Obama, Mussolini and Fascism

In recent days Fox News in the United States, and some media in Canada, have suggested that Obama's recent economic steps are not socialist but rather fascist. Since our government (and virtually every other government) is following the same course presumably Harper's economic steps are fascist too.

I suspect this is not meant as a positive thing.

Of course, while fascism, and the related but different Nazi movement, are properly seen as unique evils, that does not mean everything they did was wrong. Hitler's War on Cancer was a good thing -- even if done for the wrong reasons.

The reason we see Mussolini as evil is not because of his economic policies. Similarly, Hitler's economic policies, before the War at least, are not the reason he is hated to this day. Take away the racial policies, the aggressive war, the attacks on freedom of speech and assembly, the termination of democratic and religious rights, the limits on civil rights, the restoration of the death penalty for minor crimes and the attacks on the disabled and Hitler wasn't such a bad leader; put otherwise, fascism tried to fix the economy in ways not very different from FDR.

Economically, fascism preferred state control to laissez faire. Labour and capital had work together under the direction of the state. The state was the ultimate power and needed to govern the economy for the benefit of the nation as embodied in the corporate state.

For myself, I believe free markets are better than the state at regulating supply and demand but I recognize sometimes the markets need state control. That said, take out the word fascism and the economic concept in the last paragraph is not unreasonable.

Calling Obama's economics fascist is merely name calling.