Quote notes (#59)¶
John Michael Greer on the triumph of fascism (spot on):
National socialist parties argued that business firms should be made subject to government regulation and coordination in order to keep them from acting against the interests of society as a whole, and that the working classes ought to receive a range of government benefits paid for by taxes on corporate income and the well-to-do. Those points were central to the program of the National Socialist German Workers Party from the time it got that name— it was founded as the German Workers Party, and got the rest of the moniker at the urging of a little man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache who became the party’s leader not long after its founding — and those were the policies that the same party enacted when it took power in Germany in 1933.
If those policies sound familiar, dear reader, they should.
That’s the other reason why next to nobody outside of specialist
historical works mentions national socialism by name: the
Western nations that defeated national socialism in Germany
promptly adopted its core economic policies, the main source of
its mass appeal, to forestall any attempt to revive it in the
postwar world.
(via @PuzzlePirate)
ADDED: A point of clarification and a question:
Fascism isn’t a problem because it triggers scary feelings about the Nazis. It’s a problem because it’s running the world.
Question: Is there anybody among the critics of this contention
who seeks to defend fascism against sloppy criticism and ‘spin’
who doesn’t also want — at least partially — to defend elements of
socialist governance?
The sample size of the commentary so far is too small to tell, but
it’s looking as if the answer is ‘no’. If so, it would suggest
that Hayek and even (*gasp*) Jonah Goldberg are right in
suggesting that the fundamental controversy is about
spontaneous social organization, and not about any
unambiguous argument of Left v. Right.