Re: CHAT: Support/Oppression of Conlanging

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
>
> > >
> > >Wasn't he?
> >
> > This's, of course, a question of definition.  "Fascism" has become one
> > of
> > those political derogatives that people more or less automatically
> > bash
> > political enemies with. However, the almost completely state-run economy
> > and
> > society that Stalin created wasn't that similar too those of Germany
> > and
> > Italy during the 30s, which all agree where Fascist.
>
>Really? What I've been taught is that the two economic systems, despite
>superficial differences, were in fact extremely similar. Hitler's Germany
>was
>largely as much state-run as the Soviet Union. The difference is that it
>was on
>a less visible level.
We-ell, this is not what I've been taught. Granted, Hitler did eventually
impose a great deal of state control on big firms, particularly those
involved with war materiel production. But he did not, and this I believe
was of rather more immediate concern to the average citizen, do away with
small, private firms, nor with privately-owned land. Both were virtually
absent in the post-NEP Soviet Union. Also, the Nazi regime largely confined
its repression to a fairly well-defined number of target groups, whereas
Stalin's terror often struck more or less at random, happily killing even
stout stalinists. This certainly made for a different "mood" in society.
>
>  Indeed, I'd argue
> > that
> > German society 1933-39 was more similar to France's than to the Soviet
> > Union's. So, if I were trying to uphold some meaningful definition of
> > "Fascism" more narrow than "totalitarianism", I would say that Stalin
> > was no
> > Fascist.
> >
>
>If I take a narrow definition of Fascism, Stalin was fascist. You have to
>realise something: the political landscape is not a line going from extreme
>left to extreme right. It's a circle.
That's simply not true. If we look only at the economo-political right-left
axis, from complete capitalism to complete socialism, we find Stalin very
close to the left extreme and Hitler somewhere between the middle and the
left extreme, but at the right extreme we find people like the Manchester
Liberals, who're certainly not nigh-indistinguishable from Stalin and his
ilk.

What we tradionally call the "extreme right" is, of course, not a kind of
rightism at all.

And then there are all those other axes - centralism vs decentralism,
representative vs nonrepresentative rule, etc. The political landscape is,
if anything, a polydimensional space.

>Both extremes are most often
>indistinguishable. They may have different ways of looking at things, but
>practically they are identical.
Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were hardly practically identical.

> >
> > Surely, utilizing nationalism for strengthening the ruling group doesn't
> > by
> > itself make you Fascist?
> >
>
>Yes, when it goes as far as xenophobia and deportations. They may have
>defined
>differently the "groups to hate", but both Germany and the Soviet Union had
>them. And both used deportation camps (calling them "gulags" doesn't change
>what they are). To me that's a pretty good definition of fascism. Of
>course, if
>you add that fascism *has to* be of extreme right, then the Soviet Union
>was
>not fascist.
The use I can see for the term "fascism" is for dictatorial government by
the far right. As far as I can tell, you seem to want "fascism" to mean
"totalitarian rule", which's is precisely the catch-all use I wish to avoid,
and which makes the term "fascism" pointless - we already have
"totalitarianism" which this meaning, and the added advantage of not coming
with the same association with Mussolini and Hitler, and not being used as
an insult the way "fascism" is.

>But as I said, since practically there was no difference, why
>making one? Let's keep definitions simple.
Again, I don't agree there was no practical difference between Stalinist
Russia and Nazi Germany, but generally simple definitions are only
desireable to the point right before the cease to be useful.

                                               Andreas

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