/edu/ - Education

>>3250
I think dimitrov has the best definition

Made an effort post about this on the main board but now its lost. Basically my take is this: fascism is a flawed concept, as it tries to describe a fusion between two competing and mutually contradicting concepts that try to use each other, or when one of them is just held up as a public ideological mask for the other. These two concepts in my personal pulled-from-the-ass terms would be corporatism and reactionary anarchism.
In short, the former is just a far more authoritarian dictatorship of the bourgeois - willing to curb personal freedoms, use excessive force and compromise on the ideal liberal traditions. In other words it is capitalism in decline, driven to desperation and using all its power structures to maintain the status quo. If we would consider this enough to be "fascist", then of course Mussolini's Italy, Third Reich and Franco's Spain would all still be fascist, however so would be states like Singapore, Pinocchio's Chile and to a large extent modern USA. This also means that "liberal" fascism exists, if the corporate state chooses to use more socially progressive ideology to try and justify their acts with, the Biden democrat-neocon gang might be a good example of this.
Then what about reactionary anarchism? Basically it is a collectivist ideology that values the community above all (which isn't good or "based" by the way), sometimes down to the minute regional level, but more often on the nationalist / race level. It also has a deep desire to revert back to the past, which is perceived as a glorious golden age, and thus it also shares all the batshit insane reactionary ideas of the past. I would actually argue that homophobia and sexism is far less some repressed pathology (though it is often the case with internet reactionaries) and more down to the fact that this was the way the world worked in their glorious vision of the past. Because these beliefs are so fringe, they barely ever came to represent a powerful political force, and even rarer still an independent one. Nazi Germany for the most part was a corporate state, however they, unlike their "fascist" allies, chose a reactionary-anarchist ideology to be the obscuring facade instead, though one can argue that in many case the insanity of the ideology broke through the boundary of corporatist common sense (trains that could be used for supply runs being redirected to concentration lagers). Apart from the Nazies, the only other real example of this that was successful would have to be ISIS and other radical Islamist groups. While they were manipulated a bit by their Saudi handlers, they also are true believers in what they do, genuinely thinking that they can reintroduce the medieval era Caliphate as a utopic Muslim society, and unlike the Third Reich they are the real deal, and not just an ideology used to mask corporatism.
Thus, I'd say, fascism is a flawed term that should be abandoned. Not only does it fail to show the entire story, it is also incredibly loaded term, where you can be certain that most people will interpret it differently.

-Fascism is capitalism that tries to snuff out class struggle by killing communists and promoting "class collaboration" aka porky fucks the proles over and they don't fight back.
-Some examples post 1945 would be maybe Spain, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan.
-Economics. It depends but there's always mass privatization, big public works projects and promoted self reliance. High military spending too obviously.
-Yes fascist countries can be imperialist, undoubtedly. See Italian invasion of Ethiopia or WwII for proof.

>>3273
Other than kinda disagreeing with your post as a whole, I have to ask why use the term reactionary anarchism? I don't see how that has any relation to anarchism as a concept whatsoever, in any form. The only fascists that could be called reactionary anarchist would be those inspired by Mason's Siege, such as Atomwaffen, who see Hitler as proof that state based fascism is unworkable.

>>3350
>The only fascists that could be called reactionary anarchist would be those inspired by Mason's Siege, such as Atomwaffen
Precisely. I call it reactionary anarchism because it is specifically these kinds of groups (as well as groups like ISIS or Soviet-Afghan war era Taliban) that are the purest strain of it. As I said, in my view Nazi Germany is at best a hybrid. In the end it was a porky project and the NSDAP schizos just were the stooges for it. Also they undeniably had some socialist influence in their party politics, so even NSDAP on its own wasn't purest reaction.

>Other than kinda disagreeing with your post as a whole
Could you elaborate why?

>What is Fascism? (or who best defined it)
Fascism is a system of government characterized by:
1) rigid one-party dictatorship
2) forcible suppression of opposition
3) private economic enterprise under centralized government control
4) belligerent nationalism
5) racism
6) militarism

>Some post-1945 historical examples of Fascism.
USA.

&ltRigid one-party dictatorship?
Check. (Republicans and Democrats are the same party: the party of Capital. They only present the illusion of being opposed to each other as theatre for the masses.)
&ltforcible suppression of opposition?
Check. (Ludlow massacre of 1914, 1943 massacre of Black protestors in Detroit, MOVE bombing, COINTELPRO, police brutalization of the Seattle and L.A. protests against W.T.O. globalization in 1999, etc.)
&ltprivate economic enterprise under centralized government control?
Check. USA is ruled by oil and arms-industry corporations, bankrolled by billionaire capitalists with lobbyists infiltrated into every sector of federal government to help carry out their economic agenda.
&ltbelligerent nationalism?
Check. Easily demonstrated by the mass public fervor of patriotic bloodlust, flag-waving and open display of the flag as a symbol on every other house that accompanied the Gulf War in 1991, the bombing and sanctioning of Iraq in the 90's and the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan 2001 (which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks) and Iraq 2003 (which had no WMD's). All of which resulted in the deaths of over 2 million people in those countries, overwhelmingly civilian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR8It6Yr-Sg
&ltracism?
Check. Genocide of Native Nations and enslavement of African-Americans for almost the first full century of its existence, combined with Reconstruction/Jim Crow/lynching/police murder/redlining/prison-industrial-complex including modern slave labor of Black people and modern massacres of them also (Charleston shooting), removing Mexicans from their lands like the Natives (US war of aggression against Mexico) and historical massacres/lynching of Mexicans by the Texas Rangers and modern anti-Mexican and anti-Central American immigrant baiting/repression/violence (Pete Wilson, Prop 187, Arpaio, ICE detention, San Ysidro 1984 and El Paso 2019 massacres), mass incarceration in which black people are much more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted than whites and receive harsher convictions also given the same circumstances; reducing Native Nations to tiny reservations that are still pillaged by mining and oil corporations (not to mention that Native Americans have by far the lowest living standards, highest rates of victimization by crime and even higher rates of incarceration than black people).
&ltmilitarism?
Check. C'mon now. USA has 1,000+ military bases on over 120 countries, carries out coups, bombings, mercenary proxy wars, direct invasions and/or economic sanctions and sabotage of any country or group that fails to comport with the dictates of Wall Street by being socialist or just independent of the West in general (Iran, Cuba, DPRK, Hezbollah, the Palestinian resistance factions, Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Nicaragua, Saddam's Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya, Vietnam, Arbenz's Guatemala, Allende's Chile, Lumumba's Congo etc)

Wow, looks like it ticks all the boxes!

>>3365
This should be updated to say "rigid one-party/anocratic dictatorship" so it includes the two-party dictatorship of the usa