This sounds a lot like what industrialists were saying in the 1930s about F.D.R.'s appeal. :dubious:
Agreed: these are pretty natural things to think…but they disregard the fact that things are the way they are for pretty good reasons, overall. One of the most important things the simplistic ideals you point to leave out is protection for minority interests. We have a system that requires varieties of “supermajority” to accomplish big things…and that’s probably a good thing.
Yeah, we all dream of simple, direct, easy solutions. Too bad, though: they come at a pretty hefty price, and your or my own personal interest might at peril that way.
I’ve been observing all the various governmental “isms” for a long time, as well as what people SAY about each of them. I also have a very strong dedication or addiction or tendency if you will, to look for a Bigger Picture understanding of things.
The result at this moment, is that I see more and more similarities between various “isms,” with the differences being for different reasons than I was originally taught years ago.
First of all, there’s what people SAY about each “ism.” Much of the time, rather than talking about the actual original theoretical definitions of them, they tend instead to declare that each is defined by whatever the most famous exemplar which CLAIMED to be one of them. Fascism tends to be defined as “just like Nazi Germany.” Communism is assumed to be best represented by the Soviet Union. Socialism gets the most confusion, because people can’t decide between using the Soviet Union again, and looking at Sweden. The United States at it’s best (whatever that was) is cited as Capitalism.
I’m beginning to suspect that the real differences between the various ideals, is simpler, and that the more dramatic differences between the perceptions of them, is due to the exact details that occurred with each iteration. The “execution” details, so to speak.
Fascism appears to me, to essentially be the same as communism, save that there is a tremendous focus on Nationalism in Fascism which socialism and communism don’t share. Socialism, Communism, and Fascism all seem to have the same general idea that everyone will be seen to. Capitalism seems to assume we don’t care whether everyone is seen to or not. Of course, capitalism isn’t a form of government per se, either. Exactly how they go about doing it, is where the differences lie.
Fascists in Germany especially, decided to bring about a Nationalist State, by exaggerating the European culture’s existing antipathy for Judaism, as well as by encouraging the belief that Germans were inherently, genetically superior to everyone else. Communists in the USSR demonized the landowners, since that was the easiest path to establishing loyalty of the bulk of the people. I don’t see where it was necessary to the “ism” to do those particular things.
As far as I can see, in the ideal situation, ALL of the “isms” depend on enlightened and wise people to be in all positions of power. That is why all of them suffer notable failures.
All the totalitarian systems have the same POTENTIAL benefits, dependent again on exactly who is administering them. And they are all thereby susceptible to the same problems, which are that totalitarian governments don’t have any inherent mechanisms that ensure that the most appropriately competent people will get the key jobs.
Pretty much this. And it would work too if only you could find some omniscient benevolent dictator who always knew the best course of action and how to get there.
Fascism is certainly appealing if you live in a relatively homogenous culture that can be aligned to a unity of purpose. Everyone likes feeling like they are on the “winning side”, particularly if up until that point in time, they felt like they were on the “getting fucked” side.
One of the defining traits of fascism is close cooperation between business and political elites. Such cooperation has increased in the U.S. in recent decades. Other defining traits include political suppression, government propaganda, and rigged elections. The U.S. is not fascist, but it is traveling toward fascism.
BTW, absolute power — another feature of fascism — can be present under more benign governments. Churchill wrote that the British War Cabinet over which he presided had more real power than the fascist dictators had (though this support depended on Parliament’s and the people’s support). Yes, power tends to corrupt but many MANY leaders have minimal interest in amassing great wealth; their highest ambition may be the strong praise of history books written long after their deaths!
It’s hard to classify political systems. Communism and fascism are often called opposites, but in practice may be very similar. As another example, the call for “personal liberty” in the U.S. is very strong among those who would suppress personal freedom. Some introduce two or even three “Left—Right” axes to categorize political viewpoints.
SamuelA’s examples should remind us that an important political axis is the Smart—Stupid axis.
“Most efficient form of government.” Star Trek, I think by Mr. Spock.
Originally, fascism meant (a) strongman leadership (b) nationalism © militarism and the glorification of force and violence (but only by the party and its henchmen, of course) (d) order, discipline and obedience to authority - and in the Latin countries, usually bound up with the interests of the “traditional” order - church, possibly aristocracy, certainly major landowners - not necessarily big business, since fascism tended towards economic autarky rather than free trade. Corporatism, i.e., regulation of the economy, social and cultural life through party/government controlled “chambers” of selected representatives from the relevant areas of activity was also their answer to what we could call democracy. Variants of this emerged, not necessarily identifying themselves with Italian fascism, in Portugal, Spain, Austria, Lithuania, Poland and Vichy France. In Protestant countries, it tended to have racial/ethnic priorities rather than emphasising religion (which is not to say the Catholic fascists weren’t anti-Semitic, they just weren’t so viscerally hateful about it). Both glorified traditional gender roles and put a heavy emphasis on producing children as an index of national “health and hygiene” and prosperity.
Nowadays, “fascist” is just a more general term for an authoritarian, dictatorial bully, out for a punch-up but also keen to get their martyrdom and sense of inchoate grievance in first. Challenge them intellectually on any of their absurd ideas and they either claim they’re being censored or turn to their fists.
Not even close.
*Singapore is a parliamentary republic with a Westminster system of unicameral parliamentary government representing constituencies. The country’s constitution establishes a representative democracy as the political system.[81] Executive power rests with the Cabinet of Singapore, led by the Prime Minister and, to a much lesser extent, the President.[54] The President is elected through a popular vote, and has veto powers over a specific set of executive decisions, such as the use of the national reserves and the appointment of judges, but otherwise occupies a largely ceremonial post.[82]
The Parliament serves as the legislative branch of the government.[54] Members of Parliament (MPs) consist of elected, non-constituency and nominated members. Elected MPs are voted into the Parliament on a “first-past-the-post” (plurality) basis and represent either single-member or group representation constituencies.[83] The People’s Action Party has won control of Parliament with large majorities in every election since self-governance was secured in 1959.[84]
Although the elections are clean, there is no independent electoral authority and the government has strong influence on the media. Freedom House ranks Singapore as “partly free” in its Freedom in the World report,[84] and The Economist ranks Singapore as a “flawed democracy”, the second best rank of four, in its “Democracy Index”.[85][86] The latest elections were in September 2015, with the PAP winning 83 of 89 seats contested with 70% of the popular vote.[citation needed]*
The People love the system, and elect the party. It’s safe. There is freedom, but not liek the USA, of course.
Yeah, there’s a name for those: “wrong definitions.”
ETA: Ah, someone beat me to it.
FAscism actually tends to be a more diverse umbrella than other ideologies. The only thing fascist states really have in common is a) totalitarianism, b) nationalism, and c) not communism(socialism is okay). C is necessary because otherwise most communist states in Asia would be more properly described as fascist. Then again, maybe that would be accurate, especially of China today.
As for benefits, only Germany really seemed to accomplish anything under the fascist system and that one thing they accomplished was a military machine that may be the strongest and best of all time accounting for the size of the population it was drawn from. Although that probably had more to do with Germany’s culture than fascism. After all, the Kaiser’s army was pretty awesome too and by all accounts modern Germany’s army also knows how to fight pretty well. Italy, by contrast, wasn’t any better at fighting under fascism than they were under monarchy, and at the risk of insulting Italians in general, I doubt modern Italy can fight worth a damn either.
So that means that like communism, fascism really doesn’t have any benefits beyond the ideological satisfaction of seeing your dreams of lining “the other” up against the wall come true.
One of the problems with Fascism is that it isn’t possible to separate out the “pure ideal” from the messy reality. It’s possible to dream of a perfect communist state, whilst recognising that collectivism requires a powerful state to enforce everyone sharing. It’s possible to want democracy but hate the “undemocratic” skews created by representative democracy and a party system. It’s possible to like the idea of capitalism whilst recognising we can never have a level playing field for markets to find balance.
There is no original academic theory Fascism is trying implement. You can’t separate out the theory from the reality of frustrated outcasts banding together to find something in common to hate, because that’s what Fascism is.
You can certainly debate the merits of a centralised economy in an autocratic state, but none of the good examples of this look anything like Fascism.
If you twisted Fascism slightly to say it was an autocratic state born out of frustrated outcasts banding together to find something in common to believe in, and that “something in common” was more positive than getting their own back on everyone they blamed, you could have a highly productive (but still slightly scary) state devoted to landing on Mars (exoNazis?), or greening the planet (enviroNazis?) or creating a perfect book cataloging system (libroNazis?).
Is nationalism necessarily hate though? It certainly was in Nazi Germany but was it the case in Italy? Or Spain? Obviously they didn’t like Communists, but the antipathy is quite mutual.
Also, I recall that back when Ho Chi Minh was enemy #1 of the free world, his defenders would often say, “He’s not a communist, he’s a nationalist!” So “nationalist” does not always imply hate. All revolutionaries except for pure communists are nationalists.
I’m not sure that I want to accept supporters of Ho Chi Minh as authorities on anything.
Academically, you’re correct that some uses of the word don’t imply hate. In current U.S. parlance it’s totally about fear and hate, but that’s not necessarily what this thread is about.
You may be able to get nationalism without hate, but it’s gonna still be one of it’s cousin like disgust, or at the very very least, superiority.
Nationalism basically means that you don’t like anyone that is not in your nation, and also usually means that you have certain standards as to who you allow to participate in your nation.
The basic philosophy itself is so verging on hate, that I am not sure than any practical application of it can be done without.
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Spain had really fast economic growth after WWII, although that’s probably misleading since it was largely recovering from the damage of the civil war and returning to a more natural economic level (same way that Russia’s very fast economic growth since 2000 was probably not attributable to anything Putin did).
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The “fascist” states were not all totalitarian, although they were all authoritarian, at least. After the late 1930s most of them fell into the Nazi orbit so it’s hard to say how they might have evolved on their own.
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Fascism is broadly used by its critics nowadays to mean something like “authoritarian ethnic tribalism”, and by that very broad criterion there are a lot of regimes which could be called fascist, including maybe a couple in Europe today, which have widely varying levels of economic performance. Whether they have additional ‘benefits’ depends on whether you think ethnic tribalism itself is a benefit or a cost.
I think this is about right. Have you seen the Inglehart-Welzel “cultural map of the world” thing? The mindset you’re talking about is essentially people who score low on the “Self expression vs. Survival” axis. Anglo American societies tend towards the self-expression pole, but a lot of other societies (particularly Eastern Europeans and to some extent Middle Eastern cultures) score far towards the Survival pole.
Eastern European nations are interesting in that while they’re highly secularized and often fairly favourable towards left-wing economics, they’re also extremely far towards the ‘survival’ pole (i.e. intolerant of cultural and ethnic difference), which is why the western European left-right axis doesn’t really work very well in the eastern European context (or for that matter in the Middle Eastern context, which is why secular Arab nationalists are often sort of difficult for western political thinkers to categorize as left or right).
Well, maybe, but it was also Franco’s wisdom in keeping out of WWII that helped a lot. I know Franco is reviled in Spain now, but he:
Kept Spain out of WWII
Kept Spain from going Communist
Led Spain into a stable Democracy with a figurehead King.
Yes, he was authoritarian, and some people were oppressed and taken away by the Secret Police, but less so if Spain had gone Communist.
Your last point can hardly be attributed to Franco, since if he were alive today he would loathe the secular, multicultural liberal democracy that Spain has become.
Yes, if anything that last point goes to Juan Carlos and the kind of king he turned out to be despite Franco’s mentorship.
Maybe, but he still set up a Democratic Republic with a figurehead Monarch.
He made sure his semi-dictatorship would not continue.