FDR on Fascism

[kentuck]

Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote about fascism: "The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power".


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. That's the definition I was taught.

FDR also knew about old Republican tactics to tear down government protections based on their supposed better ways of doing them, when in reality they just wanted them gone! I noticed that privatizing social security is back from the dead again!

[Igel]

2. This was in the late '30s.

It's unclear that it applied to Germany, according to some analyses the state ran the corporations more than the corporations ran the state.

It certainly applied to the UUSR, where a group (the CPSU, or, rather, it's TsK) owned the government and ran it as their own fiefdom. Subject to what Stalin allowed, when he finally acquired sufficient power.

That's the problem with most definitions of fascism I've seen--they're squishy. The same level of nationalism is fine for one group, but not the one you don't like. The close alliance between government and business is wonderful, unless you don't like it, then it's fascist. You can preach morality all you want and uphold youth as a model of beauty and rectitude, as long as they're in line with your thinking--then it's somehow fascist and corrupt. "We must have a secular society, except Jesus said as we do unto the least of these ..."; "The government doesn't espouse morality, except, well, the OT says to be kind to the stranger" even as it says there shall be one law for Israelite and stranger and that's referring to religious practice and customs.

Even translating "fashizm" from Russian is a bear, because you can be all sorts of things and still be fascist or non-fascist: The dominant definition in the '40s was "anti-socialist", which was morphed to be "anti-Russian." You can be a liberal gay Jew who opposes Russia and you're a fascist, i.e., a Hitlerite. You can be a pro-Russian anti-Semite who burns down heretic churches, insists that gays convert to Orthodoxy or be locked up, and want an authoritarian that controls the press, culture, and education, but in no way be deemed fascist.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

3. I don't worry about it because there's plenty of other words like...

"dictatorship" and "totalitarian" to describe various other abuses.

I've seen people mistakenly use fascism to describe all kinds of dictatorships, though.

Many 'Muricans wouldn't like to hear their government described as fascist by outsiders, of course.

EDIT: To clarify, I don't consider the USA to be fascist by a long shot. It's had some fascist qualities over the years, though.