Rethinking fascism, freedom

Recommended reading for the intellectually curious:

Customer Rating: 5 star "The Eagle's Shadow"
Summary: Timely advice for an arrogant country
Comment: America should heed Mr. Hertsgaard's advice. Especially with the outbreak of war in Iraq, America is alienating itself more and more from other countries. Our attitude of "we own the world" is obnoxious and tedious. We cannot impose our will on other people/countries without dire results. Sept 11 is one of those results. We don't know what goes on in the world (our media makes certain of that) and what's more, we don't care as long as we have access to cheap food, TV and mindless consumerism. We don't have to. That seems to be the prevalent attitude. This book exposes who owns the media in this country, and how the election farce was engineered. Americans should be concerned about their dwindling freedoms -America has lost one half of their Bill of Rights due to the passage of the Patriot Act, passed with little press right after Sept. 11. If a country does not want to play ball with us, we declare war on them! But watch out if someone dares to retaliate against America! Notice where past coups have taken place and you will see that our wonderful government has installed its own little puppet dictator and actually ousted democratic rulers: Nigaragua for one. Now we will begin to reap the evil harvest we have been sowing for years. I think if every American read this book, there would not be a war. Too bad Baby Bush can't read. Another book to read (5 stars) is Spiritual Gyre by Richard Sellin, which shows how America will decline just as Rome did. We are not infallible. We cannot afford to be isolationists, the world is NOT ours to exploit. Let us hope America wakes up before it is too late. I highly recommend Mark Hertsgaard's book as well as Richard Sellin's-they should be required reading for schools. Thank you for having the courage to write these books.
(online reviews) www.learn-business.com

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englishmajor wrote:

In this way, Hitler could do his atrocities while publicizing the equal and even greater outrages of Stalin, or the US could declaim the inhumanity of the holocaust while slaughtering civilians in the holocaust of the firebombing in Hamburg and Dresden, or atomic bombs in Nagasaki or Hiroshima.

Note that it was the UK who slaughtered large numbers of civilians at Hamburg and Dresden. The US bombers were focused on hitting legitimate targets in Germany.

True that US bombers killed many civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they destroyed targets of military significance there as well.

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oralloy wrote:

englishmajor wrote:
In this way, Hitler could do his atrocities while publicizing the equal and even greater outrages of Stalin, or the US could declaim the inhumanity of the holocaust while slaughtering civilians in the holocaust of the firebombing in Hamburg and Dresden, or atomic bombs in Nagasaki or Hiroshima.

Note that it was the UK who slaughtered large numbers of civilians at Hamburg and Dresden. The US bombers were focused on hitting legitimate targets in Germany.

True that US bombers killed many civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they destroyed targets of military significance there as well.

Bull**** on both accounts! & you're avoiding the issue which was that fascism cannot exist without big business. They work hand in hand. Study, if you will, post Germany: 1918-1923. The Freikorps was fully financed by big business, Krupp, Thyssen and Stinnes. It's commander would go on to be a nice loyal Nazi named Erhardt. Read The Lost Revolution by Chris Harman.

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englishmajor wrote:

oralloy wrote:
englishmajor wrote:
In this way, Hitler could do his atrocities while publicizing the equal and even greater outrages of Stalin, or the US could declaim the inhumanity of the holocaust while slaughtering civilians in the holocaust of the firebombing in Hamburg and Dresden, or atomic bombs in Nagasaki or Hiroshima.

Note that it was the UK who slaughtered large numbers of civilians at Hamburg and Dresden. The US bombers were focused on hitting legitimate targets in Germany.

True that US bombers killed many civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they destroyed targets of military significance there as well.

Bull**** on both accounts!

Nope. The fact that you dislike the truth doesn't make it any less real.

The only target of US bombers during the infamous raid on Dresden was the railyards, which was a legitimate target.

All the raids on Germany that killed huge numbers of civilians, and all the raids in Germany that caused a firestorm, were acts of the UK, and only the UK.

Hiroshima was Japan's largest military town, and was the port where most of their soldiers deployed from on their waves of conquest.

Hiroshima's large military districts contained tens of thousands of combat troops. And tens of thousands of combat troops count as a target of military significance, no mater how much you don't want them to.

Hiroshima also contained the headquarters of the Japanese Second General Army. Since the Japanese Second General Army was in charge of repelling any invasion in the southern half of the Japanese home islands, which was where we were likely to invade if Japan didn't surrender, this made it one of the most important headquarters of the war. And that makes it a target of military significance, no matter how much you don't want it to.

The primary target of the second A-bomb was Kokura Arsenal, a massive (4100' x 2000') arms-production complex. The secondary target was the Mitsubishi Shipyards, an equally large warship-production facility. Unfortunately they couldn't get either target, but they managed to drop the bomb between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the Mitsubishi Ordnance Works, destroying both.

One noteworthy thing about the Mitsubishi Ordnance Works: Japan had to come up with specialized torpedoes just for Pearl Harbor because the water is so shallow there. The Mitsubishi Ordnance Works was the place that designed and built those torpedoes.

Those weapons-production facilities were targets of military significance, no matter how much you don't like it.

englishmajor wrote:

& you're avoiding the issue which was that fascism cannot exist without big business.

I'm more interested in setting the record straight about WWII than I am in trying to get you to comprehend Fascism.

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ummm. Mitsubishi, big business? Japan also was fascist. EH?

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@Thomas,

I don't know who is being sillier than whom. Germany and Italy were oligopolistic/monopolistic, and the few big economic stakeholders did indeed profit handsomely in the fascist/nazi period. Please refer to Neumann, Shirer, Brady, Guerin, Seldes, Bellon and others to see the historical record of business complicity in fascism. I never said fascists were "pawns" of business, but the record is clear that without the financial and political support of key members of the financial and business elite, Hitler would never have been rescued from the electoral fringes in the early '30's. Mussolini's use of violent gangs at the behest of businessmen and landowners is documented - even by disgruntled fascists! joefromchicago's unfootnoted denial does not an historical record make. Finally, I must clarify that laissez-faire capitalism - the refusal of self-interested businessmen to be regulated in the public interest - is not the same thing as genuine free market economics as advocated by Adam Smith and others. Smith's ideal market conditions (many suppliers actually competing with eachother) could never spawn the monopolistic political opportunism that supported fascism.

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@Thomas,

I don't know who is being sillier than whom. Germany and Italy were oligopolistic/monopolistic, and the few big economic stakeholders did indeed profit handsomely in the fascist/nazi period. Please refer to Neumann, Shirer, Brady, Guerin, Seldes, Bellon and others to see the historical record of business complicity in fascism. I never said fascists were "pawns" of business, but the record is clear that without the financial and political support of key members of the financial and business elite, Hitler would never have been rescued from the electoral fringes in the early '30's. Mussolini's use of violent gangs at the behest of businessmen and landowners is documented - even by disgruntled fascists! joefromchicago's unfootnoted denial does not an historical record make. Finally, I must clarify that laissez-faire capitalism - the refusal of self-interested businessmen to be regulated in the public interest - is not the same thing as genuine free market economics as advocated by Adam Smith and others. Smith's ideal market conditions (many suppliers actually competing with eachother) could never spawn the monopolistic giants that supported fascism.

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@joefromchicago,

I have referred to historical sources. You have issued a blunt, unfootnoted denial. Please read the works of Shirer, Bellon, Guerin, Seldes, Neumann and Arnold and then get back to me. You can't pretend away reality just because it doesn't suit you.

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@Paul Bigioni,

Englishmajor? Is that you?

It took you three years to come up with that reply? How disappointing.

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@joefromchicago,

Actually, I just noticed this string of comments a couple of weeks ago. Still, you have to look at my sources before you rattle off a one line dismissal. My concern is that we pretend that enormous economic power does not translate into political power. That's horseshit! The guys with the money make the rules. If too few guys have all the money, then the rules will inevitably favour those same few guys. I never set out to comprehensively define fascism, but if you ignore the role of business in fascist Germany and Italy, you are missing an important part of the picture. Have you seen the graph of Mercedes profits over the 1930's? It went in only one direction -up.

I don't know how this discussion works...I'm not Englishmajor, I'm Paul Bigioni.

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@Paul Bigioni,

Paul Bigioni wrote:

Actually, I just noticed this string of comments a couple of weeks ago. Still, you have to look at my sources before you rattle off a one line dismissal.

Your sources are singularly unimpressive. Guerin was an anarchist with an obvious axe to grind who wrote in the 1930s. Seldes wrote in the 1940s. Shirer was a journalist, not a historian. Anyone who issues a list of writers on fascism without mentioning Ernst Nolte or Walter Laqueur or George Mosse or Zeev Sternhell is just displaying his vast ignorance of the subject.

Paul Bigioni wrote:

My concern is that we pretend that enormous economic power does not translate into political power. That's horseshit! The guys with the money make the rules. If too few guys have all the money, then the rules will inevitably favour those same few guys.

Well, sometimes the guys with the guns make the rules instead.

Paul Bigioni wrote:

I never set out to comprehensively define fascism, but if you ignore the role of business in fascist Germany and Italy, you are missing an important part of the picture.

When did you set out to do anything in this thread? Oh, that's right, when you were still englishmajor.

Paul Bigioni wrote:

Have you seen the graph of Mercedes profits over the 1930's? It went in only one direction -up.

Correlation doesn't equal causation.

Paul Bigioni wrote:

I don't know how this discussion works...I'm not Englishmajor, I'm Paul Bigioni.

Yeah, right.

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@joefromchicago,

This reminds me so much of "Annie Hall":

Alvy Singer: [the man behind him in line is talking loudly] What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it!
Alvy Singer: [to audience] Whaddya do when you get stuck in a movie line with a guy like this behind you?
Man in Theatre Line: Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a free country!
Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!
Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me...
[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]
Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!
Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!
Alvy Singer: Boy, if life were only like this!

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More for Joe from Chicago:

I should stop already, but I cannot resist one more kick at the can. The difficulty I have with Mosse and Sternhall is that they seek to define fascism in narrow philosophical terms. This is impossible because the fascists - both German and Italian - rattled off a litany of often inconsistent philosophical justifications. It is impossible to identify a fascist philosophy because there isn't one. The fascists simply said whatever the occasion required in order to pander to diverse constituencies at the same time. If anything, the absence of a philosophy is a hallmark of fascism. If you don't recognize this, then you won't recognize fascism when it comes knocking on your door. Ernst Nolte is interesting, but ultimately unreliable because his consuming hatred for leftists skewed his perceptions. The essence of Nazism cannot be found in the excesses of the doctrinaire socialists who were purged from the party in the early 30's. Furthermore, Nolte's refutations of Nazi-business links, like Turner's, are a bit silly. In his meticulous attempt to deny any meaningful links to business, Nolte misses the bigger picture: the structural support that business gave to Hitler. For Nolte, it is enough to refute the socialist allegations of specific business donations to the Nazis in the early 30's. He is incapable, however, of explaining how Hitler could have fielded an army and an air force without Mercedes, or why the Nazi plans for the "new world order" were written in the offices of the IG Farben trust. As for Laqueur, he claims that the rules of law and warfare do not apply to the fight against terrorism. In saying this, he is unwittingly paraphrasing the Nazi approach to exterminating all opposition.

I realize that you may differ with my views because you have some different definition of fascism. Understand that I never set out to define fascism comprehensively. (The most complete overview of fascism is found in the work of Professor Paxton.) What I am doing is pointing out that the economic context in which classical fascism arose (highly concentrated control of the market by huge private entities) still exists, and that the recurrence of fascism is a very real danger right now. If you choose to ignore this, then, like the Germans and the Italians, you will not see the many small steps by which your freedom is taken from you.

I got a huge charge out of the Annie Hall reference.

I am done now.

Paul Bigioni

1 Reply

@Paul Bigioni,

Paul Bigioni wrote:

More for Joe from Chicago:

I should stop already, but I cannot resist one more kick at the can. The difficulty I have with Mosse and Sternhall is that they seek to define fascism in narrow philosophical terms. This is impossible because the fascists - both German and Italian - rattled off a litany of often inconsistent philosophical justifications. It is impossible to identify a fascist philosophy because there isn't one.

Well then, I guess the difficulty I have with you is that, despite your contention that it is impossible to identify a fascist philosophy, you attempt to do just that.

I have never denied that it is difficult to pin down a definition of "fascism" (see, e.g., this post from about four years ago). But then I'm not the one accusing the Bush administration of slowly descending into fascism. It seems to me that the person who is making that sort of accusation has the burden of defining his terms. If you think that the US is in danger of becoming a fascist state, then it's hardly convincing for you now to claim that "fascism" can't be defined. Either it can be defined and that you can define it, or else you should just admit that you're tossing around a term that has no meaning apart from a perjoritive one.

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