>The FDR quote was not derived from the Comintern definition,
>nor do I believe I ever said it was.
Note smiley face. Smiley faces are not a sneer, by the way, they are a joke, noting my point that there are lots of people out there using different definitions of fascism. I don't claim mine is exclusive. I wish you weren't so insistent that a word with widely different useages should be used only as you direct.
>It would be nice if you actually debated this issue.
Debating does not entail agreeing with you, so I'm not sure where I haven't.
>You seem to be saying that if China is embracing capitalism,
>then its repression can be described as fascism. I think
>that view is simplistic and reductionist. I have tried to
>have a debate, but between Charles' nasty diatribes and your
>non-responsive posts, it is difficult.
I think I've been very responsive. I've said that I think if the Chinese state is increasingly dominated by capitalist forces and that is tied to dictatorial rule, that begins to look like fascism, especially when combined with some of the other marks of cultural fascism, such as eugenics, the point that started this thread.
>I still am interested in whether or not you think it is fair
>to call the British National Front or the US National
>Alliance fascist. This is in addition to several other
>points you apparently have decided not to address.
As I noted, it is probably useful to divide fascist ideology from fascism as a historical state phenomena, since no purely fascist ideology would achieve power without an alliance with the elite capitalist forces that have always been required for that. It's probably also worth separating out Nazism as a specificly virulently racist form of facism from the more economicly-oriented versions such as Mussolini.
The emphasis on fascism's racism and anti-semitism is in some ways a post-WWII emphasis, largely due to the horror of the Holocaust that redefined what people thought of the whole phenomena of fascism. But as the old saying went about Mussolini, he "made the trains run on time", emphasizing the authoritarian economic management associated with fascism as a general phenomena.
The racism should not be disconnected from the corporatism of fascism, but you seem to emphasize the former to the exclusion of the latter. I think that is historically inaccurate.
-- Nathan Newman