it's worth reading.
Is fascism a left or right-wing ideology?
“We know the name of the philosopher of capitalism: Adam Smith. We know the name of the philosopher of Marxism: Karl Marx. But who’s the philosopher of fascism?
“Yes—exactly. You don’t know.
“Don’t feel bad. Almost no one knows. This is not because he doesn’t exist, but because historians, most of whom are on the political left, had to erase him from history in order to avoid confronting fascism’s actual beliefs. So, let me introduce him to you. His name is Giovanni Gentile.
“Born in 1875, he was one of the world’s most influential philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. Gentile believed that there were two “diametrically opposed” types of democracy. One is liberal democracy, such as that of the United States, which Gentile dismisses as individualistic—too centered on liberty and personal rights—and therefore selfish. The other, the one Gentile recommends, is “true democracy,” in which individuals willingly subordinate themselves to the state.
“Like his philosophical mentor, Karl Marx, Gentile wanted to create a community that resembles the family, a community where we are “all in this together.” It’s easy to see the attraction of this idea. Indeed, it remains a common rhetorical theme of the left.
Bold mine, as that's a common theme on the left as well. There's more, I hope you'll read the rest.
4 comments:
Was there really a difference between Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and the Soviet Union?
Whenever I see or hear anyone parrot the tired lie that Fascism &/or Naziism are far right or conservative ideologies, I know I’m dealing with a rabid, Kool-Aid snorting leftist victim of mass hypnosis.
When you go past classic liberalism on the scale (which is at least somewhat tolerable) and get into the real nasty left end of the spectrum, Fascism & Naziism are just a little bit past Socialism, Communism and Marxism, but not really a whole lot deadlier.
In contrast, whenever a leftist presents a rational position, it’s almost always a conservative ideal couched in liberal terms. In other words, a leftist will happily abandon their supposed fundamentals and temporarily adopt a conservative principle that they despised yesterday, to bolster their position in debate today. Hypocrisy, another staple of the left.
Some will employ this argument while pretending that a basic tenet of conservativism has somehow been a traditional liberal position all along. It’s natural for them to do this because of all their experience with projection, i.e. presenting the worst liberal/leftist policies as products of the right.
Oh, and while I’m at it, the KKK? Jim Crow? Segregation? Eugenics? ALL leftist Democrat institutions right up there with being against the Civil Rights Act in 1964. And all typically labelled right wing, conservative ideals, imagine that.
Fired my ass, shot would be better.
Matthew: There were a few differences. Only 3/4 of the Nazi party platform came straight out of Karl Marx. Hitler sent Jews and others to concentration camps to die. Stalin sent several times as many, including many Jews, to work camps on 5 or 10 year sentences, which almost no one survived.
The two big differences:
1. Communists killed the factory owners and managers, appointed thuggish politicians to run the factories, disconnected the factory budgets and salaries from how much of the output could actually be used, and couldn't figure out why production and quality were so low. Nazis and Fascists let factory owners and managers to continue running the factories and selling the products - as long as they made what they were told to and gave a share of the business to politically connected thugs. It hurt their efficiency, but not nearly as bad as Communism.
2. A couple of years after Hitler and Stalin swore perpetual peace and conspired together to divide Poland, Hitler stabbed Stalin in the back _first_.
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