This formulation is all wrong from the jump. I think what Carrol was trying to say was that in America, a "fascist" movement, whatever that might be, would come through a pleasing, uplifting, hopefully entertaining figure, rather than from a stern moralist who goosesteps. Gore Vidal pegged this decades ago, saying that an American dictator would be more Arthur Godfrey and less Douglas Macarthur. Vidal thought that Reagan was that figure, but then, that puts personality ahead of system.
Dennis ******************* Again, point of information:
Most people, including most people on the left, are confused about what fascism actually is, IMO. They tend to call any authoritarian regime fascist. But, fascism is a particular political doctrine which has definite characteristics. For sure, fascism is an authoritarian regime. Fascists despise both socialists and liberals. Fascists are conservative nationalists who believe that they are best equipped to solve the problems of national breakdown which occur when national capitalism is undermined by, as they see it, flabby, liberal democratic rule and by communist/socialist internationalism. Fascists believe that the class struggle is an ideological invention of the Marxists meant to subvert the nation. They think that capitalism needs fascist political structures to cement the classes in harmonious nationalist spirit.
Thus, fascism is State-enforced national class collaboration within a "corporation", a body which includes all workers and employers. That is, the workers and the employers are legally mandated to organize within in the same legal-economic body. The IWW is just the opposite. The IWW is based on the struggle between the working class and the parasitic employing class. The IWW is the organization of the working/producing class into One Big Union. The employing class are NOT the producers of the economy; they are the OWNERS of the economy. The class struggle between workers and employers is over the control and ownership of social product of labour and consequently, over political power—who is to rule, who is to have control of the social product of labour which includes among other things: working conditions, working hours, wages, how much of the social product of labour will be used for public health, education and the general welfare of the producing class, the working class.
The notion of class collaboration, that the workers and their employers have interests in common i.e. the same national interest, is at the core of fascism.
All conservatives are not fascists; but all fascists are conservatives, for All conservatives, including fascists are pro-capitalist, pro-wage-slavery. They'll tell you that it is realistic; that's there's no alternative. Churchill was not a fascist nor was Thatcher. Neither was Reagan. Nor is Bush. Pinochet was a military dictator, not a fascist. Franco was a military dictator who collaborated with the Spanish fascists, known as the falangists. What should be remembered is that to the degree that any politician pushes the notion that the working class and the employing class shoud collaborate with each other "for the good of the nation" to that degree you have a political push towards fascism.
Mike B)
"But when one says liberalism, one says the individual; when one says Fascism, one says the State. But the Fascist State is unique; it is an original creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary in that it anticipates the solutions of certain universal problems. These problems are no longer seen in the same light: in the sphere of politics they are removed from party rivalries, from the supreme power of parliament, from the irresponsibility of assemblies; in the sphere of economics they are removed from the sphere of the syndicates’ activities—activities that were ever widening their scope and increasing their power, both on the workers’ side and on the employers’—removed from their struggles and their designs; in the moral sphere they are divorced from ideas of the need for order, discipline and obedience, and lifted into the plane of moral commandments of the fatherland .."
>From “The Doctrine of Fascism” written by Benito Mussolini in 1932 in
collaboration with Giovanni Gentile.
"Would you have freedom from wage-slavery.." Joe Hill http://www.shelfari.com/o1516968161
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