On Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:43:30 -0800 (PST) Chris Doss
<lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> writes:
> Nazism and Fascism don't seem incoherent to me.
I think that has to draw a distinction between them when they were social movements from what they were when they actually held political power. Both the Fascists and the Nazis before they rose to power were rather incoherent in their ideologies and in terms of their platforms and demands. Mussolini had, up through the First World War, been a leading figure in the Italian Socialist Party, and he had been editor of that party's newspaper. He broke with the party during the First World War over the party's opposition to Italian participation in the war.
After the war he became a leader of the fascisti, which were organized mainly from demobilized soldiers. Their demands were not particularly coherent, and were expressed in a mixture of rightwing and leftwing rhetoric.
As Italy began to fall into chaos following the outbreaks of massive strikes in the industrial cities in the north, Italy's bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie eventully began to look to the Fascists to restore order. That led to Mussolini's carefully choreographed "march on Rome" and his attainment of political power.
In the case of the Nazis, they too prior to their ascension to power offered a mix of rightist and leftist rhetoric. This was well prepresented in the choice of the term, National Socialist as the name for their party. Hitler even admitted in Mein Kampf that he chose the color red for the Nazi flag because of its traditional socialist connotations and he wanted to create confusion over his party's ideological orientation. In fact that party from the 1920s, into its early years in power, had an avowedly "socialist" contingent, which included people like the Strasser brothers and the SA commander, Ernst Rohm.
Both the Fascists and the Nazis when they were actually in power, they began to present a different front. The Nazis eliminated their "socialist" contingent in the "night of the long knives," in 1934, much to the pleasure of both the military brass and big business. And the Fascists in Italy, after taking power, attempted to establish a corporatist model in which the state would oversee the management of the economy. Ostensibly, both employers and workers were represented in the state organizations that oversaw the economy, but in practice this tended to work to the interests of big business.
Jim F. http://independent.academia/edu/JimFarmelant
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org>
> And all right-wing populist movements seem incoherent because they
> are built around anger and rage, but that does not mean they are
> politically powerless. They increase the amount of scapegoating and
> demonization in a society. Real targets suffer the consequences.
>
> Fascism is the most militant form of right-wing populism.
>
> -cb
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
____________________________________________________________
Senior Assisted Living
Put your loved ones in good hands with quality senior assisted living. Click now!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=a5mGXP3apnwRpXZBo1v5VQAAJ1DoEMrytxsVXKlEh0tvqeWlAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASUQAAAAA=