I was recently asked about the usual definition of fascism placing it as a right-wing phenomenon, as if Hitler were a conservative or right wing politician or orthodox Christian(!).
Unfortunately, that is the “popular” understanding of the term; so if you are conservative or traditionalist in your beliefs you are liable to be identified as a fascist.
Perhaps the best source to consult in this matter is the classic by F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. In that great work, he makes the obvious observation that the line between fascism and socialism or communism is practically … nil.
The three systems, and their multifarious variants, are undergirded by one constant: total control.
All else is dressing. Communism seeks total control by having the state own all property, or “means of production”; fascism seeks total control by having the state direct or force or threaten all property, or “means of production” to act as directed.
The end result in both cases is the same: totalitarian control of the people and their property. In other words, total control of everything.
In all such cases, Orwell’s definition applies: a boot grinding on our faces forever.
That is the reality.
To attempt to describe fascism as “conservative” or “right wing” is worse than a distraction. It is false and misleading.
Another aspect of totalitarianism — regardless of its provenance — is its complete disregard for the people under its governance.
Totalitarianism — whether fascistic or communistic or socialistic — acts and rules to retain power.
The conservative temper is totally of another world. It acts and rules as an exercise of love. It governs with an inchoate understanding that we are responsible not only for those living today, but for those who have gone before us — who have bequeathed us a wonderful heritage — and for those who are yet unborn — who will carry on on our behalf long after we are gone.
Conservative temperament sees our time on this earth as a trust. A responsibility to not only preserve what we have inherited, but to improve upon it and to pass it on to our descendants after us.
It is a disinterested temperament — it cares more for those to come in the future than it does for “me”.
So when we learn of the former self-described socialist president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, commanding his loyalists to block Bolivia’s major roads, starving out the populace, in order to prevent his arrest on charges of pedophilia, we should not care whether he is a leftwing or a rightwing maniac.
What we should understand is that he is determined to return to power.
And when we read that the self-described socialist president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, is providing the vehicles to ensure those road blockages, we should readily understand that Mr. Maduro is also a man consumed with retaining power. Whether he is a “socialist” or a “fascist” is irrelevant.
He and Morales are totalitarians.
And the totalitarian temper is not limited by forms of governing. It is found in monarchies, dictatorships, democracies, republics, fill-in-the-blank.
In all such cases, the attitude is: the people be damned.
Both Bolivia and Venezuela are suffering greatly. But this does not concern the powerful in those countries.
Their concern is to retain power.
So the blockades have caused over $1.3 Billion in damages to the economy of Bolivia plus untold deaths and wounded by the violence of the Morales thugs. All the while Venezuela’s ruling elite focuses on assisting an ally more than on liberty for her own people.
So, instead of asking whether a politician or a pundit is right wing or left wing or fascist or socialist or communist, a better question or analysis is: does that person promote or pursue more liberty for the people or does he or she promote more regulations and controls.
That is the litmus test: liberty or tyranny.
Ah. One more thing: an irreligious people cannot govern itself. Therefore, such a people will confuse “more liberty” with “more libertinage”, which always results in more tyranny.
Pray for the people of Venezuela. And Bolivia.
At a wholesale market in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, farmer Damaris Masias watches through tears as 10 tonnes of tomatoes that she spent over a week trying to get through roadblocks are tossed into a bin (Barron’s)