The abject failure of the American Education System is on full display when we experience the common and atrocious misuse of the term “fascist” in everyday discourse.

For example, Leftists often refer to Libertarians as fascists, yet Libertarians are the most anti-fascist people on the planet. Sadly, “fascist!” has become a Leftist smear against anyone who opposes Left-think, by people who see fascism everywhere, except when they look in the mirror. This provides delicious irony, given the Progressive Left’s historical alignment with fascist principles.

Fascism’s history begins when Karl Marx’s socialism joined with Woodrow Wilson’s American Progressivism, with both opposed to capitalism and private ownership, and believing that a cabal of ruling elites should control the means of production and distribute the “economic surplus” among the workers, History shows that socialism never actually produced a surplus to distribute, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The Bolshevik’s Communist take-over of Russia (1917) gave humanity its first glimpse of socialism-done-right, which necessarily eliminated private ownership. Read Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” to explore how Socialism also eliminated the previous owners.

Even though the communists “did socialism right” by removing private ownership, the reality of economic privation under socialism became undeniable. With their economy in tatters, a total of 35 million Russians were murdered or starved in the name of the “collective good”. History later repeated itself with another 65 million Chinese sacrificed to socialist principles.

Zoom to Italy in the 1920s. Mussolini was a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist, but recognized that full-blown socialism destroyed the Russian economy. Mussolini wanted the totalitarian power inherent in socialism, but he did not want to totally trash Italy’s economy in the process. He realized that pure socialism (with no private ownership) created a motivation vacuum, producing a feeble economy that starved the very people who were supposed to benefit from socialism. Mussolini’s compromise was to allow private ownership, but only under the thumb of an otherwise socialist State. Contrary to contemporary Leftist narrative, fascism is anti-Capitalist and allows no free-market to exist. In this, Mussolini was a pragmatic socialist.

In Germany, Hitler was a devout socialist – a member of the Bavarian Socialist Party – but he disliked the Marxist/Communist rejection of nationhood. He adopted the concept of “Volksgemeinschaft” (peoples’ community), and led him to the fascist-like National Socialist (Nazi) party, which competed with the communists for the same pro-socialist, anti-capitalist political territory. Nazis basically copied the Communist playbook and language, which included the antiJewish stance inherited from Russia. Germany’s Communists and Nazis were two socialist dogs fighting for the same bone.

Hence, communists and fascists are not Left/Right opposites, but rather are fraternal twins of the Left, born of the same socialist mother. They share every socialist characteristic, except the issues of private vs. State ownership of the means of production, and the issue of national identity. Both are totalitarian socialist systems that elevate the State above the individual, and are the antithesis of the American founding where primacy is given to individual rights, and not to the State. Hence: Fascism aligned perfectly with the 20th century American Progressive Left’s anti-freedom policies in the US. One big similarity between the Nazis and the American Progressives (modern Liberals) was/is the use of identity politics to align support for the Government narrative.

So, next time Person A hurls the “fascist!” epithet at Person B, evaluate whether Person A isn’t really the fascist.

Here is how to tell:

— All-powerful centralized government, run by an elite ruling class, requiring subordination of the individual to the Collectivist State.

— Suppression of traditional religion, replaced by the religion of the State. Heavy progressive income taxes to fund Statist priorities.

— State control of the economy through regulation and subsidies for favored industries (e.g. Wind, Solar, and Ethanol).

— Grand government projects to mobilize “armies” of workers (New Deal).

— Creation of new crises to unite people around the State (COVID, Climate).

— Use of Government infrastructure to coerce private companies to conform to the mandates of the State (Censorship by Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

— Social engineering through Statist policy (e.g. CRT, ESG and DEI). Use of disinformation to suppress opposition to the Government (CIA and FBI claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation).

— Opposition to private firearm ownership and the right of self-defense.

— Use of the education system to indoctrinate children with Statist thought.

Care to evaluate yourself?

Michael Dee is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com