Fascism Is as Fascism Does

[JakeStarkey]

Much of what you post, PC, becomes facile and superficial in your analysis.

You are right to be afraid of fascism and communism, and so you should be far right wing authoritarianism, which you appear to celebrate.

she's a caricature of herself. She's cried wolf so many times that people, RIGHTLY, write her rw, fear-mongering off

Scratch her, and one finds she is totalitarian beneath, just of the far right wing variety.

I think she is a Mises follower, which explains some of her delusional, erratic thinking.

 

[NYcarbineer]

As Tori Amos once said:

"...by the way I don't believe you're leaving cause me and Charles Manson like the same ice cream..."

So.......you are unaware of the close correspondence between Franklin Roosevelt and the fascist ruler of Italy?


Seems to be so very many things of which you are unaware.


Now, take notes:



11. Let's continue to remind you of how close Franklin Roosevelt and Il Duce were.

English and French commentators routinely depicted Roosevelt as akin to Mussolini. A more specific reason why, in 1933, the New Deal was often compared with Fascism was that with the help of a massive propaganda campaign, Italy had transitioned from a liberal free-market system to a state-run corporatist one.

And corporatism was considered by elitists and intellectuals as the perfect response to the collapse of the liberal free-market economy, as was the national self-sufficiency of the Stalinist Soviet Union. The National Recovery Administration was comparable to Mussolini’s corporatism as both had state control without actual expropriation of private property.




a. Mussolini wrote a book review of Roosevelt’s “Looking Forward,” in which he said “…[as] Roosevelt here calls his readers to battle, is reminiscent of the ways and means by which Fascism awakened the Italian people.”
Popolo d’Italia, July 7, 1933.


b. In 1934, Mussolini wrote a review of “New Frontiers,” by FDR’s Sec’y of Agriculture, later Vice-President, Henry Wallace:
“Wallace’s answer to what America wants is as follows: anything but a return to the free-market, i.e., anarchistic economy. Where is America headed? This book leaves no doubt that it is on the road to corporatism, the economic system of the current century.” Marco Sedda, Il politico, vol. 64, p. 263.




12. " As an economic system, fascism is SOCIALISM with a capitalist veneer. ... In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful COMPETITION, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary MARXISM, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie.

Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.....

.... Mussolini praised the New Deal as “boldly . . . interventionist in the field of economics,” and Roosevelt complimented Mussolini for his “honest purpose of restoring Italy” and acknowledged that he kept “in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.”

Also, Hugh Johnson, head of the National Recovery Administration, was known to carry a copy of Raffaello Viglione’s pro-Mussolini book, The Corporate State, with him, presented a copy to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, and, on retirement, paid tribute to the Italian dictator."
Fascism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty




So....it seems they had far more in common than their enjoyment of Gelato......you dope.

Would you like to know how many Americans died liberating Italy from Mussolini? Do you need that number?

Do you need to know who was Commander-in-Chief at the time? Do you need a link for that?

 

[NYcarbineer]

PC is so unrepresentative of American values and traditions that the mind boggles.

She is also an obvious failure as a professional blogger.

You are an obvious failure when it comes to cogent debates, Jake.

Direct us to a debate between you and Jake that you won on substance and merit.

 

[NYcarbineer]

We might as well be arguing that Ronald Reagan's military buildup was meant to copy Mussolini.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Any who have studied the history of the last century understand how very similar the economic policies of Mussolini and of Franklin Roosevelt were.

Economic policies?
....it goes well beyond economic policies. In many ways, elites desired this nation to mirror Fascist Italy....

The authoritarian designs of Italian government structures were also attractive to Roosevelt, as a way of symbolizing the strength of all-powerful state authority.

"The architecture of the three regimes in terms of ‘monumentality,’ the need of people to create symbols that reveal their inner life, their actions, and their social conceptions. The similarity of the architecture of National Socialism, of Fascism, and of that of the New Deal is a reminder of the fact that during the Great Depression, capitalism’s period of crisis, all three philosophies rejected modernism and turned, instead, to monumentality, a backward-looking, neoclassical architecture."
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, “Three New Deals”





1. "...structures that bear actual fascist symbols—those of the United States government, no less. Bizarre as it seems, many federal buildings in Washington were designed prominently with fasces, the emblem of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s twentieth-century regime. Even more surprisingly, these structures were erected in the 1920s and 1930s—just as Mussolini was ornamenting Italy’s government buildings with the same symbol.

2. The bas-reliefs on the flagpoles at the Supreme Court, done by the architect Charles Gilbert in 1935, also feature fasces as one of seven symbols of justice’s manifold attributes.

3. The federal fasces have oddly escaped the notice of modern observers, but their story sheds light on the often curious histories of cultural symbols. How did the fasces get there? Stranger still, how did they escape effacement during our mid-century war with the Italian fascist regime?
And how should we think about them today?




4. When he came to power in Italy in 1922, Mussolini resurrected the symbol and employed it to represent the strength and unity of the Italian state. Political fascism made physical power and the ability to impose order central to its ideology, and so the term “fascism” quickly became synonymous with authoritarian regimes.
Mussolini made the fasces symbol almost as common in Italy as the Nazi swastika became in Hitler’s Germany.

5. American architects knew of Mussolini’s grandiose building projects, and some publicly lauded them. Charles Gilbert, who designed the Supreme Court building, met Mussolini on a 1927 visit to Italy to procure marble for the project. No doubt Gilbert saw the countless fasces in Italian architecture. He was also favorably impressed by Il Duce himself.

6. But given the prominence of the fasces in Mussolini’s propaganda, [the architect] must have been aware that he wasn’t simply using ancient iconography. The architects working on the federal buildings of the 1930s were also extremely conscious of the political symbolism they employed.

They often looked to the socialist realism of Europe for inspiration.

The Federal Trade Commission building, for instance, completed in 1938, is adorned with socialist-realist reliefs of brawny workers engaged in various industries.




7. Today, it might seem improbable that American government projects would decorate themselves with symbols of European fascism, whatever the enthusiasms of architects. But at the time, Mussolini was widely admired by Americans for getting Italy back on its feet.
“I’m pretty high on that bird,” humorist Will Rogers said of Il Duce after visiting Italy and interviewing Mussolini. “Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government—that is, if you have the right dictator.”

The rise of fascism appeared to pose no direct threat to U.S. interests, and many saw it as a counterweight to scarier European movements. It was Bolshevism without the collectivization; Nazism without the racism."
When Fasces Aren't Fascist by Eugene Kontorovich, City Journal Spring 2014






" Political fascism made physical power and the ability to impose order central to its ideology, and so the term “fascism” quickly became synonymous with authoritarian regimes."

The more things change....the more they remain the same.

In many ways, communist and fascist movements had opposing ideologies but both ended up being repressive political systems based on the control of a single leader. While communism is based around a theory of economic equality, fascism is based around the glory of the state and strength displayed through violence and conquest. Both communism and fascism originated in Europe and gained popularity in the early to mid 20th century..


pretty much shot down your analogy and reasoning doesn't it? .... assuming you were capable of reasoning.

Obama isn't a single leader unless you rule out the Republicans in Congress which you can't.

1. Nazi...national socialism....based on nationalism and/or race...
Communism....international socialism.

2. The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.
Ayn Rand.




a. And, another based on statism, big government: Liberalis/Progressivism/ whatever you choose to call it today.



3. "Given his impetuous temperament, it comes as no surprise that Roosevelt had little regard for the limits the Constitution imposed on the presidency. In the United Mine Workers strike in 1902, Roosevelt threatened to order the army to run the coal mines.

Well known is TR's outburst, when told the Constitution did not permit the confiscation of private property: "To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!" Less well known is that at one point TR summoned General John M. Schofield, instructing him: "I bid you pay no heed to any other authority, no heed to a writ from a judge, or anything else except my commands."

Roosevelt's disregard for the Constitution carried over to his conduct of foreign affairs. Woods explains in detail the way in which Roosevelt in 1905 arrogated to himself the power to reach a binding agreement with the Dominican Republic to administer that country's customs collections. The Constitution clearly requires that treaties be submitted to the Senate for its approval, but Roosevelt at first refused to submit the agreement to the Senate. Faced with protests, he at last did submit the treaty; but when the Senate did not act on it, Roosevelt was not deterred.

Exasperated, Roosevelt simply defied the senate, drawing up what we would today call an executive agreement, the foreign policy equivalent of an executive order. (p. 141)
The Mises Review: 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.




Leads right up to FDR, doesn't it......

Hitler eliminated the 'socialist' wing of the Nazi party on the Night of the Long Knives.

 

[TemplarKormac]

PC is so unrepresentative of American values and traditions that the mind boggles.

She is also an obvious failure as a professional blogger.

You are an obvious failure when it comes to cogent debates, Jake.

Direct us to a debate between you and Jake that you won on substance and merit.

It just happened here in this thread. Jake had his tail whipped. He knows it.

Now please direct me to any argument you may have on this subject.

 

[TemplarKormac]

In many ways, communist and fascist movements had opposing ideologies but both ended up being repressive political systems based on the control of a single leader. While communism is based around a theory of economic equality, fascism is based around the glory of the state and strength displayed through violence and conquest. Both communism and fascism originated in Europe and gained popularity in the early to mid 20th century..


pretty much shot down your analogy and reasoning doesn't it? .... assuming you were capable of reasoning.

Obama isn't a single leader unless you rule out the Republicans in Congress which you can't.

1. Nazi...national socialism....based on nationalism and/or race...
Communism....international socialism.

2. The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.
Ayn Rand.




a. And, another based on statism, big government: Liberalis/Progressivism/ whatever you choose to call it today.



3. "Given his impetuous temperament, it comes as no surprise that Roosevelt had little regard for the limits the Constitution imposed on the presidency. In the United Mine Workers strike in 1902, Roosevelt threatened to order the army to run the coal mines.

Well known is TR's outburst, when told the Constitution did not permit the confiscation of private property: "To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!" Less well known is that at one point TR summoned General John M. Schofield, instructing him: "I bid you pay no heed to any other authority, no heed to a writ from a judge, or anything else except my commands."

Roosevelt's disregard for the Constitution carried over to his conduct of foreign affairs. Woods explains in detail the way in which Roosevelt in 1905 arrogated to himself the power to reach a binding agreement with the Dominican Republic to administer that country's customs collections. The Constitution clearly requires that treaties be submitted to the Senate for its approval, but Roosevelt at first refused to submit the agreement to the Senate. Faced with protests, he at last did submit the treaty; but when the Senate did not act on it, Roosevelt was not deterred.

Exasperated, Roosevelt simply defied the senate, drawing up what we would today call an executive agreement, the foreign policy equivalent of an executive order. (p. 141)
The Mises Review: 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.




Leads right up to FDR, doesn't it......

Hitler eliminated the 'socialist' wing of the Nazi party on the Night of the Long Knives.

Yet the Nazis referred to themselves a socialists. They replaced a moderate version of socialism with a more extreme one.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Here's more for you Jake:

The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit -- i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In the op*posite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in the world.​

--The Fascist Doctrine, Benito Mussolini, 1932

Mussolini* - THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM

Italian Exceptionalism? A Shining Italian City on a Hill?

Did Ronald Reagan borrow from the above?

 

[NYcarbineer]

1. "...structures that bear actual fascist symbols—those of the United States government, no less. Bizarre as it seems, many federal buildings in Washington were designed prominently with fasces, the emblem of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s twentieth-century regime. Even more surprisingly, these structures were erected in the 1920s and 1930s—just as Mussolini was ornamenting Italy’s government buildings with the same symbol.

and where did Mussolini get the symbolic fasces from??? Ancient Rome..it is a symbol of authority..

And....your point, beside the one on your head?


Would you like to excuse the swastika based on an earlier connection, too?



Here's a novel idea: comment on the truth of everything I've posted.

There are fasces on the Lincoln Memorial. Which liberal do you blame that on?

 

[TemplarKormac]

Here's more for you Jake:

The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit -- i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In the op*posite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in the world.​

--The Fascist Doctrine, Benito Mussolini, 1932

Mussolini* - THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM

Italian Exceptionalism? A Shining Italian City on a Hill?

Did Ronald Reagan borrow from the above?

Are you throwing strawmen at me? What does Reagan have to do with FDR or Mussolini?

 

[NYcarbineer]

[

Yet the Nazis referred to themselves a socialists. They replaced a moderate version of socialism with a more extreme one.

So? Saddam Hussein's elite troops referred to themselves as the Republican Guard. What does that say about Ronald Reagan?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Here's more for you Jake:

Mussolini* - THE DOCTRINE OF FASCISM

Italian Exceptionalism? A Shining Italian City on a Hill?

Did Ronald Reagan borrow from the above?

Are you throwing strawmen at me? What does Reagan have to do with FDR or Mussolini?

What does FDR have to do with Mussolini? Other than ultimately being responsible for his being deposed and killed?

 

[TemplarKormac]

[

Yet the Nazis referred to themselves a socialists. They replaced a moderate version of socialism with a more extreme one.

So? Saddam Hussein's elite troops referred to themselves as the Republican Guard. What does that say about Ronald Reagan?

You're being facetious. Sarcastic. How can you possibly derive that the American Republican party had any link to Hussein's Republican guard? Just because they have the same name? How facile.

You have no real intent of debunking the OP, just launching a random crusade against Reagan in an attempt to derail the thread. You will get no further responses from me.

 

[NYcarbineer]

If conservatives think Social Security is a product of Mussolini style fascism, maybe they should run on that theme;

I'm sure that would make it much easier to end Grandma's monthly checks.

 

[NYcarbineer]

[

Yet the Nazis referred to themselves a socialists. They replaced a moderate version of socialism with a more extreme one.

So? Saddam Hussein's elite troops referred to themselves as the Republican Guard. What does that say about Ronald Reagan?

You're being facetious. Sarcastic. How can you possibly derive that the American Republican party had any link to Hussein's Republican guard? Just because they have the same name? How facile.

You have no real intent of debunking the OP, just launching a random crusade against Reagan in an attempt to derail the thread. You will get no further responses from me.

To prove how wrong you are. Good, you've surrendered again.

How can you derive that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security have anything to do with National Socialism?

 

[TemplarKormac]

Italian Exceptionalism? A Shining Italian City on a Hill?

Did Ronald Reagan borrow from the above?

Are you throwing strawmen at me? What does Reagan have to do with FDR or Mussolini?

What does FDR have to do with Mussolini? Other than ultimately being responsible for his being deposed and killed?

He himself expressed admiration for Mussolini, therefore on that principle the admirer tends to model himself after those he admires.

 

[Moonglow]

[

Yet the Nazis referred to themselves a socialists. They replaced a moderate version of socialism with a more extreme one.

So? Saddam Hussein's elite troops referred to themselves as the Republican Guard. What does that say about Ronald Reagan?

You're being facetious. Sarcastic. How can you possibly derive that the American Republican party had any link to Hussein's Republican guard? Just because they have the same name? How facile.

You have no real intent of debunking the OP, just launching a random crusade against Reagan in an attempt to derail the thread. You will get no further responses from me.

Thank God! One less character assassin is enough...when it comes to the rwer's myopic threads trying to defame FDR but never doing it to their political parties presidents..even the really bad ones...

 

[Moonglow]

Are you throwing strawmen at me? What does Reagan have to do with FDR or Mussolini?

What does FDR have to do with Mussolini? Other than ultimately being responsible for his being deposed and killed?

He himself expressed admiration for Mussolini, therefore on that principle the admirer tends to model himself after those he admires.

The American people loved Roosevelt, I always believed, because he was willing to try anything, if enough people thought it might work to relieve the suffering of ordinary Americans. The New Deal historian, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., never quite understood my arguments about Smoot-Hawley and the 1929 Crash, but I believe he has been correct in arguing these last fifty years that FDR's New Deal saved the country from more radical experiments in fascism or communism. The cards dealt out in the New Deal were pieces of fascist, communist, Keynesian and monetarist ideas, plus a sustained commitment to a revival of free trade under the reciprocal trade agreements worked out by Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

In any case, I suggest we all forget about the Edmund Morris biography of Reagan. He didn't have a clue to what was going on in this country over the lifetime of Ronald Reagan -- which a biographer would have to understand in the first instance. I'm not saying a British historian is incapable of understanding Reagan, but it will take a while before all historians catch up with the 20th century. There isn't one yet who understands what happened in 1929.

Reagan, FDR and Mussolini

 

[NYcarbineer]

Yes. Roosevelt was a fascist dictator. Whew! We barely survived his reign of terror!

Glad you understand that. Be patient ... you're moving in the "right" direction.

As you and I know, Franklin Roosevelt changed the relationship between people and government.....

...along the same lines as Mussolini did in Italy.


And, a couple of other names come to mind.

FDR also changed the relationship between Mussolini and the Italian people.

 

[NYcarbineer]

[

Yet the Nazis referred to themselves a socialists. They replaced a moderate version of socialism with a more extreme one.

So? Saddam Hussein's elite troops referred to themselves as the Republican Guard. What does that say about Ronald Reagan?

You're being facetious. Sarcastic. How can you possibly derive that the American Republican party had any link to Hussein's Republican guard? Just because they have the same name? How facile.

You have no real intent of debunking the OP, just launching a random crusade against Reagan in an attempt to derail the thread. You will get no further responses from me.

Ironically you accuse me of absurd comparisons when the most absurd comparison is in the OP.