In the media and in many posts on the Internet, the terms Communist and Fascist tend to be confused.  I even had a very intelligent friend comment the other day in a post that differentiating Communist and Fascist is “splitting hairs”.

That is exactly why the spin masters deliberately use these terms in ways designed to confuse the reader or listener, and why it drives me nuts when they do, and moreso when sane people get suckered into repeating the bafflegab.

There are democratically elected governments around the world ranging from Social Democrat though to Reactionary on the political spectrum.  At each end of this spectrum are totalitarian governments, which can come to power through revolution against existing powers, such as the Russian peasants and intellectuals against the Czar, or by subverting an elected government, often from a minority position, and then systematically destroying all opposition – as was done by Hitler.

If you see the government as Communist, and I see them as Fascist, our view of the problems and solutions will be diametrically opposed, and on virtually every issue we would have totally opposite approaches to solving those problems. That’s divide and conquer, which is what spin masters are mainly employed to do.

I attended a right-wing meeting the other night by the author of a book called “EcoFascists”.  The ideas would be hilarious, if you did not know that some large number of people will believe the bafflegab.   You know the old maxim that “BS baffles brains”.

Commie-Fascist is DoubleSpeak, a variant of NewSpeak in Orwell’s 1984 terms.

What many argue against, and quite rightly, is Totalitarianism and Statism.  Both Communists and Fascists become totalitarian – Fascists because of, and Communists in spite of their ideology.  Totalitarianism is a corrupt system of government that infringes on the rights and freedoms of all those who are not supporters of the party.

Fascists are totalitarian deliberately and consciously (and openly), because they see themselves as “the master race” – better bred, smarter, and superior to everyone else.  It happens that Fascists get their monetary contributions from “the captains of industry” and act accordingly.  Hitler’s old sidekick, Benito Mussolini, stated it straight out:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

Communists get their money from the people, because there are no “captains of industry”.  Everything is owned by the state and everyone works for the state.

That is one reason why the Russian economy survived WWII but went into free fall when the state divested, whereas the German and Japanese states collapsed, but the same industrial companies that had supported the Empire:  Bayer, Krupp, Mitsubishi, for example, came back quickly and thrived.

So if “C” were extreme left, “C” would want to tax everybody, and in theory at least – spread that money perfectly evenly all around.   That would be true socialism.  Of course, the top ruling party members end up with all the feed, just like the pigs in Animal Farm.  But the state owns everything.  There is no private property.   But “C” will invest in schools and medicine, and provide universal healthcare.   “C” will educate so many doctors they can send them to other countries to help out, like Cuba did – and still does.

If “H” were extreme right, “H” would want to get the money from the inferior little people, and let the captains of industry do their bit totally untaxed and unregulated by anything that would interfere with profit.   If “H” can find a way to dehumanize and enslave some people so that industry can make more money, “H” will.  “H” believes that schools and medicine for the poor is a waste of “H”‘s money.  Why bother?  They are subhuman anyway.  If they die, “H” can take what is left of their money, and bury the body in a pit.  The Master Race owns the property, and lives conspicuously consumptive.  Property is paramount, and property and patent rights are everything.  Monopoly is good.  It is much more efficient. “H” takes the genetically pure and well-bred, and sends them to law school. Lawyers, soldiers, and police are obviously much more important than doctors and engineers.

Look around.  If it looks like a Fascist, and smells like a Fascist, it is probably Fascist.  And if you position yourself more and more to the right of the political spectrum, because you fear Communist totalitarianism, be careful you don’t wake up one morning and find yourself living in a Fascist state.

Update – March 2017

Much has transpired since my original posting, including the fall of the Harper “regime” in Ottawa, and the rise of the Trump “regime” in the US.  This Guardian opinion piece is worth a read in this context.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/11/farage-assange-shameless-illiberal-alliance

I challenged Chomsky back in 2013 on his use of the term “neoliberal”.  I thought of him as less extreme in his views than Cohen implies.  One would not think of Chomsky, an academic all of his life, as fostering “illiberalism – an ideology that has been growing for years”.

But Cohen also seems less than precise with words, in my opinion.  In the above quote –  “…has been growing …” seems to imply some sort of organic natural process.  Rather “illiberalism” has been deliberately seeded, watered, cultivated, and nurtured by those on both extreme left and extreme right. Knowledge is power, and those who wish to control our thoughts, our bodies, and our resources, do not accept that anyone should contest their alt-facts, their revealed wisdom, and their superior intelligence.