Fascism, then and now

[innonimatu]

This section of the forum seems a bit dead. I'll try to start posting here some light articles and opinion pieces on historical subjects.

One that found today and seems interesting for the parallels between economic ideologies, and more significantly, actions, 80 years ago and more recently.

They say little if anything about the class policies of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. How did these regimes deal with social services, taxes, business, and the conditions of labor? For whose benefit and at whose expense?

In the beginning,Fascism is banal, and to many of us, it is oddly familiar.
Before the rise of Fascism, both Italy and Germany had a robust social safety net and public services. In Italy, the trains were nationalized, and they ran on time while serving rural villages in 1861. The telecom industry was nationalized in 1901. Phone lines and public telephone services were universally available. In 1908, the life insurance industry was nationalized. For the first time, even poor Italians could ensure that their family could be taken care of if they died a premature death.
[...]
Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister in October 1922. Nazis rose to power in 1933 in Germany. Mussolini convened a meeting of his cabinet and immediately decided to privatize all the public enterprises. On December 3, 1922, they passed a law where they promised to reduce the size and function of the government, reform tax laws and also reduce spending. This was followed by mass privatization. He privatized the post office, railroads, telephone companies, and even the state life insurance companies. Afterward, the two firms that had lobbied the hardest: Assicurazioni Generali (AG) and Adriatica di Sicurtà (AS), became a de-facto oligopoly. They became for-profit enterprises. The premiums increased, and poor people had their coverage removed.
In January 1923, Mussolini eliminated rent-control laws. His reasoning ought to be familiar since that is the same reasoning used in many contemporary editorials against rent control laws. He claimed rent control laws prevent landlords from building new housing. When tenants protested, he eliminated tenants' unions. As a result, rent prices increased wildly in Rome, and many families became homeless. Some went to live in caves.
[...]

This one is worth reading (can't say the same of others on the same site...), and it is a short piece. Very interesting how the same arguments, the same kind of interests and the same victims, show up again.

I think it was @Cloud_Strife who complained in strong terms of landlords recently. In recent decades the trend across the world has been for public housing investment to be dismantled and rent controls to be ended. This resulted in huge profits for those already wealthy enough to buy up real estate and rent it, with hedge funds jumping in and pushing these polices from the past. Perhaps a comparison with nazis is apt indeed, but with the landlords being the nazi sympathizers and enablers like they were in Italy and Germany... someone has been pushing governments now to do now the same things the fascists did.

 

[r16]

you in the West are kinda lucky . ln other places the whole bunch of advisors will bundle up and sell the entire Nazi economic programme in a new name , if only ı knew jack about finance and stuff to make a point by point comparative analysis .

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

This section of the forum seems a bit dead. I'll try to start posting here some light articles and opinion pieces on historical subjects.

One that found today and seems interesting for the parallels between economic ideologies, and more significantly, actions, 80 years ago and more recently.



This one is worth reading (can't say the same of others on the same site...), and it is a short piece. Very interesting how the same arguments, the same kind of interests and the same victims, show up again.

I think it was @Cloud_Strife who complained in strong terms of landlords recently. In recent decades the trend across the world has been for public housing investment to be dismantled and rent controls to be ended. This resulted in huge profits for those already wealthy enough to buy up real estate and rent it, with hedge funds jumping in and pushing these polices from the past. Perhaps a comparison with nazis is apt indeed, but with the landlords being the nazi sympathizers and enablers like they were in Italy and Germany... someone has been pushing governments now to do now the same things the fascists did.

That's true. While strong rethorics like ethnic cleansing (or anything to justify massacre, even for the benefits of the oppressed classes or avenge the oppressors done by Communist states) became taboo (and international community took a strong leverage against country that practices such thing with local public opinion cherished these). Such things like Anti-Egalitarism became a new Fascist shell as it is happens here in my homeland.

Did South African 'Apartheid' system a kinda fascism even with limited franchising elections where 'only whites can vote' or is it a kind of feudalism?

 

[Lexicus]

Did South African 'Apartheid' system a kinda fascism even with limited franchising elections where 'only whites can vote' or is it a kind of feudalism?

It certainly took on many of the characteristics of fascism. Any racial caste system of that kind requires strict enforcement which means policing even members of the "dominant" group, which eventually leads to something very like fascism.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

It certainly took on many of the characteristics of fascism. Any racial caste system of that kind requires strict enforcement which means policing even members of the "dominant" group, which eventually leads to something very like fascism.

So in addition to martinomy regulations (wedding, mating) that the ZAR Apartheid System bans interracial matings, and infrastructural segregations. Did the regime monitor whites too and how? how did they steer the whites towards Nelson Mandella's faction? Did the govnermnent ordered assassination of an Anglican Priest Lapsley (that ended up maimed him instead, he losts two hands instead of his life and it shifted his view towards pacifism or harmonism ratherthan Black-sympathy militarism)?