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I believe, though I may be wrong, that the problem with identifying political phenomena today is the same as the predicament before classifications were devised for plants and animals. Lots of people use terms like "fascism" loosely because too many people are offering definitions. We need a system for codifying political regimes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by [[User:|User:]] ([[User talk:|talk]] • contribs) June 2006 or thereabouts.
What remains to be cleaned up so we can remove the dispute flags? I have moved much of the marginal material to Fascism and ideology. Is there still a problem with the section on religion?-- Cberlet 16:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Why is Robert Paxton's working definition of fascism ("A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion) not cited in either this or the Fascism and Ideology articles? I disagree with the view that definitions should not be part of the article; keep in mind that the text should also serve the interest of the curious general reader who seeks a basic grasp of the concept(s) - albeit perhaps one that is necessarily understood from various angles. While the "definitive" definiton may yet be elusive, Paxton's seems at least as worthy of being cited as Mirriam-Webster or the American Heritage. To leave this one (Paxton's) out seems a significant disservice to readers. Arjuna 21:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for adding that. Given the contention surrounding this article, I was loathe to do it unilaterally, but I do think it adds something worthy. Arjuna 21:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
The term 'Communism' is often used as a political system, but isn't it more of an economical one? Therefore can we really compare facsim (a political ideology) to an economical system that some governments in the past have adapted? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.170.102.41 ( talk • contribs) 13 November 2006.
Am I alone in finding the following a glaring contradiction: 'Fascism is not racist (even though Mussolini did eventually put antisemitism on his agenda and did in 1938 pass generally unpopular antisemitic laws)'? Also, 'fascism' should be in inverted commas. Etaonsh 10:10, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
National Socialism and Fascism are similar but distinct. National Socialism has a more mythical, even cultic, vision of a volk (people's) community, and it also emphasizes racial identity. Mussolini, overall, did not posses these sentiments and was more concerned with political, not biological, weakness (his fears of Communism, Democracy, and Liberalism). They are distinct forces. GANDALF1992 03:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
A few points: I would include Ernst Nolte's 6 points on fascism (antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, the aim of totalitarianism) [also quoted in Stanley Payne's Fascism]. Secondly, Mussolini's Italy was *not* antisemitic. In fact, Jews were overproportionally represented in the Party. Italian Fascism had an ideology of cultural, instead of racial, superiority. Only in 1938 did Hitler force an antisemitic line. Thirdly, I see that totalitarianism is mentioned. Hannah Arendt's definition of totalitarianism (On the Origins of Totalitarianism) has since been eclipsed by modern historians and political theorists. See, for example, Jan T. Gross (Revolution From Abroad), Anson Rabinbach, and others. And fourthly, it has become just as useful to compare Nazism with Stalinist Bolshevism as with Italian Fascism; Fascism lacked the 'totality' of society that the 2 former exhibited. It should therefore be mentioned that applying the label 'fascist' to Hitler's Germany overlooks the scholarship that has been using Hitler's and Stalin's models as the basis of a totalitarian model.
Hmmm....this sounds exceedingly familiar. You wouldn't happen to be Italian and have been indocrinated with the works of Renzo De Felice for the last 20-30 years, would you??!! There is no dount that de Felice was an extraodinarily talented, bright and knowledgeable historian of fascism (certainly the greatest and most thorough chronicler of this abomination of his generation!!). But de Felice was a self-confessed rigth-winger with an inveitable bias and limited access to the volumianous doceumentation that has recently come to light (and has yet to come to light!!) on that tragic period of history. In particular, the idea that Italian fascism was not anti-semitic has come under serious attack in recent years by several Italian historians of serious weight who have demontsrated that the Mussolini government's primary interest was in protecting exclusively Italian Jews who could be kept on as invaluable and indispensable cheap labor and did nothing at all to stop and/or enthusuaitly participated in the shipping off of non-Italian Jews in, eg, Greece, France and North Africa to the extermination camps all over Europe. I don't remeber the names of the major historians, but the journalists Furio Columbo, Giorgio Bocca and others have writeen about this extensively. The Italian racial laws were not passed involuntarily and Mussonili himself heavily redacted and published the Manifesto of the Italian scientific racists in 1938 or '39 (?). Neither he nor the Italian fasicts intellectuals/ideologists who collaborated in this effort were forced by anyone to adopt these ideas, much less to offically publish them as a sort of unversal manifesto for the fascist movement. I need to get some copies of these author's books and writings and I will let you know whatever information I can gather on this topic. Things are never quote as simple and straightforard as they seem: German Nazis-racist, Italian Fascists-involuntary accomplices!! I don't buy it.-- Lacatosias 17:51, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Richard Griffiths says, "Just as their was little anti-Semitism in Italy, there was equally little anti-Semitism in the movement, which benefited from Jewish founders in its early days, and which was joined by a higher percentage of the small Italian Jewish population than that of the Gentille population. It was only by the late Thirties, under the influence of Hitler's Germany, that that anti-Semitism was to play any important part in Mussolini's policies." (Fascism, pg. 38). Kevin Passmore says the same thing (he also gives instances where Italian policy was explicitly anti-anti-Semitic) except he says it's due also in part to a wave of anti-Semitism that arose all across Europe in '38 due to fear coming from the rise of Hitler (Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 117). Without adequate sources saying otherwise this is the view we're required to take. - DNewhall
Perhaps its best not to suggest fascism was an advocate of the state or nation as superior. Weren't these more commonly justifications for questionable actions?
Its good that it has been noted the difficulty of defining the concept. Why has the wikiproject for fascism said it will rely on the wikipedians definition though - What definition?
A similar system to fascism (albeit a primitive one) has been suggested to have first occurred in Spain up to 300 or 400 years ago. One author who suggesed this for example though there are many more is H.R. Kedward. Perhaps this is worth noting. I.e. "One for all and all for one"
Also Its good that the various differences have been noted between Mussolini's Fascism and Hitlers Nazism. Perhaps this deserves more emphasis though.
Various other advocates could be explored in more detail during the pre-war period such as those in Holland, and the US. Similarities to Japan and Kitta Ikki's ideas may also be worth exploring.
Lastly, i hope their are plans to expand this article. - A regular visitor to wikipedia 14/05/06
(Removed the new header that was here to prevent confusion regarding this dialogue.-- Ma'ath'a'yü (aka: Proofing) 07:43, 30 May 2006 (UTC))
I would like to see Fascism (epithet) merged with Fascist (epithet). And maybe that resultant article serves the purpose we were looking to address. Thoughts?-- Ma'ath'a'yü (aka: Proofing) 22:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC) Talk | @
Fascinating. There seem to be no corresponding articles on Communist (epithet) or Communism (epithet). I wonder why that is the case? Having lived in the US for most of my life, I can assure that the terms socialism (epithet) and socialist (epithet) are extraordinaily common terms of abuse used to delegimitize anyone who holds policital beliefs which even midly deviate from the hard-right wing views of Rush Limbaugh!! Why are there no articles on these particular terms of abuse?? HMMMMMMM!! -- Lacatosias 10:08, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I added a book cite to the section because the reference cite above it wasn't working right and wasn't as complete in information (viewed on the edit page - link didn't work on the article page). Also, the ref link is suppose to point out that the citation referenced is from the forward and I wasn't able to make that happen in the book cite. I am not up to the task yet of sorting out how this is suoppose to best display and and be styled so I need some help for that. Thanks. -- Ma'ath'a'yü (aka: Proofing) 17:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC) Talk | @
This deserves to be mentioned on this page, but in a factual and NPOV way. Nazism was only one form of national socialism. Nazism changed dramatically once in state power in Germany. The relentless attempts by a handful of editors to paint fascism as a form of socialism so that they can piss all over people on the political left is not merely annoying, but violates several Wiki policies. If we can teach cats not to spray in the house to mark their territory, there is hope that we can teach Wiki editors the same basic manners.-- Cberlet 16:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe fascism can be defined as any far right government that stresses intense nationalism over individualism, hence the bundle of sticks analogy.
<-----And yet, most scholars disagree...-- Cberlet 13:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I myself never had heard of the expression "Clerical Fascism" before and can assure that it is not a consensus of scholar to distinguish Fascism into these three types. There are clearly various categorizations and Wiki may have privilegied this "tripartition". I see however that the "Clerical Fascism" article is quite under-developed, and that it includes Vichy France — a term which is used by no Vichy regime scholar that I know of. I understand what the authors mean about it, and it probably is quite relevant for Salazar & Franco (although that doesn't makes it a "consensus" for scholars anyhow). In my understanding, Fascism usually designs primarily Italian fascism, which is itself then divided into various historical phases (before power, power, etc.). The term "Clerical Fascism" was clearly coined to refer to those quasi-fascist regimes which almost everybody accords in seeing some relations with Fascism (the date is a good point to start on), but with few of them claiming they were completely Fascism. The relation to religion & to ideology are usually invoked. Nazism, on the other hand, is often considered a form of exacerbated fascism, or "war Fascism", or again Fascism with a more developed racist ideology and anti-Semitic program. The question about the survivance of Fascism after WWII should of course be adressed. Tazmaniacs 23:28, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Chip, you say above: Among current recognized scholars of fascism, the general consensus is that fascism (small f) had three forms in the interwar period (Italian Corporatism, German Nazism, and Clerical Fascism). This seems distinctly wrong to me. As I understand it, four fairly distinct forms of genuinely fascist movements are recognized - Italian fascism/corporatism and imitators (including the Déat and Doriot parties in France, the pre-Franco Phalange in Spain, Mosley's party in England, and various other imitators in most European countries); German Nazism and imitators (Austrian, Danzig, Czechoslovak Nazis, notably, but other tiny groups elsewhere); the Hungarian Arrow Cross movement; and the Romanian Iron Guard. Note that while there are thus few true fascist regimes, this still leaves a substantial number of fascist movements. I would say that most people I've read don't consider "clerical fascism" (regimes like Salazar's Portugal or Dollfuss's Austria; movements like the Action Française) as really being "true fascism." If I recall Payne, his argument was that these movements, and other radical right wing movements, do not qualify as fascist because they are too conservative. If we go back to Nolte's fascist minimum, clerical fascism isn't anti-conservative - it is, in fact, reactionary. The extent of the leadership principle and the aim of totalitarianism can also be debated in these types of movements and regimes, I think. (Did Kurt Schuschnigg really develop the leadership principle?) Obviously most of the right wing regimes in Europe in the 1930s took some fascist elements, and shared in the anti-liberalism and anti-marxism that distinguisehd the fascists But it seems like most of these regimes are more easily comparable to the proto-authoritarian catholic conservatism of a Brüning, or to the semi-fascist right wing nationalism of Hugenberg's DNVP, than they are to true fascism of the Nazi and Italian varieties. So I'd prefer to be careful with "clerical fascism" - I don't think there's any real consensus that "clerical fascist" regimes were genuinely fascist. john k 19:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Now, obviously, one can define things differently from Payne. But the idea of "clerical fascism" seems entirely incoherent to me. To combine radical fascist type groups like the Ustasa and the Iron Guard (and, apparently you say, the Arrow Cross), with reactionary clerical regimes like Salazar's or Dollfuss's seems inappropriate. I think a basic issue is the distinction between a fascist movement (an idea which is fairly well-defined in the comparative sense), and a regime, which I think is an incoherent concept that doesn't really work - in no country did fascism ever take over the entire state structure in the way that Communism did in the Soviet Union. Even in Nazi Germany, which went the furthest in this direction, you have considerable autonomy within the officer corps, for instance, to the extent that the anti-Hitler plotting therein went unnoticed for years. Moving to Italy, where the royal family remained and the army was never really under fascist control, this is even more true, and pretty much every other regime that had fascist involvement usually never really saw the fascists in complete control - Antonescu, for instance, included the Iron Guard in his government from 1940-1941, but he was not himself a fascist; nor was Pétain really a fascist, although his government included fascists; the same can be said for Franco. A notable thing about many of the right wing regimes established in the 30s and 40s is the pluralism of their internal viewpoints. While external dissent was suppressed, there wasn't any clear consensus about the ideological position of the regime. This is particular clear with respect to Vichy France - you have genuine fascists like Déat and Doriot; you have reactionary Action Française types like Weygand who want to crush the French left, but hate the Germand and Nazism; you have technocratic internal reformers like Darlan who have decided that an authoritarian regime is the most efficient way to run the country and want to reform the government to increase technocratic control; you have an old parliamentary schemer like Laval who is mostly concerned with aligning France with German foreign policy. john k 23:51, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe the intro should use the common usage definition - not the narrow (Franco) definition. Perhaps we could say something like fascism is a government after the style of ... But when the man in the street says that someone is a fascist, he doesn't mean that they are Italian. Regards, Ben Aveling 09:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
<----Sorry. Didn't mean to suggesting we should be less than rigourous in our discussion. It's just that the current intro starts off talking about italian facism, in the past tense, which is a misleading guide to the the rest of this page.
There is also some duplication in the intro, and a few things said by way of explaination that can, I think, could be addressed by rewording the intro to remove the confusing bits.
What about:
It combines the two paragraphs, and (I hope) makes clear that there a general sense of the word (implicitly discussed on this page) and a strict sense (explicitly linked to the first time it is mentioned).
Yes? No? Thoughts? Regards, Ben Aveling 08:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Noticeably absent is any serious insight to the economic policies of fascism. A few words are thrown around here or there, but there is nothing concise. But without understanding who was doing what with the $$, there is a big gap IMO -- jce17:20, 15 June 2006 EST]
Please Note: This page has grown long from time to time and topical subsections have been pulled out and new pages created. Please do not complain about information missing from this page until you have explored the Fascism Template pages. Weaving links to existing pages or adding text with pointers to longer discussions is both appropriate and useful. There are already several pages where Fascism and political economy is discussed. See, for example, Fascism and ideology and Economics of fascism. -- Cberlet 21:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
A blurb on Hitler's use of mefo bills and general subversion of traditional economics under Hjalmar Schacht might be helpful because it belies fascism's tendency of mass deception and corruption. Potashnik 17:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering if there would be any objection to me including "anti- rationalism" in the first line along with the other elements that fascism incorporates? Though anti-rationalism itself has no article, opposition to the intellectual dominance post-Enlightenment, and a focus on urges and social Darwinism were significant aspects of fascist theory, as I have been discovering from several texts I'm reading about it. - Erolos 18:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Although the U.S. never was completely under the fascist spell of the 1930s, we have a far-right anti-democracy underground in America. Most neo-fascist and far-right political groups carried hypnotic labels or starts with "American", "Christian", "Conservative", "Moralist", "Nationalist" and "Patriotic" seem to hold a semi-fascist ideology. They are the National Alliance, the Christian Identity (not the Christian Coalition, sometimes reported to have a rightist anti-liberal viewpoint) and the American Fascists or Nazis under a variety of official party names. They preached the "dangers" of social permissiveness, liberal/moderate reform, the threat of "foreign influences" like Islamic terrorism, and hold a racist, nativist and anti-gay/feminist agenda. Many of the far-right get off ranting on some subjects like " political correctness", " liberal elite" and "new world order", deemed as threats to usually "white Christian straight working men" in rural America. The abuse and manipulation of "old fashioned" traditonal and moral values of a "very democratic" country by neo-Fascism in the U.S. goes ignored by the public, but widely reported by the media as conservatives whom gone to the extreme. If the U.S. is historically opposed to all dictatorship and totalitarianism, because they violate the free will of the people and the individual, then why did a rise of small but hostile organizations of neo-fascists/Nazis, hate groups and militias since the 1980's wasn't curtailed not by the government, but the American people? Most decent thinking people in the U.S. find the neo-Fascist movement is unworthy and unacceptable. It made me wonder Wikipedians from the U.S. and Europe are not fully aware of the subject on the phenomenon and we need sources to research American neo-fascism. The American far-right prototype of militia members like Timothy McVeigh, committed the 1995 bombing on the federal building in Oklahoma City, and he deeply held far-right/ neo-fascist beliefs. + 207.200.116.68 17:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
This article has come a long way in just a few months. The part involving religion and fascism is particularly interesting. Just a few comments though. I am hoping that the actual scapegoats used by the various regimes will be properly identified instead of been thrown untidily into a single overarching category called “national enemies.”
Lastly, the article states that aristocrats lent their support to the various fascist regimes - I think perhaps this should be substantiated because the various regimes played on the masses and as such drew the majority of their support from the masses and proportionally very little from the elite. -- A Wikipedian - 28-06-06.
I disagree regarding questions of support. Fascist movements drew much support from elites, especially business elites; their funding came mainly from business. This was one of the issues 'resolved' during the 'Night of the Long Knives' where the more populist, anti big business wing of the Nazi party was suppressed in favour of the big business wing. It is important to distinguish between: movements; regimes; movement prior to coming to power; movements in power (regimes); espoused policies; policies carried out; Pacificbiblio 17:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we remove the quality and NPOV flags. Comments?-- Cberlet 14:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
The Roman Fasces (bundle with axe) is a noble symbol representing the power of cooperation. As individual branches are easily broken, but resistant when joined together. Likewise weak individuals become stronger when their efforts are combined. The axe head was symbolic of the awesome force of such cooperation.
Governments are instituted among men to secure rights, according to the Declaration of Independence (1776).
The fasces grace the U.S. Congress building, in harmony with that sentiment.
According to Webster's Dictionary: FASCISM - any political or social ideology of the extreme right which relies on a combination of pseudo-religious attitudes and the brutal use of force for getting and keeping power.
LEFT WING - the section of a political party, government or group that holds the most left or radical views.
RIGHT WING - the section of a political party, government or group that holding the views of the Right.
THE RIGHT - that section of a political party ... which associates itself with traditional authority or opinion and which in legislative bodies is seated traditionally to the right of the presiding officer.
THE LEFT - that section of a political party ... which differs most from traditional authority or opinion and which in legislative bodies is seated traditionally to the left of the presiding officer.
From these definitions, we can see that the common use of the term "Fascism" is inaccurate.
Both Hitler and Mussolini OPPOSED the traditional governments of their respective nations, thus branding them as LEFT WING. Since FASCISM is right wing, and in support of the traditional government, the abuse of the fasces and its symbolism is disinformation promulgated to confuse.
Both Socialism and Communism, by definition, are opposed to traditional government, they are LEFT WING. The common characteristic of both Socialism and Communism, is the transfer of private property rights to the collective (*State). They only differ by the degree of transfer.
The compelled dispossession of private property owners is evidence that both Socialism and Communism are piracy (or more accurately, piracy ashore), disguised by flowery phraseology.
Both "Fascist" Italy and "NAZI" Germany were left wing, and therefore not fascists. They WERE socialists, though not in harmony with the socialist paradigm promulgated by Marx and Lenin.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jetgraphics ( talk • contribs)
Again, this stupid point is being made! You can't describe Hitler and Mussolini as left-wing. it's utterly stupid. They both insisted they were returning to some form of real or imagine "traditional" values, they hated, or claimed to hate everything modern.
Yes, obviously they were revolutionaries who destroyed the (not especially well-) established governments in Germany and Italy, but they claimed they were doing this because the establishment was corrupt and decadent.
The only convincing argument that i've ever heard claiming that fascism is left-wing is that it believes in state-intervention in the economy.
However, lots of capitalist, right wing governments have used state intervention in the economy. I'd hardly call early 19th Century Britain "socialist" or "left-wing", but it used very heavy tarrifs and subsidies to protect British farmers. George Bush's America still subsidizes cotton farmers and imposes tarrifs on imported steel.
All countries introduce command economies during times of major war, both Britain and the USA during WW2 being excellent examples of this. Fascist countires being by nature militaristic, inevitably have some form of command economy to produce all the weaponry they need. But, unlike real planned, socialist economies, fascists never nationalized all industries and shut down private companies. Hitler USED private companies to produce everything from tanks and artillery to Zyklon B gas and the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Are there similarities between Fascism and totalitarianist communism? Yes. Does this mean that Fascism is left-wing? No.
217.196.239.189 15:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
fascism and socialism in that both wish to use the power of the state to achieve their ends - but those ends are actually quite different. Conservative and liberal governments also wish to use the state for certain ends - are they socialist? or fascist? There is a common factor between fascism and communism of the Soviet/Maoist variety - both use totalitarian methods. But so have governments of many different hues, particularly in wartime. The distinguishing factors of fascism are in general an appeal to tradition, a distaste for democracy, a tendency to blame the ills of the nation on particular groups, especially foreigners or those of a particular race or religion, a tendency to wish for the nation to aggrandise itself at the expense of others, hostility to notions such as equality, liberty and the brotherhood of man. A cynic might also say that its distinguishing feature is that it is a label that everyone wishes to hang round the neck of their opponents, be they socialists, islamists or George Bush. It may actually be fair to say that the only true fascist regime was that of Mussolini, and others merely share some common features.
Exile 13:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
It may actually be fair to say that the only true fascist regime was that of Mussolini, and others merely share some common features.
This is basically the way I tend to view political ideologies. It may be called the "archetype" or Gestalt/holistic approach. Instead of the usual pick- and-choose laundry lists of charactersistics--anti-communism, corporatism, social conservatism--one should look at the overall pictire of the archetypical Fascist regime and then discuss all of its variations based on the commonalities or lack of commonalities with the archtype. -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 14:45, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Note to user Intangible. Please do not add "collectivism" to the entry core definition until the discussion with you at the Nazism page is finished. Assume good faith. Continue with your cites to published material that support your views at the Nazism page.-- Cberlet 16:48, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
How about both of you provide sources for your additions. If someone can't then it shouldn't be included; if both of you can we'll have to work the working of that phrase out. - DNewhall 22:36, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
in "The Social Crisis of Our Time" Röpke wrote: "One cannot continually intervene without finally reaching a point where the highly developed nervous system of the market economy refuses to function. The power of the market economy must, then, either be restored by a lessening of intervention or must be completely replaced by collectivism. This crisis was reached in Germany in 1935 and in France at the end of the Popular Front Government; in the former case it was overcome by a step forward, in the latter by a backward turn".
"The Bureaucratisation of the World" (1939) Bruno Rizzi:
"Bureaucratic Collectivism too has its social base in dominant classes which have established their headquarters in the States in Russia, Italy, Germany, Japan and the smaller States".
"Collectivism has found varying degrees of expression in the 20th century in such movements as socialism, communism, and fascism."
"Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?" (2002) Jacob Golomb, Robert S. Wistrich:
"At the same time Nietzsche also posed serious question for those aspects of fascism related to etatisme and totalitarianism. In this area the contradictions between Nietzsche's individualism and fascist collectivism were difficult, if not impossible, to bridge."
"Key Ideas in Politics" (2003) Moyra Grant:
"Right-wing collectivism is organic, hierarchical and statist; it stresses the individual's duty and subservience to the state. Fascism take this furthest with its philosophy of "Everything for the state; nothing against the state; nothing outside the state"."
Some other quotes, from Bonn (1940): To Mussolini and Hitler economics are not ends in themselves, they are mere means which society needs for the pursuit of its main purpose "power," in order to dominate other societies and to grow at their expense...economics count only indirectly; neither the pursuit of wealth nor of welfare by individuals matters...this view of society is highly collectivist—in some ways more collectivist than that of the communists, for these people see society as a physical unit, an organic body made by nature not by men.
From Roepke (1946): The best way to understand the Hitler regime is to conceive it as one of those tyrannical collectivist mass-regimes...under the name of Fascism, Communism or National Socialism...That such a government for cogent reasons, will represent itself in the economic sphere as a regime which cannot be termed other than socialist or collectivist is a fact too well established...
<---------------Definitions from some of the leading Scholars of fascism. Robert Paxton: "A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
Ernst Nolte: 6 points--antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, the aim of totalitarianism.
Roger Griffin: "[F]ascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the 'people' into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence."
The term "collectivism" is used primarily by right-wing critics of government intervention in the economy to attempt to link this and liberalism in general to fascism. POV political polemic. Not scholarly. Discussed in great detail at Fascism and ideology.-- Cberlet 02:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Cberlet: Ridiculous. Collectivism is a utilitarian justification for limiting individual rights in the name of the group that a government claims to represent. Since fascism (and communism) wouldn't have gotten very far with arguments like "I must restrict your freedoms (or even group x's freedoms) to improve conditions for myself and my buddies", or "...for the benefit of people in other lands", or "...for Gaia", the only politically viable justification for the suppression of individual liberties in the mid-20th century was a collectivist argument. Therefore a belief in collectivism is a necessary prerequisite for proponents of fascism. Another thing: I understand the desire to reroute the political discussion to the article on "Fascism and Ideology", but doesn't this open up the possibility of misleading people who read this article, and thereby reduce the usefulness of these articles as a resource? Shouldn't an article which discusses the underpinnings of what fascism is or is not actually be merged into another section of this article, especially since the definition of fascism is so hotly debated? 208.115.200.62 19:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)MBM
<---------------I'm going to have to agree with CBerlet on this one. While you did provide cites for your claim the fact that the major scholars of fascism don't list collectivism as being a part of fascism is important. Besides the authors CBerlet listed I also checked Kevin Passmore, Richard Griffiths, and Roger Eatwell (briefly, he has a lot of stuff) and found absolutely no mention of collectivism at all (yet I was able to find references saying Fascism is descended from Bonapartism). I think adding "some scholars define fascism as a form of collectivism" or "some scholars find parallels between fascism and collectivism" somewhere later in the article is fine but it shouldn't be in the introduction (unless you can find more and better sources). Maybe it'd be better placed in definitions of fascism instead? - DNewhall 20:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
We are going in circles. Will you accept mediation User:Vision Thing and Intangible? Yes or no?-- Cberlet 18:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Last time i read this artcle it sounded really quite good (not long after i posted "compliments" section.) Can we remove the tags? -Wikipedian(Again) -23/07/06
I note that this article no longer has any inline citations at all. What happened? Jkelly 02:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I suggest we spin this section off from the main article to a "Related subjects" article of its own. It's a bit tangential, and since the entire article is getting fairly large, we should become more active in spinning off such material. -- Varenius 23:57, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Umm... I think someone has written a rant in that section. 24.160.89.140 00:45, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
The see also section of this article has a couple of very marginal things in it, like Faisceau. Thinking about removing the link to Faisceau made me realise that there is no mention of fascist parties in France [1], which made me realise it didn't mention lots of other important fascist movements. Should there be some sort of section before the Italy section that introduces the key historical fascist movements and parties around the world? Or a bullet point list of these at the end of the article? -- BobFromBrockley 14:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Wow, just the removal of all of those tags has enormously improved the appearcne of this article. The Italian fascism section is thin. When I get the time, I will rip out my DeFelice and other authors and see what I can do.-- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I tried to fix 66.42.13.122's additions but couldn't so I reverted and made some comments here. The additions completely disregards or glosses over Mussolini's line of thought of the time. There is much, MUCH more to the development of fascism than Mussolini realizing "Socialist revolutions don't work". It also over-emphasises Mussolini's influence on the origins of fascism. The theories were already proposed by the French radical right at the end of the 1800s, Mussolini just adapted them into his own distinct style which he then christened "fascism". He also had many people helping him in the party, it wasn't all him. I agree that the section needs to be expanded but these most recent additions are fasctually incorrect for the most part. - DNewhall 05:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
On the whole, this is much improved since I last looked in, especially the first half or so. A few comments/questions, though.
On the whole, I think this is a far better article than a few months back; I hope my remarks here will be of some help in building it. - Jmabel | Talk 17:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering why the cited phrase "(which some have argued don't properly fall under the definition of "fascism")" was removed from the intro of the article? - DNewhall 02:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see the Opus Dei article on the latest research on this topic. I quote a portion below:
I removed the following statement from the intro:
The reason is that it's very broad in scope with only one minor citation and doesn't describe its subject matter very well. Also, and this is the biggest thing, it doesn't belong in the intro. - DNewhall 06:56, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I am sorry that I could only get one link. This has more to do with the lack of Internet references than to their non-existence. No one in the internet seems to know about professor Normal LeVaun Stamps, who did an insightful study about the collapse of democracies in the Thirties "Why democracies fall" though the political science community referst to it. Nor there is much about Professor Alexander Groth whose recent book "Democracies against Hitler" is an eye-opener. Nor John Lukacs, who believes that the use of the term "fascist" in the general form was due to the influence of Stalin who did not wish to talk about national socialism since he himself has abandoned the international form of socialism for a nationalistic one. Unfortunately w have reached the point where if something does not show in the Internet you have trouble proving that it exists...
I would like the subject addressed though. AdrianaInes 07:49, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
IMO, the article SCREAMS the American GOP and George W. Bush. So I wonder when it is acceptable to add his sorry ass to the list or any fascist leader/regime to the list? Once out of office? 10 years after his death? StormBear 04:37 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Let's see if I can't sum up the definition of fascism in a few words, according to the libertarian point of view: fascism is any form of government intervention in any sector of society with the possible exception of the military, immigration control, capital punishment of the less fortunate (oh, I'm sorry, fortune is not recognized by these folks)....the WEAK and the INFERIOR like myself. Governments that fall under this classification: every single one in the history of mankind, past, present and future!! -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:11, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The term blue IS logically vague. You are confusing vagueness with ambiguity or, more likely, unclearness. Your operationalization and experiment would have to be based on some predetermined conventional physical parameter chosen a priori. Anyway, here's the proof: pick any space-time point that clearly falls in an area which most people would describe as "green". Assume that we are dealing with discrete values. Move further and further away from that point by gradations until we get to a point that lies between green and blue. Is the point more similar to green or more similar to a point in a clearly delimited blue area. How many less hairs does it take for a nearly hairless person to become bald? How many more shifts will it take until we move from an area of green into an area of blue? The sky is blue. But the concept of blue is vague. So is the concept of vague. "Libertarian view point" is simply shorthand for "the viewpoint of those people who espouse the concept called libertarianism". I could not say "libertarian is not fascism and be done with it" because my point was that libertarians deliberately misdefine fascism to the point that even many people who might be thought to fall within the category of libertarianism (e.g. Silvio Berlusconi and George W. Bush) turn out to be fascist on many (consistent) interpretations of libertarianism. -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
You're still not getting the logical point. I said that "the sky is blue" is true but the concept of blue is vague. Patrick Steward is definitely bald, nonetheless the concept of baldness is vague. But never mind. Bush and Berlusconi are social democrats. Fine. Now, Franklin Roosevelt is often described as a social democrat and yet there are many "libertarian" editors on this site who continue to insist that the New Deal was a form of "fascism". It follows, according to that view at least, that Berlu and Bush are fascists since, like Roosevelt, they are statists and social democrats. This is addressed to the folks who actually DO sustain this view (and there are quite a few out there, such as Hogwood). So, if you do not maintain this view, then you are not really the target of my argument. -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Francesco: "Let's see if I can't sum up the definition of fascism in a few words, according to the libertarian point of view: fascism is any form of government intervention in any sector of society with the possible exception of the military, immigration control, capital punishment of the less fortunate..."
No, you are mistaken. The "libertarian" view (from Robert Higgs to Rothbard to Rand to non-libertarians like Kolko) is that fascism is government control of the means of production while maintaining de jure private property. This generally involves corporatism ("war boards," "industrial boards") and massive regulation of production inputs and sometimes consumer pricing/rationing.
The New Deal was fascist since it involved corporate boards (National Recovery Administration) controlling production, and government price-fixing. There was no significant difference between Mussolini's corporations and Roosevelt's NRA and related boards. Hogeye 03:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Francesco: I've seen you make excellent contributions elsewhere, so why the utter trolling here? This is not your blog. This is a page for working on the article. - Jmabel | Talk 02:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Currently facism redirects here. Is there a standard policy on redirecting common spelling errors and/or typos to correct articles on wikipedia? This is the first time I've seen it done. -- NEMT 22:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Of the modern ideologies socialism, liberalism and conservatism, socialism is closest to fascism because both support state intervention in the economy, both argue for large scale welfare programs (Nazi Germany was a welfare state).
One may argue whether or not fascism is a form of socialism, but one must be ignorant of the ideology to believe socialism does not belong on the list of related ideologies. ( JoeCarson 13:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC))
Some of the apartheid related articles (e.g. History_of_South_Africa_in_the_apartheid_era) have a tag identifying them as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fascism. Fair enough, in my view. Yet there is no mention of apartheid era SA in this article at all. Why is that? Paul Beardsell 03:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
An apartheid state does not necessarily have to be fascist, perhaps. The main difficulty in determining this comes with defining fascism. But in the case of the South African apartheid regime I would have thought it fitted as many of the definitions of fascism as did 1930's Italy. State control of "essential" industry. Focus on an external threat. Personal liberty sacrificed to the cause of National security. Authoritarian society. What aspect of Italian fascism would you say South Africa in the apartheid era lacked? Paul Beardsell 06:46, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Leaving aside the faults of the current regime and concentrating on South Africa's apartheid era:
Doesn't any of that count? Paul Beardsell 07:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Above it is held that saying Italy in the 1930's was not entirely fascist is the same as "arguing that Trotsky wasn't a trotskyist". But some do so argue. It would only be a contradiction in terms, not necessarily a real contradiction. E.g. some Thatcherite beliefs are not things Margaret Thatcher ever said and might be ideas with which she would quibble. Is fascism, therefore, what was practised in 1930's Italy, or has our idea of what that term means evolved? Paul Beardsell 11:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
It is all well and fun to talk about fascism and Anti-Communism, but this section talks more about the communist reaction to Fascism, not why fascism is anti-communist. Intangible 00:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Intangible, the political statements of Hitler and Mussolini are fascist ideology. Mein Kampf is full of disparaging remarks against Marxism (much more so than remarks against liberalism, for example). Fascism is inherently anti-Marxist because fascism views the nation as the primary unit of social organization, while Marxism holds that "all history has been the history of class struggle". This clash of ideas (nation vs. social class) was extremely important to both fascists and Marxists, and they invested considerable time and effort to argue against each other on this subject. Indeed, fascism defined itself to a large extent as "the movement which is fighting Marxism today" (direct quote from Mein Kampf, chapter VII). Anti-communism isn't just a random aspect of fascist practice - it is a core tenet of fascist ideology. After all, fascism was born as a reaction against communism.
The section as it stands may be incomplete, but the right solution is to expand it. -- Nikodemos 08:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Totally rewriting this article in one sitting is certainly bold, but on a page this controversial, such aggressive and uncollaborative editing is not going to be acceptable. Please edit one section at a time and then discuss it here. Thanks.-- Cberlet 21:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
Please note that it is not proper to cite an Italian Encyclopedia for which there is no direct English translation. There are two official Italian government translations of the basic text, but they differ:
I am restoring the properly cited quotes.
I moved the list of links from the neo-Fascism section into the "See Also" section because that's where lists of links are supposed to be. The neo-fascism section had no substantial content other than links to other articles, so it didn't even qualify as a section stub. The only sentence in the neo-fascism section said something along the lines of here are a bunch of links related to neo-Fascism. Spylab 11:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The dictionary definitions of fascism should be removed, because dictionary definitions are not considered reliable sources on Wikipedia. Dictionaries and other encyclopedias have no accountability because they are written by anonymous groups of people who don't have their names atttached to the definitions. Spylab 11:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I respectfully ask that you consider the possibility that your very high evaluation of your own intelligence and editing skills gets in the way of collaborative editing here on Wikipedia?-- Cberlet 02:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I believe, though I may be wrong, that the problem with identifying political phenomena today is the same as the predicament before classifications were devised for plants and animals. Lots of people use terms like "fascism" loosely because too many people are offering definitions. We need a system for codifying political regimes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by [[User:|User:]] ([[User talk:|talk]] • contribs) June 2006 or thereabouts.
What remains to be cleaned up so we can remove the dispute flags? I have moved much of the marginal material to Fascism and ideology. Is there still a problem with the section on religion?-- Cberlet 16:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Why is Robert Paxton's working definition of fascism ("A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion) not cited in either this or the Fascism and Ideology articles? I disagree with the view that definitions should not be part of the article; keep in mind that the text should also serve the interest of the curious general reader who seeks a basic grasp of the concept(s) - albeit perhaps one that is necessarily understood from various angles. While the "definitive" definiton may yet be elusive, Paxton's seems at least as worthy of being cited as Mirriam-Webster or the American Heritage. To leave this one (Paxton's) out seems a significant disservice to readers. Arjuna 21:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for adding that. Given the contention surrounding this article, I was loathe to do it unilaterally, but I do think it adds something worthy. Arjuna 21:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
The term 'Communism' is often used as a political system, but isn't it more of an economical one? Therefore can we really compare facsim (a political ideology) to an economical system that some governments in the past have adapted? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.170.102.41 ( talk • contribs) 13 November 2006.
Am I alone in finding the following a glaring contradiction: 'Fascism is not racist (even though Mussolini did eventually put antisemitism on his agenda and did in 1938 pass generally unpopular antisemitic laws)'? Also, 'fascism' should be in inverted commas. Etaonsh 10:10, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
National Socialism and Fascism are similar but distinct. National Socialism has a more mythical, even cultic, vision of a volk (people's) community, and it also emphasizes racial identity. Mussolini, overall, did not posses these sentiments and was more concerned with political, not biological, weakness (his fears of Communism, Democracy, and Liberalism). They are distinct forces. GANDALF1992 03:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
A few points: I would include Ernst Nolte's 6 points on fascism (antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, the aim of totalitarianism) [also quoted in Stanley Payne's Fascism]. Secondly, Mussolini's Italy was *not* antisemitic. In fact, Jews were overproportionally represented in the Party. Italian Fascism had an ideology of cultural, instead of racial, superiority. Only in 1938 did Hitler force an antisemitic line. Thirdly, I see that totalitarianism is mentioned. Hannah Arendt's definition of totalitarianism (On the Origins of Totalitarianism) has since been eclipsed by modern historians and political theorists. See, for example, Jan T. Gross (Revolution From Abroad), Anson Rabinbach, and others. And fourthly, it has become just as useful to compare Nazism with Stalinist Bolshevism as with Italian Fascism; Fascism lacked the 'totality' of society that the 2 former exhibited. It should therefore be mentioned that applying the label 'fascist' to Hitler's Germany overlooks the scholarship that has been using Hitler's and Stalin's models as the basis of a totalitarian model.
Hmmm....this sounds exceedingly familiar. You wouldn't happen to be Italian and have been indocrinated with the works of Renzo De Felice for the last 20-30 years, would you??!! There is no dount that de Felice was an extraodinarily talented, bright and knowledgeable historian of fascism (certainly the greatest and most thorough chronicler of this abomination of his generation!!). But de Felice was a self-confessed rigth-winger with an inveitable bias and limited access to the volumianous doceumentation that has recently come to light (and has yet to come to light!!) on that tragic period of history. In particular, the idea that Italian fascism was not anti-semitic has come under serious attack in recent years by several Italian historians of serious weight who have demontsrated that the Mussolini government's primary interest was in protecting exclusively Italian Jews who could be kept on as invaluable and indispensable cheap labor and did nothing at all to stop and/or enthusuaitly participated in the shipping off of non-Italian Jews in, eg, Greece, France and North Africa to the extermination camps all over Europe. I don't remeber the names of the major historians, but the journalists Furio Columbo, Giorgio Bocca and others have writeen about this extensively. The Italian racial laws were not passed involuntarily and Mussonili himself heavily redacted and published the Manifesto of the Italian scientific racists in 1938 or '39 (?). Neither he nor the Italian fasicts intellectuals/ideologists who collaborated in this effort were forced by anyone to adopt these ideas, much less to offically publish them as a sort of unversal manifesto for the fascist movement. I need to get some copies of these author's books and writings and I will let you know whatever information I can gather on this topic. Things are never quote as simple and straightforard as they seem: German Nazis-racist, Italian Fascists-involuntary accomplices!! I don't buy it.-- Lacatosias 17:51, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Richard Griffiths says, "Just as their was little anti-Semitism in Italy, there was equally little anti-Semitism in the movement, which benefited from Jewish founders in its early days, and which was joined by a higher percentage of the small Italian Jewish population than that of the Gentille population. It was only by the late Thirties, under the influence of Hitler's Germany, that that anti-Semitism was to play any important part in Mussolini's policies." (Fascism, pg. 38). Kevin Passmore says the same thing (he also gives instances where Italian policy was explicitly anti-anti-Semitic) except he says it's due also in part to a wave of anti-Semitism that arose all across Europe in '38 due to fear coming from the rise of Hitler (Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, pg. 117). Without adequate sources saying otherwise this is the view we're required to take. - DNewhall
Perhaps its best not to suggest fascism was an advocate of the state or nation as superior. Weren't these more commonly justifications for questionable actions?
Its good that it has been noted the difficulty of defining the concept. Why has the wikiproject for fascism said it will rely on the wikipedians definition though - What definition?
A similar system to fascism (albeit a primitive one) has been suggested to have first occurred in Spain up to 300 or 400 years ago. One author who suggesed this for example though there are many more is H.R. Kedward. Perhaps this is worth noting. I.e. "One for all and all for one"
Also Its good that the various differences have been noted between Mussolini's Fascism and Hitlers Nazism. Perhaps this deserves more emphasis though.
Various other advocates could be explored in more detail during the pre-war period such as those in Holland, and the US. Similarities to Japan and Kitta Ikki's ideas may also be worth exploring.
Lastly, i hope their are plans to expand this article. - A regular visitor to wikipedia 14/05/06
(Removed the new header that was here to prevent confusion regarding this dialogue.-- Ma'ath'a'yü (aka: Proofing) 07:43, 30 May 2006 (UTC))
I would like to see Fascism (epithet) merged with Fascist (epithet). And maybe that resultant article serves the purpose we were looking to address. Thoughts?-- Ma'ath'a'yü (aka: Proofing) 22:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC) Talk | @
Fascinating. There seem to be no corresponding articles on Communist (epithet) or Communism (epithet). I wonder why that is the case? Having lived in the US for most of my life, I can assure that the terms socialism (epithet) and socialist (epithet) are extraordinaily common terms of abuse used to delegimitize anyone who holds policital beliefs which even midly deviate from the hard-right wing views of Rush Limbaugh!! Why are there no articles on these particular terms of abuse?? HMMMMMMM!! -- Lacatosias 10:08, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I added a book cite to the section because the reference cite above it wasn't working right and wasn't as complete in information (viewed on the edit page - link didn't work on the article page). Also, the ref link is suppose to point out that the citation referenced is from the forward and I wasn't able to make that happen in the book cite. I am not up to the task yet of sorting out how this is suoppose to best display and and be styled so I need some help for that. Thanks. -- Ma'ath'a'yü (aka: Proofing) 17:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC) Talk | @
This deserves to be mentioned on this page, but in a factual and NPOV way. Nazism was only one form of national socialism. Nazism changed dramatically once in state power in Germany. The relentless attempts by a handful of editors to paint fascism as a form of socialism so that they can piss all over people on the political left is not merely annoying, but violates several Wiki policies. If we can teach cats not to spray in the house to mark their territory, there is hope that we can teach Wiki editors the same basic manners.-- Cberlet 16:14, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe fascism can be defined as any far right government that stresses intense nationalism over individualism, hence the bundle of sticks analogy.
<-----And yet, most scholars disagree...-- Cberlet 13:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I myself never had heard of the expression "Clerical Fascism" before and can assure that it is not a consensus of scholar to distinguish Fascism into these three types. There are clearly various categorizations and Wiki may have privilegied this "tripartition". I see however that the "Clerical Fascism" article is quite under-developed, and that it includes Vichy France — a term which is used by no Vichy regime scholar that I know of. I understand what the authors mean about it, and it probably is quite relevant for Salazar & Franco (although that doesn't makes it a "consensus" for scholars anyhow). In my understanding, Fascism usually designs primarily Italian fascism, which is itself then divided into various historical phases (before power, power, etc.). The term "Clerical Fascism" was clearly coined to refer to those quasi-fascist regimes which almost everybody accords in seeing some relations with Fascism (the date is a good point to start on), but with few of them claiming they were completely Fascism. The relation to religion & to ideology are usually invoked. Nazism, on the other hand, is often considered a form of exacerbated fascism, or "war Fascism", or again Fascism with a more developed racist ideology and anti-Semitic program. The question about the survivance of Fascism after WWII should of course be adressed. Tazmaniacs 23:28, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Chip, you say above: Among current recognized scholars of fascism, the general consensus is that fascism (small f) had three forms in the interwar period (Italian Corporatism, German Nazism, and Clerical Fascism). This seems distinctly wrong to me. As I understand it, four fairly distinct forms of genuinely fascist movements are recognized - Italian fascism/corporatism and imitators (including the Déat and Doriot parties in France, the pre-Franco Phalange in Spain, Mosley's party in England, and various other imitators in most European countries); German Nazism and imitators (Austrian, Danzig, Czechoslovak Nazis, notably, but other tiny groups elsewhere); the Hungarian Arrow Cross movement; and the Romanian Iron Guard. Note that while there are thus few true fascist regimes, this still leaves a substantial number of fascist movements. I would say that most people I've read don't consider "clerical fascism" (regimes like Salazar's Portugal or Dollfuss's Austria; movements like the Action Française) as really being "true fascism." If I recall Payne, his argument was that these movements, and other radical right wing movements, do not qualify as fascist because they are too conservative. If we go back to Nolte's fascist minimum, clerical fascism isn't anti-conservative - it is, in fact, reactionary. The extent of the leadership principle and the aim of totalitarianism can also be debated in these types of movements and regimes, I think. (Did Kurt Schuschnigg really develop the leadership principle?) Obviously most of the right wing regimes in Europe in the 1930s took some fascist elements, and shared in the anti-liberalism and anti-marxism that distinguisehd the fascists But it seems like most of these regimes are more easily comparable to the proto-authoritarian catholic conservatism of a Brüning, or to the semi-fascist right wing nationalism of Hugenberg's DNVP, than they are to true fascism of the Nazi and Italian varieties. So I'd prefer to be careful with "clerical fascism" - I don't think there's any real consensus that "clerical fascist" regimes were genuinely fascist. john k 19:30, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Now, obviously, one can define things differently from Payne. But the idea of "clerical fascism" seems entirely incoherent to me. To combine radical fascist type groups like the Ustasa and the Iron Guard (and, apparently you say, the Arrow Cross), with reactionary clerical regimes like Salazar's or Dollfuss's seems inappropriate. I think a basic issue is the distinction between a fascist movement (an idea which is fairly well-defined in the comparative sense), and a regime, which I think is an incoherent concept that doesn't really work - in no country did fascism ever take over the entire state structure in the way that Communism did in the Soviet Union. Even in Nazi Germany, which went the furthest in this direction, you have considerable autonomy within the officer corps, for instance, to the extent that the anti-Hitler plotting therein went unnoticed for years. Moving to Italy, where the royal family remained and the army was never really under fascist control, this is even more true, and pretty much every other regime that had fascist involvement usually never really saw the fascists in complete control - Antonescu, for instance, included the Iron Guard in his government from 1940-1941, but he was not himself a fascist; nor was Pétain really a fascist, although his government included fascists; the same can be said for Franco. A notable thing about many of the right wing regimes established in the 30s and 40s is the pluralism of their internal viewpoints. While external dissent was suppressed, there wasn't any clear consensus about the ideological position of the regime. This is particular clear with respect to Vichy France - you have genuine fascists like Déat and Doriot; you have reactionary Action Française types like Weygand who want to crush the French left, but hate the Germand and Nazism; you have technocratic internal reformers like Darlan who have decided that an authoritarian regime is the most efficient way to run the country and want to reform the government to increase technocratic control; you have an old parliamentary schemer like Laval who is mostly concerned with aligning France with German foreign policy. john k 23:51, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe the intro should use the common usage definition - not the narrow (Franco) definition. Perhaps we could say something like fascism is a government after the style of ... But when the man in the street says that someone is a fascist, he doesn't mean that they are Italian. Regards, Ben Aveling 09:03, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
<----Sorry. Didn't mean to suggesting we should be less than rigourous in our discussion. It's just that the current intro starts off talking about italian facism, in the past tense, which is a misleading guide to the the rest of this page.
There is also some duplication in the intro, and a few things said by way of explaination that can, I think, could be addressed by rewording the intro to remove the confusing bits.
What about:
It combines the two paragraphs, and (I hope) makes clear that there a general sense of the word (implicitly discussed on this page) and a strict sense (explicitly linked to the first time it is mentioned).
Yes? No? Thoughts? Regards, Ben Aveling 08:26, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Noticeably absent is any serious insight to the economic policies of fascism. A few words are thrown around here or there, but there is nothing concise. But without understanding who was doing what with the $$, there is a big gap IMO -- jce17:20, 15 June 2006 EST]
Please Note: This page has grown long from time to time and topical subsections have been pulled out and new pages created. Please do not complain about information missing from this page until you have explored the Fascism Template pages. Weaving links to existing pages or adding text with pointers to longer discussions is both appropriate and useful. There are already several pages where Fascism and political economy is discussed. See, for example, Fascism and ideology and Economics of fascism. -- Cberlet 21:38, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
A blurb on Hitler's use of mefo bills and general subversion of traditional economics under Hjalmar Schacht might be helpful because it belies fascism's tendency of mass deception and corruption. Potashnik 17:27, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering if there would be any objection to me including "anti- rationalism" in the first line along with the other elements that fascism incorporates? Though anti-rationalism itself has no article, opposition to the intellectual dominance post-Enlightenment, and a focus on urges and social Darwinism were significant aspects of fascist theory, as I have been discovering from several texts I'm reading about it. - Erolos 18:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Although the U.S. never was completely under the fascist spell of the 1930s, we have a far-right anti-democracy underground in America. Most neo-fascist and far-right political groups carried hypnotic labels or starts with "American", "Christian", "Conservative", "Moralist", "Nationalist" and "Patriotic" seem to hold a semi-fascist ideology. They are the National Alliance, the Christian Identity (not the Christian Coalition, sometimes reported to have a rightist anti-liberal viewpoint) and the American Fascists or Nazis under a variety of official party names. They preached the "dangers" of social permissiveness, liberal/moderate reform, the threat of "foreign influences" like Islamic terrorism, and hold a racist, nativist and anti-gay/feminist agenda. Many of the far-right get off ranting on some subjects like " political correctness", " liberal elite" and "new world order", deemed as threats to usually "white Christian straight working men" in rural America. The abuse and manipulation of "old fashioned" traditonal and moral values of a "very democratic" country by neo-Fascism in the U.S. goes ignored by the public, but widely reported by the media as conservatives whom gone to the extreme. If the U.S. is historically opposed to all dictatorship and totalitarianism, because they violate the free will of the people and the individual, then why did a rise of small but hostile organizations of neo-fascists/Nazis, hate groups and militias since the 1980's wasn't curtailed not by the government, but the American people? Most decent thinking people in the U.S. find the neo-Fascist movement is unworthy and unacceptable. It made me wonder Wikipedians from the U.S. and Europe are not fully aware of the subject on the phenomenon and we need sources to research American neo-fascism. The American far-right prototype of militia members like Timothy McVeigh, committed the 1995 bombing on the federal building in Oklahoma City, and he deeply held far-right/ neo-fascist beliefs. + 207.200.116.68 17:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
This article has come a long way in just a few months. The part involving religion and fascism is particularly interesting. Just a few comments though. I am hoping that the actual scapegoats used by the various regimes will be properly identified instead of been thrown untidily into a single overarching category called “national enemies.”
Lastly, the article states that aristocrats lent their support to the various fascist regimes - I think perhaps this should be substantiated because the various regimes played on the masses and as such drew the majority of their support from the masses and proportionally very little from the elite. -- A Wikipedian - 28-06-06.
I disagree regarding questions of support. Fascist movements drew much support from elites, especially business elites; their funding came mainly from business. This was one of the issues 'resolved' during the 'Night of the Long Knives' where the more populist, anti big business wing of the Nazi party was suppressed in favour of the big business wing. It is important to distinguish between: movements; regimes; movement prior to coming to power; movements in power (regimes); espoused policies; policies carried out; Pacificbiblio 17:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I propose that we remove the quality and NPOV flags. Comments?-- Cberlet 14:37, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
The Roman Fasces (bundle with axe) is a noble symbol representing the power of cooperation. As individual branches are easily broken, but resistant when joined together. Likewise weak individuals become stronger when their efforts are combined. The axe head was symbolic of the awesome force of such cooperation.
Governments are instituted among men to secure rights, according to the Declaration of Independence (1776).
The fasces grace the U.S. Congress building, in harmony with that sentiment.
According to Webster's Dictionary: FASCISM - any political or social ideology of the extreme right which relies on a combination of pseudo-religious attitudes and the brutal use of force for getting and keeping power.
LEFT WING - the section of a political party, government or group that holds the most left or radical views.
RIGHT WING - the section of a political party, government or group that holding the views of the Right.
THE RIGHT - that section of a political party ... which associates itself with traditional authority or opinion and which in legislative bodies is seated traditionally to the right of the presiding officer.
THE LEFT - that section of a political party ... which differs most from traditional authority or opinion and which in legislative bodies is seated traditionally to the left of the presiding officer.
From these definitions, we can see that the common use of the term "Fascism" is inaccurate.
Both Hitler and Mussolini OPPOSED the traditional governments of their respective nations, thus branding them as LEFT WING. Since FASCISM is right wing, and in support of the traditional government, the abuse of the fasces and its symbolism is disinformation promulgated to confuse.
Both Socialism and Communism, by definition, are opposed to traditional government, they are LEFT WING. The common characteristic of both Socialism and Communism, is the transfer of private property rights to the collective (*State). They only differ by the degree of transfer.
The compelled dispossession of private property owners is evidence that both Socialism and Communism are piracy (or more accurately, piracy ashore), disguised by flowery phraseology.
Both "Fascist" Italy and "NAZI" Germany were left wing, and therefore not fascists. They WERE socialists, though not in harmony with the socialist paradigm promulgated by Marx and Lenin.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jetgraphics ( talk • contribs)
Again, this stupid point is being made! You can't describe Hitler and Mussolini as left-wing. it's utterly stupid. They both insisted they were returning to some form of real or imagine "traditional" values, they hated, or claimed to hate everything modern.
Yes, obviously they were revolutionaries who destroyed the (not especially well-) established governments in Germany and Italy, but they claimed they were doing this because the establishment was corrupt and decadent.
The only convincing argument that i've ever heard claiming that fascism is left-wing is that it believes in state-intervention in the economy.
However, lots of capitalist, right wing governments have used state intervention in the economy. I'd hardly call early 19th Century Britain "socialist" or "left-wing", but it used very heavy tarrifs and subsidies to protect British farmers. George Bush's America still subsidizes cotton farmers and imposes tarrifs on imported steel.
All countries introduce command economies during times of major war, both Britain and the USA during WW2 being excellent examples of this. Fascist countires being by nature militaristic, inevitably have some form of command economy to produce all the weaponry they need. But, unlike real planned, socialist economies, fascists never nationalized all industries and shut down private companies. Hitler USED private companies to produce everything from tanks and artillery to Zyklon B gas and the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Are there similarities between Fascism and totalitarianist communism? Yes. Does this mean that Fascism is left-wing? No.
217.196.239.189 15:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
fascism and socialism in that both wish to use the power of the state to achieve their ends - but those ends are actually quite different. Conservative and liberal governments also wish to use the state for certain ends - are they socialist? or fascist? There is a common factor between fascism and communism of the Soviet/Maoist variety - both use totalitarian methods. But so have governments of many different hues, particularly in wartime. The distinguishing factors of fascism are in general an appeal to tradition, a distaste for democracy, a tendency to blame the ills of the nation on particular groups, especially foreigners or those of a particular race or religion, a tendency to wish for the nation to aggrandise itself at the expense of others, hostility to notions such as equality, liberty and the brotherhood of man. A cynic might also say that its distinguishing feature is that it is a label that everyone wishes to hang round the neck of their opponents, be they socialists, islamists or George Bush. It may actually be fair to say that the only true fascist regime was that of Mussolini, and others merely share some common features.
Exile 13:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
It may actually be fair to say that the only true fascist regime was that of Mussolini, and others merely share some common features.
This is basically the way I tend to view political ideologies. It may be called the "archetype" or Gestalt/holistic approach. Instead of the usual pick- and-choose laundry lists of charactersistics--anti-communism, corporatism, social conservatism--one should look at the overall pictire of the archetypical Fascist regime and then discuss all of its variations based on the commonalities or lack of commonalities with the archtype. -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 14:45, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Note to user Intangible. Please do not add "collectivism" to the entry core definition until the discussion with you at the Nazism page is finished. Assume good faith. Continue with your cites to published material that support your views at the Nazism page.-- Cberlet 16:48, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
How about both of you provide sources for your additions. If someone can't then it shouldn't be included; if both of you can we'll have to work the working of that phrase out. - DNewhall 22:36, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
in "The Social Crisis of Our Time" Röpke wrote: "One cannot continually intervene without finally reaching a point where the highly developed nervous system of the market economy refuses to function. The power of the market economy must, then, either be restored by a lessening of intervention or must be completely replaced by collectivism. This crisis was reached in Germany in 1935 and in France at the end of the Popular Front Government; in the former case it was overcome by a step forward, in the latter by a backward turn".
"The Bureaucratisation of the World" (1939) Bruno Rizzi:
"Bureaucratic Collectivism too has its social base in dominant classes which have established their headquarters in the States in Russia, Italy, Germany, Japan and the smaller States".
"Collectivism has found varying degrees of expression in the 20th century in such movements as socialism, communism, and fascism."
"Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?" (2002) Jacob Golomb, Robert S. Wistrich:
"At the same time Nietzsche also posed serious question for those aspects of fascism related to etatisme and totalitarianism. In this area the contradictions between Nietzsche's individualism and fascist collectivism were difficult, if not impossible, to bridge."
"Key Ideas in Politics" (2003) Moyra Grant:
"Right-wing collectivism is organic, hierarchical and statist; it stresses the individual's duty and subservience to the state. Fascism take this furthest with its philosophy of "Everything for the state; nothing against the state; nothing outside the state"."
Some other quotes, from Bonn (1940): To Mussolini and Hitler economics are not ends in themselves, they are mere means which society needs for the pursuit of its main purpose "power," in order to dominate other societies and to grow at their expense...economics count only indirectly; neither the pursuit of wealth nor of welfare by individuals matters...this view of society is highly collectivist—in some ways more collectivist than that of the communists, for these people see society as a physical unit, an organic body made by nature not by men.
From Roepke (1946): The best way to understand the Hitler regime is to conceive it as one of those tyrannical collectivist mass-regimes...under the name of Fascism, Communism or National Socialism...That such a government for cogent reasons, will represent itself in the economic sphere as a regime which cannot be termed other than socialist or collectivist is a fact too well established...
<---------------Definitions from some of the leading Scholars of fascism. Robert Paxton: "A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
Ernst Nolte: 6 points--antimarxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, the leadership principle, a party army, the aim of totalitarianism.
Roger Griffin: "[F]ascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the 'people' into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence."
The term "collectivism" is used primarily by right-wing critics of government intervention in the economy to attempt to link this and liberalism in general to fascism. POV political polemic. Not scholarly. Discussed in great detail at Fascism and ideology.-- Cberlet 02:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Cberlet: Ridiculous. Collectivism is a utilitarian justification for limiting individual rights in the name of the group that a government claims to represent. Since fascism (and communism) wouldn't have gotten very far with arguments like "I must restrict your freedoms (or even group x's freedoms) to improve conditions for myself and my buddies", or "...for the benefit of people in other lands", or "...for Gaia", the only politically viable justification for the suppression of individual liberties in the mid-20th century was a collectivist argument. Therefore a belief in collectivism is a necessary prerequisite for proponents of fascism. Another thing: I understand the desire to reroute the political discussion to the article on "Fascism and Ideology", but doesn't this open up the possibility of misleading people who read this article, and thereby reduce the usefulness of these articles as a resource? Shouldn't an article which discusses the underpinnings of what fascism is or is not actually be merged into another section of this article, especially since the definition of fascism is so hotly debated? 208.115.200.62 19:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)MBM
<---------------I'm going to have to agree with CBerlet on this one. While you did provide cites for your claim the fact that the major scholars of fascism don't list collectivism as being a part of fascism is important. Besides the authors CBerlet listed I also checked Kevin Passmore, Richard Griffiths, and Roger Eatwell (briefly, he has a lot of stuff) and found absolutely no mention of collectivism at all (yet I was able to find references saying Fascism is descended from Bonapartism). I think adding "some scholars define fascism as a form of collectivism" or "some scholars find parallels between fascism and collectivism" somewhere later in the article is fine but it shouldn't be in the introduction (unless you can find more and better sources). Maybe it'd be better placed in definitions of fascism instead? - DNewhall 20:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
We are going in circles. Will you accept mediation User:Vision Thing and Intangible? Yes or no?-- Cberlet 18:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Last time i read this artcle it sounded really quite good (not long after i posted "compliments" section.) Can we remove the tags? -Wikipedian(Again) -23/07/06
I note that this article no longer has any inline citations at all. What happened? Jkelly 02:20, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I suggest we spin this section off from the main article to a "Related subjects" article of its own. It's a bit tangential, and since the entire article is getting fairly large, we should become more active in spinning off such material. -- Varenius 23:57, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Umm... I think someone has written a rant in that section. 24.160.89.140 00:45, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
The see also section of this article has a couple of very marginal things in it, like Faisceau. Thinking about removing the link to Faisceau made me realise that there is no mention of fascist parties in France [1], which made me realise it didn't mention lots of other important fascist movements. Should there be some sort of section before the Italy section that introduces the key historical fascist movements and parties around the world? Or a bullet point list of these at the end of the article? -- BobFromBrockley 14:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Wow, just the removal of all of those tags has enormously improved the appearcne of this article. The Italian fascism section is thin. When I get the time, I will rip out my DeFelice and other authors and see what I can do.-- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I tried to fix 66.42.13.122's additions but couldn't so I reverted and made some comments here. The additions completely disregards or glosses over Mussolini's line of thought of the time. There is much, MUCH more to the development of fascism than Mussolini realizing "Socialist revolutions don't work". It also over-emphasises Mussolini's influence on the origins of fascism. The theories were already proposed by the French radical right at the end of the 1800s, Mussolini just adapted them into his own distinct style which he then christened "fascism". He also had many people helping him in the party, it wasn't all him. I agree that the section needs to be expanded but these most recent additions are fasctually incorrect for the most part. - DNewhall 05:11, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
On the whole, this is much improved since I last looked in, especially the first half or so. A few comments/questions, though.
On the whole, I think this is a far better article than a few months back; I hope my remarks here will be of some help in building it. - Jmabel | Talk 17:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering why the cited phrase "(which some have argued don't properly fall under the definition of "fascism")" was removed from the intro of the article? - DNewhall 02:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see the Opus Dei article on the latest research on this topic. I quote a portion below:
I removed the following statement from the intro:
The reason is that it's very broad in scope with only one minor citation and doesn't describe its subject matter very well. Also, and this is the biggest thing, it doesn't belong in the intro. - DNewhall 06:56, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I am sorry that I could only get one link. This has more to do with the lack of Internet references than to their non-existence. No one in the internet seems to know about professor Normal LeVaun Stamps, who did an insightful study about the collapse of democracies in the Thirties "Why democracies fall" though the political science community referst to it. Nor there is much about Professor Alexander Groth whose recent book "Democracies against Hitler" is an eye-opener. Nor John Lukacs, who believes that the use of the term "fascist" in the general form was due to the influence of Stalin who did not wish to talk about national socialism since he himself has abandoned the international form of socialism for a nationalistic one. Unfortunately w have reached the point where if something does not show in the Internet you have trouble proving that it exists...
I would like the subject addressed though. AdrianaInes 07:49, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
IMO, the article SCREAMS the American GOP and George W. Bush. So I wonder when it is acceptable to add his sorry ass to the list or any fascist leader/regime to the list? Once out of office? 10 years after his death? StormBear 04:37 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Let's see if I can't sum up the definition of fascism in a few words, according to the libertarian point of view: fascism is any form of government intervention in any sector of society with the possible exception of the military, immigration control, capital punishment of the less fortunate (oh, I'm sorry, fortune is not recognized by these folks)....the WEAK and the INFERIOR like myself. Governments that fall under this classification: every single one in the history of mankind, past, present and future!! -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:11, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The term blue IS logically vague. You are confusing vagueness with ambiguity or, more likely, unclearness. Your operationalization and experiment would have to be based on some predetermined conventional physical parameter chosen a priori. Anyway, here's the proof: pick any space-time point that clearly falls in an area which most people would describe as "green". Assume that we are dealing with discrete values. Move further and further away from that point by gradations until we get to a point that lies between green and blue. Is the point more similar to green or more similar to a point in a clearly delimited blue area. How many less hairs does it take for a nearly hairless person to become bald? How many more shifts will it take until we move from an area of green into an area of blue? The sky is blue. But the concept of blue is vague. So is the concept of vague. "Libertarian view point" is simply shorthand for "the viewpoint of those people who espouse the concept called libertarianism". I could not say "libertarian is not fascism and be done with it" because my point was that libertarians deliberately misdefine fascism to the point that even many people who might be thought to fall within the category of libertarianism (e.g. Silvio Berlusconi and George W. Bush) turn out to be fascist on many (consistent) interpretations of libertarianism. -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:08, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
You're still not getting the logical point. I said that "the sky is blue" is true but the concept of blue is vague. Patrick Steward is definitely bald, nonetheless the concept of baldness is vague. But never mind. Bush and Berlusconi are social democrats. Fine. Now, Franklin Roosevelt is often described as a social democrat and yet there are many "libertarian" editors on this site who continue to insist that the New Deal was a form of "fascism". It follows, according to that view at least, that Berlu and Bush are fascists since, like Roosevelt, they are statists and social democrats. This is addressed to the folks who actually DO sustain this view (and there are quite a few out there, such as Hogwood). So, if you do not maintain this view, then you are not really the target of my argument. -- Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Francesco: "Let's see if I can't sum up the definition of fascism in a few words, according to the libertarian point of view: fascism is any form of government intervention in any sector of society with the possible exception of the military, immigration control, capital punishment of the less fortunate..."
No, you are mistaken. The "libertarian" view (from Robert Higgs to Rothbard to Rand to non-libertarians like Kolko) is that fascism is government control of the means of production while maintaining de jure private property. This generally involves corporatism ("war boards," "industrial boards") and massive regulation of production inputs and sometimes consumer pricing/rationing.
The New Deal was fascist since it involved corporate boards (National Recovery Administration) controlling production, and government price-fixing. There was no significant difference between Mussolini's corporations and Roosevelt's NRA and related boards. Hogeye 03:08, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Francesco: I've seen you make excellent contributions elsewhere, so why the utter trolling here? This is not your blog. This is a page for working on the article. - Jmabel | Talk 02:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Currently facism redirects here. Is there a standard policy on redirecting common spelling errors and/or typos to correct articles on wikipedia? This is the first time I've seen it done. -- NEMT 22:16, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Of the modern ideologies socialism, liberalism and conservatism, socialism is closest to fascism because both support state intervention in the economy, both argue for large scale welfare programs (Nazi Germany was a welfare state).
One may argue whether or not fascism is a form of socialism, but one must be ignorant of the ideology to believe socialism does not belong on the list of related ideologies. ( JoeCarson 13:23, 17 December 2006 (UTC))
Some of the apartheid related articles (e.g. History_of_South_Africa_in_the_apartheid_era) have a tag identifying them as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fascism. Fair enough, in my view. Yet there is no mention of apartheid era SA in this article at all. Why is that? Paul Beardsell 03:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
An apartheid state does not necessarily have to be fascist, perhaps. The main difficulty in determining this comes with defining fascism. But in the case of the South African apartheid regime I would have thought it fitted as many of the definitions of fascism as did 1930's Italy. State control of "essential" industry. Focus on an external threat. Personal liberty sacrificed to the cause of National security. Authoritarian society. What aspect of Italian fascism would you say South Africa in the apartheid era lacked? Paul Beardsell 06:46, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Leaving aside the faults of the current regime and concentrating on South Africa's apartheid era:
Doesn't any of that count? Paul Beardsell 07:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Above it is held that saying Italy in the 1930's was not entirely fascist is the same as "arguing that Trotsky wasn't a trotskyist". But some do so argue. It would only be a contradiction in terms, not necessarily a real contradiction. E.g. some Thatcherite beliefs are not things Margaret Thatcher ever said and might be ideas with which she would quibble. Is fascism, therefore, what was practised in 1930's Italy, or has our idea of what that term means evolved? Paul Beardsell 11:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
It is all well and fun to talk about fascism and Anti-Communism, but this section talks more about the communist reaction to Fascism, not why fascism is anti-communist. Intangible 00:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Intangible, the political statements of Hitler and Mussolini are fascist ideology. Mein Kampf is full of disparaging remarks against Marxism (much more so than remarks against liberalism, for example). Fascism is inherently anti-Marxist because fascism views the nation as the primary unit of social organization, while Marxism holds that "all history has been the history of class struggle". This clash of ideas (nation vs. social class) was extremely important to both fascists and Marxists, and they invested considerable time and effort to argue against each other on this subject. Indeed, fascism defined itself to a large extent as "the movement which is fighting Marxism today" (direct quote from Mein Kampf, chapter VII). Anti-communism isn't just a random aspect of fascist practice - it is a core tenet of fascist ideology. After all, fascism was born as a reaction against communism.
The section as it stands may be incomplete, but the right solution is to expand it. -- Nikodemos 08:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Totally rewriting this article in one sitting is certainly bold, but on a page this controversial, such aggressive and uncollaborative editing is not going to be acceptable. Please edit one section at a time and then discuss it here. Thanks.-- Cberlet 21:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
Please note that it is not proper to cite an Italian Encyclopedia for which there is no direct English translation. There are two official Italian government translations of the basic text, but they differ:
I am restoring the properly cited quotes.
I moved the list of links from the neo-Fascism section into the "See Also" section because that's where lists of links are supposed to be. The neo-fascism section had no substantial content other than links to other articles, so it didn't even qualify as a section stub. The only sentence in the neo-fascism section said something along the lines of here are a bunch of links related to neo-Fascism. Spylab 11:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The dictionary definitions of fascism should be removed, because dictionary definitions are not considered reliable sources on Wikipedia. Dictionaries and other encyclopedias have no accountability because they are written by anonymous groups of people who don't have their names atttached to the definitions. Spylab 11:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I respectfully ask that you consider the possibility that your very high evaluation of your own intelligence and editing skills gets in the way of collaborative editing here on Wikipedia?-- Cberlet 02:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |