This full description of fascism was provided to US Army personnel in the European theater toward the end of World War Two, when democracy had finally, and at tremendous cost, was about to defeat fascism and reach a cautious stand-off with communism that would turn into the Cold War. This is from the great Heather Cox Richardson:
The political ideology called fascism grew out of World War I, when former socialist Benito Mussolini rejected the equality that defined democracy and came to believe that a few leaders must take a nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must organize the people as they had been organized during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that businessmen and politicians worked together. And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.
This theory drove the Axis powers during World War II, and in 1945, the United States War Department explained to U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II what fascism was. The government focused less on the ideology of fascism than on its practical outcome.
Fascism, the pamphlet Army Talks explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.” source
And here’s how it’s done in a modern corporate society:
The sickening smiles at the end, between the journalist who asked a tough question and the tough guy who repeated danced away from answering it, are all about access. If you want someone like Jordan on your network, you have to smile and thank him at the end for stonewalling and essentially lying to your audience. Note that none of these guys are ever familiar with anything a journalist asks them about. Then there is this tough guy presidential hopeful Nazi wannabe.
And finally, the State Department’s loyal lapdog to the Leader, presidential aspirant Little Marco, Viceroy of Venezuela, scourge of Cuba. He announces that the US wants to abolish the The International Criminal Court. The ICC was set up by idealists and humanists to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It was created in response to the atrocities of the Nazis and the Japanese, and others, including the Soviet Union, during World War Two.
The US has never been bound by the ICC, Reagan explicitly repudiated its jurisdiction over the US when the ICC tried to hold him accountable for his illegal mining of Nicaragua’s harbor to aid the far-right Contras — who he also illegally gave millions to through the sales of munitions to Iran (Iran-Contra “scandal” — see Bill Barr, Act I) something barred by American law.
Trump hates the ICC because, theoretically, or even just symbolically, it could still move to hold him accountable for various war crimes, including the ongoing killing of over 200 fishermen at sea (accused, without evidence, of drug dealing — not a capital offense except in Duterte’s Philippines something he’s facing trial for at the ICC) and the reckless, pitiless murder of 165, mostly girls, at a girls’ school in Iran.
Getting rid of the International Criminal Court is the dream of every war criminal and mass murderer. If you think these people aren’t Nazis, think again.
Sorry, WordPress won’t allow me to embed this short video. Here’s the link:
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