On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Marv Gandall <[email protected]> wrote: > 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.
I have to contradict you on this. The Italian fascists never cooperated in the deportation of Jews. Until Mussolini was deposed and Northern Italy was occupied by the Wehrmacht in 1944, Italy was, ironically enough, the safest place to be for Jews in Europe - far safer than Vichy France or Holland. This doesn't mean of course that the fascists were not racist. They were just less viciously so than the Nazis; to their credit, they were perhaps a little squeamish when it came to actual genocide. (Maybe we should speak of a spectrum of fascism, the moderate fascism represented by Franco and Mussolini and the extreme fascisms being represented by Hitler). -raghu. -- "Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!" _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
