Horse said to Platt:
...When will you stop with the propaganda and bluster? The Nazis,
whatever
the nickname, were right-wing, not left-wing and all your blustering to
avoid your own right-wing bias won't hide that fact. A couple of groups
you
conveniently left out below are the capitalists and corporatists which,
as
Steve pointed out via Mussolini, are the beneficiaries of the fascist
legacy.
dmb says:
I think that's right. As Pirsig paints it, fascism is essentially a
rejection of intellectual values and a glorification of social level
values.
And as just about any political scientist or historian will tell you,
political positions just don't get any more right wing than fascism
(except
maybe a Monarchist) and fascists hate leftists more than anything.
There are some differences between the various kinds of fascism; Italian,
German, Spanish or whatever. But, unless you are tone-deaf to cultural
attitudes, the affinities and similarities are pretty darn obvious. As I
mentioned the other day, for example, the right-wing Dutch politician
(Geert
Wilders) joined several of our own right-wing politicians at ground zero
in
Manhattan and they all made the same anti-Islamic noises for the same
right-wing reasons. And there is the right-wing radio preacher from Royal
Oak, Michigan who supported and admired Hitler and Mussolini back in the
1930's. Pat Buchanan (no relation) ran for President as a Republican a
few
cycles ago. He grew up in a house where Mussolini was admired and
Mussolini's portrait was proudly hung on the walls.
As Pirsig pointed out, fascism in America was not so intense as in
Europe.
They didn't have to resist full-blown communism either. In the U.S.,
social
level anti-intellectualism manifest itself as opposition to FDR's New
Deal.
And when you look at today's political situation, it's quite obvious that
the Liberals want to protect and build upon the New Deal while the
Republicans have been doing everything they can to dismantle it. I mean,
just look at who's afraid of Health Insurance Reform. Who thinks such
programs are scary, scary, socialism? Who is running against it as we
speak?
In this country, right-wingers have always opposed these things. There is
an
80 year track record that makes fascist attitudes and positions pretty
easy
to spot.
For our "low information" friends, here's a little Wiki on the European
strain:
Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology.
Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives,
values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.
Fascism
was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I
who
combined left-wing and right-wing political views, but it gravitated to
the
political right in the early 1920s. Scholars generally consider fascism
to
be on the far right of the conventional left-right political spectrum.
Fascists believe that a nation is an organic community that requires
strong
leadership, singular collective identity, and the will and ability to
commit
violence and wage war in order to keep the nation strong. They claim that
culture is created by the collective national society and its state, that
cultural ideas are what give individuals identity, and thus they reject
individualism. Viewing the nation as an integrated collective community,
they see pluralism as a dysfunctional aspect of society, and justify a
totalitarian state as a means to represent the nation in its entirety.
They advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascists reject and
resist the autonomy of cultural or ethnic groups who are not considered
part
of the fascists' nation and who refuse to assimilate or are unable to be
assimilated. They consider attempts to create such autonomy as an affront
and a threat to the nation. Fascist governments forbid and suppress
opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement. They identify
violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and
vitality.
Fascism rejects the concepts of egalitarianism, materialism, and
rationalism in favor of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit, and will.
They oppose liberalism (as a bourgeois movement) and Marxism (as a
proletarian movement) for being exclusive economic class-based movements.
Fascists present their ideology as that of an economically trans-class
movement that promotes ending economic class conflict to secure national
solidarity.
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
