Posted on 05/13/2009 12:17:08 PM PDT by Welcome2thejungle
Socialists generally speaking are internationalists who work with each other across the globe. Fascists are ardent nationalists.
I guess so. But you have to take into account that fascism and socialism have some of the same roots. That doesn't meant that they're the same thing or that they don't have connections to other philosophies.
Theory and practice also differ. Stalin was an "internationalist" in theory, but in practice, he certainly wasn't indifferent between various countries: he favored the big one that he controlled.
Whether Hitler really was a nationalist is also something people argue over. He certainly looked like one at the beginning of his rule. But by the end, he was aiming at something far bigger than Germany.
Socialists favor government ownership of the means of production, whereas fascists have no problem with private ownership so long as corporations are compliant with government objectives.
Fascists weren't opposed to starting up state-owned enterprises. And they certainly did expropriate some enterprises -- Jewish or foreign ones, certainly.
Social Democrats don't appear to have any problem with private ownership "so long as corporations are compliant with government objectives." Look at Sweden.
If Obama or other politicians today are socialists, that doesn't mean that they won't tolerate private or corporate property, just that they want control of aspects of its operation and profits.
Socialists are ardent secularists and generally disdain organized religion. Fascists often seek and receive the support of the Church and encourage religious participation.
Up to a point. But there are religious socialists. And fascists' relations with established churches may be more a matter of practicality, rather than of theory. Mussolini and Hitler weren't exactly other worldly or Christian in their thinking.
Socialists love social engineering, collective farms and kibbutzes. Fascists are generally socially conservative, support the military, law and order, and traditional family structures.
Others have brought up the objection to this quite well. Not every military dictator was a fascist. And Franco, though not a fascist, was a centralist. Basques and Catalans wouldn't call him respectful of their traditional institutions.
I'm not saying that you're wrong. Just that any generalization is going to have exceptions. For one thing, you have to compare one form of totalitarianism with another. Comparing a totalitarian group with one which contains totalitarians and non-totalitarians will give questionable results.
I'd certainly prefer to have lived under a typical Latin American or European dictatorship than under Stalin or Lenin. Throw Hitler into the picture, and things get complicated. He was as bad as Stalin, if not worse.
A country like today's Sweden, though "socialist," probably is better than either fascist or a communist states were. Whatever its vices, there is still a measure of personal freedom there that fascist or communist states didn't allow.
That is true under the Obama fascism, but it wasn’t exactly true under the original fascism. The old fascism was based on favoritism that killed competition and controlled prices. It wasn’t based on benefit to the people. It was based on benefit to the state. The state and people are not the same entity in a fascist regime. That’s the difference.
Under Obamism the unions and the state are the same entity. Obama is determined to “return the wealth” to the workers from whom, he “feels” it was stolen. Plainly Obama wants a redistribution of wealth, transfering the ownership to the unions, but controlled by the government. That’s why it’s neither true socialism nor true fascism. Obama seems to think that the real entrepreneurs will work for next to nothing to the benefit of the unions. Obama can’t even find people to work for his administration, how does he think he’s going to find people to run “private” industry for the government and unions?
I haven’t been explaining this very well. What I am trying to say is that in true fascism, the people own NOTHING, not even in name only. In socialism, the people nominally own everything. In Obamism the people, nominally own or have the right to own everything, but Obama still expects the the private entrepreneur to contribute at the same rate, but under heavy regulation. Obamism is like something directly from Atlas Shrugged. I expect Obama to enact a anti-dog eats dog rule at any time.
I think that the difference is between European ideology and US style ideology. A European poster, last week, said that the difference is that the European model lacks the antipathy of the union worker for the owner/management. They aren’t trying to make any retribution for past perceived injustices, as is present in the US model and Obamism. Obama thinks of his economic ideology as a type of restorative justice.
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