The semantics of "fascism"

[Ol' Dirty]

When the left talks about highly reactionary groups, we often label these groups as "fascists," regardless of their actual connection to Mussolini's Italian Fascism. While drawing parallels between the Italian fascists can be useful in argument at times, we should be careful to ignore the differences between fascism and other reactionary groups in other countries. In the strictest sense, even Hitler's Germany was not fascist, but National Socialist, Naziism being a reactionary trend native to Germany. Recently, the left has labelled the Stateside "Tea Party" movement as fascist. Though the group is certainly reactionary, I would like to point certain important differences between Italian Fascism and the Tea Party movement:


Whereas Italian Fascism was authoritarian-totalitarian in nature, the Teabaggers are operating in the vein of "Don't Tread on Me" anti-federalism and states rights. These two aspects are in starkest contrast.

The Tea Party movement is dominated by conservative, pseudo-reactionary White Anglo-Saxon Protestants from the "middle" and "working classes" (petit-bourgoise and proletariat in Marxist parlance, respectively). Italy has had a historically weaker petit-bourgeois class than the United States -discounting, say, during the Renaissance-, and was arguably dominated by the Italian intelligentsia and staffed by members of the working class and peasantry who followed them. Although the Teabaggers have numerous working people in their ranks, there is a higher proportion of small business owners and shopkeepers than in Italy.

Italian Fascism was a result of the long unification process in Italy; because Italy had been so long divided into smaller city-states, Mussolini advocated an authoritarian, paternalistic police state to create unity. Conversely, many people in the United States view the policies of Keynesians like FDR as violations of strong Stateside trends of localism and self-reliance. The main reason FDR gained power is that the Friedmanesque policies of Pres. Hoover had failed to deliver on the promise on upward mobility during the Depression. The Teabaggers are a reaction to centralization rather than a call for it.


There are numerous reactionary groups in recent history who have been labelled as "fascists" by the general left, as fascism is the widely accepted standard of Western reaction, alongside German National Socialism. It is still, however, a misnomer as applied to groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Teabaggers.

I will continue on this later, but I'm trying to articulate that we need to distinguish between genuinely fascistic parties, such as the BNP and Greek military junta, and conservative and reactionary groups such as the Teabaggers and KKK.
Discuss.

[Bonobo1917]

Interesting subject. A similar debate is continuing in the Netherlands: is Geert Wilders just a very right wing conservative with Islamphobia as his trade mark? Or is he a fascist, albeit of a specific kind? I think his combination of extreme Islamophobic racism, his virulent nationalism - all used to build a mass base, an movement-in-the-process-of-becoming -, his preference for authoritarian methods of rule and the fact that he is explicitly a leader figure brooking no opposition within the raaks (his PVV movement knows only ONE member: G. Wilders) , among other things, makes him part of the fascist traditon, broadly speaking.
On Italy: the nucleus of Mussolini's fascists in 1919-1922 consisted of demobilized lower officers, frustrated in their nationalism after a war bringing much bloodshed and little glory. You can't get much more petty bourgeois that thát, I would think...And the main ENEMY of the armed fascist bands was the organised workers' movement. Violent attacks against trade unions and left wing parties were its main activity. Extreme hostilty to the workers' movement is a characteristic of all fascist movements - and something that is, I think, noticeable in both the Tea Party thing and in Wilders' way of operating. That hostility against the organised working class makes fascism useful for the capitalist class -at the time that they see no other option to maintain their rule, that is.
The Greek junta? A right wing military dictatorship, and that is bad enough. Fascism, however, differentiates itsef from 'ordinary' military dictatorship by its mass, mostly petty bourgoeis, base. Fascism is, or tries to build, a movement, on the streets, through the ballot box, usually both. Generals (and colonels) usually don't (Franco in Spain was the exception rather than the rule). This difference does'nt make military dictators better than fascists. But there are different forms of reactionary movements and politics...