating New Deal policies.
Unlike New Deal policies, Fascist eoonomic policies are not concerned with providing an safety net to protect individuals from the ravages of economic downturns, particularly the ravages accompanying a Great Depression. They are concerned with centering society around militarist values. Fascists are not concerned about whether or not the poor will suffer as the result of laissez-faire economic policies. Fascists are more concerned that laissez-faire economic policies will result in the private sector being geared to produce butter at a time when Fascists want guns. That is a huge difference (might explain why an alleged fascist like FDR had no problem with going to war against Mussolini and Hitler, his alleged fellow travelers.)
So that's a valid reason for objecting to calling Obama's policy Fascist... not because it might remind people of Hitler. When you start throwing out words because they are offensive, it makes it hard to have rational discussions. My issue was with throwing out words because they have some bad historical association... I'm all for using words correctly.
I'm so riled up by this that I actually went through with all the annoying hassle of registration for comments, just so I could tell Megan that she is flat-out wrong this time:
It doesn't make a ^%$# bit of difference whether we call it fascism, socialism, communism-lite, peronism, corporatism, or whatever; these are all just words.
The bottom line is that -- whatever you choose to call it -- it is the exact opposite of Classical Liberalism and/or Individualism, and anybody who used to call herself "Jane Galt" ought to recognize that implicitly. (And yes, I know, Bush was almost as bad. So what?)
Is your suitcase packed with a change of clothes and toothbrush, in case the secret police come for you tonight?
No? Then you don't actually believe you live in a fascist state.
Give 'em time.
The assertion was that we are "moving towards" a fascist state, not that we are living in one.
I've seen very few things to refute this position.
Hear, hear. I find comparing Obama to Hitler to be as annoying and idiotic as when people did so in discussing Bush.
Please, let's lose the hysteria. Neither guy was/is nearly as bad as their immoderate critics contend.
Very dense analysis, and one that misses the main point.
What, then, is the repetitive carping about the greedy 'upper 2%' (alternatively referred to as the 'upper 5%'?)which are supposed to finance all these socialist policies. And the "good" 'lower 95%' that will get their social justice by squeezing that aforementioned 5% (or 2%, depending on the date and time of the socialist pandering) - what is their sacrifice for this rapid socialization of our entire society?. Besides losing their jobs as their "wealthy" employers are taxed into poverty, I mean..
The Jews were mainly targeted in the early-mid 1930's for their wealth, which then would be appropriated by the force of law. And then it was. Long before the Nazis captured the Jews for murder, they legally appropriated their property and income.
Since the Federal Income taxes paid by the "upper 2%" comprises an astonishing 50% (37% just by the upper 1% alone!), the Federal Income tax is almost non-existent for the vast majority of Americans. Of course, even fewer Americans will actually be paying for Obama's idiotic policies, according to the leftist propaganda.
It's also an ironic fact that 2% of Germany was Jewish in 1933. They were successful in business and relatively wealthy and owned quite a large amount of real estate in the growing urban centers. They were easily demonized and targetted by their jealous fellow Germans.
I speak as a descendent of that exact population, and my family lost most of their lives and all of their property to the same "social justice" rhetoric and evil jealousy of wealth as is being practiced by this Administration. This ongoing demonization of capital will impoverish and enslave us all.
Texas Jew,
I'm not sure your comparison holds water. First of all, Nazis resented Jews simply for being Jews, not for being wealthy. They had no problem with brutalizing poor Jews in the Warsaw ghettos in the same way they had brutalized rich Jews in Berlin or Hamburg. They even despised Christians of Jewish descent who had assimilated into the Gentile world, even those who would have been supportive of right-wing militarist anti-Bolsheivik movements. At the same time, wealthy Gentiles were not targeted by the Nazis, and in fact wealthy German Gentiles benefited from the liquidation of their wealthy German Jewish competitors. In addition, the Nazis attacked Jews not only as rapacious capitalist robber barons, but also as radical atheist Communists out to destroy German capitalism and Christianity.
Show me how Obama has demonized the wealthy as being both robber barons and Bolsheiviks, and your point might actually have some validity.
Obviously, he's not going to condemn anyone as being a "Bolsheivik" as that wouldn't make any sense. He is demonizing the wealthy for being robber barons and for, in their greed, destroying the US economy. His rhetoric is different but the result is the same... he's calling for sanctions against the wealthy because they are bad people.
"He is demonizing the wealthy for being robber barons and for, in their greed, destroying the US economy. His rhetoric is different but the result is the same... he's calling for sanctions against the wealthy because they are bad people."
It is not the same at all. Obama has simply argued that the financial industry has to bear consequences for its actions; the government bailout of the financial industry is for the purpose of recapilizing insolvent firms that are critical to the functioning of the global financial syterm. It is not meant to shield the financial industry from all the pain that accompanies firms that became insolvent. What will the result of this be? Increased regulation on the financial marketplace.
Hitler on the other hand did not demonize the wealthy. He demonized Jews, wealthy or poor, secular or religious, converted, lapsed, or observant. He did not demonize the Gentile wealthy. The result of this was that Jews of all stripes were brutalized by Nazi thugs, and wealthy Jews had their money and property confiscated by the state and given to wealthy Gentiles. Oppression of course eventually led to genocide.
So I guess you're right. The result is the same.
I find this thread enlightening if slightly surprising. For a start, I don't see how one can possibly set aside the historical context of fascism in order to apply the word to the current administration's various economic policies, for a start. That's either disingenuous or willfully ahistoric, both of which have their own related issues.
The citation of Italian fascism against current events in the automotive and financial sectors seems somewhat obtuse to me. In what sense has it become dirigiste for the government to set standards for supplicants for state aid? To put it differently, what about the progression from "GM probably should go bankrupt" to "The federal government is providing a fixed period subsidy preparatory to bankruptcy" puts it in the same category as collectivization of farming or similar? Whither Ford, if the government is taking over in Detroit?
Equally, if we are to cite Italian fascism as somehow meaningful in describing the Obama administration, can we look forward to an analog to the Italian hostility towards the Slavs of the Balkans? Where are the administration's outbursts against perfidious Mexico and Canada as an external source of our problems?
Obviously I must be dulled by a youth partly spent in the apparently fascist confines of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, because the current imbroglios over banking and automotive production look to me remarkably like arguments over the cost and advisability of moving along a short stretch of the continuum of modern capitalist state regulation of various industries.
Correspondingly, I find the proposition that the current administration are fascists and that we should all be watching out for the railcars to be laughable. And in fairness, for all the authoritarian overtones of the previous administration, I wouldn't call them fascists either - for starters, the uniforms weren't nearly smart enough.
The comment above about calling politicians out on their lies and deceptions is fair enough, but when it comes to using the word "fascist," I don't think that much has changed since someone much more clever than Jonah Goldberg wrote on the subject.
I agree that while the term “fascist” may be a technically accurate description of Obama’s policies, it isn’t particularly useful on a practical basis because there are other aspects of fascism that Obama does not or has not yet tried to implement which most laypeople more readily associate with fascism. Yes it’s true that Mussolini, Franco and their supporters may not have gone for the racial superiority/genocidal policies that people normally associate with Hitler but they also did other things beyond increasing government control over the economy (which I agree is bad enough).
The point is that if you have to explain to people that when you accuse your opponents of fascism or implementing fascist-like policies that you’re not really accusing them of fermenting genocide or violently suppressing their political opposition, you’ve already lost the argument.
And frankly given how great the severity of what Obama-Reid-Pelosi are actually trying to do to the economy, health care, energy policy, etc., I don’t think that we can afford to waste time like the Democrats did when they were out of power on counterproductive tactics which only give them more time and room to implement policies that many of us find bad on their merits.
"And frankly given how great the severity of what Obama-Reid-Pelosi are actually trying to do to the economy, health care, energy policy, etc."
The problem, of course, is this: who are you talking to? The country as a whole and independents as a whole are in favor of Obama's progressive tax structure, universal health care, efforts to limit global warming, etc. How exactly do you plan on stopping broadly popular proposals? Sure, many of *you* find them bad on their merits, but many of you are in an echo chamber in a small minority that is vastly out of touch with what America actually wants.
So your solution is to use more and more heated rhetoric? Do you think anyone who doesn't already agree with you is listening? Because to most of us you just sound like lunatics. If they're bad on their merits, start arguing that and actually trying to convince someone, because I can assure you the "omg fascism" route is, to put it mildly, incredibly ineffective.
Once again Megan's commentors prove she is infinitely more sane and rational than they are.
The frenzy some people have whipped themselves into spouting about fascism, socialism, collectivism, and sometimes all at once is really stunning to behold. You're using them (and most people who do so use them almost interchangably) because they're scary words. Mussolini was a fascist. He was a really bad guy who was our enemy. Tying Obama to him allows you to conclude Obama is a really bad guy who is our enemy. It's quite clear what rhetoric is used for.
But it's laughable on its face, and outside of the conservative/libertarian echo chamber it's as ludicrous as the people that thought Bush was setting up a dictatorship. There is *nothing* fascist about a bankrupt company begging the government for money for the third time accepting strings on that money. Nothing. Nor is there about trying to instill confidence in American industries by guaranteeing warrantees for a company that, uh, you're propping up with your money, since that's by definition what you're doing. Nor is there about being in the unfortunate position of having companies that can bring down the entire economy with them and choosing the lesser of the available evils to prop them up while they wind down in an orderly fashion.
You've twisted words far beyond what they meant a year ago in your anti-Obama hysteria. But you know, it's really not that bad a thing from my perspective. Outside of the deranged minority represented very well here he's broadly popular. If/when his broadly popular agenda gets enacted and the right is still yelling about fascism and socialism, people might just start thinking that maybe those aren't such scary words after all. And then you'd just be tuned out even more.
Let me be perfectly clear about this: I think Obama is a really bad guy who is our enemy. That is primarily because he is Commander in Chief of the side of the War On Drugs that initiated hostilities. Whether or not he is a fascist is a side matter that I attempt to determine dispassionately. Now, I happen to disagree with most people about the cultural contexts under which a particular system of government can be considered fascist, but that belief is an authentic one, and I do not care for your questioning of my motives for holding it.
Call me ludicrous and hysterical if you will; I am used to it.
Adam,
There is something fascist about bailouts if you think of the problem over a period of time. If the precedent is set that all large companies are shielded from failure by the government, than the government will soon take control of the firms themselves.
I have never, ever, seen in my life a situation where the governments gives aid but does not take control of what it is aiding.
"If the precedent is set that all large companies are shielded from failure by the government, than the government will soon take control of the firms themselves."
You gave an if and a then, but this is not actually a true statement. The premise you didn't state that makes it work is that you assume the government never gives up control once the company they've aided no longer needs aid. This is a typical libertarian slippery slope argument that doesn't actually follow history. Even right now, banks are giving back TARP money so they don't have to do what the government tells them. Which is *exactly how it's supposed to work*. See the S&L situation for further examples.
And the other part of this is that the lesson learned is that companies shouldn't be able to get in a position where they're too big to fail. Companies like AIG get government aid because a failure would be too catastrophic to the broader economy. So the solution in the future is to make sure no company gets in a situation like that again, so next time we can let them fail instead of taking them over. I would have thought that was widely known.
Step 1:
Require registration for comments to weed out over-politicized and/or personal rants in the comments threads.
Step 2:
Quote someone who claims the President of the United States is a fascist and ask the group to discuss it. Mention Hitler and genocide in the same post.
What were you thinking, Megan?
Moving on...
All those in this thread, including Megan, who are using the argument that there is/will be no violence or police state therefore it can't be fascism are revealing their ignorance.
Police states or genocides are not a requirement of a fascist system, though they are most likely a symptom of them, just like, say, military style uniforms and youth "education" programs.
In an fully formed fascist regime, the police state would form from the need to police all parts of society that the state has taken into its fascist bundle of sticks. So, with this in mind, commenters should be aware that using the lack of a police state or genocide or violence has the causality inverted.
So, sorry, if fascism comes for us, we won't have the luxury to look for jack boots and death squads to act as neon warning signs. We have to actually look at what the POLICIES are. To this end, the discussion of whether Obama's policies are similar to Mussolini-style fascism/corporatism/collectivism should be encouraged by those of us with an interest in preserving natural and individual rights.
I should ad, as a post script, that this kind of discussion/analysis is markedly different from the Bushitler crowd, who used the label but refused to engage in an argument of how Bush was in fact acting like a fascist (leaving aside whether Hitler should actually be thought of as a fascist or a national socialist or whether there is even a difference). This crowd also made the same causality mistake I highlighted above.
"I should ad, as a post script, that this kind of discussion/analysis is markedly different from the Bushitler crowd, who used the label but refused to engage in an argument of how Bush was in fact acting like a fascist"
While I'm not sure where what Bush did ranks exactly on the fascist scale, I'm quite sure it was pointed out over and over and over again by liberals that wiretaps on one's own citizens without a warrant or probable cause, indefinate imprisonment in a jurisdiction in legal limbo (with no charges ever brought and without any rights), and torture were all completely unwarranted and illegal expansions of executive power that were reminiscient of other states with similar levels of executive power. I would be willing to apply whatever label you feel applies to such behavior, with or without using the scare tactics seen in this thread.
Fascism is not a "scale". It's a system of government, which you clearly have yet to grasp. Fascism isn't a word that means "tyrannical" or "unjust" or "totalitarian". It has an actual meaning with an actual history, despite its frequent use (usually by the left) in complete ignorance of both.
Bush may have been fascist, but wiretaps or violations of other rights aren't inherently fascist anymore than, say, effective speakers and cults of personality are.
Bush may have used his wiretapping to CREATE or IMPLEMENT fascist *policies*, but that isn't the argument you or others are making. You are saying that these things are fascist in themselves, which is obviously nonsense. Anarchists, communists, and even unprincipled libertarians can use wiretaps as a means to any number of ends.
Right, once the Italian state moved to incorporate the unions and put the auto companies under the umbrella of state-led industrial policies, the single-party state, purges, political executions and wars of aggression were inevitable. That's why after Attlee nationalized the health service and the mines, the rounding up of the Tories and the show trial of Churchill inevitably followed. And once Adenauer instituted state-mandated management-worker boards at leading industries, it was only a matter of time before all the Social Democrats were thrown into concentration camps. And the French decision to create national industrial policy led by state-champion firms starting in the late 40s led inevitably to the single-party dictatorship of De Gaulle and the French invasion of Spain in 1952.
Look. Fascist ideology didn't start out saying "We should have a state ruled by terror where apparatchiks control everyone's lives in a militarized atmosphere of fearful obedience on pain of prison camps or disappearance." But the actual history of all the fascist states that did exist from the 1920s on did in fact entail all of that. And so the word "fascist" has come to mean all of these things, just as the word "Communist" can no longer mean today what it meant in 1872, when it had no connotations of Stalinist or Maoist show trials and mass executions.
When leftists argued that Bush was bad in some of the same ways that Nazis were bad, they weren't arguing that Bush's policies were secretly Nazi-like in some deep and obscure fashion. They were arguing that Nazis were bad because they tortured people and that Bush was bad because he tortured people. They were arguing that Nazis were bad because they launched unprovoked wars of aggression and that Bush was bad because he launched an unprovoked war of aggression. It would have been ridiculous for leftists to compare Bush to the Nazis just because he had an untrammeled view of executive power; that would have been a gross exaggeration. The problem wasn't that Bush did things that were similar to the LESS OBJECTIONABLE elements of the Nazi regime -- that he promoted national pride, exercised regularly or what have you. The problem was that he TORTURED PEOPLE. When someone accuses Obama of "fascism", they're trying to get the same frisson of the politically taboo -- fascism, purges, torture, military dictatorship! But Obama doesn't purge people, doesn't torture, doesn't govern as a military dictator. He's just continuing a Bush administration intervention into some industrial corporations that (arguably) departs from American tradition and looks more like the way democratic South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, France, Italy and (pre-Thatcher, mainly) Britain handle industrial policy. None of those countries are fascist, and neither is Obama.
Good points; I think you're getting closer to the heart of disagreement.
If "fascist" is considered as a libel applied by the victors of WWII on the losers, which it certainly is, then your analysis is spot-on.
But that's not all it is. I generally think of fascism as a governing philosophy that was reborn in the twentieth century as part of an ongoing cultural discourse that included the maturation of the nation-state (and other states that aren't nation-states but act a lot like them), Taylorism, Fordism, Catholic corporatism, organized labour, technocracy, social Darwinism, economic- and social-interventionism/engineering, the reaction (or preaction?) to the liberalization of gender and sexuality, nationalism, militarism, and authoritarianism, amongst other things, that emerged as an international phenomenon that had various explicitly nationalist culturally-relative expressions.
Now, I would like it if fascism in this sense, along with many of the other things I mentioned in relationship to it (at least in their authoritarian forms), were politically taboo, but they aren't. They're a part of the American tradition, or at least an American tradition -- a living one, no less -- and that tradition is something that I would like to see as little of as possible, despite the fact that various slices of it can claim a fair amount of support from various parts of the modern American political scene.
Whenever you start worrying too much about the semantics of the word "fascist," just think of Gramsci sitting in his prison cell.
Calling Obama's very light dirigisme "fascism" is pretty insulting. Notwithstanding all your isms, which pretty much cover every modernist post-Darwin/Great War political/economic movement of Europe (so you can draft sundry pet grievances into the Fascist camp for argument purposes), why don't you just limit yourself to actual states that actually called themselves fascist?
Or why don't you ask Antonio Gramsci if Waggoner quitting in order to secure GM more baillout loans constitutes Fascism.
(replying to jamie @ 5:22 here as comments only nest finitely)
Because I think policy implementations are more important the rhetoric and because I'm not that good at necromancy, to answer your questions in their respective order.
Would you care to argue that the sundry grievances I mentioned are not a related in a current of social discourse or did you merely wish to meta-grouse about my grousing?
Saying that fascism and Fordism are "related in a current of social discourse" is one thing, but saying that a bailout loan is fascism is completely another. Naturalism and Neoromanticism are related in the same social discourse as all the things you mention, after all, but no one calls Theodore Dreier or Edward Elgar fascist.
This whole language argument has the goal of restricting debate, and making participants have to choose between "freedom," and "fascism," where fascism is fiat money, one child policies, industrial mass production, a Czech republic free of the Hapsburgs, the Spartacist league, women's suffrage, industrial policies, the Bauhaus, the labor movement, the Pill, and IBM punchcards.
You might think that it's a very clean academic thing to call all a government bailout "fascism," but people who are generally more statist in their persuasion, or people who have very good reasons to support the current policy, are going to interpret your agenda pretty clearly as trying to play a language game where they are the nazi. Again, you might not see it that way, and you might even construct a sort of convention where a person can participate in an argument as a "fascist" and still make valid points, but you do a disservice to the language.
If you want to find out why people actually advocate one thing or the other, then you should not use the word. But if you have sworn enmity to the State and will have nothing to do with the other side, go ahead and keep using the word. However, you should expect pushback from people who believe there's something in between 1890s libertarianism and Buchenwald.
Everything jamie says here is dead-on correct.
Matt, your argument that the meaning of words change because of context is fine, but then you go on to make to very startling errors.
First, you use this definitional drift to excuse the Left's use of the word "fascism" as synonymous with "evil", "abusive", or "dangerous", especially in regard to allegations of torture. But that's an absurd definition of the word. Every form of government known to man has had its violent excesses, abuses, and uses of torture. Torture, police states, and genocide all predate and will postdate fascism on earth. To say or imply that the practice of these things is inherently "fascist", therefore, is borderline moronic. That might be how some people use the word, but it's offensive to reason.
Your view that Bush's alleged use of torture legitimizes the label of fascism, whether or not he advanced any actual fascist view of state, compounds the mistake I discussed above. But what is troubling is that you deem the underlying tenets of fascism, the *causes* of the torture if you will, "LESS OBJECTIONABLE" or troubling than the torture itself. This is shocking and dangerous.
People like me are willing to engage the left on the use of the word "fascism" precisely because of the danger inherent in this point of view. The link between the growth of the role of state in private life and the growth of police power of the state is absolutely causal. Mussolini said of fascism, "everything inside the state, nothing outside it." As fascism policies are embraced and grow, the justification to regulate, police, and punish every aspect of private life for the "greater good" grows. In fact, there is no private life in fascism. Everything is within the legitimate purview of the state to affect and shape.
It is this view of the role of state that necessitates the growth in power and trampling of rights that we now associate with fascism. If you don't understand this process, if you dismiss the growth in the breadth of state interest as a causal factor to the trampling of rights, then you fundamentally misunderstand the danger of fascism.
You cite examples of states that embraced fascistic policies that did not degenerate into totalitarian regimes, but history is more filled with those that did succumb to despotism. And even regimes that we think back on fondly, like Wilson's presidency, had gross and terrifying abuses or rights that are usually glossed over in history books. But keep in mind, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and other European states had fascist governments only about 60 years ago, and in some cases much more recently. To use European states as an example of how it's harmless to embrace fascist policies because it doesn't lead down a dangerous road relies on the belief that we are at an end of that road, that these countries won't move more toward statism, that we are at an end of history, if you will.
I refuse to be so shortsighted.
Nessuno, many of the writers here keep making this error:
"Torture, police states, and genocide all predate and will postdate fascism on earth. To say or imply that the practice of these things is inherently "fascist", therefore, is borderline moronic."
But nobody on Megan's side of this issue does say that torture is inherently fascist. What we say is that to call somebody "fascist" when they're not practicing even the slightest form of mild political repression is ridiculous. You're confusing our argument "you can't call it fascism if it doesn't have repression" with an argument that "if it has repression, it must be fascism" -- an argument nobody here is making.
You think that all the European and democratic East Asian governments are heading towards fascism because they've had industrial policies since 1945. First, that's silly. Second, you've expanded the definition of "fascism" to cover everything. "Industrial policy" is NOT "fascist policy". It's industrial policy. Fascist governments had speed limits, too, but speed limits are not "fascist policies". The US government has owned its passenger rail company since the '70s and its postal service forever, as well as a number of other corporations run for the public benefit, but if the US is fascist, Europe is fascist, East Asia is fascist, you're fascist, I'm fascist, he's fascist, we're all fascist!...then we're just being silly here.
(replying to Matt Steinglass @ 4:58 here as comments only nest finitely)
Who you callin' "we", Steinglass?
(replying to jamie @ 6:27 here as comments only nest finitely)
Luckily I haven't made the claim that the auto bailout is fascist, so I don't have to defend it.
However, you are the one tr
Nice rationalization.
No, leftists were overwrought liars when they said/say that Bush "tortured people". Bush didn't torture anyone. The CIA waterboarded precisely three people with the complete knowledge and encouragement of Democrat Congressional leadership. This came after the Clinton Administration created the policy of extraordinary rendition to third countries in the 1990's where Michael Scheuer says they definitely tortured the rendered individuals. If leftists were honest (they don't even understand the meaning of that term) and they were truly against torture, they would have been equally "outraged" by the Clinton Administration's policies. When leftists called Bush/Cheney Nazi's they were hysterical and had no legitimate basis for their claim and they were actually doing what you are projecting onto Obama critics. Leftists are liars when they make this assertion as well. "Bush" didn't "launch" the war in Iraq, the United States Government did. The Congress, including the Democrat controlled Senate, authorized the war. That stands in contrast to Kennedy launching us into the unprovoked war of aggression against North Viet Nam without congressional approval and Bill Clitnon launching us into the unprovoked war of aggression against Serbia without congressional or United Nations approval. See, when leftists are so selective with their outrage, accusations of Nazi-like behavior aren't legitimate.You say that fascist regimes all started out with terror. Well, Obama has only been in office less than 100 days. Give him time. He has already used the power of his office to threaten individual members of the conservative media, he has intervened in the management of private industry, he has demagogued against the productive sector of our economy, he has plans to take over the health care industry, etc. etc. Given that his attack on Limbaugh was such an abysmal failure, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that his tactics will escalate in severity. Obama is just getting started. He now wants to subsidize newspapers. How long until he starts to control form and content? How long until he begins to replace editors and publishers? I know that it makes Democrats' fragile egos feel better that "he won" but it doesn't change the fact that he has already started us down a path that can be accurately described as fascism.
What do you think of this video?
http://tinyurl.com/o77xm7
Things being done openly and notoriously are troubling enough; don't delve into the abyss of fabricated claims of torture and abuse. We've had enough of that in the last 8 years.
FEMA concentration camps are a myth.
What is fascism? A short man on the balcony...ya gotta have that. Probably need a nice juicy scapegoat/boggyman with which to rally the masses. Hyperpatriotism...mindless, unreflective, brutish, total lack of concern for how your nation is perceived by others. Stolified, jingoistic national institutions. Glorification of another glorious day and age which probably never really existed, and sanctification of the folks who lived during the good ol' days...I dunno, are we there yet?
...oh, yeah, and non-stop bashing of the "cosmopolitan types" in your society....
Then there's that militarism thing....
You all desperately need to read "Liberal Fascism", by Jonah Goldberg. Then you wouldn't be quite so historically ignorant.
Fascism doesn't require death camps, or great public speakers. It requires a belief that the individual must be subordinated to the group, and that power should be in the hands of the government.
Which is to say, "fascist" or "progressive", it's all pretty much the same thing.
Hitler, El duce and Franco were Fascists....yup, they were the progressives of their day.....kinda like a European version of the Bull Moose party, I guess. And among the things that I "desperately" need to do, reading Jonah Goldberg is not one of them.
How is this helpful?
I'll tell you what's not particularly useful:
Using the special pleading logical fallacy to defend what is otherwise indefensible. Government control of industry is great IF it's done by non German Non Jew-hating non white people. WTF??
Megan is actually using the ANTI argument from Hitler. You just can't get more post-modern than that. According to Megan, "dragging the specter of Hitler into the conversation" is inherently non helpful unless it has something to do with antisemitism or mass murder. Bullshit.
Hitler's anti-smoking campaign was thoroughly collectivist and set the stage for later atrocities. Utilitarian arguments also were used to ban civilian guns, things that could have proved useful in preventing the very genocide that Megan and her ilk focus on almost exclusively whenever Nazism is brought up.
Genocide is the end. Collectivism is the means. Collectivism is the evil that both Hitler and Obama share, though obviously to differing degrees. Ignore that fact at your peril.
Hitler's anti-smoking campaign was thoroughly collectivist and set the stage for later atrocities.
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There you have it....Nazi Germany was one big nicotine fit. And I see where you're going with this.....Obama the smoker is just one lost Nicorette away from a genocidal rampage.
I take it from your glib reply that you don't have a more substantive criticism of my post. You attempt at misdirection is as naked as a...well, you get the idea.
How likely do you suppose it is that BHO is one school shooting away from implementing draconian gun control measures?
Here's what's wrong in your post: "Government control of industry is OK if it's done by non-Jew-hating people" is a reasonably true statement. (Similarly, "Baseball is OK if it's done by non-Jew-hating people", "Square dancing is OK if it's done by non-Jew-hating people," etc.) Government control of industry is generally inefficient and one wants to avoid it if possible, but there are other kinds of evils in the world too and sometime government control of industry, temporary if possible, is the lesser of several evils. You, however, tossed in "non-German" and "non-white" out of your own witches' brew of revealing resentments.
I take it from your glib reply that you don't have a more substantive criticism of my post.
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No, I feel my level of substance was just about appropriate for the little mish-mash of right wing talking points you threw up there......
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How likely do you suppose it is that BHO is one school shooting away from implementing draconian gun control measures?
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Zippo....Nada. That issue was decided by the SCOTUS. Somewhere Charles Whitman is smiling
Megan,
Could you please update this post with your preferred name for the economic system that describes where this increasing intervention seems to be leading?
The housing bubble began with the idiotic housing policy of the Clinton Administration: specifically HUD Secretaries Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo increasing the sub-prime percentage of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac portfolio to more than 50%, Franklin Raines deciding that Fannie would buy and hold mortgages, etc. It continued with loose monetary policy and the interference of Congressional Democrats with adequate oversight of Fannie and Freddie.
We now have power hungry Democrats "not letting a good crisis go to waste" by quadrupling the deficit that Obama so incessantly reminds us he inherited despite the fact that over borrowing got us into this mess in the first place.
As far as leadership that is "popular, legitimate and respected", compared to what? Obama's approval rating is lower than Bush's was at the same point in his presidency.* Respected? Hmmn. There were 58,000,000 Americans who didn't respect him enough to vote for him and the Rasmussen poll found that approximately 43% of Americans disapprove of Obama's performance (33% strongly). He isn't respected outside of the liberal echo chamber. Legitimate? Well, it's true that Democrats ginned up false claims that blacks were prevented from voting in Florida, that Jeb Bush created the butterfly ballot to fool senior voters and that Al Gore would have won a recount (not according to the media sponsored recount). Democrats also continue the lie that Al Gore "won the popular vote" depsite the fact that his approx. 500,000 vote margin of victory was less than one third of the margin of error nation wide. Yes, Democrats claimed that George Bush was illegitimate and threw eggs at his limo during his first inauguration. In contrast to the imaginary basis for Democrat claims of Bush's illegitimacy, many non-socialist Americans question Obama's legitimacy because he deliberately accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions from straw donors after turning his web site's security settings off and the media overtly and purposely did everything in its power to shield him from the scrutiny he so richly deserves.
Fascist? Several commenters have already explained how apposite that adjective is to Mr. Obama. After eight years of listening to Democrats hysterically and cluelessly accuse Bush of being an "extreme conservative", wailing about pre-emptive war (where were they when Clinton bombed Serbia for 73 days), Guantanamo (it's still open), torture (we still have extraordinary rendition and Obama refused to rule out enhanced interrogation) and holding terrorist suspects indefinitely (Elena Kagan said that's no problem), does anyone really expect Democrats to be taken seriously when they whine about Obama being accurately described as a fascist?
*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690358175013837.html
This is an interesting thread. Obviously Megan was right to mention Hitler, because rhetorically speaking this fella did not mean to imply any less a figure. Beyond that, this fella's ideas -- among them that socialism abolishes all money and prices -- appears to discount that, say, in the socialized healthcare system of Canada, of course "money" and "price" remain relevant in many nontrivial or semantic ways. If anything, certain prices -- such as fees paid to healthcare technology manufacturers -- may have political restrictions or settings, which is what this yokel describes as "fascism." At the same time, those fees certainly don't operate without market value consideration, so they're not socialist.
See how I've demonstated that Canada's plainly socialistic healthcare system has more in common with fascism than socialism, according this moron? He's an idiot. Have none of you figured that out? At least Megan did. I agree with el toro. "Collectivism" is what animates Obama's thinking; he would say that it's practically and morally better to bear some burdens collectively. That as we collectively run the country as Americans, we can collectively guarantee a relatively efficient level of baseline care for Americans, regardless of the personal inability of some to pay for what may be necessary healthcare visits.
That's what's ultimately at stake, and we all know it. Whining about what is socialism and fascism is, frankly, what the fools will be doing while the adults settle the question of where to lead the country. If you want to participate in that conversation, it'd be best to leave the boring rhetoric behind, because you're fooling nobody.
It seems that Megan's real problem is with Sheldon Richman's definition of fascism. Otherwise, what is the problem here? If the problem is that to the general public, fascism = Hitler and nothing else, then the answer is education, not to close our eyes and pretend otherwise.
By nationalizing a large part of the financial system; soon to nationalize a large part of the manufacturing base, including implementing large scale cap and trade on energy production and with plans to nationalize health care. The Obama administration is pointing us in the direction of fascism as laid out in the definition above.
You know the expression: If it walks like a duck...
Tell you what:
They can stop enacting fascist economic policies, and I'll stop accurately characterizing them.
Win, win for everybody.
Ok, fascism is thrown around way too loosely--Islamofascim was pretty stupid, my libertarian leaning thinking often gets taunts of
"fascist."
But the term is correct when we are talking about private industry controlled by the state. You say it is not that aspect of fascism which really bothers you--but the genocide. The totalitarian economic system was part and parcel of the whole deal--you know that--I hope.
Has trying to fit in with all your hip Obamiac friends, totally corrupted your belief in the importance of economic freedom?
Taunts with "fascism" are useless--but intelligent descriptions and discussions of an economic system that is going "fascist" is not only valid--it is essential. I think most people feel there is no coupling between civil liberties and economic liberty---hopefully you know better and can be a voice of reason and sanity.