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Who is a real fascist? Why?

lemurien

Critical Thinker
lemurien
Joined
May 18, 2011
Messages
402
I have noticed that historical facts keep changing as time passes by.
What I learned when I was young is not true any longer.
No matter which subject, whether it is physics, chemistry, biology or history, I am in a constant state of confusion and googling day in day out about things I thought I knew. Of course, it is very rewarding but I do feel quite stupid at times.

Now I just finished reading Isabel Allende's 'Of Love And Shadows' which is a well-written novel from the days of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile. I do remember the coup, as I was in Inti Illimani's concert the day after.
(It was a Chilean group playing traditional and revolutionary music)

Now, after reading the book, I started googling about Chile, the Chigago Boys, the embargo and the economical miracle...also about the desaperecidos, the torture, mass murders and the international organization Condor that the military juntas of the different countries had set up to assassinate their political enemies wherever they might be.

Of the modern leaders, who would you call a fascist and why?

At the time it was clear the General Pinochet was a fascist.
He was very nationalistic, he saw Foreign Enemies everywhere (Cuba did play some games in Chile, true), he reigned with iron hand, jailed, tortured and killed all opposition and more.

He he gave foreign capital free entry and held copper nationalized.
"Fascism is hostile to the concepts of laissez-faire capitalism, free trade, economic individualism, materialism, and hostile to bourgeois culture".
 (wiki)

I would like to know now, why is he not considered a fascist?
Is it only because he had close ties with the US and Nixon did not want to be in collaboration with somebody who is called a fascist?

Of the leaders of today, who would you call a fascist and why?
 
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Using
Fascism is hostile to the concepts of laissez-faire capitalism, free trade, economic individualism, materialism, and hostile to bourgeois culture
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as a working definition of fascism, IMO there are no fascist leaders in Western Europe or North America.

There are probably several in sub-Saharan Africa, but we don't care about those (no oil).

If a monarch can be the head of a fascist state then there may be several in North Africa and the Middle East

Some of the leaders of the newly independent post Soviet Union states bear the hallmarks of being fascists
 
zooterkin said:
Who says he isn't?
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http://dorethabarbagallo.coolblogz.com/2010/09/04/its-raining-on-santiago/
Pinochet is a Capitalist, funadamentalist if you want, but not a fascist. Of course these days everyone that doesn’t agree with marxixst/liberals is a fascist. Whether it is Pinochet, Bush or Thatcher.


http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t163676/

Was he (Pinochet) a fascist?
Yes and no. The only reason why he wouldn't be considered a true "fascist" is due to a lack of nationalism in his government, and also, it was pretty obvious that he was a toadie for the US government and corporate elite. A truly fascist government would have to be "its own man," so to speak, not accountable to any "hidden interests."

http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=64263

The conservative general Augusto Pinochet was demonized by the international left. Some label him as a fascist, and some commies go as far as comparing him with Adolf Hitler. I do not consider him fascist, but rather a decent conservative who made necessary decisions during the troubled time.

John 16:33
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Here are some proofs that Pinochet was not a fascist:
He supported the free market, fascists supports massive governmental intervention in economy.
He just killed a few thousands violent rioters, death tolls from real fascist regimes are orders of magnitudes bigger. And most deaths from real fascist regimes are innocent.
He fixed the economy.
He reenacted democracy, and accepted the outcome of an election he lost.
If Allende was allowed to keep up his socialist/atheist destruction of Chile, the invariable result would be communist-grade death tolls, hyperinflation and runaway dept. I have friends from Chile, and they thank God for Pinochet.


My personal theory is that the world is going mad. Maybe me.
 
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lemurien said:
http://dorethabarbagallo.coolblogz.com/2010/09/04/its-raining-on-santiago/
Pinochet is a Capitalist, funadamentalist if you want, but not a fascist. Of course these days everyone that doesn’t agree with marxixst/liberals is a fascist. Whether it is Pinochet, Bush or Thatcher.


http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t163676/

Was he (Pinochet) a fascist?
Yes and no. The only reason why he wouldn't be considered a true "fascist" is due to a lack of nationalism in his government, and also, it was pretty obvious that he was a toadie for the US government and corporate elite. A truly fascist government would have to be "its own man," so to speak, not accountable to any "hidden interests."

http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=64263

The conservative general Augusto Pinochet was demonized by the international left. Some label him as a fascist, and some commies go as far as comparing him with Adolf Hitler. I do not consider him fascist, but rather a decent conservative who made necessary decisions during the troubled time.

John 16:33
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Here are some proofs that Pinochet was not a fascist:
He supported the free market, fascists supports massive governmental intervention in economy.
He just killed a few thousands violent rioters, death tolls from real fascist regimes are orders of magnitudes bigger. And most deaths from real fascist regimes are innocent.
He fixed the economy.
He reenacted democracy, and accepted the outcome of an election he lost.
If Allende was allowed to keep up his socialist/atheist destruction of Chile, the invariable result would be communist-grade death tolls, hyperinflation and runaway dept. I have friends from Chile, and they thank God for Pinochet.


My personal theory is that the world is going mad.
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So, some people don't consider him a fascist (one of them being Stormfront, who think he nearly is, anyway (high praise indeed) and another being the Landover Baptist site, which is a satirical website, and the third is a random blog post). Your original question implied that he was not generally considered to be a fascist and I think you'll find plenty of people who do still think he was.
 
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a definition from wiki:
Fascism is anti-anarchist, anti-communist, anti-conservative, anti-democratic, anti-individualist, anti-liberal, anti-parliamentary, anti-bourgeois, and anti-proletarian.[9] It entails a distinctive type of anti-capitalism and is typically, with a few exceptions, anti-clerical.[10][11]

Fascism rejects the concepts of egalitarianism, materialism, and rationalism in favor of action, discipline, hierarchy, spirit, and will.[12] In economics, fascists oppose liberalism (as a bourgeois movement) and Marxism (as a proletarian movement) for being exclusive economic class-based movements.[13]

Fascists present their ideology as that of an economically trans-class movement that promotes resolving economic class conflict to secure national solidarity.[14] They support a regulated, multi-class, integrated national economic system.[15]


and still from wiki:

However, he (Pinochet) and his regime are generally excluded from academic typologies of fascism.[32][33][34][35]

Roger Griffin included Pinochet in a group of pseudo-populist despots distinct from fascism and including the likes of Hitler (to a certain extent since Pinochet was not fanatically violent)[citation needed], Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Pol Pot, Suharto, and Ferdinand Marcos. He argues that such regimes may be considered populist ultra-nationalism but lack the palingenesis necessary to make them conform to the model of palingenetic ultranationalism.[32] ("national rebirth" — palingenesis)
 
Roughly paraphrasing Mussolini:

A fascist abolishes limits to the state. The state is life.
A fascist lives for war and mocks the idea of peace.
A fascist opposes the socialist left and seeks its destruction.

Looking at the map, it occurs to me that there aren't many states that actually embrace war. Just the US and the UK, the US being hostile to the socialist left. Neither of them have the merger of life and state associated with fascism. The US merges life and commerce.

Pinochet was not the theorist that Mussolini was, nor the nationalist that Mussolini and Hitler were. He was a military commander, a servant of US interests and the local economic elite.

Today there are many nationalist governments in the world, but none I can think of that combine all the features above.
 
lemurien said:
a
Roger Griffin included Pinochet in a group of pseudo-populist despots distinct from fascism and including the likes of Hitler
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Well if Hitler wasn't Fascist, I don't know who is.

It is true that the movement he led took the name "National Socialist" rather than "Fascist", but it took much inspiration from its older cousin Fascism in Italy, including adoption of the Fascists' Roman salute (nowadays generally referred to as a Nazi salute).

One of the problems with the word "fascism" is that it has come to be used as a term of general abuse against anybody that the writer disagrees with. So we lack a clear definition of the term, other than in the strict sense of describing Mussolini's movement in Italy.

I am personally sceptical about the extent to which Hitler and Mussolini espoused statist ideas in economics. As far as I am aware, and I am open to correction here, they allowed private enterprise and did not nationalise industry; indeed, Hitler was supported by many captains of German industry. The 'socialist' element of the National Socialists was eliminated in the Night of Long Knives.

It is arguable that pure, unregulated free market economic policy requires Fascist social policy to deal with the unrest and crime caused by widening inequalities and unemployment in society.

So was Pinochet a Fascist? Well, if he wasn't it is little consolation to the 80,000 he interned, and the 30,000 he had tortured, including women and children.

What about Saddam Hussein? He fits the bill more closely. He was constantly invading other countries, killed thousands of his own subjects, and when his Ba'ath party came to power thousands of Communists were murdered.
 
Gazpacho said:
Roughly paraphrasing Mussolini:

A fascist opposes the socialist left and seeks its destruction.
Click to expand...
I've recently run into this or that article that claims that fascism is inherently of the 'left', and not the 'right' (usually mentioning that the Nazi's were in the National Socialist party). Could you give me the exact Mussolini quote, because I can't find it.
 
"il socialismo e una frode, una commedia, un fantasma, un ricatto"
"socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail."

"lo stato liberale e una maschera dietro la quale non vi e nessuna faccia, e un ponteggio dietro il quale non vi e nessun edificio."
"the liberal state is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building."

"il fascismo dovrebbe essere definito piu propriamente corporativismo, perche e una fusione di stato e di potere aziendale."
"fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and businesses power"

his excellency benito mussolini, head of government, duce of fascism, and founder of the empire. (as he liked to be called)

cheers
 
mrgrouch said:
"il fascismo dovrebbe essere definito piu propriamente corporativismo, perche e una fusione di stato e di potere aziendale."
"fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and businesses power"
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Nobody has been able to verify this quotation to my knowledge.
 
bignickel said:
I've recently run into this or that article that claims that fascism is inherently of the 'left', and not the 'right' (usually mentioning that the Nazi's were in the National Socialist party). Could you give me the exact Mussolini quote, because I can't find it.
Click to expand...
"The Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the heads of the Socialists."

Mussolini made no secret of his disgust with the socialists of the day. The experience of the war convinced him that Italy's immediate problem was not class oppression but the lack of national unity, and that meant unity with the state institutions of the right.
 
Iran comes to mind as a state that in many ways is close to facist. The blurring of the army and the party, the corporatist aspects of the economy, etc. Not pure facist, but close.
 
I know plenty of people who have said Pinochet was a fascist. Just like the fascists next door in Argentina.

Added to that, the links that the OP is using to show that some dissent from the opinion that Pinochet is a fascist seem to be at pains to show they don't agree with the prevailing wisdom ... that Pinochet is a fascist.

Given that it seems to blow away the question:

why is he not considered a fascist?
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He is. He is. He is.
 
Gazpacho said:
"The Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the heads of the Socialists."

Mussolini made no secret of his disgust with the socialists of the day. The experience of the war convinced him that Italy's immediate problem was not class oppression but the lack of national unity, and that meant unity with the state institutions of the right.
Click to expand...

Thanks to the both of you for the quotes.
 
bignickel said:
I've recently run into this or that article that claims that fascism is inherently of the 'left', and not the 'right' (usually mentioning that the Nazi's were in the National Socialist party). Could you give me the exact Mussolini quote, because I can't find it.
Click to expand...

I've never come across that view myself. Although the Nazis called themselves National Socialists, in reality they never practiced socialism, and as I mentioned, the "socialist" element of the Nazis was purged during the Night of Long Knives.

As mrgrouch has mentioned, fascism is essentially the merger of state and corporate power: not public ownership of industry and the banks, as in socialism, but corporate interests being one and the same as national government.
 
There are some on the far right who see themselves as a "third position", the first two positions being socialism and capitalism, so they see themselves as transcending the left-right division.
 
The idea that fascism is part of the "left" is standard in American right-wing discourse and has been since the early cold war. It is a propaganda trick, like "islamofascism," that plays on the idea of a unified, unchanging political "other." It has been promoted heavily by business laissez-faire interests.
 
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