Left's Ignorance of Real Fascism Is Dangerous

Radical leftist organizations (for example, Antifa) are having a field day maligning movement conservatives like me. They are intentionally clumping us with white nationalist and racist groups because we reject identity politics and their socialist agenda.

Worse yet, many leftists are in favor of physically assaulting political opponents. Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, made these observations about this development, "There is violence on the left. The anti-fascists engage with those they oppose through physical confrontation. And that is a problem. That is an extremist’s tactic. There is also bigotry on the left."

That’s not all — there is also ignorance on the left. It should come as no surprise that these young radicals, whose knowledge of philosophy and history wouldn’t fill a bumper sticker, do not know that Italian fascism and Nazism were actually socialist movements.

For those interested in learning about fascism and Nazism and how leftists use the fascist card to intimidate conservatives, I recommend Dinesh D’Souza’s new book, "The Big Lie."

D’Souza contends the terms "Nazi" and "fascist" have become "virtually meaningless in popular culture." To make his case, he cites various scholars, including the leading expert on fascism, Dr. A. James Gregor, Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. "Fascism."

Gregor has written, "is routinely attributed to people who are avowedly Christians who seek lower levels of taxation, who oppose further government regulation, who are skeptical on global warming, and who seem indifferent to the fate of endangered species." The term, "has been diluted to the point where its cognitive use has become more than suspect."

Fascism is Italian for "collectivism." Its adherents adopted it from "fasci"of ancient Rome which were bundles of rods carried by the lectors to symbolize the unified strength of Romans.

"The first fascists," Dr. Gregor observes, "were almost all Marxists." The movement "was not conservative. It was revolutionary. Its clear intention was to destroy the social economic and political artifacts of classical liberalism."

Another distinguished historian, Stanley Payne, agrees, "The nucleus that eventually founded fascism in Italy did not stem from the right-wing nationalists but from the transformation of part of the revolutionary left."

The father of fascism, philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944), a disenchanted Marxist, believed . . . "the state and the individual is one" and the "authority of the state is not subject to negotiation." Fascism, he declared, is a "total conception of life . . . One cannot be a fascist in politics and not a fascist in school, not a fascist in one’s family, not a fascist in one’s work place."

Gentile’s top pupil was Italy’s most prominent post World War I socialist, Benito Mussolini, who declared "All is the state and nothing human exists outside the state." For Mussolini, Fascism was a practical form of socialism for the new century.

As for Hitler, he was a National Socialist who publicly stated "We are socialists, we are the enemies of today’s capitalist system of exploitation . . . and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

While collectivism was the basic tenet of fascist and National Socialist ideologies, there was a difference: The Nazis were anti-Semitic, deemed Slovaks and Gypsies sub-human, and believed in a "mystical bond" between German blood and German soil.

Before establishing an Aryan socialist state, Hitler was determined to exterminate the Jews and to subjugate indigenous Eastern Europeans.

Interestingly, the Nationalist Socialists were influenced by American Progressives who embraced the so-called science of eugenics which espoused birth control, abortion and sterilization to limit unworthy lives and "to conserve national resources for the future offspring of those worth saving, and to keep the superior creatures close to nature in order to keep them pure."

In "The Big Lie," D’Souza reveals that the charges made against conservatives and members of the Republican Party apply to radical leftists. These self-styled leftist "opponents of hate are the actual practitioners of the politics of hate. Though a process of transference leftists blame their victims for being and doing what they themselves are and do. In a sick inversion, the real fascists in American politics masquerade as anti-fascists and accuse the real anti-fascists of being fascists."

George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact," and "Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy." He is chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA. Mr. Marlin also writes for TheCatholicThing.org and the Long Island Business News. To read more George J. Marlin — Click Here Now.