Originally posted by harvib
reply to post by MandM

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noun
the doctrines, methods, or movement of the Fascisti
a system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism, etc.
a political movement based on such policies
fascist behavior

private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism...

NONE of the above fit liberal doctrine...

liberalism ; especially : economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives.



[edit on 22-9-2008 by mental modulator]

There is a very old argument about who controlled whom in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany at various points in the timeline of power. It is agreed that the army, the wealthy, and the big corporations ended up with much more say in decision making than other elements of the corporative state[24][25][26]. There was a power struggle between the fascist parties/leaders and the army, wealthy, and big corporations. It waxed and waned as to who had more power at any given time. Scholars have used the term "Mussolini's corporate state" in many different ways[27].
Franklin D. Roosevelt in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism:
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.[28][29][30]

Originally posted by MandM
Why does everyone think the Nazis were on the far right of the political spectrum?

Each of the philosophic principles essential to the rise of Nazism in Germany has a counterpart in present-day America.


Is the freest country on earth moving toward totalitarian dictatorship? What were the factors that enabled the Nazis to seize power in pre-war Germany? Do those same conditions exist in America today?

These are the questions raised — and answered, with frightening clarity — by Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's intellectual heir, in his powerful book The Ominous Parallels.

"We are drifting to the future, not moving purposefully," Peikoff warns. "But we are drifting as Germany moved, in the same direction, for the same kind of reason."

Some of the "ominous parallels" between pre-Hitler Germany and the United States that Peikoff identifies are:

* Liberals who demand public control over the use and disposal of private property — social security, more taxes, more government control over the energy industry, medicine, broadcasting, etc.
* Conservatives who demand government control over our intellectual and moral life — prayer in the schools, literary censorship, government intervention in the teaching of biology, the anti-abortion movement, etc.
* Political parties devoid of principles or direction and moved at random by pressure groups, each demanding still more controls.
* A "progressive," anti-intellectual educational system that, from kindergarten to graduate school, creates students who can't read or write — students brainwashed into the feeling that their minds are helpless and they must adapt to "society," that there is no absolute truth and that morality is whatever society says it is.
* A student radical movement (from the 1960's through the violent anti-nukers and ecology fanatics of today) who are, Peikoff maintains, the "pre-Hitler youth movement resurrected." The radicals are nature worshippers who attack the middle class, science, technology, and business.
* The rise of defiant old-world racial hatreds disguised as "ethnic-identity" movements and "affirmative action."
* A pervasive atmosphere of decadence, moral bankruptcy, and nihilist art accompanied by the rise of escapist mystic cults of every kind — astrology, "alternative medicine," Orientalists, extrasensory perception, etc.

In an introduction to Peikoff's book, Ayn Rand describes The Ominous Parallels as, "the first book by an Objectivist philosopher other than myself" and goes on to say that, "If you do not wish to be a victim of today's philosophical bankruptcy, I recommend The Ominous Parallels as protection and ammunition. It will protect you from supporting, unwittingly, the ideas that are destroying you and the world."