[cpfc12]

(Original post by EssexDan86)
Not sure I agree completely about the whole EU thing. Yes it's a concern that national laws and identities are eroded, but the economic benefits of being part of a huge free-trade bloc are enormous (and far more beneficial to us than all the waste of money stories the Daily Mail digs up).

The fact that we're in the EU is the reason a LOT of foreign companies from Asia, the US etc have set up factories and offices here, as it gives them a foothold in Europe and access to the whole market, without trade barriers. If we hadn't joined in the 70s, we'd probably still be suffering a lot more in terms of mass unemployment from old inefficient industries.

Up the Palace, by the way!

I understand were you are getting at, but why can't we replace the european union with a european economic commission, like we had similar to the one in the 50's and 60's. I don't see the point of everything beyond the maastricht treaty, apart from cabal of anti democratic ogliarchs who want to centralise power. If you ask me the problem with u.k politics is centralisation of power, lets not even get started with the EU.

And are you a palace fan !!!
new season two weeks away.

[ukip72]

Let's not worry about fascism until it actually becomes a political force, which it isn't. Though if your worried about any form of dictatorship then the EU is already well established.

GSTQ

[anarchism101]

(Original post by EssexDan86)
Also, didn't fascism originate as a labour movement originally? The Nazi party was not the party of the super rich and aristocrats, but of ordinary workers. The right wing elites in 1920s Germany had their own party, the DNVP. Hitler himself would have hated insitutions like the Bullington Club and the aristocracy.

The Nazis originally attempted to be a workers' party. That attempt failed pretty poorly. After Hitler got out of prison in 1924, they reinvented themselves to try and appeal to two groups - the middle classes, and the thousands of ex-soldiers who knew no other life than the army but were banned from it by the Treaty of Versailles' restriction of the German army to 100,000 men. Originally big business didn't support the Nazis, but they began to move towards them in about 1930 when the Nazis started doing well in elections.

[Kibalchich]

(Original post by walkingbeard)
For the key points of fascism, you must look at the fascists: Benito Mussolini said that fascism was 'the merging of state and corporate power'. That doesn't (just) mean that state and industry merge, but that all corporate entities merge into the state - members' clubs, youth clubs, community associations, trade unions.

Too much attention is paid to Italian fascism's most obvious symptoms - the closed heirarchy of leadership, the use of paramilitary squads to beat down political opponents and suppress dissent.

But those things are also symptomatic of the society that fascist Italy inherited. At that time, Europe was rife with extreme poverty, and correspondingly highly militant trade unions; significant numbers of young European men were involved in military occupation and colonial matters.

In our current political climate, there has been absolutely no need for a fascist to use a hit squad. They smile for the cameras instead.

Now, in the UK today, I don't think that any of the three main parties is currently particularly fascist, although the threat is always most present in the Labour Party. At a basic level, the key difference between a socialist and a fascist is one of democracy and class analysis on the one hand, and authority and one-nationism on the other.

That is why I believe that the greatest threat to British freedom in recent times has not come from the Conservative Party (which is objectionable in its own way), but from Tony Blair's Labour Party. Blair's MO was absolute authority and he required obedience. He was rightly accused of a presidential style of Government, keeping the Cabinet under his thumb. Under his leadership, the Government introduced more new crimes than all there had been before. He was renowned for his cast-iron grasp on the media and for allowing unprecedented fraternisation between big business and Government. He crushed Whitehall.

If you look below the surface, the fascist analogies become more apparent, both in the ideology and in the practice.

The guiding light behind New Labour is the work of the sociologist Anthony Giddens. One of the key concepts in what is considered by some, his holistic view of society, is the Third Way. The Third Way has been a key concept in fascism right from the beginning - a third way, not capitalist, not communist, acknowledging what it considers the best aspects of both, and trying to formulate an ordered society without class antagonism.

On the practical front, New Labour's malign influence could be felt nowhere more strongly than Glasgow, where I lived for several years. Fully buying in to the New Labour ideas of private financing and partnership between the state and community groups (corporatism in the language of 20th century fascism), the City Council sold all its housing to an arm's-length management company, Glasgow Housing Association (GHA). The stated intention was to further transfer the stock to local housing associations some time down the line.

In the mean-time, the local housing associations did a lot of the administrative work for GHA and part of that was looking after things like repairs. For each area there was a local residents' group to control this in partnership with the local housing association. Each group was filled with local New Labour cronies, who were often the same people who ran the local Community Councils. Neither the tenant groups, nor the community councils ever advertised their meetings, or elections, or the fact that hundreds of thousands of pounds were technically waiting to be spent on repairing run-down estates.

Eventually, many of the GHA housing stocks were knocked down. The land was sold to local private housing associations run by New Labour cronies.

Corporatism is the essence of fascism. Racism barely comes into it, and neither do the hit squads.

Hmmmmmm. A few misunderstandings there. First of all, that Mussolini quote doing the rounds of the internet is of dubious providence. Can you find a primary source for it? I can't.

You're also misunderstanding corporativismo. It doesn't mean the merger of state and corporate power. States and corporations have always been intertwined, this is nothing new, its just capitalism. Corporatism in the fascist sense means that the economy is organised into sectors, with vertically organised trade unions replacing traditional class based trade unions. It is about an attempt to end class conflict by bringing classes together to co-operate for the greater good of the country. Don't forget, that at the time of fascism's rise in Italy, it was a time of very intense class struggle, with mass strikes and factory occupations.

http://libcom.org/history/articles/i...upations-1920/

[tammie123]

You're absolutely right! Just when I thought intolerance towards people of colour had finally dissolved, our current leader reignites this old flame by claiming that 'multiculturalism has failed'. I don't understand how everyone can just ignore this and act like it never happened.

[cpfc12]

(Original post by tammie123)
You're absolutely right! Just when I thought intolerance towards people of colour had finally dissolved, our current leader reignites this old flame by claiming that 'multiculturalism has failed'. I don't understand how everyone can just ignore this and act like it never happened.

No if he said our "inter racial society has failed" but he didn't so you are wrong.
I am not in favour of defending David Cameron, but true diversity is more than skin deep colours and such, its about having a diversity of different opinions.
Multiculturalism is based on the idea of "moral relativity" Its a theory not an absolute truth on how we should live our lives. I like to embrace other cultures, and enjoy travelling, but to say that all cultures are compatible with western societies based on democratic principles, is a different matter completely.

[Scumbaggio]

Didn't a famous man once say that the next wave of fascists would be called anti-fascists?

[Kibalchich]

Did they? Who was that then?