Viewing 16 posts - 81 through 96 (of 96 total)
  • What's the difference between socialism and fascism?
  • konabunny
    Free Member

    German and Italian troops fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War is a prime example and more recent examples can be found in the Balkan War of the 90s. Western European fascists and nazis (from UK, Italy, Germany etc) fighting for the Croats against the Slavic Serbian aggressors and the Muslim problem. On the other side you had Russian and Eastern European fascists and nazis fighting for the Serbians in defence of Pan Slavic Nationalism, Chetnik fetishisation and the perceived Christian resistance to the historical enemy, Islam.

    I’m not disagreeing with your general thrust (that fascists have taken internationalist positions and communists have taken nationalist/ethnicist lines) but I am not sure if the various post-Commie Yugoslav wars are the best examples. The Tudjman Croatian regime identified heavily with the fascist Ustase of WW2 while the Serbian regimes identified with the anti-fascist/nationalist Cetniks of WW2. Moreover, although Zhirinovsky and Limonov’s time in Sarajevo got a lot of play, and various Soldier of Fortune-subscribing and Mujahedeen nutcases popped up “in theatre”, their impact really wasn’t that significant. Certainly not compared with the impact of the Russian/Belorusian state industries shovelling technology to Belgrade and the Dyncorp trainers who facilitated Operation Storm.

    TL,DR: it was the Croats that were the Nazi-worshippers, not the Serbs.

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    I think you’re being naive or overly simplifying things, ernie, by arguing there’s clear blue water between fascism and socialism: economically at least there were clear points where they overlapped ….

    Well of course there is……it’s “human society” ffs. My point, which you have obviously completely missed, is that there is considerably less “clear blue water” between fascism and capitalism.

    you’d be hard pushed to find a fascist regime that didn’t support centrally planned strategic industries

    Government support for strategic industries does not define socialism, and you are naive if you think it does, you’ve obviously fallen for neo-liberal propaganda.

    Capitalists are more than willing to see massive government intervention and support for the economy/industries if required, specially in a crises situation – this isn’t socialism.

    I know I’ve ridiculed George Bush on here in the past for being elected to office as a neo-conservative and then leaving office 8 years later as a neo-socialist, but it was a “joke”, George Bush was never any kind of socialist – he was a straightforward capitalist. Despite the massive government support which he gave the finance industries.

    The current neo-conservative ultra liberal economic argument of a deregulated free-market without any government interference/support is a very recent development. Which doesn’t work btw, throughout most of its history, apart from the early mercantile capitalism of Adam Smith, capitalism has enjoyed massive government intervention and support, whether it be through the capital projects of the Victorians, state monopoly capitalism, keynesianism, rearmament, the New Deal, or whatever. All were designed to strengthen capitalism, not weaken it, none can be described as socialist – in fact they were largely introduced to resist the threat from socialism – the means of production overwhelmingly remained firmly in the hands of capitalists.

    Yes, government intervention and support can be seen as “a socialist policy and solution”, in the same way as equal pay for women can be, but it is neither unique to socialism nor does it define it. Who owns the means of production does.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    My point, which you have obviously completely missed, is that there is considerably less “clear blue water” between fascism and capitalism.

    I didn’t miss it, I ignored it – I was talking about fascism and socialism, not capitalism. But since you bring it up: it’s not that I agree or disagree, I just don’t think it’s relevant. Capitalism and socialism are directly comparable, I don’t think fascism is.

    Government support for strategic industries does not define socialism, and you are naive if you think it does, you’ve obviously fallen for neo-liberal propaganda.

    It may not define it, but govenment running or supporting an industry is, at least according to the traditional definitions, more socialist than capitalist.

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    I didn’t miss it, I ignored it – I was talking about fascism and socialism, not capitalism.

    OK fair enough, ignore the fact that capitalism and fascism are closer to each other than socialism and fascism, and just concentrate on any similarities which might exist between socialism and fascism, like the fact that both have structures which are common to all societies, that should keep people reasonably ill-informed about the truth.

    And it should also keep happy Daily Mail columnists such as Richard Littlejohn, who likes to propagate the lie that anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun is a fascist.

    The Fascist Left have turned the Nanny State into the Bully State

    Richard Littlejohn loves to call anyone to the left of himself a fascist, back in the days when he worked for the Sun he slagged off the Guardian for being the “anti-American propagandists of the fascist left press” because of reluctance to support George Bush’s “War in Terror”.

    Luckily for him, Richard Littlejohn wasn’t working for the Daily Mail in the days when it was urging its readers to support Oswald Mosley’s British Union of fascists, with headlines such as “Hurrah for the Blackshirts”.

    Who would have thought that the Daily Mail under Lord Rothermere’s ownership, who btw was a friend and supporter of both Mussolini and Hitler and praised Mosley for his “sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine”, was once a bit “socialist” eh? I wonder what their readers made of it all.

    Edukator
    Free Member

    Someone that I’ve never met let alone mated with is calling me “mate” again. I know that most more appropriate words are blocked by the swear filter but surely you can think of something better than “mate”.

    RustySpanner
    Full Member

    Edukator – Member

    Someone that I’ve never met let alone mated with is calling me “mate” again. I know that most more appropriate words are blocked by the swear filter but surely you can think of something better than “mate”.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    Richard Littlejohn loves to call anyone to the left of himself a fascist, back in the days when he worked for the Sun he slagged off the Guardian for being the “anti-American propagandists of the fascist left press” because of reluctance to support George Bush’s “War in Terror”.

    Misusing “fascist” is hardly limited to Richard Littlejohn, it’s a massively overused insult bandied about without any real reference to its original meaning. (Incidentally, the importance you give to the closeness of fascism and capitalism is uncannily similar to the importance right wing commentators give to the closeness of socialism and Stalinist communism…)

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    No of course it’s not limited to Richard Littlejohn, reference to the ‘fascist left’ is widespread among the more unstable right-wingers, it’s used as a deliberate ploy to deflect criticism away from themselves. In much the same way as the BNP can’t stop harping on that they are the victims of racism.

    So yeah, as you quite correctly point out, a great deal of people deliberately misuse terms such as fascism and socialism to suit their agenda. There’s even a thread on STW titled “What’s the difference between socialism and fascism?” in which the OP says, “They would when taken at face value appear to be the polar opposite of each other, but when you think about it a bit more are they not just the same thing?”.

    Incidentally, the importance you give to the closeness of fascism and capitalism is uncannily similar to the importance right wing commentators give to the closeness of socialism and Stalinist communism….

    The only importance I’ve given to it is in the context that whilst socialism is easy to define fascism on the other hand is a little harder to pin down and define. And the reason for that is quite simple – because it shares startling similarities not with socialism, but with capitalism. At what stage does capitalism cease to capitalism and become fascism ? The boundaries are often very blurred.

    And ‘right-wing commentators’ are correct to point out the connection between socialism and stalinism, I have no problem with that – why would I ? It’s actually true. As I’ve already pointed out, socialism is an economic model not some sort of vague arrangement where people are rather nice and sociable towards one another.

    I also said : “And yet despite being a socialist I don’t automatically support all socialists, but neither do I deny they are socialist simply because I don’t like them. As an example take Mao Zedong, I consider him to have been a particularly nasty piece of work with a callous disregard for human life and human rights, but there is no doubt that China under Mao Zedong was socialist. Maybe not the sort of socialism which Lenin would have approved of, and more the sort of socialism which Stalin would have, but still socialism”.

    You’ve obviously read what I’ve said mogrim as you keep commenting on my posts, try to increase your concentration span so that you remember what I’ve written without the need for me to copy and paste my own stuff 🙂

    mogrim
    Full Member

    You’ve obviously read what I’ve said mogrim as you keep commenting on my posts, try to increase your concentration span so that you remember what I’ve written without the need for me to copy and paste my own stuff

    I read last night’s stuff last night, and I was enjoying a beer or two while I did so… I apologise for having forgotten what you wrote, though – I may frequently disagree with you, but I (nearly) always find your posts interesting!

    At what stage does capitalism cease to capitalism and become fascism ? The boundaries are often very blurred.

    Here, sadly, we must disagree – I’m not convinced that capitalism has the state-sponsored violence that accompanies fascism, nor does it have the coercive and tribal element. Of course, countries that have capitalist regimes may also maintain armies, expansionist and exclusionist policies and the like, but as modern day Japan and Switzerland show they’re not an essential feature.

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    I’m not convinced that capitalism has the state-sponsored violence that accompanies fascism, nor does it have the coercive and tribal element.

    So presumably the moment a capitalist state uses violence it ceases to be capitalist and becomes fascist ?

    Well that’s a pretty slack definition, and one which undoubtedly would appeal to some of the pain-in-the-arse trots I have encountered through my life, but it’s not one which I would necessarily subscribe to – I need a bit more than that.

    What’s this “tribal element” which you speak of btw ? Do you mean stuff like racism and bigotry ? If so, using scapegoats to take responsibility for the failures of capitalism is hardly unique to fascism – your bog standard run of the mill boring capitalist, has no aversion to doing the same should conditions require it. “It’s not our fault”, divide and rule, and an unashamed appeal to “tribalism”, is widely used with some considerable success.

    That’s not to say that fascism is no different to bourgeois liberal democracy of course, it certainly is. But I think you are exaggerating how far apart they are.

    When General Pinochet, with the help of his friends in Washington, overthrew liberal democracy and installed an extreme right-wing military government which among other things instilled fear through violence, Chile didn’t actually change that much, certainly not to the extent it could be described as “revolutionary” change. In fact the purpose of the coup was to protect and maintain the status quo – it was a “conservative” coup, not a revolutionary coup. For most Chileans life carried on pretty much the same, doing the same jobs etc. They just had to watch for things such as curfews etc. Had it been a left-wing socialist coup then their lives would have changed rather more dramatically.

    Edukator
    Free Member

    You mean they’d have lost their real jobs and ended up in a bloated state sector taking backhanders from the only people still making money: foreign capitalists prepared to pay backhanders.

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    If that’s how you want to perceive it, yes.

    So you agree with me then ………excellent.

    seosamh77
    Free Member

    What’s the difference between socialism and fascism?

    In their purest forms, I’d have a guess at: Fascism is Monoculturism, Socialism is Multiculturalism.

    Edukator
    Free Member

    Multiculturalism, except when it’s seen as capitalist unity in which case socialists are opposed to it.

    Do you approve of my source or would you prefer the Mail, Ernie? 😉

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    Well generally I would prefer the Daily Mail, but I’m just happy that you agree with me, so I’m willing to let it go on this occasion.

    Although I’d be grateful if in the future you would provide links to the Daily Mail please.

    cheekyboy
    Free Member

    Had it been a left-wing socialist coup then their lives would have changed rather more dramatically.

    They would have had tax credits.

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