On 2010-02-21, at 10:54 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote:
>
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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