Steve Shives - Is Batman Fascist?

[Jonathan101]

It's not about "being scared of being called a Marxist", it's that "Marxist" is used as an insult even to describe people who definitely are not Marxists, and Fascist people who are not Fascists.

Speculating about him being a fascist seems incredibly more pertinent now than what I know about historical presidents. But really what do I know? I'm really not that confident lol, but if you want to throw an example down then I'd appreciate it.

Besides all of the ones who owned slaves and / or partook in ethnic cleansing or started wars to expand US territory?

Well, you've got Woodrow Wilson, who expelled every Black person from government that he could, segregated the ones he couldn't, and the one guy he couldn't segregate or fire was forced to work INSIDE A CAGE. Did I mention that under his tenure, the KKK was revived (against his wishes mind, but more because he was a "law and order" guy than an anti-racist guy, as he was a Confederate sympathiser) and reached between 3-6 MILLION members (today, it's few thousand at most) and during his Presidency there were a number of anti-Black race riots culminating in Tulsa (after he left). He was considered extremely racist even for his time.

Plus a largely successful campaign of culture genocide against German-Americans (forced to stop speaking German- it used to be the second most spoken language in the US-, pressured to changed their names and street names to sound more English, ordinary citizens harassed and sometimes assaulted, and in at least one case a German-American was LYNCHED and the culprits got away with it). Not to mention that during the war, laws were passed to make criticising the government illegal. The leader of the Socialist party campaigned for President while IN PRISON under him.

Warren Harding is considered one of the most incompetent, unqualified and corrupt Presidents ever, a rich dude who got the job because he was good-looking but has no real policies or much experience and was generally regarded as a dimwit by political insiders. He signed laws to restrict immigration, deregulated the economy, added four conservative judges to the Supreme Court, opposed government welfare during the postwar depression, cut taxes for the rich, and oversaw the beginnings of prohibition. He was a VAST improvement over his predecessor but his policies are broadly similar to the modern Republican party.

Herbert Hoover was Presidents during Prohibition and despite facing mountains of evidence that it was a disaster, was largely being ignored and only lead to an explosion in organized crime, he stubbornly remained a big supporter and refused to do anything to repeal it, and it was only undone under FDR. Won't blamed him TOO much for the Great Depression since it was out of his hands, but none of his policies to combat it had much effect.

FDR had policies designed to monitor German, Italian and Japanese Americans, the latter of whom of course (and some of the former) were placed in camps and also had to liquidate their assets, and he too had rules (albeit less severe), had an unprecedented 4 terms in office, refused to congratulate Jesse Owens or other African-American athletes for winning the Olympics despite inviting the White winners to the White Hourse for it, and he was frequently accused of being a fascist and would-be dictator from both the left and the right, starting as early as his second month in office.

Eisenhower issued an Executive Order barring thousands of people from working for the Federal government on suspicions of being homosexual, and there were more firings for being homosexual than for being Communists (though homosexuals were often labelled Communist). There was also Operation: Wetback, a massive effort to deport illegal immigrants from Mexico- over a million were sent back over the border, often ending up in unfamiliar territory without food or water in searing heat and not allowed to take any property with them, resulting in several deaths; many also had their heads shaved to mark them as repeat offenders (apart from the inhumanity it often didn't work).

LBJ oversaw the escalation of the Vietnam War as well as surveillance, harassment and arrest of anti-war protestors. Behind closed doors was widely regarded as a boorish, domineering bully who had a history of kicking congressmen in the shins with steel-tipped shoes, sexually harassing female staffers, adultery, literally showing off his huge dick to the press (nicknamed "Jumbo" or "Johnsons' Johnson") and firing one very loyal staffer on suspicions of being gay. His tenure saw huge race riots and a massive crime wave.

Richard Nixon escalated the Vietnam War even further (after sabotaging peace talks by promising the North a "better deal" if they waited until he was President- this proved to be out of his control but is regarded by many as plain treasonous), with Pol Pot being a side-affect of his "madman" (his words) bombing campaign.He (re-)bugged the White House without telling people, believed in the existence of Jewish-Masonic-Communist conspiracies and plots against him personally, and started the "War on Drugs" that, according to one ex-Nixon staffer, was intentionally designed to target African-Americans from the outset and undermine the recently acquired Black vote, a problem that continues to this day. Let's not get started on the accusations of him being a crook or the Watergate scandal.

Just to name a few. I won't get started on the all of the Governors and Senators who were kleptocrats, in league with organised crime, openly racist, ran their states like dictatorships, or some combination of the above.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

With that taken into account then I would have to defer to the collective of the current generation that most understandably did not really endorse any political positions during that time. Calling your president a fascist is not negated by hypocrisy of past generations. As I was saying, I don't think that the DNC establishment was much riding that train. That's not really something they can really just do when rustling around in the other side's swamp trying to deal with him.

I'm well aware that Obama has borderline initiatives by many people's accounts. And personally I think people should have a critical understanding of the politicians they endorse just for cases like this for instance.

But again, the theoretical consideration of this or that person being Fascist is heavily pedestrian and doesn't have to be defined by idiosyncratic and pathological partisan behavior. I don't believe I've been contradictory to that regard here and I'm not going to control my conduct for the slippery slope of crying wolf as a millennial taking my vote seriously. And I don't really use the 14 point bullet point system anyhoo, which I don't know if I still cross your x-hair there or not.

[Rocketboy1313]

And a "spectrum of fascism" is fine as long as it isn't actually a "spectrum of Nationalism" or "Spectrum of Concervatism" under a "Fascist" name. Otherwise it has the same problems as making a "spectrum of Marxism" (or a right-wing version of a "spectrum of fascism") and trying to cram Anarchists, Socialists, Syndicalists and Liberals onto it as if they all believe in much the same thing.

...but, mostly, I came here just to bash Eco.

Every comment you write has me take you less seriously.
Fascism is centrally about Conservatism and Nationalism.

[Jonathan101]

And a "spectrum of fascism" is fine as long as it isn't actually a "spectrum of Nationalism" or "Spectrum of Concervatism" under a "Fascist" name. Otherwise it has the same problems as making a "spectrum of Marxism" (or a right-wing version of a "spectrum of fascism") and trying to cram Anarchists, Socialists, Syndicalists and Liberals onto it as if they all believe in much the same thing.

...but, mostly, I came here just to bash Eco.

Every comment you write has me take you less seriously.
Fascism is centrally about Conservatism and Nationalism.

I meant that you can be a Nationalist and a Conservative without being a Fascist, and it isn't simply a synonym for the extreme right any more than Marxist is for the extreme left (since there are extreme leftists who are not Marxists).

Fascism is also a broader church than it first appears. There were National Syndicalists, Strasserists, corporatists, laissez-faire capitalists, Futurists, veterans, clerical fascists, anti-clerical fascists, neo-pagans and others in fascist movements. The first British Fascist party was founded by a woman and 25% of British fascists were ex-suffragettes or women despite fascism stressing masculinity. Mussolini was nearly ousted from the National Fascist Party in the early days for not being right-wing enough.

There are prominent scholars who consider fascism to be fundamentally anti-conservative, even if they tend to make strategic alliances with conservatives for power and are generally "less hostile" to conservatives than to socialists (since they still don't like sharing power with them and generally seek some form of radical transformation of society).

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I thought I remember in Hitler's campaign speech that he rallied against conservatism on the basis of them letting corporations run rampant.

[Jonathan101]

I thought I remember in Hitler's campaign speech that he rallied against conservatism on the basis of them letting corporations run rampant.

Well, Hitler was a pathological liar, so that doesn't mean much. What he actually said to private business interests was quite different.

His self-proclaimed economy policy for the Nazi Party was "we don't have one", and sure enough they changed it two or three times over a 12 year period, as well as purging the Socialist wing of their own party in 1934 (albeit for a few different reasons, not simply disagreement on policy), although said wing still had some adherents like Goebbels. One of the most explicitly Socialist members of the party- Otto Strasser- left it because he came to believe Hitler was not a real Socialist (Otto Strasser exerted a bigger influence on postwar Fascist movements).

Both Hitler and Mussolini adopted a laissez-faire approach after first taking power- de-regulating the economy and de-nationalising industry- before adopting more centralised economic planning. Italy took a Corporatist approach (though this is more like a Guild system rather than "private corporations run everything" as the word "corporation" meant something different back then, as well as something different in Italian), while the Nazi's supported Cartels and both adopted protectionism. In Nazi Germany, you weren't going to be in charge of a major business if you were not a member of the Nazi party, and you were expected to do whatever the state told you to...but on the other hand, they were still run primarily for-profit, received lots of bribes and special treatment, and generally were not punished if they failed or even refused to do what the Nazi's asked (whether this would have lasted had the Nazi's won the war is another question mind).

Both of them nationalised trade unions under one roof, which by extension meant that strikes were banned and they were now at the mercy of the state- mind, the trade unions in the Marxist Soviet Union (and not just under Stalin) were only marginally more free.

The biggest problem for Nazi Germany were that they spent way too much money on the military to the point of constantly being on the point of bankruptcy even when they were winning, forcing them to loot other countries just to pay the bills and keep German people fed. It has been called a "vampire economy" by historians. Hitlers' Economics Minister tried to quit his cabinet in protest.

Basically, Fascists can be economically left-wing or right-wing, but Hitler was "economically insane".

Regardless of his feelings on Conservatism, he reluctantly aligned with the far-right DNVP (a pro-business party) to gain a majority of seats in the Parliament (then sidelined and forced them to fold a few months later once his dictatorship was firmly established) and of course the military loved him for lavishly spending on them (though most assassination attempts on him later on would come from Conservative elements in the army who felt he had "outlived his usefulness"). The churches came to hate him because he wanted them subordinate to the state and tried to purge Christianity of all Jewish elements (which means almost all of it) and he grew increasingly hostile towards them as they resisted. Big business was generally friendly to him so long as they benefitted.

At the same time, right-wing political parties, media and organizations were merely banned or folded into the Nazi party apparatus; left-wing and liberal ones were both banned and their members thrown in concentration camps in their tens of thousands and in many cases murdered. Hitler was clearly more hostile to the Left than the Right (though, had the Communists taken power, they would likely have cracked down on the Socialists, who they hated even more than the Nazi's, and the Bolsheviks in Russia fought literal wars against other left-wing factions too), and basically wanted to recreate Imperial Germany but "bigger", "better" and "no Jews"*, which was closer to what Conservatives wanted than what Socialists did- this, though, put him at odds with the members of his party who took the "Socialist" part of "National Socialism" seriously.

* and also "no Kaiser", which alienated some Conservatives further.

[Reality]

My God, so this is where all the people online who are stupid enough to listen to Steve "Block the world" Shives post. What a joke of a cesspool this forum is.

[Beelzquill]

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I thought I remember in Hitler's campaign speech that he rallied against conservatism on the basis of them letting corporations run rampant.

Well, Hitler was a pathological liar, so that doesn't mean much. What he actually said to private business interests was quite different.

Yes I was saying the same thing to Grey ICE about Mussolini and his philosophy on Fascism in one of the review threads. Not that you were supposed to know that (necessarily), but I just thought I'd mention the coincidence.

I mentioned it because it was just a matter of his campaign. Fascism is about perverting conventional institutions of democracy, liberals and conservatives for instance, as had Hitler done.

Really interesting read btw. Thank you.

[Jonathan101]

Well, it's not really "about" that, it's just what they did to attain power.