Reader Input Needed: Why is Fascism Equivalent to Communism?
This is my first attempt to work with PJM readers to form a knowledgebase. If we can pool our talents and put all the information in one place, this will help us fend off current and future attacks on our rights. So here’s your chance to help save America, right from the comfort of your desk.
Today’s lesson regards the divisive tactic of equating conservatives with fascists, as if fascism is also a right-wing manifestation. But fascism and communism are far more similar than not, and it’s time to kill this Alinskyism (rules 3, 4, 5, 8,10, and 13).
Human Rights Watch reported the Chinese government—i.e. the Communist Party—recently announced they’re planning to “stop using” their Re-education Through Labor (RTL) system “sometime this year.”
Under the RTL system, individuals can be detained and subjected to forced labor for up to four years on the decision of the Public Security Bureau alone. According to the Chinese government, the system is designed to reform minor offenders, such as drug users and prostitutes, through work.
So when you buy those cheap products made in China, you’re supporting the system I call Chinese Redistribution of American Profit (CRAP). Unpaid labor lowers production costs, raising profit margins and/or making your iPhone and TV more affordable.
But there’s a darker side to the dark side of communist forced labor. According to Agence France-Presse:
But opponents say they are also used to silence government critics and would-be petitioners, who seek to bring their complaints against officials to higher authorities.
In other words, all nails sticking up will be hammered flat.
But the most curious aspect is RTL reminds me of the Nazi’s “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Will Free You). This hangs above the Auschwitz concentration camp, as well as having appeared elsewhere.
In early 30s the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” was very popular because of high unemployment level in Germany. Later it became a favorite motto of Nazi officers who forced prisoners to work in inhuman conditions. The slogan appeared over the gates of many forced labor and extermination camps around the world.
Nazi stands for “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” Apologists get around the left/right disconnect by claiming the Nazis supported private property, conveniently ignoring that the property remained “private” as long as the owner served Nazi goals.
University of Barcelona researcher Germà Bel wrote that during the 1930s, Nazi Germany privatized “public services previously provided by government,” including “steel, mining, banking, local public utilities, shipyards, ship-lines, railways…” Bel concluded that “privatization was used as a political tool to enhance support for the government and for the Nazi Party.”
German researchers Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner, of the University of Mannheim, note that the Nazis usually allowed firms to “devise their own production and investment patterns” and for “war-related projects freedom of contract was generally respected.” However, the authors also noted:
In view of the violence displayed by the regime otherwise it can be taken for certain that the reason was not any respect for private property as a fundamental human and civil right.
In other words: “As long as you play ball with us, we’ll ‘respect’ your private property.” Nazi government force determined how resources were used, just as communists do.
Besides forced labor—a cute name for slavery—other “features” shared by fascists and communists are:
- Civilian disarmament.
- Government-sponsored mass murder, labeled “Democide” by Professor Rudy Rummel.
Rummel estimates that during the 20th Century, the three biggest socialist governments—China, USSR, and Nazi Germany—murdered 76.7M, 61.9M, and 20.9M, respectively. That’s a total of 160 million murder victims. This number is mind-numbing. To perhaps put it in a more comprehensible perspective, it would take 10,920 years for American criminals to murder this many people, using 2011 FBI murder data as the divisor.
So here’s your homework assignment: What other “features” do fascists and communists share?
Scapegoating is a time honored tradition in all political systems, but socialists and fascists have it down to an art. The Jews were popular targets for both the Nazis and the Soviets, as well as “greedy capitalists” who didn’t play ball with the governments. This scapegoating drove entire political movements, fanning the flames to make the target the perfect “source” of all society’s ills. And it didn’t stop with people: Class resentment is inherent to both fascism and socialism because it allows the “eternal revolution” that is needed to keep the lower classes divided to not become destructive to the government pushing it.
The government is eternally making up enemies for the people to target and to divide them so that their control remains absolute. This is why a communist society begins to look more like a feudal one: The central dictators can only keep the people in line with willing lieutenants among the populace who will keep the message flowing and not allow any competing messages to get out. The lieutenants get to win no matter who the enemy of the state this week is just as long as it isn’t made to be them. And they keep it that way by serving the state and reaping the rewards.
Just look at everything demonized in our own society by Leftists: Oil, gas, fast food, guns. Each target is hit and attacked over and over again to turn people against them and against the producers of those items for the ultimate gain of more power.
Because, the core belief of each is that power lies with the state, not the people.
And one more step in this Andrew. We are constantly bombarded with admonitions from ‘experts’ telling us the five best things to do on a first date, the ten ways see if you beau is cheating, etc. Along with this is the incredible deluge of health ‘advice’ with all manner of vague symptoms listed and introverting your attention; and if you go through the list and don’t find anything, not so fast, starting thinking about a silent heart attack.
Each of these assumes that our personal ability to self direct, that is take personal responsibility for our lives, as we have for a good long time now, is flawed and this in turn lessens our personal sovereignty.
A good question everyday is, “Who are these experts and why are they experts and who says so?” Would they be the same boyos that gave us Global Warming?
One of my most frequent and most effective means of exposing the bogus scientific studies and the cliche’d refrains of, “They say that…” , is to simply reply, “Who exactly are ‘THEY’, and how are ‘THEY’ the ultimate authority on the matter?”. Often just a pause to consider the origins of “THEY”, is enough to cast doubt and facilitate an open debate into facts vs hyperbole!
Relatedly, the concept of Natural Rights (which our current president has label – as have others – negative rights) does not exist in fascist/communist states. They may pay lip service to them (there was freedom of religion & speech in the USSR Constitution) but they do not exist in practice.
Even before World War II, Robert Heinlein called Bolshevik Communism “Red Fascism”.
All of these, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini competed with each other for establishing the template of a modern, centralized, totalitarian State. There was certainly a need for Stalin to ensure that the brand of Marxism which finally won that in-house competition was not a threat to Soviet Russia and that Marxists in other countries “knew” which brand had the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Pretending that they were ideological opposites worked in all of their favors. Too bad Hollywood’s brand won World War II and helped found the United Nations.
Not an expert, but it sounds like:
Communism: means of production “owned” by everyone, no private property though in practice party members receive party property for their exclusive use. All “businesses” owned by state.
Fascism: means of production “owned” by party members, private property rights only for party members or other select group. Party members would naturally use property in support of party/nation. All “businesses” owned by party members with ties to the state.
But in all practical purposes for the average non-party member it means the state has total, arbitrary control over you and your property.
What other things do fascism and communism have in common?
dictators, central planning, secret police, use of propaganda, destruction of religion, youth control, infiltration of party politics into life, confiscation of the arts for political purposes.
Fascism and conservatism have almost nothing in common, whereas fascism and communism are hardly distinguishable. In addition, the obama administration is clearly fascist.
Weo, did you notice that all those attributes are happening in American today? Chilling.
In both systems, the justice system was entirely controlled by the State. Each also had both military and civilian secret police units. Civil law worked only for the party and upper level party members. Criminal law was either nonexistent or the mere whim of the party leader. Corruption was endemic in both the regular and secret police; lawyers were more or less irrelevant.
One thing in common with fascism/communism was revealed to me when I was stranded one evening at Philly Airport, along with an elderly gentleman. I struck up a conversation. Turned out he was a Russian immigrant, who told me he survived both Buchenwald and the “People’s” Gulags of Stalin. He was captured on the Eastern Front but survived because he knew German and the Germans respected that, but the communists sent him to prison after liberation because….he knew German and the Germans had kept him alive, he was suspected as a collaborator. he had started an engineering firm in PA and had done very well for himself in freedom. He leaned over to me in the middle of this incredible story and said, almost whispering, “I don’t know your political beliefs but i will say this,” and then wit tears in his eyes he said, “I saw it, both fascism and communism started in the universities.”
Both are/were considered by their adherents as modern, Progressive, scientific evolutionary movements, and hence appeals to idealistic and arrogant professors and their gullible minions.
‘What other “features” do fascists and communists share?’
Tacky looking uniforms.
Tee, hee.
Redistribution of wealth was common between them.
Difference was in the world view I believe. Communists/Socialists were for a new world order – all countries would fall under the same “Communist” banner. So all would be treated the same, with a small group of “leaders”.
Nazis (National Socialists) were Germans first. I think the same for the Italian Fascists. They had the same general socialist ideals, but Germans/Italians would be the rulers and the rest of the world would serve the Germans/Italians. So there would be three groups, the “leaders”, the true Germans/Italians, and then everyone else (trolls, slaves, etc.). However, the end result would eventually be just two groups, leaders and trolls (who would live in squalor and exist at the whims of the leaders).
“As long as you play ball with us, we’ll ‘respect’ your private property.”
Sounds eerily like our government.
I believe you have to go past the “consensus” developed in the early 20th century to find the real definitions of communism and socialism. It appears to me, that about the 1920s, the western understanding of socialism took a deviation. Most likely to keep the socialist dream alive even as its evils were blamed on communism.
Here is a very good definition from an article published in 1887:
I believe the similarities between socialism under the communist brand and socialism under the fascist brand become clearer when you look into their root mechanism.
Source- Scribner’s Magazine, Socialism, Francis A. Walker
Wow. He who doesn’t study history is doomed to repeat it. I take it this text isn’t part of modern public education?
You might find this one from 1909 of interest as well
Scribner’s Magazine, Socialism: A Philosophy of Failure, J. Laurence Laughlin, 1909
I stumbled across these quite by accident but found quiet a few articles to be very interesting and refreshing. Certainly more nuanced on socialism than what is presented in the modern education.
Another common ground – their premise is atheism. Leftists try to propagandize Nazis as Christians, but, while they were more subtle than Lenin or Marx about their atheism, it is clear that their entire premise and belief was based on humanistic, materialistic and obviously Anti-Christian dogma. When fascist thinking is investigated at depth, one finds that their Anti-Semitism was based largely upon the rejection of the Jewish God and the absolute morality He represents. Mussolini put it this way:
“Everything I have said and done is these last years is relativism, by intuition. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology, and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories, and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than fascism.” —Benito Mussolini, Diuturna (1921)
http://pinterest.com/pin/307089268311047154/
If you have a political center, the far left and far right tactics can be bent around until they finally meet i.e. whatever the name, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck… What’s more their ideas are so fragile, of course because their totalitarian system isn’t universal as claimed at all, that they have to be protected by a bodyguard of lies and protected further with intimidation, assaults, arrests, and liquidation.
All this is done ‘to’ the unenlightened by the enlightened for the greater moral good of the people. “We hate immorality so your ‘consciousness’ will rise or we’ll break you.” What they fear most are free means of communications and the ability to freely pose questions.
And, more uncomfortably, all this can reside within the individual to a greater or lesser degree, all of us, in any area where we lack integrity. Integrity: To explore the moral questions of life in depth, to make the commitment to self to follow found conclusions even at personal cost, announcing your intentions openly so you can be seen as trustworthy in said areas. (gleaned: The Insufficiency of Honesty by Stephen L. Carter: The Atlantic, Feb. 1996
The way I was taught and way I taught my kids to disrupt the Right is facist narative is to say Ayn Rand a far right author therefore there can be no such thing as a right wing dictator.
Both systems exalt the State above all other things, such that nothing is of importance that doesn’t have the State’s involvement (and blessing). Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism explores this idea extensively.
If there’s a difference between the two systems, it would be that Communism expropriates explicitly, whereas Fascism does it implicitly, by imposing overwhelming regulation, taxation, and State supervision. (That was Mussolini’s core idea: by leaving nominal title to the means of production in the hands of private parties, he hoped to leash industry and commerce to the State’s agenda while retaining the profit incentives that make enterprises flourish.)
They are not equivalent, but neither is fascism “conservative.” Unfortunately it is not possible to reconstruct a straight discursive path from the days prior to Leninism to the days after. The grand practitioners of Leninist work in politics, war, economy, and culture – Muezenberg, Karl Radek, Joseph Stalin, etc. – succeeded in reorganizing the very DNA of the vocabulary of everyday, academic, and institutional life. They were also the ones who allowed the German military to evolve from the Reichswehr to the Wehrmacht, and forged the Red-Black alliance that culminated in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that started World War 2 – but then were somehow excused from those crimes by having eventually been invaded by Nazis.
That one fact is the secret to the whole conversation. The other basic element is the absence of anything like a coherent “fascist” doctrine – whether German, Italian, Romanian, Finnish, whatever. It actually resembles the welter of the chaotic evolution war doctrines and techniques that are, for example, recounted in Ruth Fischer’s book. All you have to know is that Hitler was not an informant for von Seeckt’s Reichswehr intelligence but that he had probably been chosen because the year before he had been a member of the Red Brigades attempting to bring Soviet revolution to Germany beginning THREE DAYS after the end of World War 1.
It’s just far too complicated for public consumption. The truth will never come out in a mass-conscious- changing way. That’s a fact from which we will unfortunately have to proceed.
Perhaps. But perhaps we need to get out the message we can. This column will hopefully help us hone a narrative that more can understand. The goal here isn’t perfection, to explain to all and convince all to turn from our downward spiral. Indeed, some want the spiral, because it suits their goals to destroy America and remake it in their (socialist) image. It starts with meeting one person at a time where they are right now, and helping them return one step at a time. I liken it to Alcoholics Anonymous. New people take the First Step of 12. People with some sobriety have a little more wisdom. They sponsore newcomers and help them get their feet on the ground. We’re addicted to fictions about something for nothing, and socialism promises much but delivers little. We need to break the addiction where and when we can.
I understand the impulse. Fascism ended with historically unprecedented finality in the destruction of Berlin in 1945. The word has absolutely no meaning thereafter. That it continues is the result of the Soviet shift following World War and its agents’ repetition thereafter, particularly as it was applied to the West German government and picked up by, for example, the Leftist student groups and Red Army Faction and konkret and other Stasi creations. I think the basic problem is that Soviet pre-war propaganda coalesced with American pro-Soviet, anti-Hitler propaganda, and we in the US never really reversed that or reinterpreted it or, when an occasion such as the Sovietization of China or the Korean War broke out, repudiated completely as the war-time exigency it was. The US-based Reds in and out of government therefore had the precedent of official US policy and also dramatically benefitted from, for example, Truman’s decision to take exposure and purge of US government communists in-house, while basically denying, for parochial Democrat politicsl reasons, that any problem existed.
Both are totalitarian.
By that, I mean both attempt to control every aspect of life. They seek to control education, the arts, sport, the economy, spiritual life, the press, science, etc. They destroy, co-opt, and/or undermine every rival “institution.” By far, the most important of the rival institutions are the family and religion.
The only real differences between the two is how they exercise their control (Communism is more direct, Fascism more indirect), whether they are nationalist or internationalist, and their justification (the workers vs the race/people/nation). Of course, any former non-Russian Soviet will tell you that the Soviet Communists were, underneath, just as racist/ethnically biased as the fascists, and the fascists were almost as hung up on class as the Commies.
Which is why in North Korea you still have a “communist” system, while Red China is, for all practical intents, actually a fascist system now.
Rule by criminals. The rulers are subject to no laws; neither the laws that are applied to the rest of the nation nor to any natural laws.
Mussolini: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” I’m sure Stalin agreed. Simply put, in both fascist and communist states, people exist to serve the state. They are, essentially, assets to be used for state power.
One thing that supports the idea that communism and fascism/Nazism were opposites is that Hitler hated communists. This was, however, because they were close competitors trying to draft the same people, the workers. Also Hitler was a nationalist, communism is theoretically internationalist. Finally, Hitler’s racism considered Slavs to be only slightly better than Jews.
Also, both Hitler and Mussolini were profoundly anti-capitalist. Read some of their speeches or writings attacking capitalism.
It goes deeper than that. There is nothing inherently “right-wing” about Conservatism, either–Conservatism has meant different things at different times in different places. The Conservatives in Weimar Germany wanted to restore the Monarchy; Conservatives in Colonial America would have wanted to preserve the Monarchy, as well.
“Right-wing” versus “Left-wing” is a false dichotomy. The choice is between Tyranny on one hand and Anarchy on the other–and it’s more a horseshoe than a straight line–tyrants need anarchists to incite the riots necessary for the populace to demand government intervention; hence the love affair for the modern Democrat party with the Occupy movement.
When the choice is between Tyranny on the one hand and Anarchy on the other, limited government and individual responsibility are not extreme positions–they are the exact opposite of extreme positions, since the point is to avoid either extreme.
Communism and Fascism are both tyrannical systems.
I think Jonah Goldberg covered a lot of this ground in his book “Liberal Fascism”.
I know that Liberals/Progessives HATE being told that Conservatives are the intellectual heirs to James Madison. They, on the oher hand, to want to disown the American Revolution in favor of the French Revolution.
The Constitution pre-dates all that Marxist crap. They don’t like that observation either.
All factions of the Left view Human Beings as “perfect-able”, i.e., the people can be “educated” to function as an organic structure of “social animals”. Inherent rights of the individual, as elucidated in the Declaration of Independence, are categorically rejected. Individual responsibilities are viewed as relevant only as assigned by society, each contributing to the specific goal of achieving Equality – equality of social standing and material condition for all members of society.
Karl Marx identified (if memory serves) some 16 different varieties of Socialism. Though the methods differ the overriding goal of Equality remains the same. In ALL of the left’s various disguises, which most definitely includes Fascism, Rights are held by Society as a whole, and individuals are assigned Privileges by Society, in the person of the State.
Mussolini consistently insisted that his goals were Socialist. He had been active, in a leadership position, in the Italian Socialist Party for decades. He stated directly that he had always been a Socialist and would always be a Socialist.
Following WWI, Italian Socialist labor unions managed to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum and actually take over some rather large manufacturing facilities. They pitched out the “Bourgeois” owners, engineers, supervisors, accountants, etc, and attempted to run the facilities themselves for the exclusive “benefit of the workers”. The enterprises of course came to a screeching halt in short order. Something less then 8 weeks.
Mussolini noted the failure. He had come under the influence of one Georges Sorel, a French Engineer-cum-social philosopher who developed Syndicalism. Sorel had recognized that any manufacturing process which could function required ALL the various participants, investors, managers, clerks, bookkeepers, etc, etc. So, instead of following the strictly Socialist view that Labor should run pretty much everything, he determined that all groups should be formed into Syndicates; Labor, Management, Finance, Engineering, etc., and that the various syndicates would then negotiate between themselves to find mutually acceptable division of authority and profits.
Mussolini added the final element – all the relationships, and especially the goals (production targets) would be guided by the State. The State as the Master Planner.
In Mussolini’s view, the move from State ownership of the means of production to Syndicalism was NOT a departure from Socialism. It was merely a change in method. He directly explained that the State did not need to own everything. Ownership, as a concept, is merely the legal exclusive right of control over property. Mussolini determined that the State could adequately control all property through (ready for it?) REGULATION. Socialist goals would be accomplished by Syndicalist means.
Mussolini, good little Community Organizer that he was, determined that a Grand Symbol for his newly devised Movement was required. He selected the devised used by the Lictors of the ancient Roman court. A collection of rods, bound together with an Axe. The Rods symbolized the Syndicates, bound together by common social purpose, with the over-riding power; the Axe, which represented the Emperor’s power, or the State. The ancient name of this symbol is the Fasces. Thus Fascism.
It’s interesting to note that in 1916, under Woodrow Wilson, he of “War Socialism” fame, a Fasces appeared on the obverse of the new Liberty Dime. Socialists and Progressives were great admirers of Fascism until immediately prior to the outbreak of WWII.
Hitler’s addition of German Romanticism, and bald faced Racism, into Mussolini’s Fascism resulted in Nazi-ism. When the Nazis clashed with the Bolshevik Communists, the Left set about re-defining themselves out of an embarrassing fix. Suddenly, the Fascists, so admired by Socialists and Progressives everywhere during the ’20s and 30′s, were re-defined into “Right-Wingers” and “Conservatives”. The re-definition continues regularly, to fit whatever delusion-of-the-moment the Left wants to promote.
Basically, the guiding ambition of the Left seems to be to turn Human Beings into . . . hive insects. Whether they accomplish their utopian goals through State ownership of everything, or effective total control of everything through Regulation does not matter – to them or to us – their over-riding goal of Social Equality, remains the same.
Fascism is only Socialism/Communism by slightly different means. To the rest of us, it is a distinction without a difference.
That was a great post. Thank you! One possible difference between outright state ownership and direct control of business and industry under communism, and technically private ownership and management with regulation under facsism, is that if regulation is not overdone to the point of destroying the price discovery process, the economy might have some chance of fairly long term survival. This is not possible under communism, as postulated by the Austrian economist Von Mises, and proven by the collapse of the Soviet Union. In other words, communism is an abhorrent political parasite that kills the host economy, whereas facism is an abhorrent political parasite that perverts, sickens, and cripples the host economy. But, for practical purposes, you are exactly correct, for those subjected to either one, it’s pure disaster.
Fascism is just another hydra-head of the totalitarian beast.
Jonah Goldberg wrote a great book on the subject of fascism being just another iteration of socialism/extreme progressivism.
Give it a read….
TAL
Another seminal work on fascism is “Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Wolrdview” by Gene Edward Veith. It is required reading for anybody who wants to understand where we are heading, like Jews on a Nazi cattle car. Reading this has revolutionized mine and many of my friends’ perspectives on this issue. http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Fascism-Liquidating-Judeo-Christian-Scholarship/dp/0570046033
Fascism also shares characteristics with the Democratic party, as this article from 1935 illustrates. http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/pdf/Nazi_Labor_Unions.pdf
It’s not that complicated to understand. During the French Revolution, the government was divided into three general groups. Those who favored what equaled a Socialist government run by committee sat on the left side of the meeting hall, those who favored a strong, dictatorial form of government with a single strong leader sat on the right side of the hall, and those who were undecided or who leaned strongly in neither direction sat in the middle. They were called the “Mountain” I believe. In any case, it was not the form but the style of government that dictated which “side” they sat on.
In fact, both Fascism and Socialism are collectivist forms of government, the difference being that one style tends to be oligarchic, , run by committee, while the other side is more monarchic, with a single, vastly powerful figure, a dictator, at the head of government. It makes absolutely NO difference which style of government a country has, unless one foolishly considers it more dangerous to have a single figure who might be maddened by greed and power, because in an oligarchy, greed and power run rampant among MANY such so-called leaders.
Fascism was invented by Mussolini’s bunch, and named for the “fasces” or bundle of sticks with an axe head at the top. It was carried by Roman consuls and was supposed to symbolize the power of his office, the bundle of sticks with which he could whip the people and the axe head with which he could chop off their heads. There were other symbolic meanings, but this was the one inferred by those who were governed. Hitler’s “Nazism” was nothing more than pure fascism under the name of nationalism and socialism. Duh! It was called Socialism — nazionalsosialismus! — Where in Hell is there confusion on that???? The acronym NSDAP stood for Nazional Socizializmus Deutsche Arbeits Partei, or National Socialist German Workers Party. These governments were no different from Mao’s China or Staliin’s Russia (or Kruschev’s or Brezhnev’s or anybody else’s of their.
Now, if you want to delineate a real difference, you put Total Government on one side (Communism, for example) and absolutely NO government on the other (absolute Anarchy). In between you put the various gradations of governmental control — Commnunism, Fascism, Democratic Socialism (or Social Democracy, but that term can be misleading) until you get somewhere right of center and you have Democratic Republicanism, which is what we are supposed to have and once had in this country. Do not be fooled by the criminals who preach Anarcho Syndicalism as a form of anti-government, because all they mean is that labor unions should BE the government, as though that would be easier on the people!!!!
In fact, the US Constitution and Bill of Rights are UNIQUE in human history because they are the first and thus far the only documents which state clearly that INDIVIDUAL HUMAN AND POLITICAL RIGHTS underly EVERY CONSIDERATION OF GOVERNMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s called FREEDOM and is at the root of our system of government. Since FDR we have lost that concept (or have been lulled out of it) by evil people who want to take it over for their own begnefit. This present bunch of crooks is just the latest and most virulent gang to do so. I believe it is time for another revolution but a revolution that brings about AMERICAN RESTORATION. Maybe that ought to be the motto on our banner.
What do Fascism and Communism have in common? They share a common, subversive goal. And it has nothing to do with the welfare of man or the creation of utopia. They serve one purpose and one only: to lead man away from God. The ideology that attracts people to the totalitarian styles of government, all of them, are modeled after the philosophies of the ancient mystery religions. They are based on the idea of a perfectible man. A being, who; when trained, purified, refined, is godlike. Evolution was also based on these principles. However, the original author of these principles: the idea that man is like god, perfectible by some process, that there is a secret knowledge that may be obtained by self-sacrifice, or self-indulgence, or commitment, or desire, or 100 other ways. This secret knowledge when obtained elevates man to immortality. In other words, the “way” is self-made. Everyone is alike and no one requires no more or no less than another. The terminology changes through the centuries. The hooks and enticements, and control mechanisms are updated and refined. The goal was, is, and will alway be the same. Can anyone name the original author? This ideology is not progressive, it is clearly digressive. If you will notice, every so-called entitlement, or right, or progression proffered by “the enlightened” is one that is gained by acting in direct contradiction to the Commandments of God. To murder (unborn children through abortion) to covet, (through a validated sense of entitlement) to steal, to bear false witness,(assinate the character of anyone who threatens the narrative) dishonor parents, to hate , to be prideful, to focus on self, to denounce God, to deny the very existence of sin, to make wrong right, evil into good. This is how man evolves. This is how man dies. Gradually, lovingly, craftily led willingly into lawlessness and anarchy, and then slaughtered, enmasse,
I don’t know how successful you’ll be. The left will just say none of those things define fascism, and will credit their own definition as THE definition. If you try to think up objections to it, you accept the debate on their terms and you’re now in a reactive mode. Instead, take the offensive by challenging your opponent: ask him who wrote that definition and explain why you should accept it.
I did this in a YouTube comment thread. The leftist said such-and-such a video was a “textbook” example of fascism. I asked “Which textbook?”, and the leftist would not name any specific textbook and very soon just refused to discuss it further.
Of course, there’s no comparison between a YouTube thread and your situation, which is a lot more demanding. So I don’t know how well this technique will work for you.
“ask him who wrote that definition and explain why you should accept it.”
That should read “ask him who wrote that definition and why you should accept it.”
Also remember what Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language”: ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning [when used by the left] except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. … Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.’