The way I see it the differentia specifica of fascism is not repression or absence of democracy, but the mobilisation of a reactionary mass to destroy the labour movement. It is quite different from using the army, which, in Germany was discounted as a possibility by reactionaries after the failure of the Kapp Putsch in 1920. It was only then that German elites were prepared to contemplate turning to the 'Bohemian Corporal' and his thugs.
So when Wojtek writes:
>Repression or genocide of minorities are not new, and it was effectively
>used in the colonisation of North America, or venting popular rage in
>Europe (pogroms). However, what distinguishes pogroms form fascism is how
>the state apparatus was involved in it.
and
>By sharp contrast, fascist repression was carried by agents of the state in
>their line of duty, as a matter of official policy toward minorities.
I see it rather differently.
I do not share the current ambition to widen the use of the word fascism to embrace any and all ethnic conflict. Discovering 'fascism' on the march in Rwanda or Bosnia does nothing to help us understand those conflicts, and it tends to minimise the truly unique character of the holocaust.
Nor do I think it helps to label Western imperialism as 'fascism'. Racial domination was a feature of all the imperialist states, not just Germany or Italy.
Labelling repression as 'fascism' in the first place tends to imply that it is the exception, rather than the norm for capitalist states. Then further to denounce everything as fascism just blunts the meaning of the word. Fascism was a distinctive movement, mobilised to defeat a growing organised labour. We have different problems today, and gain nothing by blurring the distinctions.
In message <19980616205203.6289.qmail at hotmail.com>, charles brown
<cdehbrown at hotmail.com> writes
>
>Dan Lazare wrote:
>>
>>I still don't see how you can have fascism within the context of a
>bourgeois-
>>liberal republic.
>
>Well, I am being a little creative with the concept, but did Black
>people have the full panoply of bourgeois democratic rights, civil
>liberties ? Did they have the full protection of the Bill of Rights ?
>When a huge fraction of the population are systematically denied these
>do you just say, oh , but this is a liberal republic, so , this is not
>fascism ?
>
>Was South Africa with apartheid a liberal republic because it had a
>constitution and elections ? or was it a mixed republic and
>anti-republic ?
>
>
>
>Before I had said:
>><<
>> I agree that the U.S. is not fascist now. But Jim Crow was fascism for
>> Black people, in all the essentials. It was pre-Italian fascism, but
>> part of the rise of imperialism in the U.S., so it had the essential
>> class characteristic and was open terrorist rule. It is important to
>say
>> this to debunk the American myth of the ultimately democratic U.S.,
>> never fascist and all that.
>>
>> Charles Brown
>>
>> >>
>>
>
>
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