While my comment was facetious and meant to mockingly point out how we never hear the same defenses used for fascism that we routinely use for communism, it technically is accurate.
Real fascism actually hasn't been tried, because there is no such thing as "real fascism." Even in this thread there isn't anything approaching an agreement on what fascism means. Benito Mussolini certainly had some idea of what he meant by the term, but the term has been used in so many different ways that his system might be more properly referred to as "Mussolinism" at this point to avoid confusion. Besides, if we try to define fascism entirely in terms of what WWII Italy did we will be trying to generalize to a universal concept from a single example, which never ends well. Even if we include WWII Germany into the mix we still don't have enough to work with to define a complete system of beliefs and practices beyond "stuff that kind of seems similar to what WWII Germany and Italy did." Contrast, say, what we can say about democracy or communism or feudalism.
Because of the inherent difficulty of defining exactly what fascism means, coupled with the fact that most people simply don't care (since they only use the word for pejorative rhetoric), the common usages of the term have multiplied and mutated long past the point of confusion. George Orwell was even complaining in the 40's that even by that point the word had essentially become meaningless.
Now that was a good post........
In America today, fascism is usually meant to refer to somebody else.....
Germany for sure and Italy too for those who know a little about history.
Spain became fascist prior to WWII, but Franco kept them out of the war and plodded along for decades with their own Spanish version of it. Hitler tried to gain Franco as a military ally, but failed when Franco dug in his heels and insisted upon neutrality. Franco was the only major national fascist leader to survive the war.
I wrote all that to remind the reader of slight variations on the rule of government by corporate and military interests - fascism. The American version, like the Spanish version, is also slightly different.
In no case, however, has fascism ever displayed a willingness of the government to allow competent elected leadership to guide national policy. The elected government, if such is allowed to exist, is always subservient to the fascist powers. In America these powers have been more accurately defined as the Deep State (*).
Fascism grew in stages in America before its leaders finally succeeded in overthrowing the democratic process.
1933 - Attempted Fascist coup d'etat to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The plot failed, but none of the organizers were prosecuted. Prescott Bush, grandfather of President George W. Bush was one of the plotters.
1948 - National Security Act passed and unified the powers and authority of separate intelligence agencies into a single Central Intelligence Agency. It's first director was Allen Dulles, a man described as being the personification of evil. The phrase 'spook' came to be used to describe CIA field operative agents.
1960 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his final speech to the nation, warned of the increasing power of the military-industrial complex. Ironically Eisenhower had been aware of its growing power during his administration and did nothing to stop it or block it. He realized too late the nature of the monster he had nurtured.
1961 - President John F. Kennedy expresses his intent to disassemble the CIA and begins by dismissing Allen Dulles as director. The Northwoods document (
flying an airplane into a building as a fake attack against America to justify war) is developed by the Pentagon and presented to President Kennedy who refused to authorize an invasion of Cuba .
1963 - President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The Warren Commission was assembled to investigate and report on Kennedy's death. One of its key members was Allen Dulles. The report was published a year later and universally rejected by almost everyone who read it. As a result of Kennedy's death, the United States directed the full weight of its military-industrial complex and its intelligence community into the prosecution of the war in Southeast Asia. During the course of the war the CIA developed contacts and procedures to trade in illicit drugs so as to finance its covert operations.
1985 - Nicaragua war ostensibly fought against Communist Sandanista government was a shadow war illegally orchestrated by the CIA. Despite congressional action forbidding its continuation and withdrawing funding, the CIA gained funding with the help of George H. Bush, the father of President of George W. Bush. The elder George Bush had close ties with the royal house of Saud in Arabia and was able to organize illegal funding and transport of arms and fighters for the CIA. Bush was later rewarded with directorship of the agency. The methods of financing and executing major overt shadow wars were developed during this period. The war against the Sandinistas failed and in the fall of 1985 the United States was officially declared a debtor nation by the government.
2001 - Coordinated attacks in New York City and the Pentagon by airplanes that flew into buildings. Accusations of intelligence community involvement were dismissed despite massive evidence to the contrary. No one was ever punished for negligence and several persons in authority were actually promoted. The 911 attacks justified war and the passage of the Patriot Act a month later which effectively deleted the Bill of Rights from the US Constitution. The war in Afghanistan was also initiated in October to defeat the Taliban (a nationalistic group that had seized power and was in the process of destroying poppy fields, the source of illegal drugs). The first task of the intelligence community following 911 was to secure the poppy fields - their primary source of income for illegal covert activities. The drug trade in south central Asia has flourished since that time.
2003-Present Day - Department of Homeland Security created to secure the US from international terrorism, but is also given broad powers to insinuate itself into any issue person or organization it sees fit to prosecute
with or without judicial oversight.
As of this writing the United States is now a fascist police state. Those that ignore this reality do so to their own disservice.
and that's me, hollering from the choir loft...
(*) The term was originally invented by Recep Erdogan, president of Turkey to describe the members of a failed coup d'etat against him. The term Deep State was adopted by Mike Lofgren in his book of the same name to categorize and define the non-elected powers that govern America. They are the military-industrial complex (term first used by President Dwight D. Eisenhower), the intelligence community (defined and legalized by the 1948 National Security act) and by the Financial cartel (a rather nebulous and ill defined group of banks and super wealthy international families). Together these super powerful groups dictate policy of the US government, subvert existing law to their advantage, plan and execute dilution of the rights of American citizens and engage in unending war - all of which supports and expands the new American Empire.
