Fascism
Fascism is a political ideology, practice and religion that seeks national unity through patriotism, collectivism and strong suppression or extermination of any liberalism and opposition. Fascism generally sees the individual as subservient to the group; those who do not accept this are considered as enemies; the dictatorship of the strongly organized group is justified. Fascism usually implies the existence of a at least one strong leader, fuhrer; the canonical texts by the leader are considered as irrefutable true. In such a way, fascism substitutes all the historical concepts of morality with submission to the interests of the patriotic group, expressed by the leader.
The main assumption of the fascistic religion is that the superiority gives namely this group the moral right to dominate over all other people and use all methods necessary to provide such domination: propaganda of xenophobia, terror, racket, taking hostages, the war of extermination, cruelty. These methods, both theory and practice were described by Vladimir Lenin at the beginning of century XX [1] [2]. (See the links for more Russian references.)
In years 1920-1930ths, fascism spread to Germany (and then to Italy), and got its future development. The canonic text on the German fascism, called also hitlerism (or National Socialism), is the book by Adolf Hitler entitled Mein Kampf published in 1925-1926 years [3]. This book is considered as an equivalent of the Bible for hitlerism
[4].
The main enemy is declared to be jews, either by the ethnicity or by their religion. For this reason, hitlerism is also called Nazism. The racial orientation makes the main difference between hitlerism and stalinism (named after Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR), where the dominant group is called proletariat and the meaning of "main enemy" varies from epoch to epoch; first, it refers to the bourgeoisie, then, to kulaks (transliteration from Russian кулак, which means an independent farmer), then, after extermination of farmers, becomes some kind of abstract enemy of the people (Literal translation of the Russian враг народа), a term, which can be applied to anybody: that time, every citizen of the USSR or foreigner could be qualified as "enemy of the people" (justifying the repression). This gave the almost permanent source of slaves for the concentration camps, created in the USSR in 1918; this recourse was limited only by the population of the USSR, making stalinism stronger than hitlerism, at least during few generations.
In many other aspects, hitlerism and stalinism are very close. Their cooperation covered the suppression of the enemies inside the countries (Germany, USSR), the coordinated invasion to other countries
[5],
the export of grain from starving Russia to more prosper Germany and the ideological support
[6].
Such a cooperation lasted until year 1941; then the it converted to war. Since that time, the soviet propaganda interprets the National Socialism as essence of fascism.
The ideas of hitlerism and stalinism are generalized in the book The doctrine of fascism (La dottrina del fascismo) [7], published by the Italian leader Benito Mussolini in 1933. In that book the ideas of fascism are formulated in the abstract form, that can be applied to any country and any epoch; the only need is to choose the appropriate strong majority as the dominant elite, representing the national interests, and to declare some minorities as enemies (id est, victims). This idea generalizes the Russian concept of bolsheviks (transliteration from Russian большевик). Neither stalinists, not hitlerists use the term 'fascism' with respect to themselves. German hitlerists used word Nazi, while the stalinists call themselves bolsheviks of communists; some of them recognize themselves as stalinists (but do not recognize stalinism as kind of fascism).
After the World War II (1938-1945), the hitlerism was condemned and punished; then fascism is not welcomed in civilized countries. In some countries, the book Mein Kampf is banned [8] The ban give the neo-fascists [9] [10] more opportunities: they recycle the fascistic ideas and re-use them without to cite the sources. The groups, united with the collective narcissism, pretend to be "anti-fascists", while they never had red the classic fascists documents and can neither classify, nor even identify the phenomena of fascism in century 21. [11]
Words fascism and fascist are also often used as a pejorative name for people. This was lucidly described by George Orwell in What is Fascism?[12][13], where he described how it was used to describe a huge swathe of political ideologies and positions and is thus it has been rendered fairly meaningless.
In particular, the nashists by themselves use the term 'fascism' with respect to any ideology, different from nashism.
See also
- National Socialism
References
- ↑ V.I.Lenin. Lessons of the Moscow Uprising. (1906)
- ↑ V.I.Lenin. Democracy and dictatorship.(1918) V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, v.28, p.368-372
- ↑ A.Hitler. Mein Kampf (1925-1926)
- ↑ Jim Walker. Hitler's religious beliefs and fanaticism
- ↑ The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939
- ↑ V.M.MOLOTOV. THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT. March 29, 1940
- ↑ Benito Mussolini. The doctrine of fascism (1933)
- ↑ Russia Bans 'Mein Kampf'. [Radio Liberty], March 26, 2010.
- ↑ Zbigniew Brzezinski. Moscow's Mussolini (How Putin Is Creating a Fascist State). Sept. 20, 2004
- ↑ Gavin Knight. The alarming spread of fascism in Putin's Russia, 24 July 2007
- ↑ [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,514891,00.html Anselm Waldermann. The Nashi Movement. The New Statesman, 2007 Nov. 2
- ↑ As I Please: 'What is Fascism?'. The Tribune. Telelib (24 March 1944). Retrieved on 12 April 2014.
- ↑ Also see Orwell's Politics and the English Language which makes similar reference to the pejorative use of 'fascism'.