Romney

[Adele Edisen]

I am going to say something bold and rash. You may accept it or not. I think this country is in the midst of a fascist takeover.
There, I said it! Maybe I'm not the only one to say and think the same.

Adele

Ms Edisen,
I have to wonder what percentage of the general public knows what a fascist is. Now, that would be the general public, and not just the readers of this forum. My age group, +/- a few years has been programmed to fear a communist takeover, and now terrorism, but very little discussion about fascism has been forthcoming. Or did I miss it?

Larry,

Thank you for asking about fascism. Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, before and during World War II, defined Fascism as "the Corporate State." This means that the ruling power of the government and its aims are the welfare and maintenance of business corporations. There are other charactristics which are part of the fascist state, but Mussolini's definition gives us the basic concept of what fascism is. Fascism arose in the Twentieth Century in Europe after World War I as highly militarized, totalitarianized states with centralized political power in a very small group enpowered by business interests, including support from international cartels and corporations. The rise of fascist dictatorships in Italy and Germany was economically aided by support from the United States and Great Britain, as well as by domestic corporations.

The post-war economic depression created many unemployed workers, hunger, starvation, and deprivation in the populations, making many prone to the pseudo-socialistic propaganda spouted by the leaders of the fascist movements. The official name, for example, of the German Nazi Party was the National Socialist Workers Party, and it quickly organized and mobilized the poverty-stricken people into militarized units. The German Nazi Party was VOTED into power and quickly controlled the German Reichstag, its parliament. The German Constitution of the Weimar Republic was one of the most democratic constitutions in the world. The weakened chancellor, Hindenburg, gave his powers to Adolph Hitler, and the Third Reich was born in 1933.

By the way, the first piece of legislation passed by the newly formed Reichstag was a law forbidding the use of animals in biological scientific research.

In Italy, originally a monarchy, King Victor Emanual was simply evicted by Benito Mussolini and his private army of blackshirts in 1922. Mussolini initially claimed to be a socialist, but quickly became a tool of the Italian and international corporations who could use him for their profit making gains. Every dictator of any country is a puppet of some guiding economic power, domestic or foreign.

During the 1930s there were other fascist dictatorships in Europe: Spain, Portugal, Hungary, etc., but none as terrrible as Nazi Germany with its extermination camps, killing 14 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews, and its world domination goals extending across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The fascist philosophy spread to South and Central America, where the Spanish Generalissomo Franco's concept of fascism was prevelent. Franco's fascists were called Falangists, from the word phalanx).

So, the best definition I can find is Mussolini's Corporate State. It is one we may use to define our own form of government now.

By definition, Socialism is defined as public ownership of the means of production and distribution. For example, Amtrak, our railroad passenger system, is publicly owned through the government; it is owned by all of us and is not a private profit-making corporation. In socialist countries this is the case for manufacturing and such productions of all goods; there is no private ownership of production, as is the case in capitalistic nations, USA, etc. There may limited private ownership of economic production units in some quasi-socialist countries. The Soviet Union had a socialist economy (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR). It did not have a communist economy. Webster's dictionary can provide the definitions of these economic terms. There are no truly communist countries, as by Webster's definition of a communist state, all means of economic production are owned by the public, and there is no State, or government, just some administrative offices to run things, presumably.

Some very small societries where everything is shared by the group do exist, and have historically existed throughout human existence. The early Christians, as refugees, lived in such a manner. This allowed them to survive the harsh conditions they faced. A group of primitive peoples in the Phillipines were discovered some years ago living in such a manner, and probably the cave peoples and other early humans did so as well.

There are some good books on Fascism. I'll list a few in my next post.

Adele