Fascism's Close Relationship With Progressivism and the Left

It was roughly during the early 1890s and through the early 1920s in America when the Progressive movement saturated society and inspired advocacy for government being the initiator and overshadowing determinant of social change. Multitudes of young crusading idealists, pragmatists and materialists harnessed influential sway in the local, state, and federal legislatures of society. They  employed far-reaching new powers in ratifying mountainous new legislations inclusive of minimum wage and maximum hour laws, anti-trust statutes, constraints on sale, distribution, and consumption of alcohol, expropriation of hundreds of miles of roads and highways, accommodations for new immigrants and the poor, women’s rights to vote, electoral reform, and much more…

In spite of all that, the Progressive Era was a time of ferocious state-endorsed racism. From an African-American historical standpoint, the Progressive Era features itself as the worst epoch since the Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. David W. Southern, a Westminster College historian, wrote in his book --- "Progressive Era and Race: Reform and Reaction, 1900-1917"--- giving detailed accounts of the morbidity of black disenfranchisement, segregation, race-baiting, and the lynching. To be a racist was of the norm amongst the 20th Century Progressive champions panegyrized by the Leftists of today. One of them being Woodrow Wilson, the American president during World War 1, who reversed tolerant racial policies put in place by Republicans and enacted the Jim Crow Laws segregating toilets, cafeterias, and rooms in work departments, high schools, and universities. After the Civil War and under ascendancy of the Republicans, the black populace was given access to federal jobs and permission to commingle with the Caucasian race in various circumstances, but with Woodrow Wilson, all of this was made undone. In his book, David had this to say: “At college, budding progressives not only read exposes of capitalistic barons and attacks on laissez-faire economics by muckraking journalists, they also read racist tracts that drew on the latest anthropology, biology, psychology, sociology, eugenics, and medical science."

So, in light of what history has to tell us, how have the times evolved to now bring us into a period when the Left discriminates against people of the Right with this damning label of racism? In tandem with racism, Leftists routinely attribute Fascism to Right-wingers as an affront to Right-wingers when they support foreign policies distasteful to contemporary Leftism. To the perception of contemporary Leftists, Right-wingers’ patriotism becomes blurred with nationalism, or becomes blurred with Benito Mussolini’s and Adolf Hitler’s nationalism specifically, and thereby also leading to racism being erroneously thrown into the mix for an extra flavor to be added to the insult. In the beginning of Hitler's obsession with Anti-Semitism, Mussolini was reluctant to follow suit, but would eventually make Anti-Semitism be part of his agenda in 1938. Prior to 1938, many outstanding Italian Jews were leaders of the early Fasci di combattimento. Anti-Semitism was non-existent and Italian Jews were customarily protected by both Fascist and non-Fascist Italians, making Fascist Italy one of the safest places in the world for Jews during the Second World War. And unlike Hitler, Mussolini did not set up concentration camps for the Jews living in Italy. 

Most pointedly, Leftists have learned to associate racism with Fascism because of Adolf Hitler’s obsessive hatred for and harangues against Jews along with everything else horrid his regime brought upon them during the Holocaust. Hitler received his ideas on eugenics and the idea of war being the purification of the national spirit from Woodrow Wilson and the Left-wing American militaristic Progressives during the late 19^th and early 20^th Century. The concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed superior Nordic race was not Adolf Hitler’s. The idea was created and cultivated in the United States with California being the omphalos of the movement at least two decades before Hitler came to power. The Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune were three amongst other corporate philanthropies who financed eugenics programs in America. Scientists from prestigious universities such Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stamford were also in league with these philanthropies performing experiments. 

Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience program so dogged for cleansing the human gene pool of any defective characteristics inherited through parent to offspring. The aim was to have prevalent the genes and characteristics that fit the Nordic stereotype. Forced sterilization and restrictions on interracial marriages became national policy in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Some 60,000 Americans were sterilized and surgically operated on in gruesome and torturous ways, thousands of people were prohibited in becoming married, and thousands more were forcibly segregated in "colonies" with untold numbers so mercilessly persecuted.  

 In 1924, when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, he recurrently talked about American eugenics saying things such as: “There is today one state, in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."  Hitler told his fellow Nazis that he closely studied American eugenics saying: “I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.”

In Germany sterilizations were given to people with serious physical deformities, Huntington’s chorea, and who were hereditarily feeble-minded, deaf, blind, alcoholic, epileptic, schizophrenic, and manically depressive or psychotic. These sterilizations in Germany exceeded beyond 5,000 per month in 1934. Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans were taken from nursing homes, mental institutions and other state-ran institutions and were systematically gassed. In all, between 50,000 and 100,000 were killed. 

In other parallels, modern-day Leftists’ justification in fundamentally altering the United States Constitution to best suit the cultural and demographical changes of our modern-day times by characterizing it as a living and growing entity, was a salient feature of Woodrow’s administration and the Left-wing Progressivism and pragmatism of the period, and is in all probability where Hitler derived his idea of Germany being a living organism under siege by bullying forces. It was Wilson who said our United States government was "not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life... No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live".

Leftists have pushed the Fascist label over to the Right so to avoid the humiliation they would become flushed with if they were to look at themselves in the mirror and see how their history of moral code and complexion has been blemished in this way.

Fascism is a term originally invented by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to explain his adaptation of Marxism to the political climate of Italy post World War 1. What came to be known as Leninism was Vladamir Lenin’s adaptation of Marxism to the political climate in Russia during the same period. For Italy, Mussolini cleaved to Marx’s tenet of a country undergoing a state of capitalism previous to arriving at socialism meanwhile Lenin strived to transition Russia into socialism promptly from semi-feudalism. Mussolini’s nationalism was the main variance in Marxian principle and is what made him reject the divisive notions of class warfare of Communism and the revolutionary activities of Lenin’s Reds.

The fasci of Italy were simply groups of political activists. The fasces were the bundles of rods carried by the lictors of ancient Roman times symbolizing the monolithic power of the organized Roman people. The fact that people are stronger in numbers rather than being separated as individuals was hugely emphasized, and it was on this principle that all other principles of Fascism were predicated---idealizing and focusing on the collective instead of the individual, a paramount objective of Marxism. Fascism was/is a nationalistic form of extreme socialism while Trotskyism was/is a internationalist form of extreme socialism with Leninism being somewhere in between. Mussolini's ideas and structure were very influential and he had many adherents -- not the least of which was Adolf Hitler -- and some even survived World War II -- such as Peron and Chiang Kai Shek.

Sparta is what many students of ancient history see as the pioneer of Fascism while Marxist students associate Fascism with Napoleon Bonaparte’s ideology and regime. Mussolini imbibed Marx’s literature and studies of the ancient world, but it was also many other ideas that he affixed with his Marxian inspirations making his political philosophy a synthesis of many things and very ideologically distinguishable. 

Mussolini’s 1919 election manifesto and the policies it composed of are perfect for explaining the meaning behind Fascism. Mussolini saw himself as leader and savior to the proletariat workers, and his policies decreed the proletariat workers to be at the helm of industry. He said, “If the bourgeoisie think they will find lightning conductors in us they are the more deceived; we must start work at once…. We want to accustom the working class to real and effectual leadership.” Like most Leftists today, Mussolini was a pro-unionist. He said, “Therefore, I desire that this assembly shall accept the revindication of national trades unionism.”Furthermore, his policies decreed government arrogating war profits, the closure of the stock exchange, much land to be given to peasants and the overthrow of the monarchy and aristocracy. Also, amongst large audiences Mussolini would animate them with never-endingly vituperating against plutocrats.