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I agree.
Well the Soviets certainly murdered plenty of children due to who their parents were. As did the Chinese, come to that and Pol Pot and plenty of other rather nasty communists.
You destroy your own argument by refusing to see how nasty communism has been in practice. If fascism had remained a theory it too would be harmless, its the putting into practice that's always been the problem.
Errr...what point have I missed, exactly?
I repeat - what happens to Kant, Nietzsche, Hume and Jung in your egalitarian utopia? What happens to the scientific method?
Blurring Fascism and Nazism is lazy. Mussolini's Italy was incredibly different to Nazi Germany. Mussolini was a nasty dictator but he doesn't deserve to be lumped together with Hitler and the Nazis. Mussolini's legacy is clouded by the fact that he backed the wrong horse, he wanted to be on the winning side of a post-war settlement; he'd have backed the Allies if he thought they'd have won and had he done so would no doubt be viewed very differently. (Not that he deserves to be viewed favourably).
As for fascism being a greater evil than communism - I don't really see the merit in a debate on which kind of totalitarianism is the worst as any kind of totalitarianism is evil imo. Although, I will say that relative religious freedom and day to day freedoms were better in Mussolini's Italy than the Soviet Union. And I'd be pretty puzzled if Aladdin would rather have lived in Stalin's Russia than in Mussolini's Italy...
And as for fascism and racism it is simplistic to intrinsically link the two, at least in a historical sense. Mussolini for instance was not particularly racist. Mussolini ridiculed ideas concerning the superiority of particular races. Mussolini was not anti-Semitic, he had various Jewish girlfriends and his fascist movement was not anti-Semitic until the alliance with Hitler. (Prior to that many senior figures in Italian fascism were Jewish).
As for the BNP, I'm not even sure they technically qualify as fascists. Though I'm pretty certain they do qualify as racists.
I don't know what the qualification is for fascism. It's a vague word and thrown around too easily perhaps. I think the BNP are ideologically undeveloped; they seem to encompass an array of different prejudices and sympathies. (Some seem to admire Hitler, others are diehard British patriots and want to preserve a 'British way of life', some are just anti-immigrant whilst others buy into ideas of racial superiority. One or two are Jewish I hear, while others deny the Holocaust and are rabid anti-Semites). The leadership are not clear-cut, Griffin does not go beyond pretty simple populism designed to appeal to an actually pretty narrow audience.
I don't know where the BNP really stand; there's talk of Nazi sympathies but the public face seems to be about nothing much more developed than patriotic and populist rhetoric. The actual truth behind the BNP imo is that they don't really know where they stand; Griffin might be a Cambridge graduate but most of the BNP hierarchy are hooligans and thugs. The BNP isn't much more than a reflection of their simple prejudices, there's certainly very little intellectual theory behind the BNP.
Exactly.
It isn't the idea, thought or words which are dangerous. It actions. Nick Griffin/Nazis/Communitsts etc can say what they like as far as I am concerned. Stopping them from acting (though gained power for example) is my goal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
Fascism would seem to involve:
Ultra-nationalism
Authoritarianism
Militarism
Social conservatism
Some degree of Economic Control
Don't know if the BNP fit that, they are obviously very nationalist, socially conservative and economically I believe they are more left than right, so I guess you could say so.
I think i would prefer to just call them scum though........
This is very good.....