Seems I read the word “fascism” a lot lately, linked to President Tump and Republicans. Fair? After World War 1, Europe was in ruins and the world suffered a deep depression. In Italy, an avowed Communist and writer for the Socialist newspaper ‘Avanti’ (‘Forward’), Benito Mussolini, called for a National Socialist (Marxist based) Government run by former Military men, “Because, they are trained to get things done”. He called his party the Fascist party after their symbol, sticks tied to an Ax, representing the people bound to the State. He allowed some private ownership, but businesses had to work under a centrally planned economy. In the Thirties, Germany’s Hitler founded the NAZI party (NSDAP – or “National Socialist German Workers Party”). This as opposed to Russia’s “International Communist” movement. During the Thirties, President Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler exchanged warm correspondences, and F.D.R. even put Italy’s Fascist symbol on the back of our dime, while instituting several ‘Third Way’ programs (CCC corps, Social Security). Hitler used the Progressive Eugenics movement as a model for his goal of Racial Purity and admired the Democratic Party’s ‘Jim Crow’ laws to legally repress his own minority’s. The renowned economist F.A. Hyack declared that Germany had a “True Socialist Economy”. So why do people today equate ‘Fascist’ with the Right? Two reasons: one, they were Nationalistic, and two, after WW2, Stalin declared that anyone who didn’t like Soviet Communism was a fascist – the reasoning stuck. That and the embarrassment on the Left for Fascism’s leftist roots has seen the term join the list of pejoratives used against Conservatives. As long as Prez Trump and the Republicans support the Constitution, limited Government, free markets and private property ownership – they can’t be called Fascist.
Richard La Motte
Valencia
