Though I have to agree that his definition does align well with Fascism conceptually. This also makes Stalin’s Russia seem rather fascist (not unrealistic, I think.) And it agrees with Evola’s critique of the movement (in Italy in this case) being very ‘mass’ while technically not being ‘democratic’ – a demotic system without all the need for that fancy democratic machinery; a democracy of direct feeling.

IMO Archdruid Report is a…strange blog to put it mildly. I certainly don’t agree with or endorse anywhere near everything he writes. BUT – his series (4 parts) on “fascism and the future” is one of the better-done ways of handling this subject.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/02/fascism-and-future-part-two.html

The question is why isn’t that good enough for everyone else? Fascism now just means politically bad and evil, and so its definition has to be stretched to accommodate everything bad and evil, which leaves it predictably muddied.

Everything else and since then, as Orwell explained, is using the word as a generic insult and derogatory, conveniently untethered from any need to describe or align with reality, and a punching-bag-word. Indeed, this constantly incoherent, inconsistent, and insouciant use is precisely why it’s become linguistically impossible to define the world descriptively. So, if one is going to have to rely on prescriptivism by necessity, then return to the source, and those writers will explain their ideas for us completely adequately.

The trick is that nobody pridefully calls themselves ‘fascists’ anymore, and so the term is used by people attacking a ghost enemy. That’s a recipe for abuses that suffocate the proper uses. Another hint is that, when exposed to the originally published ideas of fascism, the other leaders of the world hardly recoiled in immediate horror as they would today.

This whole approach is like trying to understand the tenets of some eradicated original schism of Christianity by asking a 13th century European about it, and being told about, “The psychology and behavior of the kind of people who tend to become heretics.”

Um, no, that’s not the question that was asked. It’s worse when that original sect left entire books trying to explain themselves and what they thought and why they acted as they did – not to mention the contemporary books of their observers and critics – and everyone treats those books as if they are barely relevant to the question of what the schismatics actually believed, or how their hated name should properly be used these days, which has devolved into a mere swear word.

‘Isms’ are about ideas. For instance, looking at this absurd definition really tells us nothing at all about who is in charge, what powers they have, and the relationship of the government to, and its power over, the markets and the means of production.

And what about some uncomfortable comparisons to present day ‘mixed economy’ governments? What if their extolation of democratic values is, for all intents and purposes, a mirage?

Finally, I don’t even think the definition passes its own Historical test. If the Italian fascists weren’t fascist, nobody was, but they weren’t any more obsesses with political ‘internal cleansing’ than anybody else dealing with certain threats, and especially the Communists. In that respect, American WWI-era anti-Syndicalism laws sought the exact same amount of ‘internal cleansing’ and suppression of the crazy commies because of their tendency to shoot and bomb people alongside their ‘merely political’ activities.

The whole approach is bunk.

Cleaned up. I think we can get the DailyStormer kids to agree with this.