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Old 03-04-2008, 07:47 PM   #37 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru
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Doesn't anyone use Wikipedia anymore?
Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.
--Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism.
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood 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."
...a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination."
--Robert O. Paxton, former professor at Columbia University.
Stanley Payne's Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980) uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector; fascist symbolism; anti-liberalism; anti-communism; anti-conservatism.
--Wikipedia: Fascism.
Basically, fascism is a monstrosity of an entity that has all but completely been left behind in the 20th century. Neither neo-liberalism nor neo-conservatism resemble fascism as we should know it.

This is not to say that some government practices don't infringe on rights and freedoms. In doing so does not a fascist make. China isn't fascist. Russia isn't fascist. America isn't fascist. They might be militaristic and/or expansionist. They might be lured through capitalist channels to partake in rampant globalization at an unsavory cost. They might also do unjust things protecting these interests. But, seriously, none of this is fascism. If it were, we'd be more mobilized to put a stop to it.

Perhaps a period of hyperinflation and a reactionary fallout will once again lead to this, but for now, let's keep perspective.
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Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 03-04-2008 at 07:51 PM..
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