# Explain fascism please. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 17, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065 "2010-07-17T22:15:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/141 "2010-07-21T16:44:25Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > The one big failing of Classical Liberals, or Conservatives today, is not what the Left thinks. We have always been called monsters, the living human nightmare, the utter evil. But it’s untrue and was never true. Only the Left could really be so, because onyl the Left was willing or able to completely abandon any form of limitation on its power. Conservativism may never be truly as good as it could be, or maybe morally should be depending on your view. But it does not produce monsters. You can only become a demon if you are certain you are an angel. You can only create Hell on Earth if you are willing to sacrifice it to create Heaven on Earth. And that was the ultimate goal of the Left, from the moment it tore free from its womb to shower France with blood in the Revolution and drown Europe in death under Napoleon, to the Fascist and Communist experiments. > > Likewise, the Left as such made vastly lot less progress than they like to imagine, because they were always looking for perfection, not improvement. Time was always their enemy: they wanted everything, a world with no choices, where no good came at the cost of another good, and they wanted it yesterday. See what I mean guys? 🙂 Give it up, once extremism raises its ugly head conservatism also produces monsters. Just read what Jacobo Timerman had to endure at the hand of the military regime in Argentina. [http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780299182441?&PID=31754](http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780299182441?&PID=31754) But as it was the mantra then (as it seems now), it was ok, there is no way those nice military juntas and coups would be led by monsters, after all they were conservative and supported by American conservatives. :rolleyes: > **[On 30th Anniversary of Argentine Coup: New Declassified Details on Repression...](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm)** ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/142 "2010-07-21T16:48:49Z")
This whole argument is sort of like a priest and a rabbi arguing that a particularly nasty Atheist is more Catholic or more Jewish. 😃 Edit: as a means of explaining what “atheism” is. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/143 "2010-07-21T16:57:02Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > And that was the ultimate goal of the Left, from the moment it tore free from its womb to shower France with blood in the Revolution and drown Europe in death under Napoleon, to the Fascist and Communist experiments. :dubious: If you really see continuity between the French Revolution and both Communism **and** Fascism in the 20th Century . . . well, there’s something there but you’re **grossly** oversimplifying. See [“Which Civilisation?”](http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2001/which_civilisation) by Michael Lind, _Prospect,_ 10/25/01: > [@](#): > > On the secular side of the civilisational divide, there have been three major traditions: humanism, rationalism and romanticism. These three traditions originated in Europe but now have adherents around the world. All three are essentially secular worldviews which do not need to invoke the authority of divine revelation or mystical gnosis (though some romantics are mystics or pantheists and some humanists have been religious believers). In respects other than their common secularism, the three traditions are fundamentally different from one another. > > Humanist civilisation crystallised in Renaissance Italy, before spreading to the Netherlands, Britain, and the US. This liberal, commercial, increasingly democratic civilisation has spread to other nations by emulation (Lafayette’s France, Atatork’s Turkey, Yeltsin’s Russia) and by conquest and conversion (post-1945 Germany and Japan). Humanists seek to ameliorate the problems of social life with the guidance of practical wisdom, derived chiefly from history, literature and custom, with little or no reference to supernatural religion or natural science, with the possible exception of the emergent sociobiology. Humanists tend to be modest as philosophers and cautious as reformers. Examples of great humanist thinkers and statesmen are Petrarch, Erasmus, Bacon, Montaigne, Voltaire, Franklin, Hume, Burke, Smith, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. > > Rationalism, a world view underlying a number of secular creeds, first crystallised in 17th and 18th-century France. Rationalists reject the humanist distinction between practical wisdom and natural science. The goal of rationalists of all kinds is to devise a science of society, modelled on natural science, which can serve as the basis for the construction of a “rational” social order. Stephen Toulmin makes a useful distinction between the “reasonableness” of Renaissance humanists and the “rationality” of Enlightenment philosophes. The rationalist pantheon includes social engineers like Condorcet, St Simon, Comte, Fourier, Bentham, Marx, Lenin and Ayn Rand. (The “secular humanists” who support world federalism and utopian social reform are really rationalists). > > Romanticism, the third major secular world view, has spread widely from its original homeland, late 18th and early 19th-century Germany. Romantics reject both reasonableness and rationality, they exalt the inspired unreason of the artistic genius, the child, the primitive uncorrupted by civilisation. Rousseau, Emerson, Wagner, Nietszche and Frantz Fanon should be on a list of romantic prophets, and idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel arguably are closer to romanticism than to humanism or rationalism. > > The American revolution, and the French revolution in its constitutional phases, were humanist. The French terror and the Bolshevik terror were rationalist. The second world war was a struggle of three secular civilisations: humanism (Roosevelt and Churchill), rationalism (Stalin) and romanticism (Hitler). The war by Islamic radicals against the US, Europe and Israel is, among other things, a conflict between religious and humanist civilisation. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/144 "2010-07-21T17:04:25Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I’m a little confused by what distinction you mean between the “middle class” and the “working class”. In the United States at least, “middle class” is virtually synonymous with the people who work for an employer for wages Which is an absolute crap definition, because it ignores a whole range of factors that differentiate the real middle class from the real working class. Not the least of which is the range of wages. In any case, if you’ll look up at the voting percentages and membership percentages post I made a day or so ago, you’ll get a pretty good idea of the breakdown from my point of view. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/145 "2010-07-21T17:05:45Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Which is an absolute crap definition, because it ignores a whole range of factors that differentiate the real middle class from the real working class. Not the least of which is the range of wages. In any case, if you’ll look up at the voting percentages and membership percentages post I made a day or so ago, you’ll get a pretty good idea of the breakdown from my point of view. We’ve been over this before, and I thought you were in agreement that the “working class” in America = everybody who is not independently wealthy but has to do work, of whatever kind, for a living. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/146 "2010-07-21T17:23:17Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Do you know **anything** at all about the economic structure of Nazi Germany? Because you are making it pretty apparent you don’t. > > Other than actions specifically aimed at Jewish owners of department stores, the Nazi regime let the owners of the means of production continue unhindered… This is, taken literally, ridiculous. The Nazis introduced all manner of economic restrictions and controls affecting business owners. They were very aggressively against international trade, for one thing, engaging in “autarky” measures and strictly controlling all international trade and forcing import substitution programs. Prices of all goods were strictly controlled, as was access to raw materials. Industrial output was mandated by the economic planning apparatus, which was headed by Goering himself. Banking and credit was subject to the same planning restrictions. The Nazi regime was totalitarian in the real sense of that word; they tried to control absolutely EVERYTHING. You don’t really believe a German industralist in 1940 was free of Nazi interference, do you? I think you’re the one who needs to look into was Nazism was all about. It would have been unthinkable to the Nazis for any aspect of German society to not conform to the Nazi vision. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/147 "2010-07-21T17:29:57Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > You don’t really believe a German industralist in 1940 was free of Nazi interference, do you? I think you’re the one who needs to look into was Nazism was all about. It would have been unthinkable to the Nazis for any aspect of German society to not conform to the Nazi vision. No I don’t think of it as free from Nazi interference. But it was interference for the benefit of big business, and happily acquiesced to by big business. German business happily conformed to the Nazi vision of society, because in doing so it could line its pockets to a greater extent than it could under social democracy, or, indeed, under a free market system. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/148 "2010-07-21T17:37:32Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Your comment says nothing about us, but a great deal about you. Motes and planks and all that. Bullshit. It says something about you that your only response is a vague ad hominem attack. > [@](#): > > Fascism has very definite social and political roots, and arises under fairly specific circumstances - mainly, at times of economic and political crisis… > …Essentially, it comes from what Marxists often called the ‘petty bourgeoisie’ but what most here might call the ‘lower middle class’ - people with some education and a skilled job, but who are definitely not on the way up and are more likely hanging on by the skin of their teeth in times of crisis. When the shit hits the fan, they resent the representatives of big business and big government that seem to be eroding their way of life, but at the same time they’re dead convinced that the socialists and communists are an even worse threat. They look to a glorified history of their country as an ideal, but only insofar as that country provides a safeguard of personal property (including salaries). Racism is certainly an element in the fascist philosophy, whether it’s glorification of one’s own race or more-or-less organized hatred of the ‘outsider’ who seems to be ruining the country. (In that vein, and this is not meant as a political potshot, I feel the Teabagger movement represents the first faint stirrings of a mainstream fascist organization. They’re not anywhere close to there yet, but it’s a mistake to wave them away as a bunch of annoying loonies. They have the potential to be quite dangerous.) I missed the fact that the post references teabaggers, perhaps they were intentionally crafting their definition of fascism to describe teabaggers but the description does in fact describe the tea party pretty closely. Explain to me how the above description is unlike the teabagging movement? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/149 "2010-07-21T17:46:32Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Explain to me how the above description is unlike the teabagging movement? Because no fascists have ever been interested in sex acts between two men. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/150 "2010-07-21T18:04:16Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Because no fascists have ever been interested in sex acts between two men. Except for Ernst Rohm . . . ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/151 "2010-07-21T18:07:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > We’ve been over this before, and I thought you were in agreement that the “working class” in America = everybody who is not independently wealthy but has to do work, of whatever kind, for a living. I’ll try to keep this brief so as not to derail the thread, but crudely put, yes, that’s my view as well. But obviously, the further up the wage scale you go, opportunities for income outside of the direct sale of labor power (investments, for example) increase, bringing such people into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, petty or otherwise. For someone at the low end of the scale, such things are an impossible dream and the only thing they have to look forward to at retirement is anything they’ve managed to scrimp and save from a lifetime of living paycheck to paycheck on top of whatever Social Security and Medicare are able to provide. Furthermore, the perspectives on how they can change their lives for the better are radically different. For the middle class, it’s getting that promotion or investing more wisely or further training and education, or any number of individualistic approaches. For the working class, it starts with organizing _collectively_ to fight for better wages, better conditions, and so on and so forth. The way production is organized throws the working class together side by side at their jobs, and they can learn from that not only how to work side by side but to fight side by side. Finally, the inevitable crises of capitalism (it’s able to get out of them more or less, but never to avoid them) render the individualistic approach to betterment rudely moot when savings or investment funds or equity built up in a house is wiped out. Parts of the middle class are thrown into the ranks of the working class where they need to find a job - any job - just to survive. They end up becoming members of the working class (_proletarianized_ in marxist terms). A good example is teachers - a skilled profession whose members now are in unions and in places fighting like hell against an education system that leaves both them and the children they teach more and more out in the cold. In short, if you have to work for a living, no matter to what degree, you are in fact a worker. But not all workers are proletarians, until they become wholly dependent on selling their labor power to survive. **Damuri** , I was not specifically crafting that definition of fascism to describe the teabaggers; I was actually summarizing some of Trotsky’s arguments from the essay _What is National Socialism?_ I don’t think it at all accidental that the description fits. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/152 "2010-07-21T18:27:13Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > **Damuri** , I was not specifically crafting that definition of fascism to describe the teabaggers; I was actually summarizing some of Trotsky’s arguments from the essay _What is National Socialism?_ I don’t think it at all accidental that the description fits. The tea baggers are “fascist” in the same way that Obama is “socialist”. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/153 "2010-07-21T18:29:00Z")
> [@\*\*Brainglutton\*\*](#): > > If you really see continuity between the French Revolution and both Communism and Fascism in the 20th Century . . . well, there’s something there but you’re grossly oversimplifying. I do not simplify, but I do not write or claim to have written everything, either. I do not agree at all with the idea that Communism was rationalist. It claimed to be so, but I consider very much that it was a product of Romanticism. But that is because I consider the entire rationalist movement to have effectively died and been absorbed in weird ways into romantic thought. The Communists may have been less poetic and more in tune with precision machinery and modernist styles, but they were otherwise very Romantic and avoided its actual fact whereever possible. They were obsessed with symbols and mythmaking, falsifying hisory, and paying homage to the Will to Power in ideology if not in name. Honestly, while they claimed to be scientific, the plain fact is that the Communists are about as close to Rationalism as a rotting twinkie. Likewise, I agre the French Revolutionaries pretended to be Rationalists. But they were deeply Romantic in effect. No Rationalist would ever dedicate it as a Temple to Reason. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Bullshit. It says something about you that your only response is a vague ad hominem attack. Which is precisely what you _opened_ with. If you are really incapable of seeing that a band of citizens, not gathering to take power or assault minorities, but angry about bad governance and dedicated to reform of corruption and waste, is not Fascist, then as I said, you are the sick one. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/154 "2010-07-21T20:04:01Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The tea baggers are “fascist” in the same way that Obama is “socialist”. > > Regards, > Shodan Aside from Malthus’ excellent point that Nazism isn’t an ideology that fits on the left/right spectrum (and often expressly disclaimed it), this is the thing I agree with most in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/155 "2010-07-21T20:12:14Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > If you are really incapable of seeing that a band of citizens, not gathering to take power or assault minorities, but angry about bad governance and dedicated to reform of corruption and waste, is not Fascist, then as I said, you are the sick one. I’m assuming you’re still talking about the Tea Baggers. And you may be right. Though the general anti-Muslim emotions are worrying to me. But then, I’m Dutch and, per capita, we have shit-loads more Muslims. Speaking of Dutch politics: I’m not nearly as sure that Geert Wilders’ “movement” isn’t pretty close to fascist: hard to position in the left/right spectrum: check blaming minorities for the big problems: check voter base in the working class/populism: check mythical invoking of the “glorious past” (“judeo-chrisitian culture” and all that): check economically capitalistic/anti-socialist: check (when it suits Wilders) anti-democratic: check (Wilders’ party has only one member: guess who that is). anti-internationalism: check Really the only thing that’s clearly missing is a strong belief in an industrial/technological future. Wilders may be too much of a pessimist. The above mentioned “the beauty of our economic plan is that we don’t have one” or some such is _very_ evident with Wilders, even if he isn’t as blatant about it. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/156 "2010-07-21T20:15:23Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > voter base in the working class/populism: check Except, as shown, this really isn’t the case historically for fascism. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/157 "2010-07-21T20:19:53Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Except, as shown, this really isn’t the case historically for fascism. Really? Who were the majority of voters for Hitler and Mussolini? ETA: As far as I can see, the strategy was more or less to find some kind of platform that would entice a significant portion of the working class, while still keeping the “ruling elite” happy. Also, AFAIK, democracy as we know it was pretty new at that time. Dutch politics at least shifted a lot when every man (and I do mean “man”) was allowed the vote. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/158 "2010-07-21T20:24:04Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > Really? Who were the majority of voters for Hitler and Mussolini? For Hitler - lower middle and middle class people, who suffered disproportionately from the inflation. The combined SPD/KPD vote did not drop significantly as the Nazi vote rose, suggesting the Nazis pulled their votes from elsewhere, in particular by the cannibalization of the Nationalist and Conservative parties. Was there working class support for the Nazis? Yes. But that support wasn’t the mainstay of the party. The divisions of course get blended during the recession, but the fact of being unemployed and poor doesn’t necessarily make someone working class. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/159 "2010-07-21T20:38:26Z")
> [@villa](#): > > For Hitler - lower middle and middle class people, who suffered disproportionately from the inflation. The combined SPD/KPD vote did not drop significantly as the Nazi vote rose, suggesting the Nazis pulled their votes from elsewhere, in particular by the cannibalization of the Nationalist and Conservative parties. Don’t forget the Christian & Catholic parties. Those are still the largest block in German politics even today, and they were fairly marginal in the 1930s elections (with the Catholics as the largest religious party getting 11% of the votes, compared to 25% for the largest party: the social democrats). ETA: [1930’s German election results](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_1930) for the interested. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2010, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065/160 "2010-07-21T20:49:08Z")
True, but the Center Party survived, and in fact lost very few votes until it was banned. It did manage to vote for the Enabling Act, though, so it should probably be defined as suicide rather than death at the hands of the Nazis. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-fascism-please/547065.md?page=9)