Many a university professor during the 1930s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.

F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, page 34

NAZIism is a Left-wing ideology. It was mislabeled “right wing” by Stalin but just about anything is to the right of Stalin.

“9/11 was a consequence of our military presence on Muslim holy lands..”

claims Paul. Sorry, but it wasn’t.

Separately, Paul’s willingness to accept the support of white supremacists and other fringe types (both today and for decades past) also troubles me. Though I am very much a pro-America libertarian-conservative, I never fell for Paul’s spiel and at this point, I’m obviously not gonna.

The first comment in this thread was brilliant…

Once more, Chase descends into babble. I re-read comment #1, and far from it being “brilliant”, it doesn’t even relate to Bruce’s post (which has nothing to do with placing either Hitler or gay issues within the “tribalism of left or right”); nor does it address Goldberg’s point about the shared intellectual heritage of leftism and fascism.

“Liberal fascism” is a reality, not first pointed out by Goldberg, but (I am told) something he does an effective job of demonstrating. I guess some people just want to talk about something else.

Such inflammatory invective is not just anti-Democrat. It’s anti-American.

Which is itself sheer inflammatory invective. Hypocrisy, anyone? LOL

As soon as Hitler and his movement started to gain global attention the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was like a total fanboy. The GMJ kept sending letters from 1933 onward basically saying he’d do anything to join up with the NAZIs so that he can assist in their war against the Jews.

The Germans didnt’start to engage back until 1938 or 39.

In collaboration with each other, the following happened (in no particular time order)

The GMJ raised up two SS divisions of Balkan Muslims

The GMJ motivated after much effort the Concentration Camps to start actually killing jews

The GMJ pursuaded Bulgaria (I think) to send it’s prisoner Jews up north to be killed instead of releasing them in exile as was the plan

In Iraq, the GMJ called for allMuslims to revolt against the UK

The GMJ extracted a promise by Hitler that once Europe was conquered, the German Army wold enter the Middle East and into the UK Mandatory Palestine for the purpose of enabling a Jewish Holocaust by Arab hands

Undoubtedly, NAZI Germany got the idea of affixing a Jewish star to the clothes of jews and other dress codes from Islamic rules of the dhimmi.

Persia changed its name from Persia to Iran in order to impress Germany in 1933. Iran means Aryan.

A lot of Muslims thought Hitler was the Mahdi

The GMJ fled to Egypt after 1945 and spread NAZI legacy to the Muslim Brotherhood

The GMJ is Yassir Arafat’s uncle, and I believe Arafat’s movement has always been jihadist disguised in anti-colonialist clothes.

Kuntzel makes a bold and consequential argument: the dissemination of European models of anti-Semitism among Muslims was not haphazard, but an actual project of the Nazi Party, meant to turn Muslims against Jews and Zionism. He says that in the years before World War II, two Muslim leaders in particular willingly and knowingly carried Nazi ideology directly to the Muslim masses. They were Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and the Egyptian proto-Islamist Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Islamo-fascists, I say. Hat tip to Ace.

If its all motivation then “wanting to help people” or “wanting to stop wars” is important and anyone who disagrees with helping people or stopping wars must have evil motivation.

And I suppose it would explain why so many people think that Iraq would be better, safer, more peaceful, if we left. It’s because we have good motivation for leaving.

The results would *have* to be good.

If you *want* to do good things, then you’re good.

If someone is bad, it must be because they *want* to do bad things.

I was watching some You-Tube… Milton Friedman debates Naomi Kline (I think?) and in one section she’s outright mocking the mere concept of unintended consequences. (They weren’t really debating, she was talking about him and someone interspersed clips of his actual arguments) Milton Friedman, she scoffs, tries to claim that in trying to do good, social programs actually harm people. How stupid can you get! Har Har Har. It’s just so OBVIOUS that you do good by…. ta da!… doing GOOD!

I’m not overstating it. I promise.

When unintended consequences and externalities are concepts taught any FRESHMAN poly-sci student (hey, I only took one year) the idea that someone presenting herself as a serious thinker would scoff at the mere concept that motivation might not determine results is pretty pathetic.

But really, we see it don’t we?

Trying to say that controlling people is fascist, no matter it’s for good reasons and not evil ones violates the notion that motivation drives results and meaning.

Mandatory classes for people who don’t comply to community standards of sensitivity toward gender, race or orientation, aren’t fascist… not because they aren’t mandatory or because they aren’t trying to force people to think in proper ways… but because they are GOOD, because the purpose and motivation for them is GOOD. Because it’s about getting us to treat each other well and it’s about combating hate.

By trying to do good, we do good.

Now, along comes Jonah Goldberg who is putting the word in perspective and there is a battle over the nuances of the meaning.

Because in regards to liberals, you’re not supposed to call a spade a spade. You’re not supposed to be smart enough to recognize what they really stand for and who they really are. When you nail liberals as to what they are and expose their camoflage, they go apeshitspicygonzo.

You just aren’t supposed to pay any attention to the kooks behind the new iron curtain.

Frankly, fascism probably can not be defined as it is a system of government that has survived long enough to develop clear characteristics.

I just thought of a 2×2 matrix chart one could make. On one side, put Totalitarian, vs. On The Way to Totalitarian. On the other side, put Private Property Abolished, vs. Private Property Maintained in Name. Then fill in the squares:

Private Prop, no | Private Prop, si
————————————————————–
Totalitarian: | Communism | Fascism
On the way: | Socialism | Left-liberalism

The chart probably won’t display well, so here it is in text form:

- Communism: totalitarian; abolish private property
- Fascism: totalitarian; keep a ‘fig leaf’ of private property ownership
- Socialism: on the way to totalitarian; abolish private property
- Left-liberalism: on the way to totalitarian; keep a ‘fig leaf’ of private property ownership.

A plague on all their houses!

I see some basic problems with it:

1) It’s a collection of symptoms, not an identification of the essence.

2) The symptoms presented are largely Western, WW2-era entities / factors such as political parties, Keynesian spending, etc. Thus partly obscuring fascism’s long tradition in human affairs.

3) The symptoms would encompass behaviors of legitimate governments, when those are at war legitimately in defense of their people. Thus lending itself to conspiracy thinking. (Hmm… Wild guess… What do you think of Dr. Ron Paul?)

I’ll stick with my definition: Fascism is a species of totalitarianism (the genus), in which (the differentia) private ownership of the means of production is maintained in name, but is so marred by government direction and regulation as to render it useless as a bulwark against that government’s totalitarian encroachments.

And by that definition, the Islamo-fascists are indeed… well… Islamo-fascists. I.e., the Islamic world’s analog / equivalent to the classical Western fascism of your symptom-list. (Plus the fact that some of them really are inspired by Hitler.)