{"id":85419,"date":"2022-09-08T01:52:04","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T06:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=85419"},"modified":"2022-09-08T01:52:04","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T06:52:04","slug":"85419","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=85419","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Fascism Left- or Right-Wing?<\/a><\/p>\n

Copied from Facebook:<\/p>\n

Is fascism a left or right-wing ideology?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u00a0know the name of the philosopher of capitalism: Adam Smith. We know the name of the philosopher of Marxism: Karl Marx. But who\u2019s the philosopher of fascism?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u2014exactly. You don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t feel bad. Almost no one knows. This is not because he doesn\u2019t exist, but because historians, most of whom are on the political left, had to erase him from history in order to avoid confronting fascism\u2019s actual beliefs. So, let me introduce him to you. His name is Giovanni Gentile.<\/p>\n

\u201cBorn in 1875, he was one of the world\u2019s most influential philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. Gentile believed that there were two \u201cdiametrically opposed\u201d types of democracy. One is liberal democracy, such as that of the United States, which Gentile dismisses as individualistic\u2014too centered on liberty and personal rights\u2014and therefore selfish. The other, the one Gentile recommends, is \u201ctrue democracy,\u201d in which individuals willingly subordinate themselves to the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike his philosophical mentor, Karl Marx, Gentile wanted to create a community that resembles the family, a community where we are \u201call in this together.\u201d It\u2019s easy to see the attraction of this idea. Indeed, it remains a common rhetorical theme of the left.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, at the 1984 convention of the Democratic Party, the governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, likened America to an extended family where, through the government, people all take care of each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing\u2019s changed. Thirty years later, a slogan of the 2012 Democratic Party convention was, \u201cThe government is the only thing we all belong to.\u201d They might as well have been quoting Gentile.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, remember, Gentile was a man of the left. He was a committed socialist. For Gentile, fascism is a form of socialism\u2014indeed, its most workable form. While the socialism of Marx mobilizes people on the basis of class, fascism mobilizes people by appealing to their national identity as well as their class. Fascists are socialists with a national identity. German Fascists in the 1930s were called Nazis\u2014basically a contraction of the term \u201cnational socialist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Gentile, all private action should be oriented to serve society; there is no distinction between the private interest and the public interest. Correctly understood, the two are identical. And who is the administrative arm of the society? It\u2019s none other than the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsequently, to submit to society is to submit to the state\u2014not just in economic matters, but in all matters. Since everything is political, the state gets to tell everyone how to think and what to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was another Italian, Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943, who turned Gentile\u2019s words into action. In his Dottrina del Fascismo, one of the doctrinal statements of early fascism, Mussolini wrote, \u201cAll is in the state and nothing human exists or has value outside the state.\u201d He was merely paraphrasing Gentile.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Italian philosopher is now lost in obscurity, but his philosophy could not be more relevant because it closely parallels that of the modern left. Gentile\u2019s work speaks directly to progressives who champion the centralized state.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in America, the left has vastly expanded state control over the private sector, from healthcare to banking; from education to energy. This state-directed capitalism is precisely what German and Italian fascists implemented in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

Leftists can\u2019t acknowledge their man, Gentile, because that would undermine their attempt to bind conservatism to fascism.<\/p>\n

\u201cConservatism wants small government so that individual liberty can flourish. The left, like Gentile, wants the opposite: to place the resources of the individual and industry in the service of a centralized state. To acknowledge Gentile is to acknowledge that fascism bears a deep kinship to the ideology of today\u2019s left. So, they will keep Gentile where they\u2019ve got him: dead, buried, and forgotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we should remember, or the ghost of fascism will continue to haunt us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Fascism Left- or Right-Wing? Copied from Facebook: Is fascism a left or right-wing ideology? \u201cWe\u00a0know the name of the philosopher of capitalism: Adam Smith. We know the name of the philosopher of Marxism: Karl Marx. But who\u2019s the philosopher of fascism? \u201cYes\u2014exactly. You don\u2019t know. \u201cDon\u2019t feel bad. Almost no one knows. This is … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-scratch-a-lib-find-a-tyrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85420,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85419\/revisions\/85420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}