Will the Government shut down on the 27th of March?

[Admiral Yi]

Disagree.  Socialism exists on a continuum.  You can be a little more socialist or a little less.  With fascism, either you are or you're not.

[Neil]

Disagree.  Socialism exists on a continuum.  You can be a little more socialist or a little less.  With fascism, either you are or you're not.

Are you sure that fascism is entirely binary?  It seems that the current Hungarian government shows that a 'soft' fascism is possible.

[CountDeMoney]

Libertarians are libertarian because they want *less* governmental intrusion, not because they want to return to a state of nature.

They make you wonder, though.

[Admiral Yi]

Are you sure that fascism is entirely binary?  It seems that the current Hungarian government shows that a 'soft' fascism is possible.

Point taken.  But I think the exceptions are going to be groups that are based on (militant) ethnic nationalism.  Arguably that's the irreducible core of fascism and naziism.  Not countries that hold better military parades than others.

[Neil]

Are you sure that fascism is entirely binary?  It seems that the current Hungarian government shows that a 'soft' fascism is possible.

Point taken.  But I think the exceptions are going to be groups that are based on (militant) ethnic nationalism.  Arguably that's the irreducible core of fascism and naziism.  Not countries that hold better military parades than others.

Yeah, without ethnic nationalism you don't quite have fascism, do you?

[Razgovory]

Disagree.  Socialism exists on a continuum.  You can be a little more socialist or a little less.  With fascism, either you are or you're not.

Nonsense.  Fascism is a notoriously flabby term and the fascists themselves were able to ally with ideologically similar parties, which often meant conservative parties.  The racial aspect

[Razgovory]

I wonder what else I was going to write.

[fhdz]

Who can say?

[Razgovory]

Who can say?

Oh, I'm sure someone will come around and tell me what I actually meant.

[Warspite]

Fascists were corporatist, not really socialist. Unless there were fascist movements that believed in the workers' ownership of the means of production?

Is Francois Hollande a socialist?

Technically a Social Democrat. 

[fhdz]

Who can say?

Oh, I'm sure someone will come around and tell me what I actually meant.

Theoretically at least *you* ought to be able to.

[Sheilbh]

Point taken.  But I think the exceptions are going to be groups that are based on (militant) ethnic nationalism.  Arguably that's the irreducible core of fascism and naziism.  Not countries that hold better military parades than others.

Militant nationalism, I think is probably the irreducible core. I think whether its ethnic or not depends on how you define ethnicity. For example nationalism is exclusive to other nations but can be inclusive of previous, internal ethnic or sectarian divisions.

I think militarism and a cult of the leader are probably other core elements.

Technically a Social Democrat. 

Yeah. The party's called Socialist but they're not anymore, as anyone on the left of the PS moaning about Blairite Moscovici would tell you. It's just that great flaw of the European centre-left: its cloying sentimentality and nostalgia. The same thing that makes Ed Miliband go to the Durham Miners' Gala or any modern Labour leader call themselves a democratic socialist

At least Blair didn't go through the pretence.

[Razgovory]

The ethnic thing could be fairly elastic.  The Nazis hated Jews, but the some of the early Italian fascists were Jewish.  Part of the problem is that they were often amoral opportunists who were willing to say anything to come to power.  If that meant adopting some Socialist terminology or calling yourself "a worker's party", so be it.  It's easier to say what fascists were against, since it was primarily a reactionary movement.

[Neil]

The Italian experience is interesting in that you could hardly consider the Italians to be a single ethnic group.  They'd been working hard to try and unify the country, but there were still enormous gaps in language and culture between the north and south.

[fhdz]

The Italian experience is interesting in that you could hardly consider the Italians to be a single ethnic group.  They'd been working hard to try and unify the country, but there were still enormous gaps in language and culture between the north and south.

That's why until they had to adopt anti-Semitism their fascism was more along the lines of "restore the Roman Empire" rather than "x ethnic group is the source of all our problems".