The Economics of Fascism

The Economics of Fascism Supporters Summit 2005

October 7-8, 2005
Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama

"Whenever the fascists came to power in Europe, they banned the work of the Austrian economists. The reason: the Austrians wrote as vehemently against "right-wing" central planning as against old-fashioned left-wing socialism. While many are alert to the dangers of socialism, far fewer know of the danger of fascism, which might be defined as economic regimentation toward monopolized state capitalism."

Wall Street's Bailout is a Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene -- Why Aren't the Dems Doing Something About It?

Washington's handling of the bailout is not merely incompetent. It may well be illegal.

November 14, 2008

The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.

In a moment of high panic in late September, the U.S. Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed -- a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the notice."

Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country's banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending -- for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc. -- is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used.

Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure.

Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. "There is only one president at a time," we hear from Barack Obama. That's true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama's ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama's renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/economy/107000/

Vincere—the tragic life of Ida Dalser, Mussolini’s first wife

By Richard Phillips
28 November 2009
WSWS.org

Vincere, the latest feature by veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio, is about Ida Dalser, the first wife of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. The audacious work is currently on the international film festival circuit, after premiering at Cannes in May this year. The movie has received some well-deserved praise and last month won the best direction, cinematography, editing, art direction and acting prizes at the Chicago film festival. Unlike most of Bellocchio’s more recent work, Vincere has secured several international distribution deals and eventually will be released in US and Australian cinemas.

Vincere, or “to win”, gives valuable insights into Dalser’s tragic life, the deep class polarisation of Italy in the lead-up to and throughout World War I, and some sense of the brutal, all-encompassing state repression during the first decade and a half of Mussolini’s fascist rule.

The movie opens in 1907 with the first encounter between Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and Mussolini (Filippo Timo), at that point a Socialist Party member and journalist, and a militant atheist. One of Mussolini’s earliest pamphlets was entitled God does not exist and the movie’s shows him defiantly challenging a group of Christian scholars. Dalser, originally from Sopramonte in Trento, then under Austrian rule, runs a successful French-style beauty salon. She is impressed with the young firebrand and falls in love.

Mussolini as editor of the social democratic paper Avanti drives up its circulation, but with the outbreak of WWI the Socialist Party splits into two factions—those calling for Italian intervention in the bloody imperialist conflict, and those rejecting any involvement.

Mussolini becomes a ferocious proponent of Italian intervention, seeing the war as an opportunity for Italy to wrest control of Trento and Trieste from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Denounced as a traitor and expelled from the party, he establishes his own paper—Il Popolo d’Italia—to agitate for the war. Dalser sells most of her possessions to help finance Mussolini’s political activities and the couple are married and have a son. Mussolini, however, maintains a certain distance and refuses to completely commit himself to Dalser. He joins the army and is wounded in a training accident.

SNIP...

The asylum scenes are both tragic and beautiful, including an extraordinary moment when Dalser climbs up the bars of the asylum in the depth of winter and flings out her letters declaring that she is Mussolini’s wife and protesting her treatment. Another scene provides a damning exposure of the attitude of those sections of the Italian middle class who had accommodated themselves to Mussolini’s dictatorship. One psychiatrist tells Dalser to adapt herself to the existing political reality. This government will not last forever, he complacently declares, so you must become a great actress and pretend to be a “good fascist woman”. She rejects his cowardly advice.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/idal-n28.shtml

FASCISM IS A FORM OF CONSERVATISM

EXCERPT...

The aristocrats and gentlemen of the Right who made up the majority of
Hitler's cabinet hated the concept of democracy even more than the
Nazis did, All over Germany, thugs in brown shirts took possession of
the streets and roughed up Communists, socialists, and Jews; they
chased socialist mayors and officials out of government buildings

http://www.buy.com/prod/hitler-and-his-secret-partners/q/loc/106/3042...
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Chapter 1: Financing the 1933 Elections

On the cold winter weekend of January 28, 1933, Germany was officially
without a government. Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and his cabinet
had resigned on Saturday afternoon, and eighty-six-year-old President
von Hindenburg had not yet appointed a new chancellor. A nervous
tension spread over Berlin. Everyone waited for news; most felt
Germany was at an historic turning point.

Who would be the next chancellor? Hitler - the leader of the largest
party, the Nazis, who pledged to destroy democracy? Papen - the
aristocratic horseman who had been chancellor before Schleicher, but
who had no popular following? Perhaps Schleicher again, if he could
persuade the Social Democrats, the second largest political party in
the country, to join him in a coalition? Governing Germany in the
middle of an economic depression with nine million unemployed was not
an enviable task. The country had just had three different chancellors
in rapid succession. By tradition, the leader of the largest party was
usually appointed chancellor. But the Nazis had been the largest party
for over a year, and so far intrigues and political maneuvering had
succeeded in keeping Hitler out of power. Everyone guessed what a
Hitler government would mean. He had not kept his militarism, anti-
Semitism, and dictatorial ambitions a secret.

Political intrigues were so numerous that weekend that no one really
knew what was going on. Sensational rumors were being spread
throughout the city. Some said an army coup was imminent, that
Schleicher and the generals were about to abduct President von
Hindenburg and declare martial law. There were also rumors of an armed
Nazi uprising and a general strike by the socialist workers.

Hitler and Hermann Goering, the second most powerful man in the Nazi
party, stayed up all night on Sunday, January 29, trying to figure out
what Hindenburg might do. It was not until after 10 A.M. on Monday
that Hitler received a summons to the president's office. Even at that
point, the Nazis were not certain whether Hitler would be appointed
chancellor or Hindenburg would ask him to serve as vice-chancellor.
Across the street from the Chancellery, in the Kaiserhof Hotel,
Hitler's lieutenants were waiting, unsure of what was going on.
Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, said:

In the street the crowd stands waiting between the Kaiserhof and the
Chancellery. We are torn between doubt, hope, joy and despair. We have
been deceived too often to be able, wholeheartedly, to believe in the
great miracle. (S.A.) Chief of Staff Roehm stands at the window (with
binoculars) watching the door of the Chancellery from which the
Fuehrer (the leader, Hitler) must emerge. We shall be able to judge by
his face if the interview was a success. Torturing hours of waiting.
At last, a car draws up in front of the entrance. The crowd cheers.
They seem to feel that a great change is taking place....

A few moments later, he is with us. He says nothing. His eyes are full
of tears. It has come! The Fuehrer is appointed Chancellor. He has
already been sworn in by the President of the Reich. All of us are
dumb with emotion. Everyone clasps the Fuehrer's hand....Outside the
Kaiserhof, the masses are in a wild uproar....The thousands soon
become tens of thousands. Endless streams of people flood the
Wilhelmstrasse. We set to work...at once.

Hitler's victory was not a complete one by any means. He had been
appointed chancellor in a coalition government. Papen was to be his
vice-chancellor, and all the powerful cabinet posts were held by
Papen's conservative allies, rather than the Nazis. But at the moment,
Hitler's followers weren't worried about the details; for them the
only thing that mattered was that Hitler was chancellor. They had come
to power! All day, crowds gathered in the square outside the Kaiserhof
Hotel and the Chancellery.

At dusk Nazi storm troopers in their brown uniforms gathered in the
Tiergarten park, along with men of the Stahlhelm, an
ultranationalistic veterans' organization, for a torchlight victory
parade through the center of Berlin. As soon as it was dark, they came
marching by the thousands through the Brandenburg Gate, carrying
swastika flags and the black, white, and red flags of the German
empire. Bands marched between the units, beating their big drums as
the men sang old German military songs. But as each band came to the
Pariser Platz, where the French embassy was located, they stopped
whatever they were playing and, with an introductory roll of drums,
broke into the tune of the challenging war song "Victorious We Will
Crush the French."

The torches carried by the marchers glowed hypnotically in the
darkness. To foreign witnesses, it was a frightening sight. "The river
of fire flowed past the French Embassy," Ambassador Fran=C3=A7ois-Poncet
wrote, "whence, with heavy heart and filled with foreboding, I watched
this luminous wake." Liberal Germans found it an "ominous sight." It
was, wrote one German reporter, "a night of deadly menace, a nightmare
in...blazing torches."

SNIP...

The facts seemed to support Papen's optimism. Not only did Papen have
Hindenburg"s confidence, but in fact the old president had promised
never to receive Hitler unless he was accompanied by his vice-
chancellor. Papen also held the important post of minister-president
of Prussia, Germany's largest and most powerful state. From the
composition of the cabinet, it seemed all the real power was in the
hands of the conservatives: the aristocratic General von Blomberg was
minister of defense, Baron von Neurath, a career diplomat, was foreign
minister, and the old archreactionary Hugenberg was both minister of
economics and minister of agriculture. The Nazis were outnumbered six
to two.

CONTINUED...

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.liberalism/msg/c4a4cca9cb898b3f