Posted inEconomics / Fascism / Opinion / Politics

What is fascism?

In modern world, when wealth and power of a country is concentrated in a few businessmen who control the government then that political state is called fascism.

You may think that this definition seems simple. Because when we hear the word fascism, a lot of horrible pictures will come into our minds. Without considering those horrible things how can I define such a simple superficial definition? That criticism is natural. Not only that, as per this definition most of the countries should be fascist countries. But we don’t call them like that. So this definition needs a thorough analysis.

Does democracy is true democracy

Let us start with this criticism. The meaning of democracy is rule (ആധിപത്യം) by the people(1). In that system we give our vote to one person and elect the person with most votes. You informs your issues to that person. He/she then take it to parliament. Get approval. Then implements at your place. Similarly the decisions government takes is presented in the parliament, representative takes it back to your place. Conducts public hearing. People will take a decision whether to vote it in the parliament or not. Then the elected representative will vote it in the parliament. This should be the way democratic government to work.

But in reality there was no such people power system existed in this world till now. (2) instead of that parties publishes their promises. That may be evolved from democratic discussions with in the parties or created by leaders themselves. People will elect a party or group of parties whose promises are appealing to people. Once in power these parties may implement these promises or do something other they really like.

(3) Other than these two modes there is another form. A different kind of invisible people who are not members of any party and don’t have any responsibility to people will create programs for these parties. They will select candidates. They create social approval for these candidates using cleaver PR tricks. After winning the election these these invisible people will implement their programs using these representatives.

For example there is an organization named American Legislative Exchange Council in US. US states pass 24,000 of that are written by them. It’s members are State legislative members, conservative thinkers, corporate representatives etc. Protect interest of rich and corporates, increase profit are the main agenda of this organization. Quarter of state legislative members are part of it.

The democracy in most of the countries is of this last type. I repeat, Fascism is a condition, when a few businessmen control a country in such a way that it’s wealth and power getting concentrated to them.

Apoliticized Fascism

Most of the people call brutal and violent dictatorships as fascism. But when we call that dictatorships as fascism we cannot understand why that happened, how it works etc. We put all blame on one person’s, the dictator or leader, behavior and become fools. We may somehow can stop it by paying heavy price, but after sometime it may come back. Like we are all now facing the same 1930 moment.

Without understanding the problem we cannot solve it. So we have to throw away these kind of petty analysis and start scientific analysis. Without isolating the issue from its surroundings study its totality. if you look it in that perspective you can see that fascism is nothing but pure capitalism without mask of democracy. In another words we can say that fascism is the real name of capitalism. Imperialism of modern times.

They did not came for me

But we will not feel this as fascism. Because even during this time democratic institutions may be working. Citizen rights and freedom may not be blocked. But it is a peak point. As far as capitalism can maintain its profit, there will not be any issue. That society will stay at that peak point. How long that state remains is just a luck. You have to realize that fact. Because next stage will be brutal violent phase. (you have to ask why, will talk about it later)

There is no relectance for democratic governments for having friendly relations with fascist governments. the fascists and dictators like Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, Suharto etc were worshiped by leaders and wealthy of democratic countries like US, UK, Canada, Sweden etc. They respected these fascists by calling them “admirable gentleman”. Without supporting democratically elected government of Spain’s request, they supported Franco. More than 20 corporates and banks like IBM, Texaco, Ford, GE, Coca-Cola, Sullivan & Cromwell, and J. P. Morgan had industrial-financial relation with fascists governments. These relations were live even while during the World War II. They sold weapons for both sides. When US were bombing Germany, they excepted these corporates. With all these we can understand how close relation they had with fascists.

As the famous German poem, “First they came for the Communists, And I did not speak out, Because I was not a Communist”. But they are fascist at that time. When they are forcing child labour, giving low wages to women, owning women body, polluting the environment, selling weapons, creating global warming, privatizing health care and education, concentrating wealth all of these time they were fascists.

At that time they had a mask of democracy. So we did not see them. But there were lot of warnings. We ignored those. May be those were not directed to us, or may be we were distracted or both. But there is no point in worrying about fascism when it really hurts us.

Fascism is not a bad person. It is a process. It is a system. A system in which wealth and power are concentrated to few businessmen. It is the end state of capitalistic cycle. If we pay huge price with our life we may can destroy it. But if that is for putting a democracy mask again, then that cycle will be repeated. So can we do better than capitalism, that is the question.

[To be continued …]


Written by: Jagadees.S

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