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 19th
and early 20th 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.
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