The roots of Fascism.

Something worth reading considering the recent events in Italy:

http://specialcollections.library.wisc.edu/exhibits/Fascism/Intro.html

Italian Fascism

Stanley G. Payne

Fascism was unique among the radical forces produced by the early twentieth century, developing out of World War I without any clear predecessor in the nineteenth century. It first emerged in Italy in 1919, catapulting its leader, Benito Mussolini, into the premiership three years later and then to the creation of a new political dictatorship beginning in 1925. The term fascism, however, would later be applied to an entire cluster or genus of new revolutionary nationalist movements in Europe between the world wars, of which the most important was German National Socialism, or Nazism, for short, so that the Italian origins of the first fascism would often be overlooked, attention focusing primarily on Germany. The initial, or "paradigmatic" fascism nonetheless had specifically Italian roots and characteristics.

The term comes from the Italian fascio, derived from the ancient Latin fasces, which referred to the bundle of lictors, or axe-headed rods, that symbolized the sovereignty and authority of the Roman Republic. From approximately the 1870s, the term fascio was used in Italy in the names of radical new social and political organizations, normally of the left. Thus the revolutionary nationalists who sought to create a new left nationalist league in 1919, in the aftermath of World War I, formed a Fascio di Combattimento, transformed two years later into the new Fascist Party, and so a radical new "ism" was born.

Italian Fascism began on the left, seeking to combine strong nationalism with modern developmentalism and an aggressive new style of activism that prized violence, idealism, and anti-materialism. While reenforcing Italian colonialism, Fascism originally embraced national liberation and rejected extreme imperialism and racism. Mussolini did not create the movement but skillfully guided himself to power as its Duce (Dux, or leader), at the same time moving the party to the right and engaging in practical compromise with Italy's established institutions. Though Fascists invented the term "totalitarian" for their new system, Mussolini was unable to complete a Fascist revolution and instead presided over a somewhat limited, semi-pluralist political dictatorship.

--snip--

I'm so tired of that right-wing talking point.

The right-wing owns fascism, it is their baby.

The definition of fascism (as opposed to its common use as a general epithet) is a merger of corporate and government power.

FDR instituted fascism here in the US during the 1930s under the National Industrial Recovery Act. The military-industrial complex (which spans many more industries than that, but that is the common reference to the concept) is another example of a fascist arrangement.

In the USA alone we have seen both parties at one time or another enact fascist policies. We are currently witnessing the revival of fascism here as a response to the real estate and financial sector crash; the Federal Reserve intervention in the collapse of Bear Stearns is an archetypical example of what a fascist regime would do.

There is actually an interesting distinction between past fascism and today's version - in the past, fascism was nationalist; today it is globalist.

Globalism is also by nature anti-left.

...the corporate types seem to like it. As do the military types. As do the posers from the Religious set.

Hmmmm. What party champions those groups in the USA?

I wonder....

The RW talking point is that Fascism IS leftism. But Fascism developed much like modern American neo-Conservatism -- radicals who become enchanted with the authoritarianism of the traditional Right and fused it with Futurism. They then disowned the left as an intellectual "fling" they once had. Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol and David Horowitz are prime examples of this mindset. (And all the more remarkable that they are American Jews. Alan Dershowitz et al. have written often about this development in the American Jewry.)

In a sense, Fascism was the high-tech Right of its day, like the more wigged-out versions of Libertarianism (the Nolan/Koch branch, not the Browne/Paul branch). They even had their own version of the Singularity -- "The State" as a mystical concept, with a new, special meaning, a super-conscious quasi-organism that would act on its own.

Most of the real far-out Fascists were not thugs, but involved in the gnostic/occult subculture, like Julius Evola. Martin Heidegger is occasionally lumped into that group, though he wasn't exactly a mystic, let alone an orthodox Nazi. (But he was, to his shame, a member of the Nazi party.) And Hitler, of course, had a very extensive occult following.

But the left? It is no more to "blame" for Fascism than the Swiss are to "blame" for LSD or Jacques Cousteau for Spongebob Squarepants.

--p!

Much like Hagee's open your mouth and let the demons fly ot flavor of christianity, the european right was very much into the occult and to understand them, it's important to understand their connection to magic solutions.

Ravencroft covered the topic in 'The Spear of Destiny' quite well.

http://books.google.com/books?id=BKt_4HbED6AC&dq=spear+of+destiny&pg=PP1&ots=F3ujA10-M-&sig=obdcXNElK5MvN_Iog7nsNkPYKyI&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dspear%2Bof%2Bdestiny%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail

Sawdust Caesar: The Untold Story of Mussolini and Fascism by George Seldes, circa 1933.

Seldes was eyewitness to the rise of Italian Fascism in the 20's, watching Mussolini change his political views from liberal to populist to fascist, rising to power through the latter.

of PTSD soldiers milling about. In this context, Mussolini promptly organized his "black shirts," preaching anti-individualism and ultra-nationalism, glorifying violence as "cleansing," and using his thugs to beat the crap out of anyone who disagreed with his political views. The philosophy was statist but entirely anti-communist essentially from its beginning, and by 1920 the Squadrists were regularly attacking striking working and socialists. Substantial corporate donations to the Fascists followed immediately