Of course it does.
No, they’re not. The Iran of 1980 and the Iran of today are very different countries.
Interesting topic.
I will have to pour a bit of cold water on your thesis, however. You can probably search GQ or (possibly) GD for my list of Fascist characteristics, but you have completely misinterpreted my comment that you quoted. My point in that post and thread was that of the fourteen purported characteristics of Fascism listed, I agreed with only two of them (which I bolded) in regards to identifying Fascism uniquely. So wandering through a list of terms that I disagree identify Fascism (and only finding 50% matches by your standards) does nothing to oppose my position that the Fundamentalist Muslims/Wahabbists/Islamists, or whomever are inappropriately labeled Fascist.
Now, of the two (out of fourteen) points that I agree are particular to Fascism, I believe only one–that of identifying scapegoats for ongoing problems–is employed by the Islamists.
The “nationalism” claim does not work and makes no sense. Iran has its own nationalism. Pakistan has its own nationalism. Egypt has its own nationalism. Turkey has its own nationalism. Indonesia and Malaysia and Libya and other largely Muslim nations all have their own expressions of nationalism that is in conflict with the concept of the universal brotherhood of Muslims.
Hypothetically, if a serious movement arose to reestablish the Caliphate, it might take on nationalistic trappings, but as long as it is a pipe dream, there is no pan-Islamic “nationalism.”
Off the top of my head, I can recall a few other characteristics of fascism that are clearly contradicted by the Fundamentalist Muslims.
There is no “racial” identity among even the most extreme Muslims. They are bound together by their beliefs, not their births. Facscism did not always express itself in the Nazi’s “Master” race, but there is always a racial/ethnic component to Fascism. Arabs might band together with a racial identity under a hypothetical Caliphate, but if they did, they would be excluding the Persians, Turks, Indians, and dozens of other ethnic groups throughout the world.
There is no cult of the leader among the Islamists, a trait that has been found in every Fascist state. Looking to a semi-legendary icon from the distant past does not cut it. The Fascist states all had living leaders who were dramatic public figures around which a cult following developed. bin Laden does not cut it. Even if he is still alive, it is pretty clear that his organization runs without hanging on every word that drops from his lips. In addition, the Persian/Iranian Shi’a have no love and limited respect for him. (The same is true of the Ayatollah Khomeini. He might have developed into a cult figure in Iran, but he was hardly the leader of the entire consevative wing of Muslim thought.) Muqtada al-Sadr is working hard to become a cult leader, but he has to fight with his own countrymen for the top spot (which he has not yet achieved) and if he actually comes to power and becomes a cult leader in Iraq, it is certain that he will be opposed by the Sunni Wahabbists and ignored by many others outside Iraq. (It is pretty silly to ascribe cult leader status to a person who is reviled by the very peopole who started the movement one wishes to label “Fascist.”)
Or a communist?
Actually, it is not a synonym for Muslim. A Muslim is an aderent of the religion of Islam. An Islamist is one who promotes Islam in particular political ways that are not dictated by Islam or the Qur’an. Now, no one has to like the word Islamist, but if we are going to replace it, then let us replace it with a word that has an actual meaning in context rather than tacking the word “fascist” onto the end of a word as some sort of bogeyman when the movement so described has so little in common with Fascism.
Well… I’m going on the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of “A government ruled by or subject to religious authority.”
Although, to be fair, I’m curious as to where you’re coming from. How can an Islamist government be pro-democracy? I would assume that it could only be that way if it didn’t respect the basic rights of all citizens, regardless of religion, to be first class citizens and/or if all of its citizens were Muslims?
Am I missing something?
Perhaps… my point was simply that there was either a dovetailing or a direct influence of some Arab nationalists and Nazi doctrine. I think that, say, the Protocols’ and Mein Kampf’s continued success do speak to something of a linear descent of ideology. No?
Yes, I wouldn’t argue that Nazism was the sole influence on Arab judeopathy, but it did have some influence and/or similarities.
Political flirtation, yes… but certain ideological lineages? As you correctly point out, Jew-hating was hardly unique to the Nazis. But certainly in some people, like the Mufti of Jerusalem, Nazism’s ideologies, where they came to eliminating the Jews, found fertile soil and have continued as evinced by the popularity of Mein Kampf. No?
Hah, fair enough. 
My point was that some of the Arab political forces were “co-believers” and/or “student of” certain parts of Nazi doctrine. You put a finer point on it with more nuance, kudos.
Why not? If Hitler had died and the Nazi regime really did survive for 1000 years, with Hitler’s example as the guiding principle (distorted or not), would that no longer have been fascism?
As for various cult leaders and/or Imams and/or Supreme Leaders… why wouldn’t they count? If someone is the leader of a small cult of personality, does that negate the fact that they’re the leader of a cult of personality?
Now, as I’ve already stated, I don’t believe that Islamofascism is a good term, and I have even less love lost for little bulleted lists of 'what fascism is" (with or without uniforms)… so this is purely a academic. But if you’re going to say that a cult of personality around a leader is a sign of a fascist movement, why does it have to be a large fascist movement? If there were only 20 Nazis in 1940, wouldn’t they still have been fascists?
And now, on to a post that got eaten by the ‘submit’ button.
Iran is a civil society? That’s either powerfully absurd, like Alice in Wonderland level bonkers, or painfully ignorant.
They’ll murder you if you’re gay. They can arrest you if you’re a woman who isn’t dressed in proper “Islamic fashion”. They’ll jail you if you offer sufficient dissent. Then they’ll possibly torture you while they’re at it. They can and will arrest you without any actual charges being filed. The Government controlls most of the media under the direction of the Supreme Leader. Etc, etc, etc…
This is what you call a “thriving civil society”? This? This?
This is just absolutely through the looking glass. Do you honestly believe all those things, from oppressing women to murdering gays to arresting and torturing political dissidents without charging them with anything… are part of a “thriving civil society”? If the US adopted Iranian policies, you’d support that??? Do you really believe that all those things. any of those things, or a single one of those things are the mark of a “thriving civil society”, or did you simply not know much about Iran when you made your claim?
So as long as you cherry pick and ignore that opposition parties existed in Mexico and weren’t chosen by the ruling party, ignore that Iran doesn’t even have a ruling party so much as it has a Supreme Leader and his cronies who form an oligarchy and then decide who can and cannot be in politics (thus controlling the legislative, executive and judicial branches), ignore all the massive and systemic human rights violations and pretend that Iran is a civil society, it’s just like Mexico was.
You do know that in the 1980’s and now, the Ayatollah does the same things? That the Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989 but the Ayatollah Khamenei is the current Supreme Leader?
And that the governmental structure is almost entirely unchanged and is exactly as I described it, sham elections and all?
You claim that Iran’s political system is somehow very different from how it was in the 1980’s, but it’s virtually unchanged. Rather than some blanket pablum, why don’t you point out why the sham elections of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime are different from the sham elections of the Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime?
What do you mean, “if”?
Since I believe that the “corporatism” angle is one of the defining characteristics of fascism, does anyone know what the general opinion of the fanatical islamists is on that point? Do they have one?
I strongly suspect that Fascism cannot survive without the cult leader. No Fascist country has managed it.
As to the many separate leaders: Fascism is characterized by the single cult leader–Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Salazar, etc.–and I would suspect that once the leader was out of power, the country/movement would change direction and take on some other form of political philosophy. (Fascism is not the only movement associated with the cult leader–Korea, Cuba–but without that leader you are missing a significant characteristic of Fascism.) Now, if you want to posit that al Sadr is leading a Fascist movement shaped by Islamist tendencies, I could see a case for that–provided you could demonstrate the same ethnic appeals, ultra nationalism, and economic trends within his group–but his separate little hypothetically Fascist group cannot be considered representative of the Islamist movement which no longer has such a leader in Iran and really has few or no similar leaders anywhere else. (Omar exercised great power in Afghanistan, but I do not recall the Taliban holding him up as the epitome of their movement; he was just the guy who got to be in charge.) It is hardly appropriate to pick small movements within larger ones and claim that they typify the larger movement based on exactly the areas in which they differ from the larger movement.
Pointing to multiple Islamist leaders pretty well establishes that they are not following the cult of personality for the single strong leader that is one of the defining characteristics of Fascism.
There is lots of evil in the world; we don’t really have to shoehorn every evil movement into a box labelled “Fascist” simply because we all enjoy hating Hitler.
Well in most Muslim countries industry is dominated by the ruling party. Only the UAE has a system that is good for business, which is probably why Dubai is becoming the New York of the Middle-East. Saudi Arabian corporatism is dominated by Saudis and their cronies.
I think Islamofascism is a perfectly applicable term. The problem is that fascism was for the left what commie was for the right throughout the cold war. If you were a leftist, any group with any organization that opposed you were fascist, just like if you were on the right any group with any organization that opposed you were communists. The term has been abused, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not applicable.
Al Qaeda wants to establish an Arab dominated caliphate. That is Nationalistic of a kind. I don’t think simply predating fascism really changes whether or not the term is meaningful.
As I joked in the thread that inspired this. “Every government is fascist under capitalism.”
The semantic quibbling in this thread is IMO pointless. When someone says, ‘Islamofascist’, not a single person is confused as to what is being spoken of, and that is the true measure of a term’s utility. The sophistication with which one views the opposing factions is irrelevant. Many people think that ‘Islamofascism’ is more prevalent than it is, though many people think it is less prevalent than it is. I doubt that when Hitler rose to power more than 17% of the population supported his most radical agendas, though he did publish Mein Kampf early IIRC so who knows? We established in the thread about the prevalence of radical Islam that about 17% supported the more extreme terror tactics, eliminating those who said, ‘sometimes’.
What is of paramount importance is to understand where the support for terror is concentrated around the Arab epicenter. There are outliers like the former Soviet States, and the East Asian, Pacific Island Muslims or the Northwestern African Muslim states that don’t support radical Islam as much. What that means is that out of the 233m Muslims who DO support such terror, MOST of them are concentrated in the countries that are near Saudi Arabia. The highest concentration is from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan. Iran is probably one of our greatest hopes because if it comes to a nasty conflict they are the ones who have the most chance of having an effective secular resistance and they do not want to see a Sunni Caliphate anymore than we do. They seperate the Sunni states that are the biggest problem areas thankfully. From what I’ve read the Supreme Council is becoming more moderate as well in terms of who is succeeding the old guard.
We are going to be in Iraq for a very long time. An acquaintance of mine who is in Iraq has said that he thinks we’ll have to be there in a colonialist capacity for decades. Iraq has some hopeful signs right now, that people see Al Qaeda as a greater threat than America and have been proactively dragging terrorists out of their hidey holes and killing them themselves is good for us. Part of the reason it is more peaceful is that the ethnic cleansing has largely been successful. Shia and Sunni have unmixed themselves. The Shia are more dangerous to us in terms of what they are capable of, but the Sunni are more dangerous to us in terms of ideological backbone. Our greatest defense is the fact that Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure would crumble without western contractors, and it is the epicenter of the fascist nationalism with Wahabbism. Our natural allies in the Muslim world IMO are the Shia, unfortunately we are tied more to the Sunnis. If we pull out of Iraq and it collapses, it is very possible that Sunni nationalism could form a sort of super-state or some kind of bloc and become quite powerful. Al Qaeda gets its funding from the Saudi and Qatari royals. These are people we do business with. I was impressed in the Republican debates to hear them speak so frankly about the need to reduce our business ties to those regions because that money flows into the pockets of terrorists. After the exposure Giuliani has been getting for his close ties to Qatar, I was surprised that he was so frank about that. Word and deed however, are two different things.
The lack of a cult leader is the most serious argument against the label of ‘fascism’, but the soil is fertile for such a leader to rise.
Wasn’t that list of fascist traits in the OP debunked on this board a bunch of times? I thought it was tailor-made by someone who was trying to get the result he wanted rather than an actual description of what fascism is.
That’s not what “corporatism” means.
Just to lead off with this:
Neither of us are arguing that 'fascism" is an accurate descriptor. I am arguing that overly simplistic lists aren’t a help to anybody.
See… it depends on what we define as fascist, I suppose. I always found it odd that Stalin’s Russia was full of talk about hating fascists (after his friendship with good ol’ Adolph went south) when there really wasn’t much difference between Stalinism and fascism. And the Russian despotism continued in one form or another, simply by selecting new leaders as time went on who weren’t themselves deified.
I’m also not sure of any reason why fascism couldn’t. have functioned without a cult-of-personality type leader. For example, surviving Nazis were still fascists even after Hitler offed himself. Right? That their political movement was no longer viable is beside the point. I can’t believe that if the Allies stopped their advance and just left Germany alone, that the surviving Nazi upper echelons would have decided that fascism wasn’t such a good idea after all.
There are still European “fascist” movements, even to this day. Including but not limited to neo-Nazis. In some cases, it is evident, the ideology itself is sufficient.
I would prefer to call them totalitarian, myself, or nationalistic/ethnic totalitarianism, only because I do not believe that the events in the early half of the 20th century are particularly ripe for generalization, let alone over-generalization. I mean, Mussolini himself took his conception of fascism from the power wielded by Imperial Rome, SPQR and all that, and yet he called it fascism and not Romanism.
Why? Honestly, why? Other than an arbitrary decision that the fascist nations in the past had cults of personality?
Same scenario, Hitler offs himself, the Allies say “ah well, you guys just sort this out, we’re going home.”, Nazi command structure remains mostly intact. Is there any evidence that diehard Nazis would, at that point, have decided to abandon fascism?
Notice that I am not nor have I been arguing that Islamism is fascism. I have argued that overly simplified ‘bullet point lists’ of what fascism are either would include movements like Sadr’s, or require liberal use of True Scotsmen. Huge rallies are characteristic of fascism, but huge violent demonstrations/riots don’t count, as they put sugar on their porridge. Having a strong and charismatic leader is characteristic of fascism, except when that leader has a splinter group without a larger group. Fascism is characterized by strident appeals to one’s group (be it ethnic or national), but not when it’s an appeal to one’s group (be it cultural or religious). Etc…
Here, for instance, is what Benito Mussolini had to say on the subject.
He claimed, for instance:
Is it really that hard to rework that as an Islamist proclamation?
How many words had to be changed?
Compare that with various other fascist proclamations.
Let’s take one of Hitler’s formulations, for example.
From that, we can easily get to something of a Jihadist sentiment:
Of course, if the second formulation puts honey on its porridge instead of sugar…
Again, the point isn’t that various factional interpretations of Islamism or neo-fundamentalism are fascism, but that looking for similarities and unfairly excluding differences when performing pattern recognition is silly. Especially if we (IMO) correctly characterize fascism as a subset of totalitarianism which was seen in only a few European nations during the 20th century. Problem solved. A loaded word is removed from play, we can acknowledge that various Jihadist movements are totalitarian without conjuring up Hitler, and any discussion of autocratic rule can be judged on its merits rather than referring to everybody from Bush to Aznar as a “fascist” :smack:
Again, it’s worth noting that I’ve done no such thing. Even the idea of the ‘larger movement’ is something of a reification, and risks letting our abstractions be taken for anything other than a convenient linguistic fiction. Looking at individual small movements as individual movements is much more fruitful than looking at how they relate to an ephemeral ‘larger movement’.
There were still Nazi fascists even after they’d fled to Brazil.
All it shows it that various splinter groups have their own strong leaders. Claiming that fascism has to have a strong, charismatic leader around whom a cult of personality is built… but then saying it doesn’t count if it [del]puts milk in its porridge[/del] isn’t also considered the living embodiment of the philosophy, is an unfair rhetoric game to play.
And odd to boot when you consider folks like Omar. I mean, the Taliban saw him as their supreme spiritual leader, obviously endowed with the ‘correct’ view and practices of Islam. But because he wasn’t the living embodiment of Mohammed’s legacy, it doesn’t count?
I mean, rhetorical games like that aren’t quite as trippy as claiming that Iran has a thriving civil society, but they sure seem like dirty pool.
And, just to head off any sniping from the sidelines or opportunistic quoting-out-of-context a year from now, the above samples of hypothetical Islamist proclamations were meant to illustrate how Islamists see their Jihad, not to tar all Muslims with the Islamist brush. (yeesh)
I should have explained better. What I especially meant was (from that page) “According to various theorists corporatism was an attempt to create a modern version of feudalism by merging the “corporate” interests with those of the state.”
In other words, a sort of fusing of industrial and social powers into a single hierarchical, politically guided construct (usually also involving the military, but I’m assuming here that the military is under state/political control anyway) with the state at the top, but also with industrial development as a high priority. “Politically guided capitalism” if you will.
No, Al Qaeda isn’t interested in advancing the interests of Arabs over other Muslims. They’re actually explicitly anti-nationalist, viewing such arbitrary divisions in the international Muslim community as the product of Western interference with Islam. This is why Arab Qutbists were willing to fight alongside the non-Arab Afghan Mujahadeen in their struggle against the Soviets. The international alliances that were forged in Afghanistan in the 1980’s led directly to the Al Qaeda we know today. This is one of the reasons for the opposition between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, which WAS a fascist organization and WAS a pan-Arab movement.
Such distinctions are important. The rabid nationalism of the real fascists was one of their weaknesses. Nazi Germany would have fared much better if it hadn’t mistreated the citizens of the conquered Soviet republics. After years of Soviet misrule many Ukrainians and Russians would have been willing to join with the Nazis to overthrow the brutal regime. But the Nazis with their doctrine of racial supremacy never saw the inhabitants of Eastern Europe as anything more than a cheap source of slave labor.
This illustrates exactly why “Islamofascist” is a bad term. It obscures the true nature of our enemy by creating an equivalance where none exists. It this sort of muddy thinking that lumps international pan-Islamic groups like Al Qaeda together with regional fascists like the Ba’athists and local paramilitaries like Hezbollah. In reality these different groups often have very different goals and approaching them with a “they’re all just Nazis” mentality is counterproductive.
Point of fact: Hezbollah is a global organization, not local.
Well the West clearly did not cause the Sunni/Shia schism. They might be willing to fight together, but where do you think the Caliph will come from? Where do you think the capital will be? Baghdad is an Arab city.
Sure, but it’s a nationalism of a sort, but nationalism for a country that doesn’t currently exist. They are above the nationalisms of the current western nation states, but they want a big grand national polity. The Nazis wouldn’t’ve failed if they’d just used Jews to fill their bureaucracies and not wasted material rounding them instead of using it to fight the war as well. Al Qaeda would be more successful if the United States weren’t technologically and organizationally light years beyond them. They’d be more successful if Muslim terror didn’t target all non-Muslims. They don’t want to have Arabs to be elevated in stature above other Muslims in doctrinal terms, but still it would be Arab dominated and racist against tribes that are not Muslim. Same problems, just a larger scale.
I don’t agree. That just says there are multiple factions who want their own particular fantasy fulfilled. I don’t agree that Islamist sounds nice like Buddhist and ultimately it will probably be the term that sticks. However, I think there is little confusion as to what one is talking about when one says either word. Yes there are degrees of differentiation internally, but we all immediately think of totalitarian Muslim terrorists when we use these words.
They may have gobal reach, but their goals are strictly regional. They’re not interested in conquering the world, just bumping off Israel.
Well, you know…there are democracies and then there are democracies.
A state where sharia ( some version ) was implemented as the law of the land and clergy were thus granted control over most judicial matters ( for Muslim citizens at the very least ), but where free and fair elections were held on a regular basis, would be a democracy and likely acceptable to some Islamists. It wouldn’t be a liberal, western democracy as we know it - women’s rights would likely be somewhat constrained ( depending on the version of sharia implemented ), homosexuality almost certainly illegal ( or at least in a very deep ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ well ), etc.
But it would be democratic. Not my own idea of paradise, but then I’m not an Islamist ;).
Oh, I dunno. Words have meanings and fascism just does not work for me in this context. It really does seem only a half-step from “health Nazis” to me. I understand what some people mean by it, but it still makes me shake my head in disagreement and I do believe it is potentially obfuscatory.
No, I agree with Pochacco. They’re not concerned with creating a country, they’re concerned with creating a community. They’re anti-nationalist in the same general way fervent Marxists are.
This is major league silliness.
One can make a case that aQ is a social club. One can provide multiple definitions of “social club” and then proceed to demonstrate that aQ does indeed fit these definitions.
BFD
The REAL question is about the ACCURACY and USEFULNESS of the term.
Just as “social club” is technically a term that “fits” aQ, it’s not a very accurate or useful descriptor of aQ, one can trot out various criteria and definitions etc for Islamofacism ad infinitum, but it still doesn’t make the term any more accurate or useful. (xpt that it has great utilitarian value as a propaganda tool)
And you then expend considerable effort attempting to rebut a number of bullet points regarding Fascism.
My point is that Fascism has a meaning as a word. (I suppose that it does, in some sense, have two meanings: the specific one that is used when discussing political movements and the vague one that simply means “I don’t like those people.”)
My problem with allowing the second meaning to be employed in the creation of neologisms is that it leads to fuzzy “we hate/fear them” logic that leads us down the wrong paths among decision makers and results in really stupid decisions. Fighting “worldwide communism” for fifty years after that movement had failed and the actual struggle had morphed into merely an extension of the Great Game, led the West to make incredibly stupid and harmful decisions that needlessly cost a lot of lives and money and put the West (or, at least, the U.S.) on the morally wrong side of several struggles. Ignoring the “communist” bogeyman and promoting democracy throughout the world, regardless whether the particular country wished to try out a socialist economy would have been a smarter (and more moral), approach to the world. I see the same sort of stupidity in people running around making all-encompassing claims about Islamists, (or, often enough, about Islam).
You have missed the point, on this one. There are several distinct features of Fascism, (not the 14 tailored points of which I rejected all but one in the earlier thread, but actual characteristics). The cult of the personal leader is one when it is discovered in conjunction with the others. The lack of a single leader for all the Islamists is one (of several) reasons to discount claims of “Fascism” regarding the Islamists. I used it because it was easily remembered and shown to be wrong. I have actually pointed out three separate reasons why Islamism does not match well to Fascism: the lack of the cult leader, the lack of the tribal/ethnic claim of identity, and the lack of the type of economy discovered under Fascist states which is a modified Capitalism. (Stalin or Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il might have developed cults of the personal leader, but their totalitarian states were not Fascist: there was no Capitalism of any sort (outside the underground economy). The entire economy was planned in the Soviet systems, unlike the economy under the Nazis where there was a certain amount of control exercised regarding pricing and wages, but corporations were still publicly or privately held, entrepeneurs could still start up their own businesses, individual merchants could still choose their own product lines, etc.)
Nor have I said you did. My comments have been general, responding mostly to The Flying Dutchman and simply repsonding to your post that seemed to say “Well, why can’t we call any group anything we want regardless of the actual meanings that various words havbe been assigned by people who actually studied the movements they define?”. It is not a No True Scotsman fallacy to reject cherry-picked similarities when there are actual constellations of factors that must act in concert to meet a definition. I have not expressed any comments on the fourteen points from the earlier thread–I rejected most of them as not pertinent at that time–however, Fascism does have a constellation of factors that defines it, some of which do appear in Islamism, but overall the definitions do not match.
Naw, not much effort at all. Like I said, it’s mostly academic (and by extension, an interesting discussion) but not particularly weighty.
Sure, I don’t disagree with that. Or like I said in my first post, one of the problems was "some people trying to insinuate a strong correlation between the Axis powers and various Islamic nutjobs. "
The Nazis, Italians and Spanish did not have a single leader, they all had their own leaders. You are artificially draping a label “The Islamist Movement” over varying individual Islamist organizations. Much like “the Axis” was still a group of fascists even though there wasn’t one charismatic leader who all the Axis powers identified with as the embodiment of their philosophy. That is my point. If you find a group that has certain qualities, complaining that it can linguistically be defined as a subset of a larger abstraction doesn’t do anything.
So no, I didn’t miss the point. Fascism doesn’t have to have a leader figure. In fact, the Nazis who remained after Hitler’s death were still fascists, although they had no leader. Perhaps, to be successful on a national level, it needs a leader, but that is quite different from saying whether or not a movement was “fascist” or not. And as long as you invalidate any leaders of various movements as not being valid because they’re not leaders of an overall movement that doesn’t actually exist as a cohesive whole outside of linguistic fictions, then we’re at the point where the guy isn’t a Scotsman because he likes slivered almonds in his porridge.
I’d personally choose what my post actually said over what it seemed to say to you. I most certainly have not said that we can apply labels willy nilly. More to the point, I have said that oversimplified bullet point lists miss the point and that fascism shouldn’t be applied to anything outside of the historical examples from the 20th century, and that totalitarianism was a perfectly good descriptor. I have pointed out that due to certain generalizations, divergent instances that weren’t intended to be included in a grouping can be. And that instead of showing that we can “call any group anything we want regardless of the actual meanings that various words have…” that individual instances should be treated on an individual basis with as little recourse to generalization as possible, and that overly simplistic generalizations cannot then legitimately exclude instances which are similar enough to fit their standards.
In short, I am pointing out a problem with loose generalizations, not championing how we should apply loose generalizations to anything we feel like.
Actually, when there are a constellation of similarities (due to over simplified bullet point lists), and all those similarities are ignored via lawyerball, that’s pretty much the definition of a NTS fallacy. Much like, for instance, arguing that Fascism is typified by movements that have a strong, charismatic leader. And then arguing that other organizations that meet the characteristics for Fascism that you’ve laid out, but have a strong and charasmatic leader who isn’t considered to be the living embodiment of their philosophy… they don’t count. Or leaders who are considered to be a living exemplar of their philosophical tenets, but who doesn’t speak for other, separate groups who might be lumped together via linguistics.
Even your claims about economics ignore the vagaries of the economic policies and philosophies of various Axis nations.
[
The Nazis, on the other hand, while having a similar situation of control, had significant differences as well.
Again, there are similarities, there are differences… but so? Many of the policies in both Italy and Germany had much in common with Soviet Russia. But you say Russia wasn’t a fascist nation. Because with both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had brutal and oppressive top-down systems of economic control, there was (slightly) more freedom under the Nazi system. It’s also not totally true, by the way, that German merchants could all truly choose their product lines. The Four Yar Plan (part of the inspiration behind the Soviets’ Five Year Plan), saw the entire German economy put on a war footing, individual businesses wishes be damned.
Or as General Thomas stated: “History will know only a few examples of cases where a country has directed, even in peace time, all its economic forces deliberately and systematically towards the requirements of war, as Germany was compelled to do in the period between the two World Wars.”
and: "“The National Socialist State, soon after taking over the power, has reorganized the German economy in all sections and directed it towards a military viewpoint, which had been requested by the Army for years. Due to the reorganization, agriculture, commerce and professions became those powerful instruments the Fuehrer needs for his extensive plans, and we can say today that Hitler’s mobile politics, as well as the powerful efforts of the Army and economy, would not have been possible without the necessary reorganization by the National Socialist Government. We can now say that the economic organization as a whole corresponds with the needs, although slight adjustments will have to be made yet. Those reorganizations made a new system of economics possible which was necessary in view of our internal and foreign political situation as well as our financial problems. The directed economy, as we have it today, concerning agriculture, commerce and industry, is not only the expression of the present State principles, but at the same time also the economy of the country’s defense.”
Likewise, entrepreneurial activities were dependent on what you felt like doing, and how ‘pure your blood was’. Farmers, for instance, where out of luck.
[
](http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/Slouch_Purge15.html)
My point all along is that the oversimplified lists lead to such wobbly results precisely because of their nature. Germany ran its economy in a way that was generally similar with Italy, and generally similar with Russia, and generally similar with New Deal America, too. But the devil, as always, is in the details. Ignoring the substantial and significant differences between Italian fascist economics and Nazi fascist economics and just draping the label of ‘fascist economies’ over everything is not elucidative.
I’m sure you know that old saw about life being a joke by the general at the expense of the specific?
Spend enough time looking, and any generalization either fails to account for the particular facts of specific instances or proves to be too vague and general to keep a tight grouping. That’s the nature of language, it’s unavoidable.
No matter what general characteristics of fascistic politics you select, they will end up being applicable, even as a constellation, to other totalitarian systems of government. Unless we start in with NTS fallacies. And you’ll have to cherrypick qualities of often changing, decade long systems which ran in various countries, with differing factors, dynamics and specifics, in any case.