BartSimpson BartSimpson:
shockedcanadian shockedcanadian:
Disgusting. Time to start shorting the Phillippines economy, seems they've got way too far right into fascist territory.
Fascism is a left spectrum political philosophy that is sometimes seen as an intermediary between capitalism and communism.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html$1:
As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie.
It's an economic system. That nationalistic socialists utilized the system does not mean that every nationalist is also a socialist bent on imposing a fascist economic order.
Fascism is actually on the far right of the political spectrum although it is not capitalism.
Consider that every known fascist government that has existed -Italy, Germany and Spain in the eatly 20th century and various Latin American countries later on:
1) always declared socialists, communists and other "leftists" to be enemies of the state and outlawed/executed/imprisoned members of those parties
2) were often fighting left-wing insurgencies supported by communist countries like USSR and Cuba
3) had FRIENDLY relations with the USA and multinational corporations from capitalist countries, including receiving arms and financial support
The philosophy of fascism is also anathema to socialism and communism. Like other right-wing movements, fascism exalts:
1) A rigid class system where a wealthy hereditary aristocracy not only controls private industry but also the government, thus blurring the lines between business and state as you mention but not in the same way as communists would. Leftists in contrast aim to abolish the aristocracy and at least in theory create a classless society with industrial activity managed as a public resource.
2) Organized religion, usually with one particular religion (often catholicism) effectively serving as the unofficial state religion. Left spectrum is usually Atheist or at least agnostic and often views organized religion as a tool of right-wing oppression.
3) Single national ethnic and religious identity and contempt and scapegoating of minority ethnic/religious groups. Socialism and communism, probably due to the fact that the Soviet Union had a large diverse population, didn't really care about eliminating ethnic minorities, the only thing that mattered was loyalty to communist principles and the party. "Universal brotherhood" is a central theme of socialism/communism. In the USSR, a comrade was comrade was a comrade no matter what ethnic group a person came from, so long as people were loyal. Yes there were persecutions and forced relocation but these were largely due to internal political power struggles and the paranoia/temperament of individual dictators like Stalin. But note that the USSR didn't promote "Russian" identity only Soviet identity and Stalin himself was not Russian but a Georgian.
4) Social conservatism - in addition to supporting religion, fascist regimes support "traditional" values and gender roles Women as stay at home housewives, men as the sole breadwinner and head of the family, etc. Anyone not promoting a Leave It To Beaver lifestyle may be considered a subversive. In communist and socialist countries, women and men were more likely to be equals although every country is different. The Soviet Union had female tank commanders fighting in WW2 and women more quickly rose to positions of authority than in western nations. What mattered more than gender was whether a person was a good communist and loyal party member; "universal brotherhood" more or less included women. As for homosexuality, I'm not really sure how the commies considered them, probably not well but overall they seem pretty silent on the issue. Fascists on the other hand were virulently anti-gay and actively persecuted them as subversives.
5) "Restoring the Golden Age" rhetoric - like the right wing, fascist ideology is based on the idea that they will return the country to some past golden age that once existed but was ruined by minorities and subversives described in the points above. Fascism promises to "cleanse" the nation of the subversives with extreme prejudice, and return the nation to its former glory. Communist/socialist ideology is the opposite: there is no past Golden Age; the past contains nothing but a history of oppression and the Golden Age is something in the distant future which they hope to build over many years.
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