OK. Let's just look at regimes. My argument would be that even if a regime is authoritarian, totalitarian, repressive, militarist, involves major scapegoating, supports eugenics, has formed an alliance with some forms of capitalism, it is still not necessarily "fascist." The left has a tendency to call everything that it doesn't like that involves statism and capitalism "fascist.
Statism exists on the left and right. Stalinism was a form of rigid hierarchical statism, but would you call it fascist? Remember the debate as to whether capitalism had been restored in the Soviet Union? If it had, would Stalinism have become a form of fascism? Isn't more useful to say that communism and capitalism can have totalitarian forms? Arendt's actual argument was just that--while saying later that she never meant to argue that all forms of communism and fascism were not automatically totalitarian.
Government repression can exist outside fascism. Racism and antisemitism can exist outside fascism. One can argue that there is a high level of political repression in China, and that control of social relations is in many ways totalitarian, especially when it comes to gender and reproduction, but that doesn't automatically add up to "fascism."
-Chip
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Nathan Newman
> Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 6:57 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Defining Fascism
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Chip Berlet" <cberlet at igc.org>
>
>
> >OK, Nathan, sometimes social science gets lost in
> theorizing, and that's
> >a valid point. But here is the problem. As Michael P. has
> pointed out in
> >another post, some of the fact base as to who actually
> supported Hitler
> >has been revised by later research using computers and voting records
> >from Germany.
>
> But my whole argument on this thread has never mentioned who
> voted for or
> even ultimately supported fascist regimes- so I'm not clear
> why you are
> throwing books at me :)
>
> My whole original point was that the present Chinese state in
> its governing
> was beginning to resemble fascist regimes in its policies.
> That the Russia
> government has used nationalist appeals in conjunction with a shift to
> authoritarian capitalist rule is hardly original with me.
> The eugenics
> angle on Chinese policy was I thought an interesting variant,
> adding to the
> stoking of nationalism by the regime in the last few years.
>
> Who supports the new policies is a matter of internal Chinese
> CP politics,
> not of mass support, except for the regime keeping a nervous
> eye out for
> mass uprisings. The phenomena of leftwing authoritarianism
> giving way to
> rightwing authoritarianism does not fit the traditional
> paradigm of fascist
> regime creation, but your emphasis on fascism as
> revolutionary movement
> still seems to overemphasize supporters at the expense of
> regime outcome.
>
> But hey, I already said that multiple definitions are
> inevitable on such an
> overdetermined word :)
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
>