Originally posted by: UNCjigga
Originally posted by: Vic
Originally posted by: UNCjigga
Again, you need to read up on fascism. Completely fictional? Read up on Germany's National Socialist Worker's Party circa 1933-1945.
Fascism is a leftist movement. A collectivist movement by definition.
OK, ripped straight from Wikipedia:
Merriam-Webster defines fascism as "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition"[1]. The American Heritage Dictionary instead describes it as "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the
extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."[2].
Mussolini defined fascism as being a
right-wing ideology in opposition to socialism, liberalism, democracy and individualism. He said in The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism:
"Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the 19th century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State." [3]
Fascism is associated by many scholars with one or more of the following characteristics: a very high degree of nationalism, economic corporatism, a powerful, dictatorial leader who portrays the nation, state or collective as superior to the individuals or groups composing it.
Stanley Payne's Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980) uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector; fascist symbolism;
anti-liberalism; anti-communism [4]. A similar strategy was employed by semiotician Umberto Eco in his popular essay Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt[5]. More recently, an emphasis has been placed upon the aspect of populist fascist rhetoric that argues for a "re-birth" of a conflated nation and ethnic people[6].
Many scholars hold that fascism as a social movement
employs elements from the political left, but eventually allies with the political right, especially after attaining state power. See: Fascism and ideology.