[ExI] Anons

[Darren Greer]

Damien wrote:

>The technical name for what you prefer is "corporate fascism". That doesn't
have a really compelling history.<

I agree Damien. When the definition of fascism was entered for the first
time in the  Encyclopedia Italiano, Mussolini suggested that corporatism was
a more accurate name for that type of arrangement than fascism anyway.
Fascism is *by definition* the merging of business and government, most
often accompanied by rabid nationalism and sometimes overt racism.

But not always, which might make modern fascism difficult to recognize
because we always assume holocaust-type ethnic cleansing comes with it. It
doesn't. Italy followed Germany's Wannsee Conference directives (because it
was under political pressure to do so) but not to the letter. For some of
the war Mussolini allowed the north west of the country to become a kind of
protectorate for Jews who had fled other parts of the state. The ax fell on
them only after Italy fell, when the allies invaded the south and Germany
took the north to meet them. I got this story from John Keegan's The Second
World War, which is an excellent book by the way.



Spike wrote:


>In any case it would be far preferable to government takeover of
corporations.<

Is there a difference? When governments and corporations merge, does it
matter who made the first move? Given the checkered history of IBM, Ford,
Chase Manhattan, etc, not to mention the America First Committee and the
role of prominent industrialists like Ford in trying to keep the U.S. out of
World War II for business reasons, perhaps it should be illegal. Currently
we try to prevent the merging of the two with market regulation and not
through legislation, which doesn't seem to be working all that well. The
repeal of Glass-Steagall and the housing market crash is a good example of
that failure.

Don't mean to sound testy, or confrontational, Spike. I have a bit of a bee
in my bonnet about what seems to be a widespread misunderstanding of exactly
what fascism is and how easily it could happen again. The U.S. congress has
a fasces engraved on a wall somewhere inside, by the way. Don't know its
history, or what genius decided it was a good idea, but it has always made
me wonder.

darren



I

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>wrote:

> On 2/12/2011 9:46 AM, spike wrote:
>
>  Our constitution is set up to maintain separation of church and state.
>> It doesn't say anything about separation of corporation and state.  As far
>> as I can tell the latter would be perfectly legal.  In any case it would
>> be
>> far preferable to government takeover of corporations.
>>
>
> The technical name for what you prefer is "corporate fascism". That doesn't
> have a really compelling history.
>
> Here's a random-selected thumbnail:
>
> <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7260.htm>
>
> Damien Broderick
>
> _______________________________________________
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> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
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>



-- 
*There is no history, only biography.*
*
*
*-Ralph Waldo Emerson
*
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