And it just keeps getting better. As NateM predicted, we’re now at the Irrational Idiocy stage over at Pandagon:
Neil: Communists and Fascists got into a lot of scrapes because they were barking up the same tree. Of course there is rhetoric from each group decrying the other. Communist and Fascist ideologies developed seperately. They had very different justifications, but at the end of the day they often ended up looking quite similar. If one group demands sacrifice for the Nation and the other group demands sacrifice for the people, well, if the people are in your nation then that ends up being pretty much the same thing. I wouldn’t want to be the one advocating for individual dignity and rights under Fascists or Communists.
Jesse: Neil – small problem with your explanation: ideologies that result in some similar outcomes do not, in fact, constitute similar ideologies…. a car and a plane both take you from point A to point B, and both have wheels. Are both therefore the same thing? Unless you’re being patently dishonest.
Of course, it is undeniable that Fascism and Communism are both offshoots of Marxism founded by members of European socialist parties, both require the supremacy of the State over the individual, both appealed to collective consciousness, both advocated what were considered “progressive” government policies, both were openly anti-religion and both demanded and enacted the nationalization of a significant proportion of the means of production in their respective countries.
So, given his admission above, Jesse is now reduced to asserting that ideologies which spring from the same source, were created by members of socialist political parties, have similar ideals and result in similar outcomes do not, in fact, constitute similar ideologies.
A better analogy would be to compare two ground vehicles, both designed by automotive engineers working for Ford, both with four wheels and running on internal combustion engines. One is painted red, has a four-cylinder engine and runs on diesel, the other is painted black, has six-cylinders, runs on gasoline and features a machine gun mounted on the front. It also comes with a spiffy driver’s outfit. Both vehicles share a tendency to crash and kill everyone on board. I submit that to deny that they are both cars requires either ignorance or sheer, willful idiocy.
These heroic efforts to deny the inherent leftism of Fascist and National Socialist ideology is nothing more than a desperate attempt to hang something evil on the right wing. Never mind that great men of the right such as Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Schumpeter and Friedrich von Hayek, were actively warning people of the evils of all forms of socialism, Marxian, national, Communist and Fascist, as early as 1922. As Mises prophetically wrote in that year in his landmark work, Socialism:
Nationalization of all the means of production involves complete Socialism. Nationalization of some of the means of production is a step towards complete Socialism. Whether we are to remain satisfied with the first step or whether we desire to proceed further does not alter its fundamental character.
The fact that the Fascists were not complete Socialists does not alter their fundamentally socialist character.