I have seen on the vine and in the news the word fascist used more times in the last two decades than during the entire cold war to describe Americans who didn't agree with another persons views, I thought that since I had seen it used twenty times or more in one articles posts here on the vine that I would look it up and see just what the heck it really meant. When I saw what it meant in total I figured I'd "educate" the vine.
Fascist as insult
Main article: Fascist (insult)
Following the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, the term fascist has been used as a pejorative word, often referring to widely varying movements across the political spectrum. George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'". Richard Griffiths argued in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times". "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-war organisations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term "neo-fascist".
Contrary to the common mainstream academic and popular use of the term, Communist states have sometimes been referred to as "fascist", typically as an insult. Marxist interpretations of the term have, for example, been applied in relation to Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. Herbert Matthews, of the New York Times asked "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?" J. Edgar Hoover wrote extensively of "Red Fascism". Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet Split, and likewise, the Soviets used the term to identify Chinese Marxists.
Understanding the insult of being called a fascist is a major part of understanding fascism in total, so, let's begin there. Fascism has only been around for a hundred years as fascism, before this time it was being either a moderate Liberal or a moderate Conservative, depending on your beliefs. However, there was a strain of these two that considered the idea of moderation the only part that really needed to be addressed, this is when Fascism as a political belief grew into a viable component.
Fascism (pron.: /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism. Fascists seek to unify their nation through a totalitarian state that seeks the mass mobilization of the national community through discipline, indoctrination, and physical training. Fascism utilizes a vanguard party to initiate a revolution to organize the nation upon fascist principles. Fascism views direct action including political violence and war, as a means to achieve national rejuvenation, spirit and vitality.
Fascism recognizes the occurrence of class conflict, and advocates a resolution to end the division of classes within a nation and secure national solidarity. However fascism publicly favours proletarian culture due to its association of proletarian culture with economic production and claims that the proletariat as producers must have a dominant role in the nation. It rejects standard bourgeois culture that it associates with unfit sedentary lifestyle, individualism, plutocracy, and the bourgeoisie's economic exploitation of the nation's proletariat, that fascism views as inconsistent with virile nationhood. Fascism claims that cultural nationalization of society emancipates the nation's proletariat, and promotes the assimilation of all classes into a proletarian nation.
Fascism advocates a state-controlled and regulated mixed economy; the principal economic goal of fascism is to achieve autarky to secure national self-sufficiency and independence, through protectionist and interventionist economic policies. It promotes regulated private enterprise and private property contingent whenever beneficial to the nation and state enterprise and state property whenever necessary to protect its interests.
Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who combined left-wing and right-wing political views. Fascists have commonly opposed having a firm association with any section of the left-right spectrum, considering it inadequate to describe their beliefs, though fascism's goal to promote the rule of people deemed innately superior while seeking to purge society of people deemed innately inferior is identified as a prominent far-right theme. Fascism opposes multiple ideologies, such as communism, conservatism, liberalism, and social democracy.
So, as we can see by the definition that calling a Liberal a Fascist is an insult, not a fact, but, is it an insult to the Liberal or the Fascist? Also, calling a true Conservative a Fascist is an insult as well, because according to the above text Fascism opposes both Liberalism and Conservatism. So, who in our country can really be called a Fascist?
Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism". Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism and (iii) the myth of decadence". Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.
- "1) a mass movement with multiclass membership in which prevail, among the leaders and the militants, the middle sectors, in large part new to political activity, organized as a party militia, that bases its identity not on social hierarchy or class origin but on a sense of comradeship, believes itself invested with a mission of national regeneration, considers itself in a state of war against political adversaries and aims at conquering a monopoly of political power by using terror, parliamentary politics, and deals with leading groups, to create a new regime that destroys parliamentary democracy;"
- "2) an 'anti-ideological' and pragmatic ideology that proclaims itself antimaterialist, anti-individualist, antiliberal, antidemocratic, anti-Marxist, is populist and anticapitalist in tendency, expresses itself aesthetically more than theoretically by means of a new political style and by myths, rites, and symbols as a lay religion designed to acculturate, socialize, and integrate the faith of the masses with the goal of creating a 'new man';"
- "3) a culture founded on mystical thought and the tragic and activist sense of life conceived of as the manifestation of the will to power, on the myth of youth as artificer of history, and on the exaltation of the militarization of politics as the model of life and collective activity;"
- "4) a totalitarian conception of the primacy of politics, conceived of as an integrating experience to carry out the fusion of the individual and the masses in the organic and mystical unity of the nation as an ethnic and moral community, adopting measures of discrimination and persecution against those considered to be outside this community either as enemies of the regime or members of races considered to be inferior or otherwise dangerous for the integrity of the nation;"
- "5) a civil ethic founded on total dedication to the national community, on discipline, virility, comradeship, and the warrior spirit;"
- "6) a single state party that has the task of providing for the armed defense of the regime, selecting its directing cadres, and organizing the masses within the state in a process of permanent mobilization of emotion and faith;"
- "7) a police apparatus that prevents, controls, and represses dissidence and opposition, even by using organized terror;"
- "8) a political system organized by hierarchy of functions named from the top and crowned by the figure of the 'leader,' invested with a sacred charisma, who commands, directs, and coordinates the activities of the party and the regime;"
- "9) corporative organization of the economy that suppresses trade union liberty, broadens the sphere of state intervention, and seeks to achieve, by principles of technocracy and solidarity, the collaboration of the 'productive sectors' under control of the regime, to achieve its goals of power, yet preserving private property and class divisions;"
- "10) a foreign policy inspired by the myth of national power and greatness, with the goal of imperialist expansion."
So, as we can see there is a set of rules to being a Fascist. I've added bold to the steps above because I feel that it is important in the issues concerning the U.S. today, most of what is bolded above is of major concern because it is the ideals of one of the party's today, many of the politicians of that party and many of the members who have been very active, ie, the Tea Party have stated these very points in their speeches and on TV and here on the vine. Consider it very carefully, because if you believe any of the above points then you are well on your way to being a Fascist. I've said it before in the vine, if you are pointing a finger at someone and calling them a fascist there are three more fingers pointed at you.
Fascism is a chaotic take over of a government ending in bloodshed for the most part, however, as we have seen from the past a simple take over can happen with the implanting of ideas in the mind of the electorate, convince the electorate that they are under attack by Fascists or Socialists and then tell them that you can save them if they just vote for your ideas and accept your leadership and guidance.