Smasharoo wrote:
That said, as I said previously both parties thave the potential to lead us to an authoritarian state, the Democrats towards athoratarian Socailism and the Republicans to Fasicsm.
Ok. Fine. But this brings us right back to my origninal statement. Isn't fasicsm more like "authoritarian socialism" then "authoritarian capitalism"?
Heck. Even if you take capitalism in it's more european incarnation (what Marx was warning about), it's closer to simple monarchy or oligarchy. It's no-where near fascism.
Find the difference between fascism and dictatorship, and you are close to understanding why I say that socialism leads more readily to fasicsm. If you don't have socialism, then you have no need to "appease" the masses. Fascism specifically involves using techniques to get the masses to support a charismatic leader. If you don't already have a strong ideology that says that the people deserve X share of the wealth, then you don't need to go to such lengths to control them. You just do it directly.
If you were to say that extreme Republican view (libertarian actually) could lead to oligarchy or possibly dictatorship, I'd be inclined to agree (which is why I'm not a libertarian). But I can't see any possible way a rightwards movement in US politics can result in fascism.
Smasharoo wrote:
1. The Patriot Act is cearly a move TOWARDS Fasicsm. Not a big move. Not the end of the world, but it certainly it's moving us closer to, rather than farther away, from a police state.
2. Other aguments made by the right for expanding vastly the powers of the police apparatus, including the abuse of material witness warants, a very questionable application of passe comatatus, and the attempt to short circut Legislative and Judicial checks on exacutive power.
Ok. These are basically the same point. I really think you assume *any* authoritariansism is fascism. It's not. Really. Those are moves towards more power in government. That does not equal fascism.
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3. Intense secrecy. Republicans are constantly struggling to minimize the amount of information that gets to the Press and consistently attempt to gut FOIA.
Could this possibly be related to the Dems constant misinterpretation of "facts" into innuendo against the administration? Heck. Even when they say straight out "X did not happen", the media manages to present it in a way that makes their readers/listeners/viewers believe the opposite. Just look at the "Cheny lied" thread for an example of this.
And beyond that, I don't think that's a particulary Republican or Democrat move. If we'd had a press that insisted on digging into facts before any investigation was done, and presenting their biased view of what those facts meant back in WW2, you'd have seen similar clampdowns on the information (actually, there were since there wasn't a FOIA back then). The FOIA was written to ensure that the public could find out after the fact what their government was doing or had done in order to maintain accountability. It was not intended to be a tool used by the press to hinder a current investigation.
One can easily argue that this is a backlash against the press being given too much access to the inner workings of government. There is a line there Smash...
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4. Prayer in schools. A foothold on the way to establishing a state religion.
Eh? I ought to frame this one. So you are claiming that state sponsored religion is an attribute of fascism?
Do you even know what makes something a fascism? You really do seem to think that anything authoritarian must be "fascism". That's just not true. Fascism inclues a disdain for religion at best. Certainly, establishing a state religion is *not* part of a fascist ideology. The exact opposite is more likely to be correct.
I know you're going to try to pull out Franco. Um... I've said before. He wasn't really a fascist. He called himself one. He went through the motions. But other then the label, nothing about his government or how he came to power matches *any* of the patterns followed in other fascist regimes. The fact that Franco counted the Church as one of his supporters is one of the strongest arguments for why he *isn't* facist.
I'll say it again. You seem to believe what you are saying because you have labeled the Republican party "right wing". You've also labeled authoritarianism "right wing", and you have labeled fascism "right wing". You therefore assume that Republican policies must be closer to fascism. However, in the US we began with a very weak federal government, not a strong one. Thus, the "right wing" in the sense of maintaining status quo is actually composed of those trying to limit government power, not expand it. Thus, the "liberals" are changing things by giving more power to the government (changing the status quo). In Europe, the Right is the authoritarian side of the equation. In the US it's the Left that is. It's the Left that wants to give more power to the government by giving that government the power to control industry and distribute wealth.
The Left in the US is closer to fascism both because fascism shares many aspects of socialism *and* the left is actually a movement towards authoritarianism, not away from it. You're just blinded to this fact...
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A Capitalist Fascicst state is certainly not out of the realm of possability.
Capitalism is not just the ability of the people to own property Smash. If it was, then every government in the world would be "capitalist". No recorded fascism has ever had a "free market", and certainly not to the extent that the Reps favor. However, *every* example of fascism did include a government that had strong control over industry and distribution of wealth, the defining characteristics of a socialism.
Look. I'm not saying that socialism always leads to fascism. I'm just saying that fasicsm has much more in common with socialist governments then capitalist ones.
Why don't you do this? Instead of looking up quotes from people saying whether Hitler was a socialist or not, how about you just look up fascism and see what it's actually about. What methods does it use? How does it gain power? How does it keep power. Then simply compare that to both socialism and capitalism and decide for yourself which one it is more like. I think you'll e surprised at just how much fascism has in common with socialism, despite that one of its tenants is a hatred of socialism. Remove the labels and just look at what they do and how they do it, and you'll see they are nearly identical. Fascism just replaces the focus on the working class struggle with a focus on the national identy of the peoople. Other then that, they are identical.
