David S. wrote:
Marvin Gandall writes:
Almost certainly mentioned already, but racial or ethnic superiority is
integral to fascist ideology, and has been expressed in murderous
fashion in
many cases, genocidally under the Nazis.
DS: > It is not. It was not integral to Italian fascism, and certainly not
to
Franco. "Nationalism" (i.e. pride and preference for one's own) is
certainly an element of fascism, but nationalism is not equivalent to
fascism.
MG: I don't know who would argue that nationalism is equivalent to fascism.
I certainly didn't suggest it. Race was not as important to the Italian and
Spanish fascists as was the second pillar on which the fascist movement
rested: the war against the rising trade unions and socialist parties in
Europe. However, the Italian fascists - mostly opportunistically because of
their alliance with Hitler - did turn to racism during the war and assisted
in the deportation of the Jews. In Spain, the Falange was fascist, but it's
influence was diluted somewhat by the church, monarchy, and officer corps
which were also part of the Francoist regime. But while race may have
mattered less to the Spanish and Italian fascists and their their
reactionary traditionalist fellow travellers as it did to the more virulent
German and most other fascist movements and regimes, it never lay far
beneath the surface in a common adherence to social Darwinism in which the
"fittest" were invariably identified with the white race.
MG: >>> The left is in theory internationalist, and has historically
demonstrated
this in practice by leading campaigns against racism and anti-semitism
and
for full equality under the law.
DS:> Yes, agreed. A difference between communism and fascism is, at the
ideological level (if not always at the practical level), internationalism
and racial/religious equality under the law.
MG:>>> How does your description of there being "little real difference
between the
extremes" square with the above?
DS: > I don't think I ever said that, because it begs the question.
MG: But I was quoting directly from your post.
DS: I am still trying to understand the classification system that
determines "A" in on the left and "B" is on the right. Right and left of
what? Right and left had meaning vis-a-vis the ancien regime, but the
ancien regime is long gone, at least in West LA where I live. I mean, is it
conceptually useful to think of FDR and Churchill in the middle of Stalin
and Hitler, or instead to think of, oh I dunno, Herbert Spencer on one
extreme and Lenin and Mussolini on the other extreme, but Lenin and
Mussolini are branched off from each other?
MG: Naturally, the lines will sometime blur and overlap, but is still very
possible to broadly distinguish - running from left to right across the
political spectrum - between anarchists, Marxists, social democrats,
liberals, conservatives, and fascists in terms of their social and economic
programmes. Political parties (excepting the anarchists) emerged from these
differences and vied for power in order to implement their goals. The
extreme parties at both ends lost influence in the postwar period, but would
likely revive at the expense of the liberal and conservative parties if the
same conditions which produced them were to reappear. IMO, politics is not
as incoherent as you suggest, and the "classifications" you decry were not
invented by left intellectuals but are commonly understood to have arisen
out of the real clashes of interest and ideology dividing modern society.
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