Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Fascism

  • Fascism Defined

    If you look at the back of a Mercury dime, you will see the fasces, a bundle of sticks around an axe (well, you will see it if the coin isn’t too worn, Mercury dimes haven’t been made since 1945).

    Please note that the dime illustrated has a 1916 date. The word fascism apparently came into use in Italy, and the year was 1921. Obviously, the fasces on the dime weren’t connected with fascism.

    The word ‘fascist’ is thrown around loosely – largely because the Stalinist Communists used it against both the real fascists (Hitler and Mussolini) and any capitalist they wanted to tar with the same brush. The only people who weren’t fascists to the Soviets were fellow communists.

    Benito Mussolini described fascism as “the marriage of corporation and the state.” I can’t say that Benny invented fascism, but he did start the first fascist government. Anyone remember that, in his second month as President, Barack Obama fired Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors? Fascism focuses on putting the nation first. Anybody remember red caps that say “Make America Great Again”? Fascism calls for total control by authoritarian leaders. Can anybody recall some of the extreme controls that came with Covid? Like Newsom activating California’s Guard to work with covid tests?

    Fascism promotes a strong, centralized government, ran by an authoritarian leader. Barack Obama, despite having fired the CEO of General Motors, doesn’t qualify as Fascist. Biden, despite leaning toward authoritarian, doesn’t qualify. Donald Trump – despite the red caps that say “Make America Great Again” doesn’t hit all the bases. It’s easy to find one aspect of each president where he touched on one of the aspects – but none of them meet all of Mussolini’s criteria, and Stalin’s criteria were never correct.

    Mussolini, with coauthor Giovanni Gentile, wrote The Doctrine of Fascism. It’s only 33 pages, and Benny the Moose was a decent writer – it isn’t a hard read. If you think about calling someone a fascist, it’s available at https://dn721808.ca.archive.org/0/items/mussolini-archive/The%20Doctrine%20of%20Fascism%20Benito%20Mussolini.pdf

  • Karl Marx Condensed

    I notice a bunch of folks claiming to know the difference between socialism, communism, and fascism – and some of the explanations suggest they never read the manifesto.  So ride along with me for a condensed version of the manifesto.

    First of all, Karl Marx studied capitalism – and saw that more and more capital wound up owned by very few people.  Glance online, and see the cheerful pictures of Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, etc.  It’s hard to argue with that observation.  For sociologists, Marx came up with the basis of social conflict theory – he based it on economic class.

    The ten points of the manifesto are:

    1. Abolish private ownership of land and apply all land rent to public purposes.
    2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
    3. Abolish all rights of inheritance.
    4. Confiscate the property of all emigrants and rebels.
    5. Centralize credit with a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
    6. Centralize State controlled means of communication and transport.
    7. Extend factories and means of production (State owned);  bring wastelands into cultivation, and improve the soil in accord with a common plan.
    8. Equal liability of all to work. Establish industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
    9. Combine agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradually abolish the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population.
    10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolish child factory labor.

    It’s important to remember that Karl Marx studied early capitalism and examined its flaws.  He theorized that communism would eliminate those flaws.  The contemporary socialism of the time was French Utopian Socialism – far different than today’s versions of socialism, and, with the relatively recent French Revolution, recognizing the concept of social conflict.

    We could go farther – graduate seminars go into a lot more detail – but this is a condensed version, just to provide enough background to be able to call BS on the ignorant ideologues.