I wonder how many "Americans" know what " Fascism" is, let alone know what it looks like?

[Stuart G]

Last edited Sat Sep 24, 2022, 06:21 PM - Edit history (10)

As a high school teacher (now retired) I spent a week talking about the "Rise of Fascism."
Also showed the film, "Night and Fog" about the Holocaust. No doubt the most horrific film
I have ever seen, and that film is totally real & truthful.

Wikipedia Review of movie "Night and Fog":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_and_Fog_(1956_film)


Reviews at IMBD, Internet Movie Data Base :

My review is 7th down....

"Most Powerful Movie Ever Made" .....by stuartpiles
I reviewed it November 16, 2004

Night and Fog reviews:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048434/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

Yes, it is available to watch somewhere on the internet, or probably at your library to take out if you desire
to watch it at your leisure. Be warned: this movie is quite sad and horrific..and totally truthful and real.
.................................So, if you don't know what concentration camps looked like, this film is it................
..................................and you will never, NEVER EVER FORGET THIS 30 MINUTE FILM.

Yes, it is on this thread ....entire film...post number 8 by Cerridwen
Yes, you can watch this film now, at post 8...yes, you are warned again. "Horrific real movie of actual events"

.......LAST 10 MINUTES IS HORRIFIC......(some filmed after U.S. army took over concentration camps)

[RKP5637]

1. It seems quite a few Americans missed a bit of high school. I think quite a few have

no concept of what it is ... and living under it.

[LakeArenal]

2. Or spell it...

[Mr.Bill]

3. T-R-U-M-P

[LakeArenal]

5. Ah yes....

[Ferrets are Cool]

4. In my mind, not nearly enough.

[RKP5637]

6. Also, it seems quite a few Americans have never had a civics course, or have

forgotten everything. They don't even seem to understand the functioning of the US government. I mentioned this to someone one day, and their remark was ... yes, it would be great if schools have courses on politeness.

[WarGamer]

7. Fascism... by definition... is no different than 1000's of years of human "culture"

20th Century Italian "Fascism" is just "rinse and repeat" from the Roman Empire 2k years earlier. And ancient Greece before that.

In fact... I'd argue pretty much EVERY world power prior to the 17th Century was "fascist" by modern definition...

Hell even Trotsky claimed that Communism and Fascism, despite ideological differences were "symmetrical" .

Fascism is the overused word of the year for 2022... there's nothing new, unique or novel about it.

[Stuart G]

9. Fascism equals ..."Total Dictatorship" if that is what you are saying. But Hitler's "Fascism"

had certain characteristics, which I will not go into at length. One particular characteristic was
complete destruction of Jews and Russians. (27 million Russians were killed in World War II)

[WarGamer]

10. You mean like the Romans and Carthage?

Substitute Jews/Russians for Carthaginians.

Trust me... nothing new here.

[LeftInTX]

12. Yes fascism started in Italy

And was pretty much a way to reinvigorate national pride in Italians and bring back the "good old days" of the Roman Empire etc. It was done at the expense of other ethnic groups. However Italy was pretty much backwater already and it could not be compared to Germany. Yes, there were Jews and Muslims and Protestants in Italy,, but I would compare Mussolini's Italy to Erdogan's Turkey.

In 19th Century Germany, there were many scientific and technological advances. It was the home of Albert Einstein etc. There was no reason for Germany to want to go backwards,. Jews did not present a threat to anyone. As a matter of fact, Germany needed Jews to progress as a world leader.

I read in Time, that QAnon is more like Nazi Germany's line of thinking than fascist Italy. Nazism is full of crazy, bizarre theories. All of the Nazi theories were detrimental to Germany. They completely boggle the mind.




My family were Aremenian genocide victims by the Ottoman Turks. However, the thought process in Turkey at the time, was more like Mussolini's Italy.

Yes, there were conspiracy theories about Armenians. However the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and Armenians were a scapegoat. Christians were seen as having western influence..( And to some extent it was true. Christians in a Muslim society prior to newspapers,trains and telegraphs could be kept away from Europeans. But when you bring in technology, western influence is possible

Germany was doing fine and then it decided to turn bizarre. It boggles the mind. They are completely void of logic and are basically UFO abduction type beliefs. However, I think like Qanon, that was part of the plan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

[Kaleva]

17. Mussolini wasn't a total dictator

The head of state was the King and Mussolini himself was voted out of power by the Grand Council and was later arrested under the order of the king.

[Cerridwen]

8. I found it on Vimeo with English sub-titles - link below

Would have posted sooner but I watched it first.

https://vimeo.com/189672641

[Stuart G]

11. Watch entire film, Night and Fog, at post number 8, directly above this one

[secondwind]

13. That was tough to watch, tougher than I thought it would be.

[Alpeduez21]

14. Americans don't know what socialism is

There’s no way they understand fascism

[Stuart G]

16. "Socialism"...we don't have any of that? do we?

Public School K -12
Free Libraries
Very Cheap Water mostly around the U.S.A.
Very Cheap local colleges
Free police and fire protection
Very inexpensive driver's licenses

of course none of that is....."socialism" Is it?...Can't be.

[Kaleva]

15. Nazism is a subset of fascism and there are differences

When people here talking about fascism, it appears to me that people are actually talking about nazism and not the fascism that one found in Italy, Argentina, Chile , Spain and other nations.

https://www.heeve.com/modern-history/difference-between-fascism-and-nazism.html

If one is going to refer to Hitler, then one ought to talk about nazism. If one is talking about fascism, then references to Peron, Franco and Mussolini would be appropriate.

[demigoddess]

18. when I was a kid, there were a lot of WWII movies(black and white) on tv. I usually caught them

in the summer time vacation. Some of them were not very upbeat. Some were close to the truth. And they recently had Ken Burn's US and the Holocaust on PBS.No excuse not to know.