The past 3 years of living in America have taught me a lot about the rise of fascism in the early 1930’s. The rise of fascism in the early 1930’s have taught me quite a bit about the time we are living in now in America. There are interesting and valid parallels, some of which I will present here.
The fascist mentality that rose in 1930’s was not something new though, at any time in history. It is a mentality that has deep roots that extend deep into humanity’s past. This mentality is not something that has disappeared as well, as many would want you to believe when you dare discuss the parallels of fascism in modern history. Of course, this is because they hold a mindset that ultimately will favor fascist hate filled sentiment when push comes to shove.
While fascism is totalitarian oppressive absolutism when implemented to the nth degree, the make up of fascism of course occurs well before any of that can or may even be possible to be implemented. That being, Hitler did not become a fascist when he became in power, Nazi’s were not suddenly fascist when they came in power, they were fascist long before they had any ability to implement their totalitarian regime. For the sake of argument, I will not be referring to fascism as a fully implemented absolute form of government, but the mentality behind it, the views of the fascist mind.
I have found that the essence of fascism is hatred and historically it is the hatred of leftism, liberals, and any ethnic minority groups or foreigners that are seen as a threat to the dominant culture of a nation. Fascism has risen out of economic and cultural plight simultaneously. In 1929, not only was the German economy wrecked from World War I reparations, the Great Depression began as well. This economic catastrophe left people broken and vulnerable, and one of the things they were left vulnerable to was hate. Now, there was hate filled demonizations of Jewish people preceding as well, as throughout human history any minority ethnic group is typically going to have a portion of the majority population to hate them, as they have not assimilated to the degree that the dominant culture demands. This hatred exploded with the economic plight of Germany, they were scapegoated and blamed for it and demonized with lies and hatred that if you believed the lies, it would make you hate them as well, and of course, left you with the delusion that they all must be killed. This is what demonization and hate filled propaganda results in.
The Jews, were speaking a foreign language, doing business with themselves primarily and had their own thriving subset of culture. Their businesses were sustained by Jewish customers and they had a subset of culture foreign to German culture. They were doing fairly well on their own and as such were hated and vulnerable to become the scapegoat for the economic plight of Germany. The similarity today of course, is the Mexican immigrant. They too speak a different language, they too have their foreign culture and they too have shops and little areas of cities in which stores show only Spanish signs. Many are here illegally and have been for some time. The lament of “press 1 for English and press 2 for Spanish when paying bills is used as fodder as to how they are coming into take “our land”. They are invaders, illegal or not, because enough of them have come here illegally to provide the demonization that they are bad hombres, sending their worst people, criminals, rapists. Any news instance of one of them doing anything of the sort is exploded as fodder for the justifications and rationalization to stereotype and demonize these illegal immigrants as evil and a scourge on white culture.
The United States had its economic plight as well, not as severe as Germany, but we did have the 2008 financial crisis which wrecked many Americans. While the United States recovered rather steadily in America, the hate filled demonizations of liberals that exploded on the scene around that time continued to fester and grow. The internet has made the dissemination of hate filled propaganda to be spread easily, in epidemic proportions. While we recovered economically fairly well, the demonization of liberals never waned. They too were the scapegoats of everything, regardless of reality. They allowed for Mexicans to come to the border, to “take our jobs”, even though white America would not necessarily even want the jobs that were being done. Conditions were ripe to point the finger for economic plight and fear that they were feeling, that their country was being overrun and white culture under threat.
Hatred was implemented based on lies and demonizations, in which Obama is seen by many as literally worse than Hitler, because of the lying hate filled propaganda they believed that would, if believed, would make you think the same. Vulnerable and angry at the situation, the conservatives found their scapegoat for the plight they perceived, which is largely based on lies with some reality mixed in, that led to a hate that seems to be only based on lying hate filled propaganda. It led to a divorce from reality in which fascism thrives. The rejection of the media, in favor of alternative facts and their hate filled conspiracy theory ridden alternative “news” in which every single instance of reality is perverted to a highly polarized biased slight that demonizes liberals and exonerates themselves from any wrong doing, daily this is pounded, by the hour, thriving rapid dissemination of lies that if you believe them, one can only hate in turn.
The essence of fascism has always been the hatred of liberals, communism, Marxism, the left, as Hitler and Mussolini exemplify. It is based on lies and it is the death throe of an ideal culture, a culture that was romanticized and may never have been.