https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/11/the-problem-with-mussolini-and-his-trains/507764/
“When you are trying to convince America that its new leader is not a fascist,” New York Magazine’s Margaret Hartmann and Chas Dannersuggested recently, “it’s best not to make any Mussolini references.”
Too late. That advice was directed at former Cincinnati mayor Ken Blackwell, a member of the Trump transition team. Blackwell just assured the Wall Street Journal that Reince Preibus, the RNC chair picked as White House chief of staff, would “utilize his personal connections with the speaker [Rep. Paul Ryan] and others, to make the trains run on time.”
Like other Italian Fascist-era coinages (turns out “drain the swamp”was a Mussolini thing, too), Il Duce’s timely trains are getting a workout these days. But, until recently, most Mussolini comparisons were being made by Trump opponents trying to remind American voters about the perils of embracing cartoonish autocrats. During the campaign, Gawker baited the GOP candidate into retweeting a Mussolini quote, and many others noted the parallels between the two characters, often packaged with the president-elect’s admiring comments about modern dictators. Now that sci-fi speculation about President Trump has broken into the real world, perhaps it’s time to finally confront the minor-but-enduring falsehood about Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his punctual trains.
Obviously, American fascism is not now, and will not be in the future, like past fascist regimes. Sure there might be similarities, but we shouldn't be swept away by them.
ReplyDeleteFascism, in the broadest terms, is about government intervention in business, without the government actually taking over. Communism is where the government takes over and on behalf of the "people" now owns everything.
In that sense, both parties, Democrat and Republican, are quite fascist. For example, the Democrats want to force people to not discriminate on hiring transgenders. I don't know about anyone else, but that's just creepy to me to have a man wearing a dress answering the phones at the office.
That's why I prefer Republican fascism. Republicans tend to have a hands off attitude to governing. So I would expect that to translate into laissez faire fascism.
My fear, and it's a Bernie Sanders based fear, is that Leftist fascism will morph into communism.
trade war us hands off behavior
ReplyDeleteprotectionism is hands off
trump is actually an old fashion Democrat
Really? Elaborate
ReplyDelete