14 Characteristics of Fascism - Lawrence Britt

The Identifying Characteristics of Fascism. 

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. 

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights.
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause.
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. 

4. Supremacy of the Military.
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. 

5. Rampant Sexism.
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy. 

6. Controlled Mass Media.
Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common. 

7. Obsession with National Security.
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. 

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined.
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. 

9. Corporate Power is Protected.
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. 

10. Labor Power is Suppressed.
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. 

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts.
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts. 

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment.
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations. 

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption.
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders. 

14. Fraudulent Elections.
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Dr. Lawrence Britt "Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons is the Optimal Framework for Human Institutions and Ecological Protection

Image
Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons (1990) provides a groundbreaking framework for managing shared resources sustainably, challenging the conventional wisdom that commons are inevitably doomed to overuse and degradation (the "tragedy of the commons"). Ostrom's work is particularly relevant today as humanity faces the dual crises of ecological collapse and institutional failure. Her principles for managing common-pool resources (CPRs) offer a robust pathway for developing human institutions that are both ecologically sustainable and socially equitable. Furthermore, CPR management is synergistic within an overall economic framework that includes Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Land rent Value Taxation (LVT) Ostrom's work is grounded in extensive empirical research, demonstrating that communities can successfully manage CPRs without top-down regulation or privatization. She identified eight design principles for effective CPR management, including clear boundaries...
Read more

Innately Naturally Therapeutic

Image
In a natural-biological environment our working memory is flooded with benign cues which prevent trauma cues from activating, reinforcing and prevailing. The human perceptual-cognitive-emotional system evolved in a specific environment - in rich biological nature, not in the artificial structures of civilisation. Unnatural or poorly designed physical environments or social organisations lead to high levels of mental ill health and it is why forest bathing, sitting around a campfire, living without tech of all kinds, makes us all feel a lot better.  When we take humans out of nature, mental-emotional ill health increases. This is very much Sigmund Freud's Civilisation and Its Discontents . The core channel through which mental dis-ease develops and through which it can be ameliorated is based in the automatic perception and working memory attention capture process . Perception of natural biological phenomena has a strong element of evolutionary based encoding. We have programming wh...
Read more

There is No Such Thing as Common Sense

  The world has become increasingly complex in the twentieth century and even more so in the first quarter of the twenty first. How we deal with complexity both emotionally and cognitively can impact on how we deal with the factual world around us. It can affect our decision-making and make us vulnerable to abuses of power. There are many folk who just don’t seem ready to accept that the world is complex, and they turn to alternative simplistic stories that have no basis in reality. Marketers and politicians play on our need for simplicity, but if you know their tricks you can be forewarned. Complexity accounts for the tendency to accept simple but false narratives instead of continuing the analysis until a robust solution is found. The reasons for this are listed below. This effect is in addition to the most basic tendency to adopt a reassuring belief and then rationalise it. The two tendencies probably overlap - an existing simple and reassuring belief can function as an emotiona...
Read more