The whiff of fascism becomes a stench

I've emphasized one aspect of fascism -- its objective of the forcible suppression of opposition. But it also qualifies under the other elements, including the suppression of private enterprise and putting it under centralized government control. That is one hallmark of the Obama Administration, it expands government, contracts the private sector and places new and unprecedented power in the hands of a centralized, expanding government bureaucracy. This government expansion also is a restriction of our freedom because as the government gets bigger, the individual citizen gets smaller. Consider some of the belief systems of his Czars. Ron Bloom, the manufacturing czar thinks the "free market is nonsense."

Thanks pissant.

I think that what we see is not the ultimate goal, and we are seeing this administration employ a number of various totalitarian-based techniques, including but not limited to fascist/corporatist, socialist, national socialist, communist, etc.

As I have posted before, Harvard historian Gaetano Salvemini pointed out back in 1936 that even with government interventionism of FDR, America wasn't "fascist" at the time (because we retained personal freedoms), but in describing the economics of Fascist Italy, he noted:

"In actual fact, it is the State, i.e. the taxpayer, who has become responsible to private enterprise. In Fascist Italy the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise. As long as business was good, profit remained to private initiative. When the depression came, the Government added the loss to the tax-payer's burden. Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."
--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini, p. 416 (1936).

That seems to me to be a pretty good description of what we see in America today, with bailouts, etc. Wouldn't you agree?

Salvemini then went on to discuss the bailouts, which were targeted to large corporations but not small businesses.

"In December 1932 a Fascist financial expert, Signor Mazuchelli, estimated that more than 8.5 billion lire had been paid out by the Government from 1923 to 1932 in order to help depressed industries (Rivista Bancaria, December 15th, 1932, p.1,007). From December 1932 to 1935 the outlay must have doubled."
--Under the Axe of Fascism, by Gaetano Salvemini (1936).

Thank you, Bush/Obama. :-(

I was visiting relatives in Chicago this weekend and when I went to starbucks to get a good ol’ seattle style coff of cuppy I noticed the “above the fold” articles in all the papers.

It hit me like a brick: They were vilifying the “big banks” and recipients of bailouts as the German media vilified the Jews in the mid-1930’s. Lumping them all together. It was disgusting.

I am no fan of big banks, but it appeared to me that a move was being made to find a scapegoat, as Hitler had to do. Just sayin’.

>>The parallels are amazing.

I couldn’t agree more. Two books that cover that time that really bring this into high relief are Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism and Amity Schlaes’ The Forgotten Man - A New History of the Depression. If you haven’t read both I highly recommend them.

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