Distressed American

This was part of a post on another thread. But, I think it is a topic worthy of a thread of its own. This term gets thrown around by the right quite frequently and it is just another Orwellian, right wing distortion of the language to ramp up the fear. Apparently, fear is a bigger motivator to make people vote Republican than facts are.

==============

In case you hadn't noticed theocratic fascism is on the rise here, not in the middle east. If you think that there is fascism to be found in the jihadist movement, you need to stop listening to the right wing propoganda and look to the definition of fascism which hinges on the government doing everything it can to meld with private corporations.

It's the Corporate State, Stupid

It's the Corporate State, Stupid

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

David G. Mills

11/10/04 "ICH" -- The early twentieth century Italians, who invented the word fascism, also had a more descriptive term for the concept -- estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Unfortunately for Americans, we have come to equate fascism with its symptoms, not with its structure. The structure of fascism is corporatism, or the corporate state. The structure of fascism is the union, marriage, merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power. Failing to understand fascism, as the consolidation of corporate economic and governmental power in the hands of a few, is to completely misunderstand what fascism is. It is the consolidation of this power that produces the demagogues and regimes we understand as fascist ones.

While we Americans have been trained to keenly identify the opposite of fascism, i.e., government intrusion into and usurpation of private enterprise, we have not been trained to identify the usurpation of government by private enterprise. Our European cousins, on the other hand, having lived with Fascism in several European countries during the last century, know it when they see it, and looking over here, they are ringing the alarm bells. We need to learn how to recognize Fascism now.

Dr. Lawrence Britt has written an excellent article entitled “The 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism.” An Internet search of the number 14 coupled with the word fascism will produce the original article as well as many annotations on each of the 14 characteristics of fascism that he describes. His article is a must read to help get a handle on the symptoms that corporatism produces.

But even Britt’s excellent article misses the importance of Mussolini’s point. The concept of corporatism is number nine on Britt’s list and unfortunately titled: “Corporate Power is Protected.” In the view of Mussolini, the concept of corporatism should have been number one on the list and should have been more aptly titled the “Merger of Corporate Power and State Power.” Even Britt failed to see the merger of corporate and state power as the primary cause of most of these other characteristics. It is only when one begins to view fascism as the merger of corporate power and state power that it is easy to see how most of the other thirteen characteristics Britt describes are produced. Seen this way, these other characteristics no longer become disjointed abstractions. Cause and effect is evident.

===========
I do not see the jihadi's merging their interests with those of corporations. In the absence of that, there is no such creature as Islamo-Fascism.


On the other hand, I think it is quite evident the the interests of our government and our corporations are well aligned, more so with each passing no-bid contract. Of course the theocratic part of our system starts when the government gives so much of the power to the religious right in exchange for their votes.

Advertising

Lie Spotter

Great read. Thanks for the link to the 14 Charatersstics to fascism.

Baste

I think what we are seeing is "Islamo-Nihilism" or "Islamo-Anarchism"

Lie Spotter

Agreed .

Baste

Sir Oswald Mosley's "British Union of Fascists" specifically called for a bicameral legislatute where the upper house was composed of the leaders of the major industries.

Distressed American

Not sure that is accurate either. They want a government, the caliphate, which would have very strick laws indeed under sharia law. That is not nihilism or anarchism in my book.

Islamic-fanaticism works for me. They are Islamic and fanatical about how it should function and how they try to force it on others.

But, Islamo-Fascism is clearly pure propoganda, spin and bullshit from a government far closer to fascist ideals than even the hoped for caliphate would be.

They are into blending political and religious power. Fascists are into blending political and corporate power.

Distressed American

It is a classic write-up. More people should understand what that term means and how we are slowly creeping in that direction as a nation.

Colin

Yeah it's just a dumb piece of low brow political rhetoric.

Baste

The classical (Russian Czarist-era followers of Mikhail Bakunin and the various splinter groups) anarchists believed that the destruction of all state apparatus was a necessity before civil society could be "rebuilt." This appears to me to be the pre-condition for the Caliphate that AQ etc are working towards.

Six

What difference does it make ? They would still hold you down and saw your head off in the name of Allah and that makes them the enemy.

Optical illusion ! None of the stupid flowers are actually spinning.