David since you use this term regularly I thought I would give you a bit of and education of what it is and how it impacts society. We are seeing further signs of this with the annointing of Kamala. Bypassing the people seems the Democratic way. You talk about restoring Democracy really, you've got to be kidding. Left-wing fascism, characterized by totalitarian control and enforced equality, is harmful to society for several reasons:
Pat, thank you for copying and pasting this interesting example of the Heritage Foundation's tireless efforts to obscure historical truth. However, try as they might, they have yet to be successful at rewriting such recent history. Too many witnesses remain, too many source documents exist. The facts are as follows.
Fascism as a political system is uniformly characterized, by both historians and the founders of fascism itself as far-right. All fascist nations are defined by extreme nationalism, anti-Communism, and opposition to democratic rule of law.
As a form of practical government fascism has been attempted only a limited number of times, all with their starts in the 1930s and 1940, in the following countries: Italy, Germany, Japan, Croatia, Austria, Chiang Kai-Shek's China, Vichy France, Greece, Hungary, Quisling-era Norway, Portugal, Spain, Falangist Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Africa, and Yugoslavia. This makes it relatively easy for historians to examine. For the sake of brevity, I'll focus here on the "Big Three"—Italy, Germany, and Japan.
Italy, 1922-1943:
The first fascist country was Italy, ruled by Benito Mussolini, who coined the term. The word has its roots in Latin, from the word fasces, a bundle of rods surrounding an axe, a symbol of Roman power.
In 1932, Mussolini published his “Doctrine of Fascism,” which, though nearly unreadable, contained buried within it the basic germs of the political philosophy. Mussolini's words below are italicized and within quotation marks.
"Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life is opposed to liberalism. It does not believe in the possibility of “happiness” on earth. Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism. Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it." "Fascism carries this anti-pacifistic attitude into the life of the individual. “I don’t care a damn, do you?” (Non me ne frego, vero?) — the proud motto of the fighting squads scrawled by a wounded man on his bandages, sums up a doctrine which is not merely political: it is evidence of a fighting spirit. Such a conception of life makes Fascism the resolute negation of the doctrine underlying so called scientific socialism."
(Oddly, as an aside, this seminal fascist motto “I don’t care a damn, do you?” found its way, minus the word “damn,” onto the back of a coat that Melania Trump wore on a visit to an immigration internment camp in Macallan, Texas in 2018.) Mussolini continues: (the bolding below is mine)
"After socialism, Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both their premises and their practical applications. In rejecting democracy Fascism rejects the absurd conventional lie of political equalitarianism. Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, democracy and socialism, both in the political and the economic sphere. Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy."
Mussolini's dream ended on April 28, 1945.
“A fitting end to a wretched life,” the New York Times declared, and there were few, either inside or outside of Italy, who disagreed. “The man who once boasted that he was going to restore the glories of ancient Rome,” wrote the Times, "is now a corpse in a public square in Milan, with a howling mob cursing and kicking and spitting on his remains.”
Germany, 1933-1945:
The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, adapted and expanded Mussolini’s notions into a form of fascism that incorporated fervent nationalism, antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics measures. Nazism’s ideology was shaped by Hitler’s beliefs in German superiority and the dangers of communism. It rejected liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Its extreme nationalism was strongly influenced by the Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged after Germany's defeat in World War I, from which came the party's underlying "cult of violence." Genocide and mass murder became hallmarks of the regime.
Starting in 1939, hundreds of thousands of German citizens with mental or physical disabilities were murdered in hospitals and asylums. Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads accompanied the German armed forces inside the occupied territories and conducted the mass killings of millions of Jews, Communists, Socialists, intellectuals, homosexuals, Romani, and other Holocaust victims.
After 1941, millions of others were imprisoned, worked to death, or murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps. This genocide is known as the Holocaust.
Hitler's dream ended with his suicide on April 30, 1945, in a bunker in the ruined city of Berlin.
Japan 1926–1945: Right-wing elements in Japan, including industrialists, military officers, and the nobility, had long opposed democracy as an anathema to national unity. Military cliques began to dominate the national government starting in the 1930s. In 1931 Japan invaded and seized Manchuria, renaming it Manchukuo. There they began working hundreds of thousands to death in slave labor camps, desperately gathering the resources to meet the needs of the massively expanding military.
In 1936 Japan and Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, aimed at countering the Soviet Union and the Communist Internationale.
In 1940, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye established the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, or the Taisei Yokusankai, to consolidate all political parties under a single umbrella group. That same year, Japan joined Germany and Italy by signing the Tripartite Pact.
Japan's experiment in fascist rule ended on September 2, 1945, with its surrender to the United States, a liberal democracy. Japan's titular ruler, Hideki Tojo was sentenced to death by an international tribunal, and hanged on December 23, 1948.
Obviously, there are communist dictatorships as well, at least in name, with Vladimir Putin's Russia as a leading current example. However, one would need to be extraordinarily unclear on the facts to call Joseph Stalin or Vladimir Putin communists. Rather they are totalitarian dictators.
One would also need to be extraordinarily unclear to categorize Kamala Harris as a fascist dictator. For one, she is a liberal, the first enemy of fascists, and for another, she is not running to be a dictator. She will win the next election, and when her term or terms are up, she will step down peacefully, as all presidents to date, with one glaring exception, have done before her.
I do not expect you to have an honest response to these undeniable historical facts, Pat. I do not even expect you to understand them. This combination of personal truculence and determined ignorance of what you discuss are what make you such a willing tool of the worst liars and criminals in the short history of this country, and so deserving of my bottomless contempt and disgust for you, and everything that you represent.
