Mussolini-Style Corporatism, aka Fascism, on the Rise in the US

[Demeter]

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. Confucius

One of the distressing things about politics in the US is the way words have either been stripped of their meaning or become so contested as to undermine the ability to communicate and analyze. It’s hard to get to a conversation when you and your interlocutors don’t have the same understanding of basic terms.

And that is no accident. The muddying of meaning is a neo-Orwellian device to influence perceptions by redefining core concepts. And a major vector has been by targeting narrow interest groups on their hot-button topics. Thus, if you are an evangelical or otherwise strongly opposed to women having reproductive control, anyone who favors womens’ rights in this area is in your vein of thinking, to the left of you, hence a “liberal”. Allowing the Overton Window to be framed around pet interests, as opposed to a view of what societal norms are, has allowed for the media to depict the center of the political spectrum as being well to the right of where it actually is as measured by decades of polling, particularly on economic issues.

Another way of limiting discourse is to relegate certain terms or ideas to what Daniel Hallin called the “sphere of deviance.” Thus, until roughly two years ago, calling an idea “Marxist” in the US was tantamount to deeming it to be the political equivalent of taboo. That shows how powerful the long shadow of the Communist purges of the McCarthy era were, more than a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system*), one runs the risk of having one’s hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist, or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression, “Mussolini-style corporatism,” to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a “quiet coup” by financial oligarchs...


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/11/mussolini-style-corporatism-aka-fascism-on-the-rise-in-the-us.html

[fredamae]

1. Why are we reluctant to

have this conversation and talk about the symptoms of this all around us?

[pa28]

2. Excellent work from Yves Smith as always.

I wasn't aware Mussolini actually replaced his legislature with un-elected representatives of corporations. Considering the Princeton study showing ordinary voters have zero efficacy in this county it seems we've developed a friendlier version of fascism. Mussolini just skipped the pretense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_of_Fasci_and_Corporations

[hedda_foil]

3. The author points to a Thom Hartmann piece that I found very interesting.

The Hartmann essay appears below the fold of the above piece.

Snip...

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice-President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?” Vice-President Wallace’s answer to those questions was published in the New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

“The really dangerous American fascists,” Wallace wrote, “are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

<snip>

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,” Wallace wrote. “Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.”

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism, the vice-president of the United States saw rising in America, he added:

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

[LakeVermilion]

4. The Fascist Network:

Fox

Not far behind:

CNN
CBS
ABC
NBC
NPR
and
PBS

[hedda_foil]

6. Indeed.

[ruffburr]

5. So Finally-

People are seeing it, I've been saying this for three years now, Been called everything from insane to conspiracy nut, Thanks for the affirmation, Maybe now people will start Voting and paying attention to politics, Though I doubt it.

[PosterChild]

7. RE: Mussolini-style corporatism

When Mussolini spoke of "corporatism" what he was referring to is a moderate form of guild socialism or syndicalism. Mussolini was claiming that fascism was in actuality the realization of the goals and ideals of guild socialism / syndicalism. He meant nothing that resembles our modern commercial corporations.

http://www.britannica.com/topic/corporatism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html

[Demeter]

9. Well, Corporations have Evolved Since Then

[PosterChild]

10. You miss the point....

.... the italian term mussolini used did not refer to businesses or corporations at all, regardless of their evolution to that point or since. It refers to a socio-economic ideology that is easily recognized as a form of guild socialism or syndicalism

corporatism, Italian corporativismo, also called corporativism, the theory and practice of organizing society into “corporations” subordinate to the state. According to corporatist theory, workers and employers would be organized into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and controlling to a large extent the persons and activities within their jurisdiction. However, as the “corporate state” was put into effect in fascist Italy between World Wars I and II, it reflected the will of the country’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, rather than the adjusted interests of economic groups.

Have a look at the links, they are interesting and informative on this topic:

http://www.britannica.com/topic/corporatism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html

[Demeter]

11. No, I don't miss the point

I am talking about the USA here and now. Whatever came before in other places can be interesting historically, but I want to deal with What Is.

Reality. Deal with it.

[PosterChild]

12. That's fine...

... my post was specifically about the phrase “Mussolini-style corporatism” being used to describe contemporary America. This is a gross misscharacterization. It indicates a very poor understanding of our socio-economic system.

If you want to deal with reality you must have a correct understanding of what it is and is not.

[Demeter]

13. Since I didn't write that phrase, you will have to take it up with someone else.

[PosterChild]

14. Thanks , it is in the title of the op, however. nt.

[Faryn Balyncd]

8. Corporate greed combined with the authority of government => fascism