Benito Mussolini on statism

Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

~ Benito Mussolini

Jacob Hornberger on the economic policies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franklin Roosevelt

Three New Deals by Wolfgang Schivelbusch... compares the extreme similarities between the economic policies of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franklin Roosevelt.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Hitler actually wrote Roosevelt a letter commending him on his economic policies and pointing out that Germany was following much the same road.

~ Jacob Hornberger, "Leftists' Perverse View of Capitalism," The Future of Freedom Foundation, June 11, 2021

George Carlin on political correctness

Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.

~ George Carlin

Jon Miltimore on Venezuelan "privatization"

It seems that after much pain and suffering, even socialist leaders in Venezuela have conceded that they cannot run an economy with enough efficiency to avoid economic ruin. But while returning enterprises to private owners is a step in the right direction, it’s hardly accurate to call Maduro's strategy “capitalism.” 

The Maduro government is still using everything from price controls on food to minimum wage hikes to currency manipulation to manage its economy, not to mention selecting which businesses get to participate in its privatization efforts (and who gets to invest). In terms of overall economic freedom, Venezuela ranked 179 out of 180 countries in 2020—one place ahead of North Korea and one behind Cuba. 

At best, Venezuela’s current economic system is a form of fascism, which Sheldon Richman once described as “socialism with a capitalist veneer.” 

So while applauding Venezuela’s small but important step, we should not lose sight of an observation from Nobel Laureate economist Vernon Smith, who in 2018 noted that prosperity would return almost at once to Venezuela if politicians repealed their harmful policies and unleashed the power of markets.

~ Jon Miltimore, "Bloomberg: Venezuela Turns to Privatization After Being Bankrupted by Socialism," FEE.org, February 16, 2021

FDR on "private power"

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

(FDR was born this day, January 30, 1882.)

Benito Mussolini: complexity requires restrictions on freedom

We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.

~ Benito Mussolini, Grand Fascist Council Report, 1929

Herbert Marcuse on suspending free speech to prevent radical right-wing movements

In past and different circumstances, the speeches of the Fascist and Nazi leaders were the immediate prologue to the massacre. The distance between the propaganda and the action, between the organization and its release on the people had become too short. But the spreading of the word could have been stopped before it was too late: if democratic tolerance had been withdrawn when the future leaders started their campaign, mankind would have had a chance of avoiding Auschwitz and a World War.

The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger.

~ Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," 1965

Time magazine on the coming war in Europe (1939)

A generation ago western civilization had apparently outgrown the major evils of barbarism except for war between nations. The Russian Communist Revolution promoted the evil of class war. Hitler topped it by another, race war. Fascism and Communism both resurrected religious war. These multiple forms of barbarism gave shape in 1938 to an issue over which men may again, perhaps soon, shed blood: the issue of civilized liberty v. barbaric authoritarianism.

~ Time editors, "Adolph Hitler. Man of the Year, 1938," Time, January 2, 1939

Benito Mussolini on the difference between classical liberalism and fascism

The fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State . . . . It is opposed to classical liberalism . . . [which] denied the State in the name of the individual. If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism), we are free to believe that this is the ‘collective’ century, and therefore the century of the State.  If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.

~ Benito Mussolini, Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions 

(As quoted by Tom DiLorenzo in "An Open Letter to This Year's College Freshmen Class on the Subject of Fascism," August 28, 2017

John Mackey on capitalism and fascism

I am an idealist. I would like the world to improve. I see America in decline. Average income is falling.  Americans now are making less money on an inflation-adjusted basis than were 10 years ago. I’m doing what I can to try to reverse it.

The currency system that we have today is going to crash.  The U.S., Europe and Japan are all basket cases. They are all in deep trouble.

Every politician wants to kick the can down the road. They just hope it collapses when someone else is in office. Fiat money and entitlement cultures are not sustainable. I don’t think these things are capable of reforming themselves without a crash.

If not a crash, then decades of high unemployment and slow growth — or even negative growth like we saw last quarter.

You might end up with Hitlers, and things like that, but there’s also a chance we could rebuild intelligently.

~ "Whole Foods CEO concerned about whole economy", February 1, 2013, CBS Marketwatch

Anthony Sutton on the dangers of "experienced" men in government

The Public relations explanation for business men turned bureaucrats is that businessmen have the experience and should become involved in public service. The intent in practice has been to control industry. It should not, however, surprise us if the corporate socialists go to Washington D.C. after election of their favorite sons to take over the reins of monopoly administration.

~Anthony C. Sutton, author, Wall Street and FDR, "FDR and the Corporate Socialists", Chapter 9

Herbert Hoover on the fascist roots of Roosevelt's New Deal

Among the early Roosevelt fascist measures was the National Industry Recovery Act (NRA) of June 16, 1933. The origins of this scheme are worth repeating. These ideas were first suggested by Gerard Swope (of the General Electric Company) at a meeting of the electrical industry in the winter of 1932. Following this, they were adopted by the United States Chamber of Commerce. During the campaign of 1932, Henry I. Harriman, president of that body, urged that I agree to support these proposals, informing me that Mr. Roosevelt had agreed to do so. I tried to show him that this stuff was pure fascism; that it was merely a remaking of Mussolini's "corporate state" and refused to agree to any of it. He informed me that in view of my attitude, the business world would support Roosevelt with money and influence. That for the most part, proved true.

~Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 420

Phil Duffy on the housing bill attempting to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

You and I have just assumed responsibility for the irresponsible actions of these organizations and their investors. This has very little to do with home buyers and everything to do with bailing out bankers and investors. It has no effect on existing home owners. They already have their mortgages. It doesn’t matter to them if their mortgager goes out of business. The case that is being made for home buyers of the future is that they can’t do without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But the market would move in to fill the role currently being played by these organizations. The market would be more prudent, but it is a lack of prudence that has caused the housing bubble and the demise of these government sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

Certainly the action by Congress with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bailout of Bear Stearns and hundreds of other interventions in the market have nothing to do with free enterprise and constitutional government. So what label accurately describes the nature of our current government? This was an issue addressed by Friedrich von Hayek, the author of The Road to Serfdom (Hayek was the co-winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize for Economics). He pointed out that socialism and fascism have many similarities. Certainly if the government owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac outright, that would be socialism. The government ‘sponsors’ but doesn’t own these entities. We the people don’t own them either, although we are forced to fund them. They will still be owned by private investors who will benefit at the expense of the rest of us. That describes a system called fascism. Surveillance of ordinary citizens is also a characteristic of fascist nations. As difficult as it may be to accept, our government is becoming increasingly fascist by any objective measure. We can no longer claim to be a constitutional republic because we refuse to be limited by our own Constitution.

Having lived through the World War II days and grown up in its aftermath when the question was asked, “How could Nazi Germany have occurred?”, I remember how we lulled ourselves to sleep. It couldn’t happen here. The problem was in the inherent nature of German stock (today we would call that DNA). We were biologically different, or so we convinced ourselves. The truth is that we are on the road to serfdom.

Phil Duffy, July 27, 2008

Lew Rockwell on how the anti-communist movement undermined the limited government plank of the Republican Party

Murray Rothbard used to tell the story of speaking to conservative and Republican audiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s. There would be large groups gathered for various talks on economics and politics. He would give a lecture on the problem of price controls, or protectionism, or high taxes. People really liked what he had to say. They would clap, and learn from his lecture.

Then he would sit down. At some point in the course of the conference, the appointed anti-communist speaker would rise to the podium. He would decry the evil of Russia and its atheistic system of government. He would call for beefing up nuclear weapons and hint darkly of the necessity of war. He would end with an apocalyptic statement about the need for everyone to completely dedicate themselves to eradicating the communists by any means necessary. No talk of limiting or cutting government; quite the opposite.

So how would these people, who clapped for Murray, respond to the warmonger? Insanely, wildly, uncontrollably. They would stand and scream and yell and cheer, getting up on their chairs and putting their hands together high in the air. The applause would go on for five minutes and more, and the speaker would be later mauled for autographs. His books would sell wildly.

Meanwhile, poor Murray would stand there in alarm. How could these same people cheer both a call for liberty and a call for empire, and, most notably, give their hearts over to the maniacal nationalist while being merely polite to a call for the same liberty that had led this party to oppose FDR's domestic and foreign-policy? It was experiences like these that led him to write the most important dissection of the Republican party ever to appear: The Betrayal of the American Right. It is here that Murray engages in a deep, soul-searching look at his own role in red-baiting in the 1950s. He had hoped to use the anti-communist movement to educate people about the need for freedom.

"It is clear that libertarians and Old Rightists, including myself, had made a great mistake in endorsing domestic red-baiting, a red-baiting that proved to be the major entering wedge for the complete transformation of the original right wing," writes Murray. Instead of supporting freedom, the anti-communist movement ended up acculturating Republicans to the imperial mindset. The moral priority of crushing a foreign government trumped every other issue.

At the same time, the libertarianism of the GOP's domestic agenda was supplanted by a belief that "big government and domestic statism were perfectly acceptable, provided that they were steeped in some sort of Burkean tradition and enjoyed a Christian framework." Fiery individualism and radicalism were replaced by a longing for a static, controlling elite of the European sort. Liberty was washed away.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Triumph of the Red-State Fascists," LewRockwell.com, February 26, 2008