Fascism - Wikiquote

Fascism - Wikiquote
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We Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own
ideology
and to enforce it with all the
energy
of which we are capable. ~
Benito Mussolini
Fascism
/ˈfæʃɪzəm/
) is a form of
far-right
authoritarian
ultranationalism
characterized by
dictatorial
power, forcible
suppression
of
opposition
, and strong
regimentation
of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements
emerged in Italy
during
World War I
, before
spreading to other European countries
. Opposed to
liberalism
Marxism
, and
anarchism
, fascism is placed on the
far-right
within the traditional
left–right spectrum
Alphabetized
by author or source
See also
External links
edit
Fascism emphasizes
action
rather than
theory
, and fascist theoretical writings are always
weak
Hitler
's
Nazism
had rather more theory, though its intellectual quality is appalling. ~
Ian Adams
Few people, unless they are familiar with the history of fascism, understand that people as ordinary as you and I, and our friends and neighbors, might bring down democracy if the going got tough enough. But
we
are the people who, driven by fear and cuddling in our own self-righteousness, could create the wave that would lift the monsters among us to power. And once the monsters acquire the powers of the state, their evil explodes. ~
Bob Altemeyer
The common elements of fascism — extreme
nationalism
social Darwinism
, the leadership principle,
elitism
anti-liberalism
, anti-
egalitarianism
, anti-
democracy
intolerance
, glorification of
war
, the supremacy of the
state
and
anti-intellectualism
— together form a rather loose doctrine.
Fascism emphasises action rather than
theory
, and fascist theoretical writings are always
weak
Hitler
's
Nazism
had rather more theory, though its intellectual quality is appalling.
This greater theoretical content is mostly concerned with
race
, and it was Hitler's racial theories that distinguished Nazism from
Italian fascism
Ian Adams
, in
Political Ideology Today
(1993)
Fear
and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism,
eros
belongs mainly to
democracy
Theodor Adorno
Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Daniel Levinson
, and
Nevitt Sanford
in
The Authoritarian Personality
(1950), p. 976.
Sometimes, when I tell people that I study
authoritarian personalities
, they say things like, "Oh, you mean
neo-Nazis
and the
Klan
." When these people are
psychologists
at conventions or the
president
of
my university
, I say "Right," because I know they will probably instantly forget whatever I reply. But I am more forthcoming with others. Most people seem surprised when I say, "No, I study normal folks, not Nazis."
Few people, unless they are familiar with the history of fascism, understand that people as ordinary as you and I, and our friends and neighbors, might bring down democracy if the going got tough enough. But
we
are the people who, driven by fear and cuddling in our own self-righteousness, could create the wave that would lift the monsters among us to power. And once the monsters acquire the powers of the state, their evil explodes.
Can one credibly talk about fascism in the
North American
context as we approach the year 2000? Is it even remotely possible that the horrors of
Nazi Germany
could someday occur in
Canada
or the
United States
? When I talk about prefascist personalities, do I seriously propose that many North Americans could act like
Hitler
Himmler
Hoess
, and so on?
[...]
although the Nazis did monsterous things,
it is a mistake to think that only ardent fascists and
psychopathic
killers became Nazis.
Adolf Eichmann
struck some as a bland person, not particularly
anti-Semitic
, who basically wanted to advance his career and so worked hard to impress his superiors. His evil was "banal." I can also imagine that many of those who made the arrests and transported the victims to the death camps would have been described as "good, decent people" by their families and neighbors. So would many of those who ran the slave labor camps in which hundreds of thousands of prisoners perished and maybe even the
SS
soldiers who
massacred
whole
villages
. You can be an ordinary Joe, or
Lieutenant Calley
, and still do terrible things. One of the first things Americans learned about the militias, in an
Associated Press
story dated April 27, 1995, is that they were "ordinary people who feel pushed."
Bob Altemeyer
The Authoritarian Specter
(1996). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 305
Most people believe the
twentieth century
was defined by the
death
struggle
of
communism
versus
capitalism
, and that fascism was but a hiccup. Today we
know
better.
Communism
was a
fool
's errand, the followers of
Marx
gone from this
Earth
; but the followers of
Hitler
abound and thrive. Hitler, however, had one great disadvantage. He lived in a time when fascism, like a
virus
, like the
AIDS
virus, required a strong host in order to spread.
Germany
was that host, but strong as it was, Germany couldn't prevail. The
world
was too big. Fortunately, the world has changed. Global
communication
cable TV
, the
internet
. Today the world is smaller, and the virus no longer needs a strong host in order to spread. This virus is airborne. ... One more thing; let no man call us
crazy
. They called Hitler crazy, but Hitler wasn't crazy. He was
stupid
. You don't fight
Russia
and
America
. You get Russia and America to fight each other, and destroy each other.
Paul Attanasio
and Daniel Pyne in words for the character Richard Dressler in
The Sum of All Fears
(2002)
edit
Fascism itself, the
mystery
of its appearance and of its collective
energy
, with which no interpretation has been able to come to grips (neither the
Marxist
one of political manipulation by dominant classes, nor the
Reichian
one of the sexual repression of the masses, nor the
Deleuzian
one of despotic
paranoia
), can already be interpreted as the "irrational" excess of mythic and political referentials, the mad intensification of collective value (
blood
race
people
, etc.), the reinjection of
death
, of a "political aesthetic of death" at a time when the process of the disenchantment of
value
and of
collective
values, of the
rational
secularization
and unidimensionalization of all life, of the
operationalization
of all social and individual
life
already makes itself
strongly
felt in the West. Yet again, everything seems to escape this catastrophe of value, this neutralization and pacification of life. Fascism is a resistance to this, even if it is a profound, irrational,
demented
resistance, it would not have tapped into this massive energy if it hadn't been a resistance to something much worse. Fascism's
cruelty
, its
terror
is on the level of
this other
terror
that is the confusion of the real and the rational,
which deepened in the West, and it is a response to that.
Jean Baudrillard
Simulacra and Simulation
(1981), p. 48
The [Italian Fascist] regime had created an imaginary
Spartan
country, in which all
men
had to make believe they were heroic
soldiers
, all
women
Roman
matrons, all
children
Balilla
(the Genoa street urchin who started a revolt against the
Austrian
garrison in 1746 by throwing one stone). This was done by means of
slogans
flags
, stirring
speeches
from balconies, military music, mass meetings, parades, dashing uniforms, medals,
hoaxes
, and constant
distortions
of reality.
The
Italians
woke up too late from their artificial dream
, those still alive, that is, hungry, desperate, discredited, the object of derision,
cornuti e mazziati,
or "cuckolded and beaten up," governed as in the past by contemptuous foreigners in a country of smoking ruins and decaying corpses, in which most things detachable had been stolen and women raped.
Luigi Barzini
, in
The Europeans
(1983), p. 172
In spite of
Bolshevism
's and fascism's different attitudes, above all,
private property
and
nationalism
, both fascists and
antifascists
acknowledged common sources and resulting similarities between Bolshevism and fascism, including their
revolutionary
ideology
, their
elitism
, their disdain for
bourgeois
values, and their
totalitarian
ambitions.
Cyprian P. Blamires, editor,
World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1
, Santa Barbara: CA, ABC-CLIO, Inc. (2006) p.p. 95-96.
Italian fascism
's chief claim to political creativity lay in the construction between 1925 and 1939 of the
Corporate State
, a system purporting to be revolutionary yet socially unifying, to guarantee progress and
social justice
by bringing employers,
managers
and
workers
together within a legally constituted framework.
Martin Blinkhorn
Mussolini and Fascist Italy
, London/New York, Routledge, (2001) p. 29
This reminded me of what
Ignazio Silone
said in 1945 soon after he returned to Italy from his
Zurich
exile: "The Fascism of tomorrow will never say 'I am Fascism.' It will say: 'I am
anti-Fascism
.'"
François Bondy
, "European Notebook",
Encounter
, vol. 47 (1976), p. 51.
The
Nazis
were only one among a number of German rightist groups to receive unreliable sympathy and subsidy from
Rome
. During that decade, figures on the right, impressed by talk of a fascist philosophy, or by events in
Italy
, or, most significantly, by glad tidings of the routing of the
Bolshevik
devil, took to borrowing the word 'fascist' from Italian and deploying it in their own language, with somewhat uncertain effect. Among them were Miss
Rotha Linthorn-Orman
, a spinster and Field-Master's granddaughter, and Brigadier-General
R.G.D Blakeney
, once the manager of the
Egyptian
state railways and now her rival at the head of the '
British Fascisti
'.
R.J.B. Bosworth
, "Italian Fascism and Models of Fascism" in
The Italian Dictatorship: Problems & Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini & Fascism
(1998), pp.206-207
People
have their fingers broken.
To be insulted by these fascists
Is so degrading and it's no
game
David Bowie
, in "It's No Game (part II)" from
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
(1980)
Those who are
against Fascism
without being
against capitalism
, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the
butcher
washes his hands before weighing the
meat
. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.
Bertholt Brecht
, "The Skill To Manipulate Truth as a Weapon"
Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic
(1964)
The rout of fascism, in which the
Soviet Union
played the decisive role, generated a mighty tide of socio-political changes which swept across the globe.
Leonid Brezhnev
, as quoted in
Selected Speeches and Writings
(1980) edited by Mikhail Andreevich Suslov.
A number of features of
Bolshevism
and
Nazism
/Fascism did show striking similarities, including their
revolutionary
action and
proletarian
nation theories, leadership principles,
one-party dictatorship
, and party armies.
Hitler
publicly acknowledge his debt to the
Bolsheviks
when, for instance, proposing to make
Munich
‘the
Moscow
of our movement.’
Cyprian P. Blamires, editor,
World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1
, Santa Barbara: CA, ABC-CLIO, Inc. (2006) p. 96
edit
Fascism is an act of
contempt
, in fact.
Inversely, every form of contempt, if it intervenes in politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, Fascism.
It must be added that Fascism cannot be anything else but an expression of contempt without denying itself.
Junger
drew the conclusion, from his own principles, that it was better to be
criminal
than
bourgeois
Hitler
, who was endowed with less literary talent but, on this occasion, with more coherence, knew that to be either one or the other was a matter of complete indifference, from the moment that one ceased to believe in anything but success. Thus he authorized himself to be both at the same time.
Albert Camus
The Rebel
(1951)
Fascism, with its violence, gets rid of everything
: it attacks
universities
, it closes them and crushes them; it attacks
intellectuals
, represses them and
persecutes
them; it attacks
political parties
; it attacks
trade union organizations
; it attacks all mass and cultural organizations. Therefore,
nothing is more violent, more retrograde and more illegal
than fascism.
Fidel Castro
Speech (2 December 1971)
Capitalist and
imperialist
countries created the conditions for the rise of fascism in the world.
Fidel Castro
Speech (8 May 1975)
What was fascism in Italy, in Germany? The exaltation of
racial prejudices
. Instead of fighting racial prejudice, which is what a revolution does, fascism exalts
prejudice
and turns it into hatred.
Fidel Castro
Speech pronounced at the centenary of the Baragua protest (15 March 1978)
Fascism in Italy brought together disparate social forces from a wide range of political backgrounds (socialists, anarchists, revolutionary syndicalists, clerical Catholics, nationalists, atheist republicans, former monarchist officers), united by their discontent with the agitation of workers and peasants and the peace treaty (
Versailles Peace Treaty
of 1919 at the end of the First World War) . There was also a lack of serious programmatic elaboration because fascism originated as a street movement organised by squadrist actions and “punitive expeditions” carried out in retaliation against leagues, chambers of labour, socialist sections and newspapers.
Umberto Cerroni
Il pensiero politico del Novecento
, Il sapere, Tascabili Economici Newton, Roma, 1995.
ISBN 88-7983-971-3
. (chap. 3, p. 36)
They
tolerated that
Nazism
before it was inflicted on them, ... they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it
, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.
Aimé Césaire
Discourse on Colonialism
(1955), p. 36
What a man! I have lost my heart! ... If I were
Italian
, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of
Leninism
. ... Your movement has rendered a service to the whole world. The greatest fear that ever tormented every
Democratic
or
Socialist
leader was that of being outbid or surpassed by some other leader more extreme than himself. It has been said that a continual movement to the
Left
, a kind of fatal landslide toward the abyss, has been the character of all revolutions. Italy has shown that there is a way to combat subversive forces.
Winston Churchill
about
Benito Mussolini
and
Italian Fascism
, in a press statement from
Rome
(20 January 1927), quoted in
Churchill by Himself : The Definitive Collection of Quotations
(2011) ed., Richard Langworth, p. 169.
Italy has shown that there is a way of fighting the subversive forces which can rally the masses of the people, properly led, to value and wish to defend the honour and stability of stabilized society. She has provided the necessary antidote to the
Russian
poison. Hereafter no great nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means of protection against the cancerous growth of
Bolshevism
Winston Churchill
, in a press statement from
Rome
(20 January 1927), as quoted in
Introduction: A Political-Biographical Sketch
by
Tariq Ali
in
Class War Conservatism and Other Essays
(2015) by
Ralph Miliband
, with date of quote given in
Go Betweens for Hitler
by Karina Urbach.
It [fascism] is not a sign-post which would direct us here, for I firmly believe that our long experienced democracy will be able to preserve a
parliamentary system
of
government
with whatever modifications may be necessary from both extremes of arbitrary rule.
Winston Churchill
, speech to the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union (17 February 1933), quoted in Martin Gilbert,
Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939
(London: Minerva, 1990), p. 457
Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism . . . As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world into more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their destruction.
Winston Churchill
The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm
, Mariner Books (1985) pp. 13-14. First published in 1948.
edit
Despite all the merely verbal declarations to the contrary, the membership, content, and political tactics of the
Falange
are in open opposition to the national revolution.
Santiago Montero Díaz, resigning from affiliation with the Falange, as quoted in
Falange : A History of Spanish Fascism,
Stanley G. Payne
(1961) p. 47
Whoever does not fight the
reactionary
measures of the
bourgeoisie
and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages, is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory.
Georgi Dimitrov
, "The Working Class against Fascism", July 1935 speech before
the Congress of the Communist International
Fascism is able to attract the masses because it makes a
demagogic
appeal to their
most urgent needs and demands
. Fascism not only inflames their
prejudices
that are deeply ingrained in the masses,
but also
plays on
the better sentiments of the masses, on
their sense of
justice
, and sometimes even on their
revolutionary
traditions
Georgi Dimitrov
, "The Working Class against Fascism", July 1935 speech before
the Congress of the Communist International
Fascism begins the moment a
ruling class
, fearing the people may use their political
democracy
to gain
economic democracy
, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its
power
of
exploitation
and special
privilege
Tommy Douglas
, as quoted in
Straight Through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Just Society
(Harper and Collins: 1995), p. 243.
I am against
Franco
and fascism generally. My reasons are that I believe that
fascism means a lack of
intellectual freedom
, a strongly
militaristic
and
repressive
social control
joined
seemingly
with
the continuance and strengthening of
false religious, racial and economic ideologies, and
generally speaking,
the
antithesis
of any hope for equitable treatment
which other forms of government at least pretend to offer the individual.
Theodore Dreiser
, in
Writers Take Sides; Letters About the War in Spain from 418 American authors
by
League of American Writers
, 1938. Also quoted in
Voices Against Tyranny: Writing of the Spanish Civil War
by John Miller; New York : Scribner, 1986.
Fascism is the stage reached after
communism
has proved an
illusion
, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.
Peter Drucker
The End of Economic Man: The Study of the New Totalitarians
, New York: NY, The John Day Company (1939) pp. 245-246.
Fascism and
Communism
represented the urge of the
lower middle class
to complete the
French Revolution
—which had signalized the victory of the '
Third Estate
' over the
Church
, the
monarchy
, and the
feudal
aristocracy
—by destroying, in turn, the privileges of the new
capitalist
class brought into being by the
Industrial Revolution
Vera Micheles Dean
Europe in Retreat
, New York: NY, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (1939 revised edition) p. 87.
Fascism appeals alike to those elements among the younger minded
middle class
who are
conservative
by temperament and strongly
nationalist
in spirit, and to those rarer and more dynamic elements who, naturally
revolutionary
in their outlook, have been disappointed and exasperated by the failure of all leadership from the left to approach any fulfilment of their aspiration.
"James Drennan",
William Edward David Allen
BUF: Oswald Mosley and British Fascism
John Murray
, (1934). Also quoted in
Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism
. Stephen Dorril, Viking, 2006 (p.247).
edit
We observe that
nothing
creates fascists like the threat of
freedom
. ~
Roger Ebert
We observe that nothing creates fascists like the threat of
freedom
Roger Ebert
, in his
review
of
Pleasantville
in
Chicago Sun-Times
(1 October 1998)
Stalinism
is worse than fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, immoral, anti-democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple, ... better described as superfascist.
Max Eastman
, as quoted in
The Road to Serfdom,
F.A. Hayek, New York: NY Routledge (2005) p. 28. First published in 1944.
Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away
imperialism
from fascism and you still have Franco and
Salazar
. Take away
colonialism
and you still have the
Balkan
fascism of the
Ustashes
. Add to the
Italian fascism
a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated
Mussolini
) and you have
Ezra Pound
. Add a cult of
Celtic mythology
and the
Grail
mysticism
(completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus,
Julius Evola
Umberto Eco
, "Ur-Fascism" (indicating "eternal fascism"), in
The New York Review of Books
(22 June 1995)
Ur-Fascism
is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easily for us, if there appeared on the scene somebody saying "I want to re-open
Auschwitz
, I want the
Blackshirts
to parade again in the Italian squares".
Life is not that simple.
Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises.
Our
duty
is to uncover it and point the finger at any of its new instances — every day and in every part of the world.
Umberto Eco
, "
Ur-Fascism
" (indicating "eternal fascism"), in
The New York Review of Books
(22 June 1995)
edit
There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its
symbol
, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and
self-righteous
brutality, into social as well as international
war
. It means
change
without
hope
. Our immediate
duty
… our immediate duty is to stop it. ~
E. M. Forster
Fascist militia, they said. Yes. But at the level of the individual and human rights what is fascism but colonialism at the very heart of traditionally colonialist countries?
Frantz Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth
, trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2004. (p. 48).
I most sincerely wish to go on record as being unalterably opposed to
Francisco Franco
and fascism, to all violations of the legal government and outrages against the people of
Republican
Spain
William Faulkner
, 1938, quoted in 'Frederick Robert Karl,
William Faulkner, American writer:a biography'. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989. (p. 630).
There is
fascism, leading only into the blackness
which it has chosen as its symbol,
into smartness and yapping out of orders, and
self-righteous
brutality
, into
social
as well as international
war
It means
change
without
hope
. Our immediate duty — in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub —
our immediate duty is to stop it.
E. M. Forster
, "Notes on the Way",
Time and Tide
Magazine (10 June 1934)' reprinted in
The Prince's Tale and Other Uncollected Writings
(1998), London, Andre Deutsch.
The commonly accepted theory that fascism originated in the conspiracy of the great
industrialists
to capture the state will not hold. It originated on the
Left
. Primarily it gets its first impulses in the decadent or corrupt forms of
socialism
—from among those erstwhile socialists who, wearying of that struggle, have turned first to syndicalism and then to becoming saviors of capitalism, by adapting the devices of socialism and syndicalism to the capitalist state.
John T Flynn
As We Go Marching
, New York: NY, Doubleday, 1944; repreint: New York NY, Free Life Edition, 1973, p. 68
Fascism is a leftist product—a corrupt and diseased offshoot of leftist agitation.
John T. Flynn
As We Go Marching
, New York: NY, Doubleday, 1944; reprint: New York, NY, Free Life Edition, 1973, p. 68
Fascism, since that is the word that is used, fascism presents, wherever it manifests itself, characteristics which are varied to the extent that countries and national temperaments vary. It is essentially a defensive reaction of the organism, a manifestation of the desire to live, of the desire not to die, which at certain times seizes a whole people. So each people reacts in its own way, according to its conception of life. Our rising, here, has a
Spanish
meaning! What can it have in common with
Hitlerism
, which was, above all, a reaction against the state of things created by the defeat, and by the abdication and the despair that followed it?
Francisco Franco
, interview with
Henri Massis
, 1938.. Quoted in Massis's book
Chefs
, Paris,Plon 1939.Also quoted in Richard Griffiths,
An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism.
London :
Duckworth Publishing
, 2000.
If fascism could be defeated in debate, I assure you that it would never have happened, neither in Germany, nor in Italy, nor anywhere else.
Franz Frison,
Irving Debate Protest
Fascism,
Nazism
and
Stalinism
have in common that they offered the atomized individual a new refuge and security.
These systems are the culmination of
alienation
. The
individual
is made to feel powerless and insignificant, but taught to project all of his human powers into the figure of the
leader
, the state, the "fatherland," to whom he has to submit and whom he has to
worship
. He escapes from
freedom
and into a new
idolatry
. All the achievements of
individuality
and
reason
, from the late
Middle Ages
to the
nineteenth century
are sacrificed on the altars of the new idols. ... built on the most flagrant
lies
, both with regard to their programs and to their leaders.
Erich Fromm
The Sane Society
New York, NY, Rinehart & Company (1955) p. 208
edit
Fascism is a
religion
of the state. ~
Jonah Goldberg
The core mobilizing
myth
of fascism which conditions its
ideology
propaganda
, style of politics and actions is the
vision
of the
nation
's imminent rebirth from decadence. ~
Roger Griffin
This machine kills fascists
. ~
Woody Guthrie
Fascism never served the interests of
Italian
business
. . . there is no credible evidence that Fascism controlled the nation's economy for the benefit of the 'possessing classes.'
A. James Gregor
The Search for Neofascism: The Use and Abuse of Social Science
, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 7.
Fascism is the
cult
of organised
murder
, invented by the arch-enemies of
society
. It tends to
destroy
civilization
and revert man to his most
barbarous
state.
Mussolini
and
Hitler
might well be called the
devils
of an age, for they are playing
hell
with civilization.
Marcus Garvey
Authors take Sides on the Spanish War
(1937)
The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but not above all for others — those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after.
Giovanni Gentile
in
The Doctrine of Fascism
, signed and approved by
Benito Mussolini
in 1932; sometimes misattributed to Mussolini.
Fascism begins with the
rhetoric
of
dehumanization
humiliation
, and
reification
, right?
It starts with the language of
brutality
, which it
normalizes
. It legitimates
hatred
and
racism
and
violence
. It views certain groups through
rhetoric
as enemies
of the American people.
It operates off of the rhetoric of
war
anti-intellectualism
, and
white supremacy
. It operates off of the language of disposability.
That language doesn't just simply normalize increasingly the notions of
white nationalism
, white supremacy, racism, and
xenophobia
; it also enacts policies and
it creates a culture of utter
stupidity
, a culture of
ignorance
And, unfortunately,
it functions so as to enable
violence
against groups labeled as dangerous, other, excess, and a threat to the
whitewashed
notion of
citizenship
[...] Fascism first begins with
language
, and then gains momentum as an organizing force for shaping a culture that legitimates indiscriminate violence against entire groups —
Black people
immigrants
Jews
Muslims
, and others considered “disposable.”
Henry Giroux
, as quoted in
Henry Giroux on His Latest Book — The Terror of the Unforeseen — and How Neoliberal Capitalism Sets the Stage for Fascism
(August 19, 2019),
Media For Us
A good journalist must recognize in Fascism certain ancient virtues of the race, whether or not they happen to be momentarily fashionable in his own country. Among them are
Discipline
Duty
Courage
Glory
and
Sacrifice
Laird Goldsborough, in
Fortune
(July 1934)
Fascism is a
religion
of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is
totalitarian
in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival
identity
is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary
American
liberalism
embodies all of these aspects of fascism.
Jonah Goldberg
, in
Liberal Fascism
(2008), p. 23
Back in the late
1980s
, I published an article entitled “What Is Fascism—And Why Do Women Need to Know?” in Lesbian Contradiction, a paper I used to edit with three other women. It was at the height of the
presidency
of
Ronald Reagan
and I was already worried about dangerous currents in the
Republican Party,
ones that today have swelled into a full-scale riptide to
the right
. There’s a lot that’s dated in the piece, but the definition I offered for that much-used (and misused) bit of political terminology still stands:
The term it­self was invented by
Benito Mussolini
, the premier of
Italy
from 1922 to 1945, and refers to the ‘
fasces
,’ the bundle of rods which symbolized the power of the
Roman emperors
. Today,
I would define fascism as an
ideology
movement
, or
government
with several identifying characteristics:
Authoritarianism
and a
fanatical
respect for leaders. Fas­cism is explicitly anti-democratic. It emerges in times of social flux or instability and of chaotic and worsening economic situations.
• Subordination of the individual to the state or to the “race.” This subordination often has a spiritual im­plication: people are offered an
opportunity
to transcend their own sense of insignificance through participation in a powerful movement of the chosen.
• Appeal to a mythical
imperial glory
of the past. That past may be quite
ancient
, as in Mussolini’s evoca­tions of the Roman Empire. Or it might be as recent as the
United States
of the
1950s
Biological
determinism
. Fascism involves a belief in absolute biological differences between the
sexes
and among different
races
• Genuine popularity. The scariest thing to me about real fascism is that it has always been a truly
pop­ular movement
. Even when it is a relatively minor force, fascism can be a mass movement without being a majority movement.
“Having laid out these basic elements,” I added, one “real strength of fascism lies in its ex­traordinary ideological elasticity,” which allows it to embrace a wide variety of economic positions from
libertarian
to
socialist
and approaches to
foreign policy
that range from
isolationism
to
imperialism
. I think this, too, remains true today.
Rebecca Gordon,
The Right’s Attempted Extermination Campaign of Queer People Is Textbook Fascism
(4 July 2023),
The Nation
What I failed to emphasize then—perhaps because I thought it went without saying (but it certainly needs to be said today)—is that fascism is almost by definition deadly.
It needs
enemies
on whom it can focus the steaming rage of its adherents
, and it is quite content for that rage to lead to literal
extermination campaigns
The creation of such enemies invariably involves a process of rhetorical
dehumanization
In fascist
propaganda
, target groups cease to be actual people, becoming instead vermin,
viruses
, human garbage,
communists
Marxists
terrorists
, or, in the case of the
present attacks on LGBT people
pedophiles
and
groomers
. As fascist movements develop, they bring underground streams of hatred into the light of “legitimate” political discourse.
All those decades ago, I suggested that the
Christian fundamentalists
represented an incipient fascist force. I think it’s fair to say that today’s
Make America Great Again
crew has inherited that mantle, successfully incorporating
right-wing Christianity
into a larger proto-fascist movement. All the elements of classic fascism now lurk there:
adulation of the leader, subordination of the individual to the larger movement, an appeal to mythical past glories
, a not-so-subtle embrace of
white supremacy
, and discomfort with anything or anyone threatening the “natural” order of men and women.
You have only to watch a video of a
Trump
rally to see that his is a mass (even if not a majority) movement.
Rebecca Gordon,
The Right’s Attempted Extermination Campaign of Queer People Is Textbook Fascism
(4 July 2023),
The Nation
Why should it matter whether
Donald Trump
’s MAGA movement and the
Republican Party
he’s largely taken over represent a kind of fascism? The answer: because the logic of fascism leads so inexorably to the politics of
extermination
. Describing his MAGA movement as fascism makes it easier to recognize the existential threat it truly represents—not only to a democratic society but to specific groups of human beings within it.
I know it may sound alarmist, but I think it’s true: proto-fascist forces in this country have shown that they are increasingly willing to exterminate queer people, if that’s what it takes to gain and hold on to power. If I’m right, that means all Americans, queer or not, now face an existential threat.
For those who don’t happen to fall into one of MAGA’s target groups, let me close by paraphrasing
Donald Trump
: In the end, they’re coming after you. We’re just standing in the way.
Rebecca Gordon,
The Right’s Attempted Extermination Campaign of Queer People Is Textbook Fascism
(4 July 2023),
The Nation
Fascism is characterised by; an all-powerful state and leader;
monism
— a single party, ideology and centre of power; expansionist nationalism and/or racism,
anti-communism
, anti-egalitarianism,
anti-liberalism
, anti-individualism, anti-rationalism,
anti-intellectualism
; symbol,
myth
and mysticism; a cult of
war
violence
and
youth
; advocacy of private
property
but hostility to
free market
capitalism
, and a combination of
consent
and
coercion
propaganda
and terror. Clearly, fascist ideology is full of 'negations' — that is, it is a highly negative
philosophy
which opposes as much as it supports. This is unsurprising, given its origins as a fundamental rejection of inter-war
liberal democracy
and all of its attendant values.
Moyra Grant, quoted in
Key Ideas in Politics
(2003) by Nelson Thornes
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS
Woody Guthrie
, a message he would variously write or
post
on his guitar, beginning in 1941.
I'm gonna tell all you fascists, you may be surprised
People all over this world are getting organized
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose
Race hatred
cannot stop us, this one thing I know
Poll tax
and
Jim Crow
and greed have got to go
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose
...
People of every color marching side by side
Marching across these fields where a million fascists died
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose
...
I'm going into this battle, take my union gun
Gonna end this world of
slavery
before this war is won
You're bound to lose
You fascists are bound to lose
Woody Guthrie
"All You Fascists"
, recorded in 1944 (
YouTube video
Should one choose to seek out today's fascism, one is counseled to look to the retrograde former
Soviet Union
, and the
reformist
People's Republic of China
. They are the natural hosts of a ‘resurgence’ of fascism.
A. James Gregor
Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher Of Fascism
, Transactions Publishers (2004) p. xii
edit
There is a sense in which the appearance of organized fascism on the political stage seems to solve everything for the left. It confirms our best-worst suspicions, awakening familiar ghosts and spectres. Fascism and
economic recession
together seem to render transparent those connections which most of the time are opaque, hidden and displaced. Away with all those time-wasting theoretical speculations! The Marxist guarantees are all in place after all, standing to attention. Let us take to the streets. This is not an argument against taking to the streets. Indeed, the direct interventions against the rising fortunes of the National Front - local campaigns,
anti-fascist
work in the unions, trades councils, women's groups, the mobilization behind the Anti-Nazi League, the counterdemonstrations, above all Rock Against Racism (one of the timeliest and best constructed of cultural interventions, repaying serious and extended analysis) - constitute one of the few success stories of the conjuncture. But it is an argument against the satisfactions which sometimes flow from applying simplifying analytic schemes to complex events. What we have to explain is a move toward '
authoritarian populism
' - an exceptional form of the
capitalist
state which, unlike classical fascism, has retained most (though not all) of the formal representative institutions in place, and which at the same time has been able to construct around itself an active popular consent. This undoubtedly represents a decisive shift in the balance of forces, and the National Front has played a 'walk-on' part in this drama. It has entailed a striking weakening of democratic forms and initiatives; but not their suspension. We miss precisely what is specific to this exceptional form of the crisis of the capitalist state by mere name-calling.
Stuart Hall
, "The Great Moving Right Show",
Marxism Today
(December 1978)
Nothing's more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.
Fred Hampton
, Excerpt from
Democracy Now
Encompassing a variety of ultra-nationalist movements, fascism typically venerates devotion to the state and uniting the people under a strong leader.
Hearts of Iron IV
, Description of fascism (June 2016)
The following joke circulated in Italy in the 1920s. According to
Mussolini
, the ideal citizen is
intelligent
honest
, and Fascist. Unfortunately, no one is perfect, which explains why
everyone you meet is either intelligent and Fascist but not honest, honest and Fascist but not intelligent, or honest and intelligent but not Fascist.
Maurice Herlihy and Nir Shavit in
The Art of Multiprocessor Programming
(2012), p. 65
There is only one form of government that cannot produce good writers, and that system is fascism... a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live or work under fascism.
Ernest Hemingway
, Congress of American Writers address (June 23, 1937) prior to the premiere screening of the Joris Ivens, Ernest Hemingway propaganda film,
The Spanish Earth
; as quoted by Mia Spiro,
The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the 1930s
ed., James Smith, Ch. 13. Fascism and Anti-Fascism.
‘But are there not many fascists in your country?'
There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.'”
Ernest Hemingway
For Whom The Bell Tolls
(1940), p. 208
Of course, I am against fascism with its spread of color prejudice and
race hatred
and
working class
oppression. How could any sensible
Negro
be otherwise?
Langston Hughes
, in
Writers take sides; letters about the war in Spain from 418 American authors
by
League of American Writers
, 1938. Also quoted in Brian Dolinar,
The Black cultural front : black writers and artists of the Depression generation.
Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2012.
To satisfy their hunger for meaning and value, they [the masses] turn to such doctrines as
nationalism
, fascism and revolutionary
communism
. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.
Aldous Huxley
Ends and Means : An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into Methods Employed for Their Realization
. New York : Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937.
edit
edit
The fascist arrangement has attempted to create the illusion of a mass society in which the traditional capitalist
ruling class
would continue to play its leading role.
George L. Jackson
Blood in My Eye
(1971), p. 121
The fascist arrangement tolerates the existence of no valid revolutionary activity. It has programmed into its very nature a massive, complex and automatic defense mechanism for all our old methods for raising the consciousness of a potentially revolutionary class of people. The essence of a U.S.A.
totalitarian
socio-political capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of a mass participatory society. We must rip away its mask. Then the debate can end, and we can enter a new phase of struggle based on the development of an armed revolutionary culture that will triumph.
George L. Jackson
Blood in My Eye
(1971), p. 138
In Italy ... rugby has 'long been appreciated for its pedagogical value as a "'maker of
men
"'. ... Rugby expanded further in the Fascist era as a
propaganda
tool for conditioning the masses to Fascist aims. Such conditioning combined the
physical
with the
ideological
in the making of men to serve the state and its aims.
Timothy John, Lindsay Chandler, John Nauright;
“Making the Rugby World: Race, Gender, Commerce”
, p.xx
edit
By 1939 [Fascist] Italy had the highest percentage of state-owned enterprises outside of the Soviet Union.
Patricia Knight,
Mussolini and Fascism (Questions and Analysis in History)
(2003) p. 65
Mussolini
and
Hitler
promised
to restore
national glory and depicted themselves as the last defense against
radical
socialism
. Neither appealed to
racism
at first. Not even Hitler, who muted his virulent
anti-Semitism
in public to attract
middle-class
voters during the late 1920s. New followers told themselves he had mellowed, but
his base
and his
Jewish targets
never doubted his true intentions.
Claudia Koonz
Autocrats do not need a majority to destroy democracy. A divided opposition helps them.
(September 15, 2019),
History News Network
Many powerful right-wing movements of the early
twentieth century
―National Socialism, Fascism, and their imitators elsewhere―also expressed a
nostalgia
for the
Middle Ages
. The
Italian
poet
and
Futurist
Gabriele D'Annunzio
espoused a "socialist
romanticism
" that helped lay the foundations of the
Fascist corporatist state
. In
France
, the leaders of
Action Francaise
sought to bring about a "counter-
Renaissance
" and reimpose the
hierarchical
corporative structure of the
ancien regime
. In
England
, Fascist sympathizers like
Oswald Mosley
lamented the passing of "Merrie old England," swept away by the competitive reality of ethnically mixed modern cities. Even today, some on the
European
far-right
see in the Middle Ages an affirmation of
traditional Christian
values, and find inspiration in the
Crusader
response to assaults from
Islamic
aggression.
Joel Kotkin,
The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class
(2020), pp. 16-17
edit
When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism'. ~
Halford E. Luccock
Two things make the
future
real
, the
artist
's
imagination
and the
worker
's
hope
. Fascism
destroys
both. Therefore the artist and the worker must
unite
to destroy Fascism. The Fascist artist is a
traitor
, the
neutral
is already
dead
Art
and
anti-Fascism
are synonymous.
John Langdon-Davies
Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War
. Left Review. 1937.
. Quoted in
Buchanan, Tom (1997).
Britain and the Spanish Civil War
. Cambridge University Press. p. 32.
ISBN 978-0-521-45569-5
The parallels between fascism and Communism as ideologies are significant.
Mark Lilla
, “An Idea Whose Time Has Gone," July 25, 1999,
The New York Times Book Review
[1]
Yeah, no. Fascism is not kind. It is not decent. It does not care about the individual, because the individual is subservient to the state, and in particular whoever runs that state. It is not compatible with
Steve Rogers
. Fascism does not fight for "the greater good", it fights for the exaltation of the inhuman, the commemoration of cruelty, and the hatred of the different. Fascism is a loser ideology.
Lewis Lovhaug
Secret Empire, Part 3 - Atop the Fourth Wall
, July 24, 2020
When and if fascism comes to America
it will not be labeled "made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a
swastika
; it will not even be called fascism;
it will be called
, of course,
"Americanism.
… The high-sounding phrase
"the American way" will be used by interested groups intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins
against the American and
Christian
tradition, such sins as
lawless violence, teargas and shotguns, denial of
civil liberties
... There is an obligation resting on us all to dedicate our minds to the hard task of thinking in terms of Christian objectives and values, so that we may be saved from
moral confusion.
For never, probably, has there been a time when there was
more
vigorous effort to surround social and international questions with
such
a fog of distortion and prejudices and hysterical appeal to fear.
Halford E. Luccock
in "Keeping Life Out of Confusion" (11 September 1938), as quoted in "Disguised Fascism Seen As A Menace" in
The New York Times
(12 September 1938), p. 15; also in
"Fascism comes wrapped in the flag" (with online facsimile of article)
The
totalitarian
states, whether of the fascist or the
communist
persuasion, are more than superficially alike as
dictatorships
, in the
suppression
of
dissent
, and in operating planned and directed economies. They are profoundly alike.
Walter Lippmann
The Good Society
(1937); Transaction Publications edition (2005), p. 89
I witnessed the rise of fascism in
Germany
and I know very well that very many young people at that time adhered to fascism out of a sincere indignation at the
capitalist
system.
György Lukács
in
Conversations with Lukács
(Cambridge: 1975), p. 148
The fascists have reaped what they have sown. The workers will not tolerate anyone defying them on their ground. The experience of Italy and Germany tears too strongly at the heart of all
proletarians
to allow it to happen again.
Issue of
L'Humanite
(April 24th, 1925)
Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook
edit
Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect — better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. ~
Ludwig von Mises
The twigs will be tied together in a neater and stronger bundle if they are all the same size and length. That’s fascism. … a kind of linear, mechano-like
organisation
– tie up all the sticks, make sure they are the same length, and you have a brick wall or something. ~
Alan Moore
There were fascists groups, the
National Front
, the
British National Party
, who were flexing their muscles and sort of trying to make political capital out of what were fairly depressed and jobless times. … There were ugly fascist stains starting to reassert themselves that we might have thought had been eradicated back in the '30s. ~
Alan Moore
It is to be
expected
that this century may be that of
authority
, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century. ~
Benito Mussolini
Fascism conceives of the State as an
absolute
, in comparison with which all
individuals
or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State. ~
Benito Mussolini
Liberalism
denied the State in the interests of the particular
individual
; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true
reality
of the individual. ~
Benito Mussolini
Fascism is a vehicle for weak, insecure people to feel powerful in the most cowardly way possible: By violating and abusing those they believe can’t fight back. It’s the attitude of the rapist and the child abuser, someone who pathetically congratulates himself for being "tough" because of his violence, but who fears taking on someone his own size.
Amanda Marcotte
"Why MAGA calls Trump 'Daddy'"
Salon
What
distinguishes liberal from Fascist
political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the
necessity
of using armed
force
to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for
power
. The great
danger
threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete
faith
in the decisive power of
violence
. In order to assure success, one must be imbued with the
will
to
victory
and always proceed violently. This is its highest principle. What happens, however, when one's opponent, similarly animated by the will to be victorious, acts just as violently? The result must be a battle, a
civil war
. The ultimate victor to emerge from such conflicts will be the faction strongest in number. In the long run, a minority — even if it is composed of the most capable and energetic — cannot succeed in resisting the majority. The decisive question, therefore, always remains: How does one obtain a majority for one's own party? This, however, is a purely intellectual matter. It is a victory that can be won only with the weapons of the intellect, never by force. The suppression of all opposition by sheer violence is a most unsuitable way to win adherents to one's cause. Resort to naked force — that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments accepted by public opinion — merely gains new
friends
for those whom one is thereby trying to combat. In a battle between force and an
idea
, the latter always prevails.
Ludwig von Mises
, in
Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition
(1927), Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 10. The Argument of Fascism
Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the
intellect
— better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property. The next episode will be the victory of
Communism
. The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be decided by arms, but by ideas. It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used. It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales.
So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its
foreign policy
, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in
international relations
, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development,
peace
among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.
It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of
dictatorships
are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved
European
civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.
Ludwig von Mises
, in
Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition
(1927), Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 10. The Argument of Fascism
Fascism is a matter of taste.
Vyacheslav Molotov
, (Soviet Foreign Minister 1939 to 1949 and 1953 to 1956) in
Communism and the Conscience of the West
Fulton J. Sheen
, Bobbs–Merrill, (1948) p. 115.
The twigs will be tied together in a neater and stronger bundle if they are all the same size and length. That's fascism. It suggests that you have two contrary organisational principles involved ... One is a kind of linear, mechano-like organisation – tie up all the sticks, make sure they are the same length, and you have a brick wall or something. The other one –
anarchy
– is a more fractal more natural more human organisational system in that it organises society in much the same way that we organise our personalities. Where it is purely the interplay of neurons – we haven't got a king neuron that tells all the other neurons what to do. It seems to me to be a more emotionally natural way of working with other people.
Alan Moore
, in
"Alan Moore Interview" by Matthew De Abaitua (1998)
, later published in
Alan Moore: Conversations
(2011) edited by Eric L. Berlatsky
Margaret Thatcher
had been in power for two or three years. She was facing the first crisis of her, by then, very unpopular government. There were riots all over
Britain
in places that hadn't seen riots for hundreds of years. There were fascists groups, the
National Front
, the
British National Party
, who were flexing their muscles and sort of trying to make political capital out of what were fairly depressed and jobless times. It seemed to me that with the kind of
Reagan
/Thatcher axis that existed across the
Atlantic
, it looked like Western society was taking somewhat a turn for the worse. There were ugly fascist stains starting to reassert themselves that we might have thought had been eradicated back in the '30s. But they were reasserting themselves with a different spin. They were talking less about annihilating whichever minority they happened to find disfavor with and talking more about
free market
forces and market choice and all of these other kind of glib terms, which tended to have the same results as an awful lot of the kind of Fascist causes back in the 1930s but with a bit more spin put upon them. The friendly face of fascism.
Alan Moore
, as quoted in
The Beat
(March 2006)
Fascism... was the product of... the... European crisis of the post-
First World War
political
and
economic
order... Fascist movements... were the immediate aftermath of the First World War, marked by the threat from the left following the 1917
Bolshevik Revolution
... and... conflict in... Europe before, during and after the
Versailles settlement
of 1919–20, and the
Great Depression
of 1929–33, an economic
recession
... that... appeared to be the structural and terminal crisis of malfunctioning
capitalist
economies and polities. Springing up... the various fascisms... were
radical
hyper-
nationalist
cross-class movements with a distinctive
militarist
organisation and
activist
political style. In a climate of... national and international danger and crisis, they sought... regeneration... through the violent destruction of all political forms and forces... held responsible for national disunity and divisiveness, and the creation of a new national order based on the moral or 'spiritual' reformation of their peoples, a 'cultural revolution' achievable only through the 'total' control of society, and on class collaborative, regulatory forms of socio-economic organisation, often of a
corporatist
nature. ...
Italian Fascism
...was part of one general European response to a general European crisis of liberal democracy which matured in the wartime and inter-war years.
Philip Morgan,
Italian Fascism, 1915–1945
(2004) 2nd edition, Introduction, p. 3.
Both
political Parties
, and the remnants of
Liberalism
as well, stand bound by the great vested interests of "
Right
" and "
Left
" which created them. In Opposition, there is the same profusion of promise; in office, the same apathy and inertia. In
post-War England
, their creeds have become platitudes; they consistently fail to grapple with the problems of the time. Their rule has led, with tragic inevitability, to the present chaos. Therefore our
Fascist Movement
seeks on the one hand
authority
as the basis of all solid achievement; we seek, on the other hand, progress, which can be achieved only by the executive instrument that
order
authority
and
decision
alone can give.
Oswald Mosley
The Greater Britain
, 1932. Quoted in Joel H. Wiener,
Great Britain: the lion at home: a documentary history of domestic policy, 1689-1973: Volume 4
, 1974. Chelsea House publishers, New York. Also in Walter L. Arnstein,
The Past Speaks: Sources and Problems in British History
, Lexington, Mass. : D.C. Heath, 1993.
Governments
and Parties which have relied on the normal instruments of government...have fallen easy and ignoble victims to the forces of anarchy. If, therefore, such a situation arises in Britain, we shall prepare to meet the anarchy of Communism with the organised force of Fascism.
Oswald Mosley
The Greater Britain
, 1932. Quoted in John Stevenson and Chris Cook,
The Slump : Britain in the Great Depression
New York : Pearson Longman, 2010.
Fascist policy is clear cut. We have a right to stay in
India
and we intend to stay there. We have more than a right; we have a duty to stay there. We have a right because modern India owes everything to
British rule
Oswald Mosley
The Greater Britain
, 1932. Also quoted in "James Drennan",
William Edward David Allen
BUF: Oswald Mosley and British Fascism
, John Murray (1934).
Nothing is permanent: certainly not the frozen images of barbarous power with which fascism now confronts us. Those images may easily be smashed by an external shock, cracked as ignominiously as the fallen
Dagon
, the massive idol of the heathen; or they may be melted, eventually, by the internal warmth of normal men and women. Nothing endures except life: the capacity for birth, growth, and renewal. As life becomes insurgent once more in our civilization, conquering the reckless thrust of barbarism, the culture of cities will be both instrument and goal.
Lewis Mumford
, "Introduction" to
The Culture of Cities
, 1938.
We want an extraordinary heavy
taxation
, with a progressive character, on
capital
, that will represent an authentic partial expropriation of all
wealth
; seizures of all assets of religious congregations and suppression of all the ecclesiastic Episcopal revenues, in what constitutes an enormous deficit of the nation and a privilege for a minority; revisions of all contracts made by the war ministers and seizure of 85% of all war profits.
Benito Mussolini
, quoted in "Fasci Italiani di Combattimento" (Italian Combat Fasci),
Il Popolo d'Italia
(6 June 1919); published in
Revolutionary Fascism
(2011), by Erik Norling, p. 92
If
relativism
signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the
fact
that all ideologies are of equal
value
, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable.
Benito Mussolini
, in "
Diuturna
" ["The Lasting"] (1921)
Standing by me and helping my work as newspaper man were the
Fascisti
. They were composed of revolutionary spirits who believed in intervention. They were youths—the students of the universities, the socialist syndicalists—destroying faith in
Karl Marx
by their ideals.
Benito Mussolini
My Autobiography
, New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1928. Reprinted in Benito Mussolini,
My Rise And Fall, Volumes 1-2
Da Capo Press
, 1998 (p.40).
My conception always was that Fascism must assume the characteristics of being anti-party. It was not to be tied to old or new schools of any kind. The name "Italian Fighting Fascisti" was lucky. It was most appropriate to a political action that had to face all the old parasites and programmes that had tried to deprave Italy. I felt that it was not only the anti-socialist battle we had to fight; this was only a battle on the way. ... It was therefore not sufficient to create—as some have said superficially—an anti-altar to the altar of
socialism
. It was necessary to imagine a wholly new political conception, adequate to the living reality of the
twentieth century
, overcoming at the same time the ideological worship of liberalism, the limited horizons of various spent and exhausted democracies, and finally the violently
Utopian
spirit of
Bolshevism
Benito Mussolini
My Autobiography
, New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1928. Reprinted in Benito Mussolini,
My Rise And Fall, Volumes 1-2
Da Capo Press
, 1998 (p. 68-9)
The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.
Benito Mussolini
My Autobiography
by Mussolini, New York: NY, Charles Scribner's Sons (1928) p. 280.
The Fascist State directs and controls the
entrepreneurs
, whether it be in our fisheries or in our heavy industry in the
Val d'Aosta
. There the State actually owns the
mines
and carries on
transport
, for the
railways
are state property. So are many of the
factories
... We term it state intervention... If anything fails to work properly, the State intervenes. The
capitalists
will go on doing what they are told, down to the very end. They have no option and cannot put up any fight. Capital is not God; it is only a means to an end.
Benito Mussolini
Talks with Mussolini
Emil Ludwig
, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933), pp. 153-154, Interview took place between March 23 and April 4, 1932
[2]
The Fascist State has never tried to create its own God, as at one moment
Robespierre
and the wildest extremists of the Convention tried to do; nor does it vainly seek to obliterate religion from the hearts of men as does
Bolshevism
: Fascism respects the
God
of the
ascetics
, of the
saints
, of the
heroes
, and also God as seen and prayed to by the simple and primitive heart of the people.
Benito Mussolini
The Doctrine of Fascism
, June 1932. Quoted in Charles Floyd Delzell,
Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-45
Springer, 1971.
Above all, Fascism . . . believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual
peace
. It therefore discards
pacifism
as a cloak beneath which are concealed renunciation of struggle and cowardice in the face of self-sacrifice.
War
alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and impresses the seal of nobility upon those peoples who have the courage to face up to it.
Benito Mussolini
The Doctrine of Fascism
, June 1932. Quoted in Jeffrey Thompson Schnapp, Olivia E. Sears, Maria G. Stampino
A Primer of Italian Fascism
University of Nebraska Press
, 2000 (p.53).
Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can direct human society. It denies that numbers can govern by means of periodical consultations: It asserts the unavoidable fruitful and beneficent
inequality
of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as
universal suffrage
Benito Mussolini
The Doctrine of Fascism
, June 1932. Quoted in Marco Piraino, Stefano Fiorito,
Fascist identity : political project and doctrine of facism
. Lulu.com, 2009. (p. 107)
For Fascism, the growth of
Empire
, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of
vitality
, and its opposite a sign of
decadence
. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; any renunciation is a sign of
decay
and of
death
. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But Empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice.
Benito Mussolini
The Doctrine of Fascism
, June 1932. Quoted in Paul O'Brien,
Mussolini in the First World War: The Journalist, the Soldier, the Fascist
Bloomsbury Publishing
, 2014.
Yet the Fascist State is unique, and an original creation. It is not reactionary, but revolutionary...
Benito Mussolini
, “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism”, Jane Soames, authorized translator, Hogarth Press, London, (1933), p. 23
You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your
New Deal
Benito Mussolini
, as quoted in
Mr. New York: The Autobiography of Grover A. Whalen
by Grover Aloysius Whalen, G.P. Putnam's Sons (1955) p. 188
Three-fourths of the
Italian economy
, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state. And if I dare to introduce to Italy
state capitalism
or
state socialism
, which is the reverse side of the medal, I will have the necessary subjective and objective conditions to do it.
Benito Mussolini
, quoted in
The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy Since Unification
, by Gianni Toniolo, editor, Oxford University Press (2013) p. 59. Mussolini's speech to the Chamber of Deputies on May 26, 1934.
A party governing a nation “
totalitarianly
" is a new departure in history. There are no points of reference nor of comparison. From beneath the ruins of
liberal
socialist
, and
democratic
doctrines, Fascism extracts those elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be described as "the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. That is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited to all times and to all people. Granted that the
XIXth century
was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the " right ", a Fascist century. If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies
individualism
) we are free to believe that this is the "
collective
" century, and therefore the century of the State.
Benito Mussolini
, in "
The Doctrine of Facism
(1932); as translated in
Fascism Doctrine and Institutions
, official Fascist government publication (1935)
Variant translations:
It may be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism.
"The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism," first authorized translation into English (1933) by
Jane Soames
, p. 20; reprinted in
The Living Age
(November, 1933), p. 241 "
The Doctrine of Fascism
" p. 20 in the 1933 original
“The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism”
If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism]],
Liberalism
and
Democracy
, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century.
Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.
Benito Mussolini
, in "
The Doctrine of Fascism
" (1932), as quoted in
The New York Times
(11 January 1935)
When brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and
trade unionism
, giving them due weight in the guild or
corporative system
in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.
Benito Mussolini
, "The Doctrine of Fascism" ("La dottrina del fascismo"). The 1935 edition from Vallecchi: Editore Firenze, p.15
Against
individualism
, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State ... It is opposed to
Classical Liberalism
... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.
Benito Mussolini
, "The Doctrine of Fascism" (1935 version)
I declare that henceforth
capital
and
labor
shall have equal rights and duties as brothers in the fascist family.
Benito Mussolini
, as quoted in
The Fate of Trade Unions Under Fascism
(1937), Ch. 3: "Italian Trade Unions Under Fascism", p. 35
The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises. The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief — either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!
Benito Mussolini
, as quoted in "Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation" (2005) by Douglas Walton, p. 263
We are fighting to impose a higher social justice. The others are fighting to maintain the privileges of caste and class. We are
proletarian
nations that rise up against the
plutocrats
Benito Mussolini
, quoted in “Soliloquy for ‘freedom’ Trimellone island", on the Italian Island of Trimelone, journalist Ivanoe Fossani, one of the last interviews of Mussolini, March 20, 1945, from
Opera omnia
, vol. 32. Interview is also known as "Testament of Benito Mussolini, or
Testamento di Benito Mussolini
. Also published under “Mussolini confessed to the stars”, Publishing House Latinitas, Rome, 1952. (
Intervista di Ivanoe Fossani, Soliloquio in “libertà” all'isola Trimellone, Isola del Trimellone, 20 marzo 1945
edit
Fascism recognizes the social utility of
private property
, which involves both a right and a duty. ... The
National Fascist Party
is in favour of a regime that encourages the growth of national wealth by spurring individual initiative and energy ... and it absolutely repudiates the motley, costly, and uneconomic machinery of state control, socialism, and municipalization.
National Fascist Party
, programme, adopted by the Third Congress, Rome, 1921. Quoted in Charles Floyd Delzell,
Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-45
Springer, 2 Jul 1971 (p.33). Also in Martin Blinkhorn,
Fascism and the right in Europe, 1919-1945
New York :
Longman
, 2000. (p. 129)
The superficial distinctions of Fascism,
Bolshevism
Hitlerism
, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of
social power
into State power.
Albert Jay Nock
Our Enemy, The State
, Caldwell, Idaho, Caxton Press (1950), first published in 1935.
There is little difference between the two, and in certain respects, Fascism and
Bolshevism
are the same.
Francesco Saverio Nitti
Bolshevism, Fascism and Democracy
(1927) p. 130
edit
It is usual to speak of the Fascist objective as the "beehive state", which does grave injustice to bees. A world of rabbits ruled by
stoats
would be nearer the mark. ~
George Orwell
The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. ~
José Ortega y Gasset
Fascism would like to be conservative, but it will end by being revolutionary.
Angelo Oliviero Olivetti
, “Nel labirinto,”
Pagine liber
, May-June, 1922, p. 163.
Zeev Sternhell
, Mario Sznajder, Maia Asheri,
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 190
The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: "the reason of unreason."
José Ortega y Gasset
The Revolt of the Masses
(1930) as edited by Kerrigan, Anthony; Moore, Kenneth, University of Notre Dame Press (1985), p. 62.
It is usual to speak of the Fascist objective as the "beehive state", which does grave injustice to
bees
A world of rabbits ruled by
stoats
would be nearer the mark.
George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier
(1937), Ch. 12
The word
Fascism
has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable". [...] Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
George Orwell
Politics and the English Language
(1946)
The Fascisti are to Italy what the
American Legion
is to the
United States
Legion Commander Alvin Owsley, 1923, quoted in "The Untold History of the United States" (2013) by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, St. Ives:Edbury Press, p. 52
edit
Not only was [Fascist] Italy the first Western country to recognize the Soviet Union in 1924, but the new Soviet art first appeared in the West that year at the
Venice Biennale
, Italy's premiere art show.
Stanley G. Payne
A History of Fascism 1914—1945
, Madison: Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995, p. 223, (first signed
de jure
recognition).
During its earlier years fascism was hostile to the
Catholic church
and several
priests
were
assassinated
and
churches
burned by the fascists. This was due partly to the fact that the papacy has never been reconciled to the unification of Italy because it was deprived of its temporal power.
Maurice Parmelle,
Bolshevism, Fascism, and the Liberal-Democratic State
, London: UK; Chapman and Hill, LTD, New York: NY, John Wiley and Son, Inc. (1935) p. 190.
Fascists have no interest in winning that battle. They don't care about respecting
free speech
or the
right to a fair trial
; they've openly declared their
murderous intent
towards
people of colour
(and other undesirables) and they'll pursue that goal by any means necessary.
Eleanor Penny
, as quoted in
Noam Chomsky: Antifa is a 'major gift to the right'
by Maya Oppenheim, 22 August 2017,
The Independent
Fascism issued from the '
Bolshevik
' wing of Italian
socialism
, not from any
conservative
ideology or movement.
Richard Pipes
, "Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime" (1995), p. 253
Market society was born in England—yet it was on the
Continent
that its weaknesses engendered the most tragic complications. In order to comprehend German fascism, we must revert to
Ricardian
England
. The nineteenth century, as cannot be overemphasized, was England's century. The
Industrial Revolution
was an English event.
Market economy
free trade
, and the
gold standard
were English inventions. These institutions broke down in the twenties everywhere—in Germany, Italy, or
Austria
the event was merely more political and more dramatic. But whatever the scenery and the temperature of the final episodes, the long-run factors which wrecked that civilization should be studied in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England.
Karl Polanyi
The Great Transformation
(1944), Ch. 2 : Conservative Twenties, Revolutionary Thirties
edit
The
race
theory
is not a creation of fascism. No: fascism is a creation of race
hatred
and its
politically
organized
expression. Correspondingly, there is a
German
Italian
Spanish
Anglo-Saxon
Jewish
and
Arabian
fascism. ~
Wilhelm Reich
Strangely, it is always
America
that is described as degenerate and 'fascist', while it is solely in Europe that actual
dictatorships
and
totalitarian
regimes spring up. ~
Jean-Francois Revel
[F]ascism and
communism
are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory—both are variants of
statism
, based on the
collectivist
principle that man is the rightless
slave
of the state.
Ayn Rand
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
, New York: NY, Signet Book from the New American Library (1967) p. 180
Such terms as
communism
socialism
Fabianism
, the
welfare state
Nazism
, fascism,
state interventionism
egalitarianism
, the
planned economy
, the
New Deal
, the
Fair Deal
, the New Republicanism, the
New Frontier
are simply different labels for much the same thing.
Leonard E. Read
Elements of Libertarian Leadership
(1962), pp 62-63
Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism which argues that liberal democracy and leftism obsolete and degenerate. Fascists instead argue that prosperity and security can only be found through struggle and call for the complete mobilisation of society under a totalitarian regime to prepare the nation for armed conflict. Fascism was born in the aftermath of the First World War and the social changes it caused. While fascism largely ceased to be a viable ideology following World War Two, parties and movements that meet the criteria of fascism can be found in the present-day.
Red World
game mod
for
Hearts of Iron IV
It is the
mechanistic
mystical
character of modern man that produces fascist parties, and not vice versa.
The result of erroneous political thinking is that even today fascism is conceived as a specific national characteristic of the
Germans
or the
Japanese
Wilhelm Reich
, in his Preface (August 1942), to the Third Edition of
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
(1933), p. xiii.
If, by being
revolutionary
, one
means
rational
rebellion
against intolerable
social
conditions, if, by being
radical
, one means "going to the root of things," the rational will to improve them, then fascism is never revolutionary. True, it may have the aspect of revolutionary
emotions
. But one would not call that
physician
revolutionary who proceeds against a
disease
with
violent
cursing but the other who quietly,
courageously
and
conscientiously
studies
and
fights
the
causes
of the disease.
Fascist rebelliousness always occurs where
fear
of the
truth
turns a revolutionary emotion into
illusion
In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all
irrational
reactions of the average
human
character
. To the narrow-minded
sociologist
who lacks the courage to recognize the enormous role played by the irrational in human
history
, the fascist
race
theory appears as nothing but an
imperialistic
interest or even a mere '
prejudice
.' The
violence
and the ubiquity of these "race prejudices" show their origin from the irrational part of the human character. The race theory is not a creation of fascism. No:
fascism is a creation of race hatred and its
politically
organized expression.
Correspondingly, there is a
German
Italian
Spanish
Anglo-Saxon
Jewish
and
Arabian
fascism. Race ideology is a pure biopathic expression of the character structure of the orgastically impotent man.
The
sadistically
perverse
character of
race
ideology
is also betrayed in its attitude towards religion. Fascism is supposed to be a reversion to
paganism
and an archenemy of
religion
. Far from it - fascism is the supreme expression of religious
mysticism
. As such, it comes into being in a peculiar social form. Fascism countenances that
religiosity
that stems from sexual
perversion
, and it transforms the
masochistic
character of the old
patriarchal
religion of suffering into a sadistic religion. In short,
it transposes religion from the ‘other-worldliness’ of the philosophy of suffering to the ‘this worldliness’ of sadistic
murder
Wilhelm Reich
, in his Preface (August 1942), to the Third Edition of
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
(1933), p. xiv.
The structure of fascism is characterized by
metaphysical
thinking, unorthodox
faith
, obsession with abstract
ethical
ideals
, and
belief
in the divine
predestination
of the
fuhrer
These basic features are linked with a deeper layer, which is characterized by a strong
authoritarian
tie to the fuhrer-ideal or the
nation
. The belief in a ‘
master race
’ became the principal mainspring of the tie to the ‘fuhrer’ on the part of the
National Socialist
masses, as well as the foundation of their voluntary
acceptance
of
slavish
submission
Wilhelm Reich
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
(1933), p. 80.
Strangely, it is always
America
that is described as degenerate and 'fascist', while it is solely in
Europe
that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.
Jean-Francois Revel
, as quoted in
"Europe's Anti-American Obsession"
in
The View From Abroad
(2003)
Fascism was born to inspire a faith not of the Right (which at bottom aspires to conserve everything, even injustice) or of the Left (which at bottom aspires to destroy everything, even goodness), but a collective, integral, national faith.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera
founder of the
Falange
, on the nature of fascism as quoted in
Falange : A History of Spanish Fascism
Stanley G. Payne
(1961) p. 31
In
Turin
the members of the
Communist Party
, during the
Resistance
, had to endure 8 hours of torture. [Fascists] would pull your eyes out with teaspoons, they'd rip your nails out with tweezers. And you had to stay silent for eight hours, and only after that you were allowed to confess and give the names of your comrades, and that was a Party guideline, to ensure the comrades' flight in those eight hours.
Marco Rizzo
Video
, 16 February 2013
The fundamental distinction between Fascism and other
right-wing
movements was its total rejection of
bourgeois
civilization
... [Fascism]
rejected the whole of
liberal
civilization—
capitalism
and the
market system
individualism
and
rationality
, the belief in
progress
and the faith in
politics
as a way of meeting society's needs without
violence
J.M. Roberts
Europe 1880-1945 (A General History of Europe)
, London and New York, Longman (1984) p. 420. First published 1967.
The most obvious novelty of Fascist movements is their
revolutionary
dynamics.
True Fascists were unchecked by respect for
tradition
, institutions or
ideas
, and had an ambivalent relationship with traditional forces and groups.
J.M. Roberts
Europe 1880-1945 (A General History of Europe)
, London and New York, Longman (1984) p. 419. First published 1967.
For
liberalism
, the
individual
is the end, and
society
the means.... For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.
Alfredo Rocco
, “The Political Doctrine of Fascism,” speech delivered at Perugia, Aug. 30, 1925. Speech printed in
The Primer of Italian Fascism
, Jeffrey T. Schnapp, editor, University of Nebraska Press (2000) p.112.
Not everyone who wants to be a fascist is one. A mere
nationalist
cannot be one, because he has not the slightest idea of
socialism
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
, as quoted in
Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France
Zeev Sternhell
(1983) p. 226
Fascism is the system of government that
cartelizes
the private sector,
centrally plans
the economy to
subsidize
producers, exalts the
police State
as the source of order,
denies fundamental
rights
and
liberties
to individuals, and makes the executive State the unlimited master of society.
Lew Rockwell
Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto
, Auburn: AL, LewRockwell.com (2014) p. 131
Russia
was the example for fascism.
[...] Whether party 'communists' like it or not, the fact remains that the state order and rule in Russia are indistinguishable from those in Italy and Germany. Essentially, they are alike. One may speak of a red, black, or brown 'soviet state', as well as of red, black or brown fascism...
fascism is merely a copy of
bolshevism
Otto Rühle
The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism
. The American Councillist Journal -
Living Marxism
, 4 (8).
Fascism was a monster born of
capitalist
parents. Fascism came as the end-product of centuries of capitalist
bestiality
exploitation
domination
, and
racism
—mainly exercised outside Europe. It is highly significant that many settlers and colonial officials displayed a leaning towards fascism.
Apartheid
in
South Africa
is nothing but fascism. It was gaining roots from the early period of
white colonization
in the
seventeenth century
, and particularly after the
mining
industry brought South Africa fully into the capitalist orbit in the
nineteenth century
. Another example of the fascist potential of colonialism was seen when
France
was overrun by
Nazi Germany
in 1940. The French fascists collaborated with Hitler to establish what was called the
Vichy regime
in France, and the French white settlers in
Africa
supported the Vichy regime. A more striking instance to the same effect was the fascist ideology developed by the white settlers in
Algeria
, who not only opposed independence for Algeria under Algerian rule, but they also strove to bring down the more
progressive
or
liberal
governments of metropolitan France.
Walter Rodney
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
. East African Publishers. 1972. p. 200.
ISBN 978-9966-25-113-8
What is seldom commented upon is the fact that
many
Africans
were the victims of fascism
at the hands of the
Portuguese
and
Spanish
, at the hands of the
Italians
and the
Vichy French
regime for a brief period in the late 1930s and the early 1940s, and at the hands of the
British
and
Boers
in
South Africa
throughout this century. The fascist colonial powers were retarded capitalist states, where the government police machinery united with the
Catholic church
and the capitalists to suppress Portuguese and Spanish workers and peasants and to keep them ignorant. Understandably, the fascist colonialists wanted to do the same to African working people, and in addition they vented their racism on Africans, just as
Hitler
had done on the
Jews
Walter Rodney
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
. East African Publishers. 1972. p. 249.
ISBN 978-9966-25-113-8
Like most colonial administrations, that of the
Italians in Libya
disregarded the
culture of the Africans
. However, after the fascist
Mussolini came to power
, the disregard gave way to active hostility, especially in relation to the
Arabic language
and the
Moslem religion
. The
Portuguese
and
Spanish
had always shown contempt for African language and religion. Schools of kindergarten and primary level for Africans in Portuguese colonies were nothing but agencies for the spread of the
Portuguese language
. Most schools were controlled by the
Catholic church
, as a reflection of the unity of church and state in
fascist Portugal
. In the little-known
Spanish colony of Guinea
Rio Muni
), the small amount of education given to Africans was based on eliminating the use of local languages by the pupils and on instilling in their hearts "the holy
fear of God
." Schools in colonial Africa were usually blessed with the names of saints or bestowed with the names of rulers, explorers, and governors from the colonizing power. In Spanish Guinea, that practice was followed, resulting in the fact that Rio Muni children had to pass by the José Antonio school—the equivalent of saying the Adolf Hitler school if the region were German, for the school was named in honor of
José Antonio
, the founder of the
Spanish fascist party
Walter Rodney
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
. East African Publishers. 1972. p. 249.
ISBN 978-9966-25-113-8
edit
Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.
Jean-Paul Sartre
, "On the Execution of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
",
Libération
(22 June 1953)
In [Fascist] Italy and [Nazi] Germany the official unions have been made compulsory by law, while in the United States, the workers are not legally obligated to join the company unions but may even, if they so wish, oppose them.
Gaetano Salvemini
The Fate of Trade Unions Under Fascism
(1937), Ch. 3: "Italian Trade Unions Under Fascism", p. 35
Donald Trump
has encouraged a new sort of alliance in the world, an alliance of fascists, authoritarians, dictators. It's striking to contrast this emerging global coalition of thug-ery to a movement formed out of the rubble of
World War II
. It was known as the
Non-Aligned Movement
Jeremy Scahill
in
Philosopher Srecko Horvat on the Yugoslav Fight Against Facism and th Rising Right-Wing Politica Forces in Europe, Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill
(3 July 2019)
There's much that we can learn from the struggle of the
Partisans
, the society that they sought to build and the horrifying end to the story of
Yugoslavia
. These lessons resonate strongly in our current moment in history.
Jeremy Scahill
in
Philosopher Srecko Horvat on the Yugoslav Fight Against Facism and th Rising Right-Wing Politica Forces in Europe, Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill
(3 July 2019)
Fascists were not
conservative
in any very meaningful sense...The Fascists, in a meaningful sense, were
revolutionaries
... [F]ascism and
communism
are clearly more like each other than they are like anything in between.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
“Not Right, Not Left, But a Vital Center”,
New York Times Magazine
, (April 4, 1948)
Hitler
tried and failed to begin a
German national revolution
in
Munich
in November 1923, which led to a brief spell in
prison
. Though the substance of his
National Socialism
was his own creation, his
coup d’état
was inspired by the success of the
Italian fascists
he admired.
Benito Mussolini
had taken power in Italy the previous year after the “
March on Rome
,” which Hitler imitated without success in Munich. Italian fascists, like Hitler and his
Nazis
, offered the glorification of the national will over the tedium of political compromise. Mussolini, and Hitler following him, used the existence of the
Soviet Union
within domestic politics. While admiring the discipline of
Lenin
and the model of the
one-party state
, both men used the threat of a
communist revolution
as an argument for their own rule. Though the two men differed in many respects, they both represented a new kind of
European Right
, one which took for granted that
communism
was the great enemy while imitating aspects of communist politics. Like Mussolini, Hitler was an outstanding orator and the one dominant personality in his movement. Hitler had little trouble regaining the leadership of the Nazi party after his release from prison in December 1924.
Timothy D. Snyder
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
(2022)
Although
Ilyin
dressed up his idea of contemplation in several books, it really was no more than that: he saw his own
nation
as righteous, and the purity of that vision was more important than anything Russians actually did. The nation, “pure and objective,” was what the philosopher saw when he blinded himself.
Innocence took a specific biological form. What Ilyin saw was a virginal Russian body. Like fascists and other
authoritarians
of his day, Ilyin insisted that his nation was a creature, "an organism of nature and the soul," an animal in
Eden
without
original sin
Who belonged within the Russian organism was not for the individual to decide, since cells do not decide whether they belong to a body.
Russian culture, Ilyin wrote, automatically brought “fraternal union” wherever Russian power extended. Ilyin wrote of "
Ukrainians
" in quotation marks, because he denied their separate existence beyond the Russian organism. To speak of
Ukraine
was to be a mortal enemy of Russia. Ilyin took for granted that a post-Soviet Russia would include Ukraine.
Timothy D. Snyder
The Road to Unfreedom
(2018) p. 11. Read it online
here
Fascism is the falsehood that the enemy chosen by a leader must be the enemy for all.
Politics
then begins from
emotion
and
falsehood
. Peace becomes unthinkable, since enmity abroad is necessary for control at home.
A fascist says "the people" and means "some people," those he favors at the moment.
Timothy Snyder
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
(2018) pp. 278–279.
The symbol Z, the rallies, the propaganda, the war as a cleansing act of violence and the death pits around Ukrainian towns make it all very plain.
The war against
Ukraine
is not only a return to the traditional fascist battleground, but also a return to traditional fascist language and practice.
Other people are there to be colonized.
Russia
is innocent because of its ancient past. The existence of Ukraine is an international conspiracy. War is the answer.
Timothy D. Snyder
The symbol Z, the rallies, the
propaganda
, the war as a cleansing act of violence and the death pits around
Ukrainian
towns make it all very plain.
The
war against Ukraine
is not only a return to the traditional fascist battleground, but also a return to traditional fascist language and practice.
Other people are there to be
colonized
Russia
is innocent because of its ancient past. The existence of Ukraine is an international conspiracy. War is the answer.
Timothy D. Snyder
We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist.
The New York Times
(19 May 2022).
Today people commonly use the word "fascism" instead of "
national socialism
." Presumably this is what you are asking. No.
Hitlerism
had
racism
as its essential
dogmatic
foundation. But in a
multiethnic
country, such an ideology has no chance of success. And
Russia
has never had such a movement. But if we speak about the rampage of militant chauvinism, then it exists--and in bloody form--in several republics of the former
U.S.S.R.
, but certainly not in Russia. And if one were to count all the instances of
violence
perpetrated on
nationalist
grounds and in local wars, all of them took place outside of Russia and were not perpetrated by
Russians
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the New Russia and Ukraine (May 1994)
, by Paul Klebnikov, in the (9 May 1994), issue of
Forbes
magazine
Fascism began as a revision of
Marxism
by Marxists, a revision which developed in successive stages, so that these Marxists gradually stopped thinking of themselves as Marxists, and eventually stopped thinking of themselves as
socialists
. They never stopped thinking of themselves as anti-liberal
revolutionaries
David Ramsay Steele
"The Mystery of Fascism"
Libertarian Alliance
(Jan. 29, 2002)
If
the
Fascist ideology
cannot be described as a simple response to
Marxism
, its origins, on the other hand, were the direct result of very specific
revision of Marxism
. It
was a revision of Marxism and not a variety of Marxism or a consequence of Marxism
... It was the
French
and
Italian
Sorelians
, the theoreticians of revolutionary
syndicalism
who made this new and original revision of Marxism, and precisely this was their contribution to the birth of the Fascist ideology.
Zeev Sternhell
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
(1989) p. 5
Fascism rebelled against
modernity
inasmuch as modernity was identified with the
rationalism
optimism
, and
humanism
of the eighteenth century, but it was not a reactionary or an anti-revolutionary movement in the
Maurrassian
sense of the term. Fascism presented itself as a revolution of another kind, a revolution that sought to destroy the existing political order and to uproot its theoretical and moral foundations but that at the same time wished to preserve all the achievements of modern technology.
Zeev Sternhell
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
(1989) p. 7
That is why so many
Sorelians
, like many people on the Left both before and after
the war
, slid into fascism. When these leftists of all shapes and colors came to the conclusion that the
working class
had definitely beaten a retreat, they did not follow it into this attitude. Their
socialism
remained
revolutionary
when that of the proletariat had ceased to be so. Having to choose between the
proletariat
and
revolution
, they chose revolution; having to choose between a proletarian but moderate socialism and a nonproletarian but revolutionary and national socialism, they opted for the nonproletarian revolution, the national revolution.
Zeev Sternhell
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
(1989) p. 27
Thus, it was quite natural that a synthesis would arise between this new socialism [fascism], which discovered the nation as a revolutionary agent, and the
nationalist movement
, which also rebelled against the old world of
conservatives
, against the
aristocrats
and the
bourgeois
, and against
social injustices
and which believed that the nation would never be complete until it had integrated the proletariat. A socialism for the whole collectivity and a nationalism that, severed from conservatism, proclaimed itself as being by definition the messenger of unity and unanimity thus came together to form an unprecedented weapon of war against the bourgeois order and
liberal democracy
Zeev Sternhell
The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution
(1989) pp. 27-8
Thus, the historical circumstance of the half century preceding the
Second World War
gave rise to the essence of fascism: a synthesis of organic nationalism and
anti-Marxist socialism
, a revolutionary ideology based on a simultaneous rejection of liberalism, Marxism, and democracy.
Zeev Sternhell
Neither Left nor Right: Fascist Ideology in France
(1983) p. 27
[Fascist ideology was] a variety of socialism which, while rejecting Marxism, remained revolutionary. This form of socialism was also, by definition, anti-liberal and anti-bourgeois, and its opposition to
historical materialism
made it the natural ally of
radical nationalism
Zeev Sternhell
Neither Left nor Right: Fascist Ideology in France
(1983) p. 268
edit
Fascism comes only when the working class shows complete incapacity to take into its own hands the fate of society. ~
Leon Trotsky
Fascism presented itself not only as an alternative, but also as the heir to
socialism
Jacob Talmon
The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century
, University of California Press, 1981. p. 501.
Unity
, in Fascist terms, means uniformity;
freedom of conscience
means insubordination;
co-ordination
means
coercion
Dorothy Thompson
, "Let the Record Speak", Boston: MA, Houghton Mifflin Company (1939) p. 20 (newspaper column: “Political Dictionary,” March 19, 1936)
The peoples of
Yugoslavia
do not want Fascism. They do not want a
totalitarian
regime, they do not want to become
slaves
of the
German
and
Italian
financial
oligarchy
as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called
Western democracies
after the
first imperialist war
Josip Broz Tito
, as quoted by Jasper Ridley,
Tito: A Biography
(Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 155.
Stalinism
and fascism
, in spite of a deep difference in social foundations, are symmetrical phenomena. In many of their features, they
show a deadly similarity.
Leon Trotsky
The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?
Labor Publications, Inc., Detroit, MI, 1991, pp. 237-238, Chap. 11, “Whither the Soviet Union.” First published 1937.
The similarities of the economics of the
New Deal
to the economics of
Mussolini
's
corporative state
or
Hitler
's
totalitarian
state are both close and obvious.
As quoted by
Norman Thomas
in
Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939
Wolfgang Schivelbusch
, Metropolitan Books, 2006 pp. 28-29.
There isn't any difference in
totalitarian
states. I don't care what you call them,
Nazi
Communist
or Fascist
...
Harry S. Truman
, (Comment on May 13, 1947), Public Papers of the President of the United States
, Harry S. Truman. Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, January 1 to December 31, 1947
(Washington D.C., 1963), p. 238
In all the countries where fascism became victorious, we had, before the growth of fascism and its victory, a wave of
radicalism
of the
masses
— of the workers and the poorer peasants and farmers, and of the
petty bourgeois
class. In
Italy
, after the war and before 1922, we had a
revolutionary
wave of tremendous dimensions; the state was paralyzed, the police did not exist, the trade unions could do anything they wanted — but there was not party capable of taking the power. As a reaction came fascism. In
Germany
, the same. We had a revolutionary situation in 1918; the
bourgeois
class did not even ask to participate in the power. The
social democrats
paralyzed the revolution. Then the workers tried again in 1922-23-24. This was the time of the bankruptcy of the
Communist Party
— all of which we have gone into before. Then in 1929-30-31, the German workers began again a new revolutionary wave. There was a tremendous power in the
Communists
and in the trade unions, but then came the famous policy (on the part of the
Stalinist
movement) of
social fascism
, a policy invented to paralyze the
working class
. Only after these three tremendous waves did fascism become a big movement. There are no exceptions to this rule — fascism comes only when the working class shows complete incapacity to take into its own hands the fate of society.
Leon Trotsky
Fascism : What It Is and How To Fight It
(1944)
The last resource of the
bourgeoisie
is fascism, which replaces social and historical criteria with biological and zoological standards so as thus to free itself from any and all restrictions in the struggle for
capitalist
property
Leon Trotsky
, "
Moralists and Sycophants Against Marxism
Donald
was incompetent, but others in
Donald's administration
were anything but. What they built was a lean and ruthless machine for advancing fascism. With the help of some luck, complicit
institutions
, an unprepared
media
, and a party of willing converts, that machine largely succeeded.
Mary L. Trump
The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal
(2021), 1st Edition, New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 139
edit
What fascism proposes is a
dream
and what fascism gives you, is a
nightmare
. ~
Paul Verhoeven
At the dawn of Mussolini's government, there were 267 parliamentarians affiliated with Freemasonry: more of a lodge than a chamber. Freemasons of different rites were other important names in the history of Fascism: trade unionist Edmondo Rossoni, Grand Minister Araldo di Crollalanza, Jurist Alfredo De Marsico; Peppino Caradonna, Bernardo Barbiellini Amidei, Aldo Finzi, Balbino Giuliano, and Costanzo Ciano, father of Galeazzo, Alberto Beneduce, future head of IRI, and Giacomo Acerbo, author of the electoral law that bears his name; Ezio Maria Gray, who would later become a member of the MSI, Armando Casalini, and many others.
Marcello Veneziani
All’armi siam fascisti, anzi massoni
What fascism proposes is a
dream
and what fascism gives you, is a
nightmare
Paul Verhoeven
as quoted by Ezra Marcus in
“Is Starship Troopers, a fascist satire, coming true?”
Interview Magazine
, (November 8, 2017)
edit
With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public. ~
Henry A. Wallace
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are
patriotic
in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.
Henry A. Wallace
New York Times
(1944) as quoted by
Thom Hartmann
in
Fascists Compete To Own America, Common Dreams,
(30 April 2018)
American fascism will not be really dangerous, ...until there is a purposeful coalition among the
cartelists
, the deliberate poisoners of public information... Fascism is a worldwide disease... [its] greatest threat to the United States will come after
the war
... within the United States itself.
Henry A. Wallace
New York Times
(1944) as quoted by
Thom Hartmann
in
Fascists Compete To Own America, Common Dreams,
(30 April 2018)
The dangerous
American
fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what
Hitler
did in
Germany
in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information..
Henry A. Wallace,
quoted by
Thom Hartmann
in
Fascists Compete To Own America, Common Dreams,
(30 April 2018)
The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the
Axis
. The
FBI
has its finger on those.
Henry A. Wallace,
quoted by
Thom Hartmann
in
Fascists Compete To Own America, Common Dreams,
(30 April 2018)
With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public.
Henry A. Wallace,
quoted by
Thom Hartmann
in
Fascists Compete To Own America, Common Dreams,
(30 April 2018)
Dr. Reich
vastly offended many people by his
sociological
theory, which holds that fascism is just an exaggerated form of the basic structure of
sex
-negative
societies
and has existed under other names in every
civilization
based on sexual repression. ~
Robert Anton Wilson
In the
fantasies
they committed to paper, the men associated the women they despised with floods of liquid and slime, and with dirt – substances that would threaten to overwhelm the defences of their ill-formed psyches. The solider male felt that he could only guarantee “his own survival, his self-preservation and self-regeneration”, through acts of violence against such women. ~ Jason Wilson
We have no right to disown our own shame in the upbringing of the beast from whom we have so lately been delivered. There was no country in Europe without its fascist party, and this at a time before the label appeared likely to prove safe or profitable.
Rex Warner
, in
The Cult of Power
, The Bodley Head, (1946), p. 142
Do we have a
free press
today? Sure we do. It’s free to report all the sex scandals it wants, all the stock market news we can handle, every new health fad that comes down the pike, and every celebrity marriage or divorce that happens. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff — stories like...
corporate
corruption
, or
CIA
involvement in
drug trafficking
— that’s where we begin to see the limits of our freedoms. In today’s media environment, sadly, such stories are not even open for discussion. Back in 1938, when fascism was sweeping
Europe
, legendary investigative reporter
George Seldes
observed that “it is possible to fool all the people all the time — when government and press cooperate.” Unfortunately, we have reached that point. p. 156
Gary Webb
Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
(2002)
Fascism had its origins in
communism
, and communism exhibited facets of fascism from its inception. Since the
Soviet empire
broke up, its logical course is toward fascism.
Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Library System, Iola,
Library Journal
, (1 March 2000)
It would seem...that man has been shocked by the
war
into forgetting how to be a
political animal
. This suspicion is confirmed by the spread of
Fascism
, which
is a headlong flight into fantasy from the necessity for political thought.
There is nothing more obvious about the post-war situation than that it is novel, springs from causes which have not yet been analysed, and cannot be relieved until this analysis is complete and has been made the basis of a new social formula. Yet
persons supporting Fascism behave as if man were already in possession of principles which would enable him to deal with all our problems, and as if it were only a question of appointing a dictator to apply them.
Rebecca West
, "The Necessity and Grandeur of the International Ideal" (1935), reprinted in Rebecca West,
Woman as Artist and Thinker
, edited by Helen Atkinson, Lincoln, Neb. :
iUniverse
, 2005.
I am for the legal government of Republican Spain against
Franco
, since Spain herself, at a properly conducted
election
, chose that Government and rejected the party which now supports Franco. I am also against Fascism; the reforms of
Diocletian
were a work of genius and made many people temporarily happy, but failed in the end and added greatly to human
misery
. I see no reason why this inferior modern copy of them should succeed.
Rebecca West
, "Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War" (1937), edited by
Nancy Cunard
, reprinted in
The Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War
(1986), edited by
Valentine Cunningham
In 1977,
Klaus Theweleit
published a book in which he sought to understand the germination of fascism in interwar
Germany
. His method was to study the
fantasy
life of that era's
conservative
revolutionaries
, by reading the diaries, novels and letters of the men who joined the
Freikorps
militias, and fought against
insurgent
communists
during the early days of the
Weimar Republic
Jason Wilson,
"What do incels, fascists and terrorists have in common? Violent misogyny"
The Guardian
, (4 May 2018).
In the
fantasies
they committed to paper, the men associated the women they despised with floods of liquid and slime, and with dirt – substances that would threaten to overwhelm the defences of their ill-formed psyches. The solider male felt that he could only guarantee “his own survival, his self-preservation and self-regeneration”, through acts of violence against such women. (Another way of maintaining their fragile sense of self is by slotting themselves into enveloping external structures like the armed forces or fascist youth organisations.)
In the
soldier
males’ journals we see them taking great pleasure, and building fraternal camaraderie, by murdering women, pairs of lovers and leftists of all genders. We also see that many of them cannot reconcile acts of physical love with the nature of their own desires. When it came to these men, their murderous acts and their sexual problems were not coincidental, they were interrelated.
In explaining how,
Theweleit
takes exception with the left’s then-dominant explanation of fascism – that it was a result of pure irrationality, or repressed homosexuality. Some said it could be countered by the left mounting a renewed defence of progress and reason, or by beefing up alternative institutions that mirrored those of the fascists.
For Theweleit, this misses the central dynamic that propels the fascist male towards violence. Fascism derives its power from channelling the protean, potentially liberating force of human desire towards hatred, distorting it into a desire for death and blood. All of its institutions, its rituals, and the (male) bonds it promotes are bent to this purpose. We cannot beat fascists by aping their structures, any more than we can hope to rationally persuade them. The problem goes deeper.
On this theme, he says that classical fascism was not as distinct as we might want it to be from the culture surrounding it. It is not a departure from European history, but an intensification of some of its more pervasive traits.
At one point he asks, “Can we not draw a straight line from the
witch
to the sensuous
Jewish
woman
? Is the persecution of the sensuous woman not a permanent reality, one that is not economic in origin, but which derives from the specific social organisation of gender relations in
patriarchal
Europe?”
Later, more succinctly, he comments that his soldier males are “equivalent to the tip of the patriarchal iceberg, but it’s what lies beneath the surface that really makes the water cold”.
Jason Wilson,
"What do incels, fascists and terrorists have in common? Violent misogyny"
The Guardian
, (4 May 2018).
Dr. Reich
vastly offended many people by his
sociological
theory, which holds that fascism is just an exaggerated form of the basic structure of
sex
-negative
societies
and has existed under other names in every
civilization
based on
sexual repression
. In this theory, the character and muscular armor of the average citizen — a submissive and frightened attitude anchored in body reflexes — causes the average person to want a strong
authority
figure above them.
Tyranny
, in this model, is not created by
tyrants
alone but by
neurotic
masses
who
want
tyrants.
Robert Anton Wilson
, in
Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups
(1998), p. 361
This means that if someone acts like a fascist, has fascist beliefs, repeats fascist talking points, and hangs out with other fascists, the fact that they publicly denounce fascism should be worth absolutely nothing to you, and shouldn’t even enter into your consideration of whether they’re a fascist. After all, “I’m not a fascist” is exactly what a fascist would say.
Natalie Wynn
Decrypting the Alt-Right: How to Recognize a F@scist
, (1 September 2017)
edit
edit
edit
The biggest threat to America today is not
communism
. It's moving America toward a fascist
theocracy
, and everything that's happened during the
Reagan
administration is steering us right down that pipe ... I really think that. ... When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very, very right wing, almost toward
Attila the Hun
...
Frank Zappa
Crossfire
debate on censorship (1986).
See also
edit
Authoritarianism
Anti-fascism
Fascism—Fight it Now
(1937)
Fascism and ideology
Nazism
Social and political philosophy
Ideologies
Anarchism
Aristocratic Radicalism
Nietzsche
Brandes
...)
Autarchism
Ba'athism
(•
Aflaq
al-Assad
Hussein
Communism
⦿ (Neo-)
Confucianism
Conservatism
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Dark Enlightenment
Environmentalism
Fascism
(•
Islamo-
Eco-
Francoism
...)
vs.
Nazism
Feminism
(•
Anarcha-
Radical
Gender-critical
Second-wave
...)
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(Neo-)
cameralism
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Gaddafism
Third International Theory
Legalism
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Juche
(•
Kim Il-sung
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...)
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Capitalism
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Mohism
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Socialism
Stalinism
Straussianism
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Xi Jinping thought
New Monasticism
(•
MacIntyre
Dreher
...)
Modalities
Absolutism
vs.
Social constructionism
Relativism
Autarky
Autonomy
vs.
Heteronomy
Authoritarianism
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vs.
Imperialism
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vs.
Liberalism
Elitism
vs.
Populism
Majoritarianism
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vs.
Collectivism
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vs.
Cosmopolitanism
Particularism
vs.
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vs.
Postmodernism
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vs.
Futurism
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Concepts
Alienation
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Fascism
The Doctrine of Fascism
(1932)
by
Benito Mussolini
Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt (1995)
by
Umberto Eco
Readings on Fascism and National Socialism
edited by Alan Swallow – Project Gutenberg
Authorized translation of Mussolini’s “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism” (1933)
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