Al Sharpton is the gift that keep on giving for conservatives. His comment on CNN on socialism is likely to make the top hits for political commercials in the mid-term elections. Sharpton said “The American Public Overwhelmingly Voted for Socialism When They Elected President Obama.”
With lines like this, Sharpton may be the featured speaker at next year’s Tea Party convention.
This is getting to be hard going!
The facists generally took over businesses not for the state but from those who did not fit in with facisms predudices in order to give to those who did fit in. These were usually small to medium family owned concerns.
They did not take over large companies in order to make them state owned, especially parts of multi-nationals.
Facism is generally business friendly, that’s why it’s leaders were often popular in other western countries, particularly the US.
Yes, I know I’m wasting bits here, but one fundamental problem with screaming “that’s Fascism!!!” is that Fascism wasn’t particularly coherent. It was a mashing together of many components – yes, the takeover of government by business interests was part of it, so was nationalism, along with racism, adding in a dose of “traditional values”, lots of propaganda, not to mention the idea of “working up irrational mob anger, then unleashing it at your economic/political opponents.” (As we’ve seen at the “town hall meetings” and recently on the steps and in the halls of congress with spittle and slurs.) In any specific example of Fascism, you’ll find a de-emphasis of one or two of these, and the addition of several “local” components.
So this “Tootie” character is running around screaming that anything (s)he doesn’t like is “Fascism!!!!” By the standard that government control of a private company is Fascism, which “Tootie” is so locked into, my local gas and electric utilities are “Fascism!!!!” Really. Let’s all run in terror from the utility truck. eeek.
Another issue is that while actual Fascist governments certainly co-mingled with multi-national corporations (e.g. Ford and IBM did business with Nazi Germany), our modern world includes truly global corporations that are far more powerful than many national governments. How the co-mingling of powerful global corporations and national/local government plays out today is quite different than it did in the first half of the 20th century.
My point is that because it was never a terribly coherent ideology, and our modern world functions differently than it did 80 years ago, it’s very difficult to overlay the historic concept of “Fascism” onto current events.
(Am I right to infer from this ignorance+stupidity that Glen Beck and his ilk are promoting the idea that what happened in Nazi Germany was fundamentally government regulation of private industry? How many of those $150 “survival garden” seed packs that are advertised on Beck are going to be watered with Gatorade? (“Idiocracy” reference.) )
correction to Mike:
If democrats cared should have read: if leftists cared…and leftists are evil….
Mike Appleton:
If democrats cared about the poor they would have helped them by now. But they don’t care and never will because democrats are evil people by nature. This is why they gave a billion dollars for one rich lawyer to run for president. That’s their vision of charity.
This is why Warren Buffet still hasn’t given up his money to the poor to provide for their health care. This is why Teresa Kerry isn’t living off 100k a year because she gave her wealth to those in need.
No, rich leftists like Soros are not going to give up their money to help Americans in need.
Men and women like this get the government to steal my money to give to the poor so the rich can live like gods and not feel guilty about it.
Buddha:
We haven’t had unrestricted “capitalism” in the main since the civil war. It is screwy to think so. You can use the Marx’s term capitalism, I prefer free market.
FDR created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration which formed a farming cartel that hurt the little farmer. This is still with us today and yet it is idiotic leftists who whine about agri-business. It was democrats who tampered with that industry and gave the advantage to big business which has hurt the small farmer.
Both sides do this, but leftists seem only to complain when the right does it (though I would argue that a right wingers who do this are really left wingers philosophically).
You said socialism is merely a middle road. This is like saying rape is merely sexual activity.
Socialism is state control over the means of production by gunpoint. A free market is controlled by the people producing, buying, and selling freely and by choice. They are not taking orders from government except when contract is violated and a case goes to court. I support this system of contract.
It is government which creates monopolies. Like the railroads for instance. The government created that monopoly during the civil war era. The government now has a monopoly on education, and Obama is on a quest to secure even more federal control over it.
Government is now acquiring a monopoly on health care. It has a monopoly on housing loans and has just seized a monopoly on college loans. This is all fascist, by-the-way, because it is limited to the USA. If we were to seize Canada, for example, and force them into our system (like Russia did to others) then we would call it true Marxism because it is hegemonic. Fascism is the version of Marxism that stays at the local level.
Obama now needs to seize the food supply (the feds already have education (loans), housing (loans), and medicine (insurance)). Obama(and his wife) are busily working towards that goal by advocating command and control power over what we eat by virtue of the power seized with the health care heist.
It goes something like this: it will be criminal activity to be obese since it causes diseases which are costly for the state. Therefore there will be a race for wholesome foods to avoid criminal activity. The food supply is not now prepared to accommodate this race. A few eggs must be cracked. Thus: destabilization of the food supply or the threat thereof.
The health care heist will destabilize the food supply and the government will ride in on a white horse and save us from the chaos it created because it tampered with it in first place.
It is just like how the government created the housing bubble, thereby destabilizing the whole economy because government cannot run the housing loan industry, and then rode in on a white horse to save (not the little guy who lost his house) but the banks the government gave the power of monopoly to!
That’s the democratic party way!
Yeah, and Mussolini was a political genius. That’s why he ended up hanging from a lamp post.
FDR, if he was anything, was a socialist. You know – that concept you either cannot or will not grasp.
“”The broad-ranging powers granted to Roosevelt by Congress, before that body went into recess, were unprecedented in times of peace. Through this ‘delegation of powers,’ Congress had, in effect, temporarily done away with itself as the legislative branch of government. The only remaining check on the executive was the Supreme Court. In Germany, a similar process allowed Hitler to assume legislative power after the Reichstag burned down in a suspected case of arson on February 28, 1933.”
“The NAZI party newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, ‘stressed ‘ ‘Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies,’ ‘ praising the president’s style of leadership as being compatible Hitler’s own dictatorial Führerprinzip.'”
“‘I don’t mind telling you in confidence,’ FDR remarked to a White House correspondent, ‘that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman.'”
That Italian gentleman was Mussolini.
Above Quotes from Wolfgang Schivelbusch
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=311
We are still living under the effects of FDR’s fascist actions. Obama and crew are blazing down FDR’s path and the recent strong development of the police and surveillance state will make the US a fascist totalitarian state. Our only hope is the 10th Amendment.
“America has a dictator”. Benito Mussolini (describing FDR)
It’s a democratic party goal that gets interrupted every four years until all the mechanisms for success are put in place.
Clockwise, we are at 11:45, if midnight is dictatorship.
I know what Al Sharpton meant, but he’s not always the most articulate guy in the room. With respect to Tootie’s hyperbole, I’d be interested in the identification of a single industry that’s been “taken over” by the government. It’s certainly not banking, or health insurance or the auto industry. The truth is that every time the government has ever attempted to level the economic playing field in this country, whether through the enactment of anti-trust laws, consumer protection statutes, labor laws or social security, the inevitable response has been charges of socialism, communism or fascism. None of the dire predictions ever materialize, of course. Take a deep breath, Tootsie. In due course, Republicans will once again be at the helm of the ship of state and will promptly steer a course in the direction of de-regulation, favorable tax treatment for the privileged and cutbacks in programs for the elderly, the poor and the mentally disabled. Then all will once again be right in your world. Life is a circle, but political life is a pendulum.
“Socialists were and are globalists with an eye for international hegemony and aggression.”
Bullshit.
Socialism is merely the middle road between total state ownership (Communism) and an economic free for all (Unregulated Capitalism). Both of the aforementioned economic systems have in recent times led to disaster – both in the former Soviet Union and in the United Stated and now the EU. Greece anyone?
Just like a troll to use a word they don’t understand and then make up a definition to suit their purposes. Socialism – the economic theory, when applied to political systems, is a system where the means of production and distribution are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness rather than market principles. Sounds an awful lot like regulated capitalism, now doesn’t it? Rhetorical. I know from previous experience you’ll just regurgitate more right wing GOP Neocon propaganda to justify the fascism taking place now in Washington and trying to assign blame for it to one party or the other. Partisan hackery is simply a distraction from the real issue and that issue is that corporations now have better access and more rights than citizens. The Constitution reads “We the People”, not “We the Legal Fiction of Corporations”.
Tootie
“Fascism entails the government takeover of private industry”.
You’re only 100% wrong. You described Communism above, not facism. Facism is the take over of government by private industry as is consistantly propsed by the GOP. Since you begin your arguments on a falsehood, or at least a lack of understanding of the facts, everything else you’ve said is irrelevant.
Jericho:
You need clarity of opinion, and you need it bad.
Could you translate your last post?
Maarg: The government take over of private industry is fascism. How many times did you want me to repeat that in order to be more clear?
Fascists were nationalists. This means that they didn’t want to jettison their national character.
Socialists were and are globalists with an eye for international hegemony and aggression.
This is the main difference between fascism and Marxism. One is nationalist (fascism) one is globalist (Marxism). Both are collectivist by gun point who claim the right to take over the operation of other peoples property (businesses).
Tootie: I don’t get the part where you see ‘putting checks and balances in place so private industry does not totally control society and the markets can function’ as a full government takeover of private industry…
There’s this thing… it’s called a nuanced opinion…, you need it bad.
The government takeover of private industry, AKA the workers taking control of the means of production.
So THAT’S facism?!
Swarth: Marxists are never centrists.
Maaarrghk:
You said “I’m confused.”
It’s okay, we will wait for you to catch up.
Hint: Marxism and Fascism are not polar opposites, the are opposite sides of the same coin: collectivism by gunpoint.
francisdane: Actually, Sharpton is a wily clever fellow who could probably give you an exact explanation of what socialism is since he has promoted it for decades.
Jericho:
Fascism entails the government takeover of private industry. What don’t you get about this?
Obama is a centrist maybe slightly left of center but a centrist,nonetheless.
First Obama is a communist. Now he’s a facist. I’m confused.