Or is Fascism, as I've said before, just conservatism with the gloves off?
Didn't you get Jonah Pantloads' memo aka his wingnut-welfare-funded screed, Doc? Everyone who's anyone knows that all Fascists are Liberals. Sheesh 
P.S. Actual answer to your question - yes.
Much as (a liberal) I abhor Berlusconi, and shudder at racism in Europe, I'm finding it hard to keep up with the current "progressive" slogan. What happened to "democratically elected" (e.g. Hamas)?
Yoyo:
I'm being a little sarcastic about regime change in Italy. Obviously there won't be any such thing imposed from without.
But fascism has always, at some point, been democratically elected (except in Spain, but conservatives are already busy rehabilitating Franco). Mussolini had his march on Rome, but he also achieved a majority in the 1924 elections. Hitler did the same in 1932.
Not too sure about Hitler...
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-...-
hitlerdemo.htm
But the point surely is that one man's "democratically elected" government (and to be precise -- since I mentioned them above -- Hamas' control of Gaza was gained by force, not via the Palestinian constitution) is another man's fascist regime. The will of the Italian electorate still doesn't oblige me to like Berlusconi, or even to shake his hand. But let's keep things in perspective, Italy is hardly a homophobic society (that incident you mention is conspicuous for its rarity). In March I was at a gay bar barely two blocks from the Vatican. Not quite Iran, yet...
http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Arch...05july/
2101.htm
http://www.talkleft.com/story/20...08/13/809/
33939
Gay persecution in Italy is, thankfully, relatively rare, as you note. What intrigued me, though, was that this wasn't a gay-bashing somewhere. Two ministries of the government got involved, and, an Italian friend told me today, it took seven years for this matter to be put right.
Closer to this moment in history, I thought that Hamas was democratically elected...wait! It was!
You don't read carefully, Doc...
Hamas won the legislative elections (i.e. like the Democrats in 2006), but the President is Fatah and the President is supposed to control various government institutions. Hamas took them over by force -- by throwing Fatah guys off rooftops, etc. To repeat:
and to be precise... Hamas' control of Gaza was gained by force, not via the Palestinian constitution
See, e.g.,
http://www.iiss.org/publications...as-coup-in-
gaza
Etc...
Or is Fascism, as I've said before, just conservatism with the gloves off?
I've stopped wondering. What I'd like to know is, given the history we know, how are liberals/lefties/progressives going to stop it in its tracks this time?
Enough with pacifism and civility. Time to be menacing. Within the law, of course.
OK, we were talking about two different things. But now I've gone and forgotten what the point of all this was. That democratic elections confer moral and political legitimacy? Up to a point. That we therefore have nothing to fear from electoral choices? Not so much.
Something like that.
But I'm a "muscular" liberal, Doc. I've always favoured intervention on urgent humanitarian grounds (Bosnia, Kosovo, Darfur, etc., maybe Zimbabwe). It's your guys who are always lecturing us about "anti-imperialism" and "sovereignty". You know, respect cultural differences (ignore the lynching of gays in Iran, female genital mutilation in Sudan, the stoning of rape victims in Pakistan, honour killings in Jordan...) etc.
As for the fingerprinting of Roma children in Italy, its impetus may be anti-gypsy racism, but I met a Roma social worker in Italy who thought that might be effective in the flagrant abuse involved in Roma parents' coercion of their kids as professional beggars (he compared it to the practice in India of selling little girls into brothels).
Yoyo,
You gotta watch those strawmen. Pack too many together, you get spontaneous combustion. : )
I don't know who "my guys" are, so I can't speak for them, but I have no difficulty with some interventions (e.g., Darfur). I even supported action against Milošević when the "mass graves of Albanians" were becoming believable (the story was since largely debunked).
I have to keep repeating this, but cultural relativism has a precise meaning, which has been conflated with moral relativism by know-nothing popular commentators, present company excepted. of course.
I'm unequivocally anti-imperialist. But I'm a sovereignty relativist. : )
All kinds of things are effective, incidentally. Putting Roma in concentration camps, and gassing half of their European population, as the Nazis did, no doubt cut down on some petty crime, if the popular stereotype can be believed. I'm sure that Berlusconi's Fascists will have a similar effect on their Roma population, hopefully without the messy murders. It's still racist, and unconscionable, and completely inexcusable. I would have thought that even a muscular liberal would agree with that.
But I'm a "muscular" liberal,
Then you have to engage in some sort of personal activism that requires real sacrifice (and maybe you have, I don't know) to support that, otherwise, it's simply lip-service that too often provides a veneer of popular moral support for corrupt authoritarians who pretend they have liberal values at heart, but are quite often motivated by something else.
Those of us not living in proximity to the conditions we'd like to change have to resign ourselves to the fact that our ability to effect change is severely limited.
Well Dawg I am not at all a fan of the harder core elements of the current Italian situation but I am not surprised. At some point mass legal and illegal immigration begins to threaten an existing culture. When the bien-pensant political elite pooh pooh the concerns of that culture they turn to other parties with other agendas.
Berlusconi and his Northern League allies trounced a Center-Left which had proven itself in a couple of years entirely incapable of dealing with the issues ordinary Italians were concerned about. I think it is a fair bet that a similar rout of the Center Left will take place in England whenever Brown has the guts to call an election.
The difference in Italy is that Berlusconi is feeling pressure from the Right whereas, in England, at least in the first round Cameron will be unlikely to face such pressure.
"Rounding up" the undocumented Roma or other illegal immigrants to Italy is an exercise of sovereign right. It is not as if the Italians are then shooting them. It is also very popular as the Roma and the illegal Muslim immigrants are seen as both petty criminals and, perhaps more importantly, alien to Italian culture.
Now I realize that the very idea of "alien" is, from the left's perspective, freighted with all manner of retrograde concepts; however, for unenlightened working class Italians, preserving their own concept of Italy for the Italians is a powerful idea.
I'm afraid we are going to be hearing rather more of this sort of thing in Europe over the next few years as the reality of mass immigration, declining native birthrates, and the total failure of the elitist left's economic and social programs become increasingly apparent.
Sorry if you are offended by my sharp definition of "respecting cultural differences"... that's what I think of when I hear the term.
As for Milosevic, I hope you're not one of those revisionists...
Marko Attila Hoare is a good source on Kosovo/a:
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress...-wests-enemies/
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress...s-anti-western/
(interesting, but a bit too facile; I have some serious reservations about that one [above]...)
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress...mply-integrity/
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress...endence-a-sham/
and, in case you didn't have enough...
http://wordpress.com/tag/red-bro...brown-alliance/
So, Ti-Guy, why are you guys so often found supporting corrupt authoritarians who don't pretend they have liberal values at heart, who, in fact, make no bones about working to eliminate "liberal values" (do I need name some)?
Jay:
I'm seeing a side of you I don't particularly like.
70,000 of the 160,000-strong population of Roma in Italy have Italian citizenship. They're all being rounded up.
The fact that a self-professed libertarian excuses this tells me much.
Yoyo:
Are you pointing to your identity here?
In any case, on the mass graves (and questioning the Albanian "genocide" doesn't make me an apologist for the guy who invented the term "ethnic cleansing"):
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilg...?
articleid=4136
http://www.commondreams.org/view...s04/0902-
02.htm
http://mefeedia.com/entry/michae...y-2008/6836008/
http://thenma.org/blogs/index.ph...ndaman/2008/02/
http://www.kosovo.net/news/archi...April_12/
6.html
At least two of these sources cannot by any stretch be identified with "the Left."
Doc,
I am of the left, myself (I refuse to have the label hijacked by the we-are-all-Hizbullah crowd), and the most vociferous Milosevic apologists are fascists (the old-fashioned, right-wing kind... see Hoare above), so telling me that a couple of your sources cannot by any stretch be identified with "the Left" isn't going to win you any brownie points with me.
I have no doubt that there were exaggerations during the Kosovo campaign, but I get off very quickly when the bus appears to be heading into Milosevic-was-an-anti-imperialist territory. (My neighbour is a Bosnian Muslim and I'm sure he'll give you a respectful hearing.)
[...Not sure what you mean by "pointing to your identity"]
So, Ti-Guy, why are you guys so often found supporting corrupt authoritarians who don't pretend they have liberal values at heart, who, in fact, make no bones about working to eliminate "liberal values" (do I need name some)?
Nice deflection, but I was only asserting something about those who claim to support noble liberal values...talk is cheap, baby.
I'm not a lefty; I probably have more fundamental political differences with Dawg than with quite a few of the libertarians here. But I respect honesty, coherence, evidence and good scholarship.
For examples of what those aren't check out loony libertarian Jay Currie's blog sometime.
Yoyo:
I can assure you that I'm not on the qui vive for "brownie points." Just so you know.
One of the commentators is a conservative. The other is a well-respected Canadian general. Not that who they are matters, but neither is a fascist.
I don't know who the "we are all Hizbullah" crowd happens to be, but you're beginning to irritate me.
Dawg, I am not advocating the "round up" - citizen or non-citizen - I am simply suggesting that at a certain point the ordinary Italian, having been ceaselessly ignored by pre-Berlusconi political elites, will vote for and support people who value Italian culture and are prepared to be seen protecting it.
Jay:
Sounds like an apology for Fascism.
Only a handful of Germans in the Reich had the slightest conception of the eternal and merciless struggle for the German language, German schools, and a German way of life. Only today, when the same deplorable misery is forced on many millions of Germans from the Reich, who under foreign rule dream of their common fatherland and strive, amid their longing, at least to preserve their holy right to their mother tongue, do wider circles understand what it means to be forced to fight for one's nationality.
--Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
Interesting move Dawg. Are you suggesting that a desire to preserve a culture is, prima facie, fascist?
Would you care to run that argument with, say, Quebec as your example?
I'd say that the desire to preserve a culture, whatever that means in fact, becomes Fascist when minorities are rounded up, Cabinet members talk about having private standing armies to take care of the Left, the capital city elects a mayor who is greeted with stiff-armed salutes and cries of "Duce, Duce!" and the Leader is given immunity for any and all crimes he has or might commit.
Don't be disingenuous with me, Jay. I've got too much mileage on me for that sort of game ("Hey, they're just worried about their culture") to have much effect, other than to piss me off.
And are too talented a rhetorician to actually answer the question I am asking.
I answered it squarely, without equivocation. Is the desire to "preserve a culture" Fascist? No. Are measures to "preserve culture" necessarily Fascist? No. But they happen to be in Berlusconi's Italy.
What a question. As if 160,000 Roma and Sinti in a population of more than 58 million are threatening Italian culture.
Are measures to preserve a culture fascist? Not necessarily, but they tend to lean that way.
If the only reason one has to preserve a culture is because it has always been like that, then any attempt to preserve that culture is probably tinged with fascism.
If the reason for the preservation of culture is to artificially preserve a favourable position for those in control, then the tinge has become more than "fascisty" in nature.
As for the Quebec question, in my mind there is certainly a degree of intolerance that could be quite accurately construed as authoritarian and dictatorial in nature. So yes I would say that the set up in Quebec is discriminatory and somewhat fascistic in nature. The system while democratic on the surface has built in measures to ensure that the tyranny of the majority will always hold sway and some people in that province will be victims of the state just because of where they find themselves positioned in that society.
Quebec isn't even remotely Fascist. It was much closer to that under Maurice Duplessis. We have to be careful of not making the term meaningless.
Dawg, the meaninglessness of the term fascist has been well established by the willingness of the Left to apply it to anyone who they disagree with. I lament its loss because it did have a particular and very useful meaning.
We also have to be careful not to confuse fascism with authoritarianism, or, for that matter statism. I agree with you that Quebec is not remotely Fascist but the Quiet Revolution was all about statism and the measures to preserve French Culture and language are most certainly authoritarian.
Dawg, the meaninglessness of the term fascist has been well established by the willingness of the Left to apply it to anyone who they disagree with.
I've used this handy reference in the last few years; of note, the Right's obsession with sexuality and its use of Newspeak are very real causes for concern.
In fact, it'd be hard not to agree that all elements of Ur-Fascism have been very dominant among modern "Conservatives" this last while.
Dawg, the meaninglessness of the term fascist has been well established by the willingness of the Left to apply it to anyone who they disagree with. I lament its loss because it did have a particular and very useful meaning.
Like this, for example?
Ah yes, the nasty, shrill "Left" who've overused the term Fascism and thus rendered it completely meaningless ... something the "Right" would never, ever, NEVER do.
the measures to preserve French Culture and language are most certainly authoritarian.
Of course, demanding that someone speak to you in a language that is not the dominant one of the community is not authoritarian at all.
That's because English-speaking people are never authoritarian. Just always correct.
I live in Alberta and there is a constant rumbling about western independence and folk always harp back to the days of NEP.
What I have found is that folk always like separatism as long as it stops where they want it to.
In Quebec it's always at province level, but wait until native Canadians want something that doesn't fit in with the "French ideal".
In Alberta what if a more progressive community complained that it's views were not represented in a more independent and right wing Alberta?
Folk are always happy when their pov is the norm and are more intolerant of those who are gainsayers. As for the world Fascist, well that is misused, but Quebec certainly is very centrist and ideologically driven on grounds of race and culture. If you don't like fascist try racist, but once the state starts to legislate what is an acceptable way to express ideas, it crosses a line into totalitarianism that makes it fascistic in nature.(Speak only with the words I allow you to use.)
Lulu
I love your stuff on CC, but the argument that "the arseholes on the right did it first," just means that your argument lacks merit to me.
Ti
same as Lulu, past mistakes are not excuses for present excesses.
""Rounding up" the undocumented Roma or other illegal immigrants to Italy is an exercise of sovereign right."
Uhm, no only individuals have any 'Sovereign rights' and any attempt by one collective to do this to another collective is the initiation of force writ large.
It is a statist exercise of persecution based not on individual actions but on "cultural identity" - and in some cases identity that is forced on someone by those outside, not by those in the group. How many of those 160 000 consider themselves Italians that happen to have Roma backgrounds? Most are, after all, Italian citizens.
I cannot see how any self-professed libertarian can support that statement above. Does the Canadian government have the 'sovereign right' to round up Italians or Germans or Muslims or Jews and do this, even if they are Canadian citizens?
Hell no.
And I'm dumbfounded that a libertarian would even entertain allowing a state to have and exercise such powers.
Berlusconi is a fascist in the very real and historical sense of the term. His actions are those of a real and historical fascist. To protect a culture through the use of coercion, state violence and threats of organized extra-legal violence is absolutely fascist.
For a libertarian to let their own cultural hangups and hatred of 'the other' blind so they lay down with such statist, authoritarian dogs is disgusting.
You Jay, are no libertarian.
You know what has really devalued the term "fascist"?
The insistence by people on the right that there are none, except for Hitler, and that he was a lefty.
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