Even where it literally hits closer to home…
‘I am a Socialist,’ Hitler told Otto Strasser in 1930, ‘and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow’.
No one at the time would have regarded it as a controversial statement. The Nazis could hardly have been more open in their socialism, describing themselves with the same terminology as our own SWP: National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Almost everyone in those days accepted that fascism had emerged from the revolutionary Left. Its militants marched on May Day under red flags. Its leaders stood for collectivism, state control of industry, high tariffs, workers’ councils. Around Europe, fascists were convinced that, as Hitler told an enthusiastic Mussolini in 1934, ‘capitalism has run its course’.
One of the most stunning achievements of the modern Left is to have created a cultural climate where simply to recite these facts is jarring. History is reinterpreted, and it is taken as axiomatic that fascism must have been Right-wing, the logic seemingly being that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists were nasty. You expect this level of analysis from Twitter mobs; you shouldn’t expect it from mainstream commentators.
At least they can still call it socialism over there. In recent years on this side of the Atlantic, referring to socialist policies as such is…say it with me…racist.
Totalitarianism… and liberals like it, too.
I always laugh when I hear a moron compare the Tea Party activists to Nazis. They must be the first Nazis ever which want a smaller, less powerful central government.
Perhaps this is the wrong place to ask, but has the Kruiser Control show been discontinued? It’s been a while since there was a new one, and I miss Sir Pantsless!
Fascism is socialism for lazy statists.
Instead of running the economy like the futile but diligent Russians did, fascists use the overwhelming power of massive government to coerce a handful of monopolies (most of whom quickly warm to the idea) to run the economy and loot it for the fascists with a few crumbs spun off to placate the boot licking monopolists.
I think you just explained the concept of ‘too big to fail’.
Likely the biggest reason for the disconnect is that Stalin needed to separate out the Fascist from the Bolshevik, to ensure that his minions followed the right (his) road. Robert Heinlein referred to the Soviets as “Red Fascists” prior to World War II.
Unlike Jonah Goldberg, I don’t think that Stalin had that much influence on the West to make Italians and Germans forget what fascism was like. There are several more likely explanations.
First, the very meanings of “right” and “left” have changed. For instance, Mussolini talked about fascism as a movement of the “right”, but he is clear about what “right” means: “right” = authority, the collective, and the State, “left” = individualism, _classical_ liberalism. This is the exact opposite of modern _American_ usage. Is it any wonder that silly twits have accepted Mussolini’s claim to be “of the right” without wondering what he meant by that?
Second, before ww2, socialism was by no means equated with the “left”. In fact, in The Road to Serfdom, Hayek distinguishes between socialism “of the left” and socialism “of the right” … and, if you read between the lines, it seems that Hayek, like Heinlein, thought of Soviet socialism as socialism “of the right”. (Note that Soviet socialism was about authority, the collective, and the State.)
Third, there was the charlatan Richard Hofstadter who conflated eugenics and capitalism under the label of “social Darwinism”.
When Bill Ayers ooined the phrase “small c communist” to describe himself (which I have embraced openly to describe him and the mindless lemmings of the left who parrot him), he was attempting to make a distinction between the savage tyrant and the beneficent one.
Tyranny, however, is a brutality magnet. It is all about force. Small c communism is about hiding behind pastel words and feathery ideas to put force into place without resistance to it.
Getting the low wattage brain to accept tyranny castor oil force fed down its throat, you cover it in chocolate and infuse it with an aroma of jasmine.
You put on the label that it is calorie free, free range grown and full of anti-oxidants.
Of course, fascism and small c communism are one. Iron-fisted rule, forcing people to buy goods and services, taking their arms, confiscating their accumulated wealth, feeding the Governmental Audrey their blood…cannot occur without fascism. Or without owning the communications and information streams and propagandizing them. Crushing opposing points of view in academia, denying a place in teaching of children, crushing opposing points of view in popular culture, crushing principled dissent in every vehicle possible.
Fascism is leftism at the wheel. It is where freedom goes to die.
Fascism, socialism, communism – there may be technical differences, but all share one evil goal, the elimination of individualism coupled with the promotion of all-powerful gubmint.
I remember talking to a teacher friend of mine and saying that fascism is ALWAYS big-government. He just wouldn’t buy it. What seems obvious (duh) to informed conservatives is a puzzlement to our liberal friends.
All the evil ism-s in government share the characteristic of being big government. As Thomas Paine pointed out, all governments are evil. The bigger the government the bigger the evil.
What is ironic is the fact Rachel Frosh, a Tory candidate, was just suspended from the party for saying (tweeting) the same thing.
I’d be curious to hear what Mr Hannan has to say about it.
Yeah, the actual conservative Brits have discovered that Dan Hannan is all pretty talk and no real spine when it comes to action. He’s a Cast Iron Dave cohort aka controlled opposition to the big gov Fascii of GB. Another politician on the EU teat that is FOS and the reason I have become a non-supporter of the Tories.