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Charles: Why do you term it "revolutionary" ? Isn't it fundamentally counter-revolutionary ?
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Chip BFascism first crystallized in Europe in response to the Bolshevik Revolution and the devastation of World War I, and then spread to other parts of the world. Between WWI and WWII in Europe there were three distinct forms of fascism, Italian economic corporatist fascism (the original fascism), German racial nationalist Nazism, and clerical fascism exemplified by religious/nationalist movements in the Ukraine, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia, among others.
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Charles B: Why is the term "fascism" used for all three ? What do they have in common ? Was Japan fascist in this same time period ? If yes, what category does it fall into ?
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Griffin, an influential scholar of generic fascism, argues that "fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism,
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CharlesB: Shouldn't this be counterrevolutionary, big power chauvinism ?
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]As a form of right-wing populism, fascism shares with right-wing populism a tendency to scapegoat demonized enemies, often in the form of complex conspiracist theories that are ultimately simple dualist propositions of "Us" v. "Them."
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Charles: This one fits Bush's current "with us or against us " phrase.
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Conspiracism is a core element of fascism, but so are apocalypticism and millennialism . Conspiracist movements throughout US history develop narratives based on false allegations about Freemasons or their Illuminati brethren, and narratives based on false allegations about Jewish cabals. But to get to the roots of the apocalyptic narrative in Western culture, one must read the Bible's book of Revelation. Fascism, rooted in Western culture, is influenced by apocalyptic and millennialist paradigms drawn from Biblical prophesy in the Book of Revelation. Wistrich also traces the apocalyptic paradigm of Nazism and writes of the millennial roots of their plans for a thousand year Reich.
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CB: The "Reich" part brings in Bush.
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But where does fascist state power come from? Is it a top down creation of capitalist elites, or does it arise from a mass movement of the middle class, or is it a fusion of the two? Many analysts now agree that that for state fascism, there must be an autonomous middle class mass movement, a crisis, and a decision by one faction of ruling elites to build a coalition with the mass movement to stave off the crisis resulting in their being toppled.
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Charles: However, some analysts insist that fascism's real class roots are in the most reactionary , chauvinist sector of the ruling capitalist class, as with the Bush administration currently. Of course some petit bourgeois and working class elements form the mass movement of anything, because there are not enough members of the ruling class to form a mass movement. However , an important aspect in Germany was the passivity of the many Germans, as is happening in the U.S.currently in response to Bush's shockingly bellicose announcements.
Is it your position that no new form of barbaric , savage, criminal, warmongering political and economic can arise that is as heinous as your fascism but is not entirely within the typology and definitions you list above ? In other words, could something that doesn't fit your definition of fascism but just as bad arise , analogously to fascism arising as something different than but as bad as Bonapartism ?